“You haven’t slept,” he said.
“No, Vasudeva. I sat here, I was listening
to the river. A lot it has told me, deeply it
has filled me with the healing thought, with the thought
of oneness.”
“You’ve experienced suffering, Siddhartha,
but I see: no sadness has entered your heart.”
“No, my dear, how should I be sad? I,
who have been rich and happy, have become even richer
and happier now. My son has been given to me.”
“Your son shall be welcome to me as well.
But now, Siddhartha, let’s get to work, there
is much to be done. Kamala has died on the same
bed, on which my wife had died a long time ago.
Let us also build Kamala’s funeral pile on
the same hill on which I had then built my wife’s
funeral pile.”
While the boy was still asleep, they built the funeral
pile.
Timid and weeping, the boy had attended his mother’s
funeral; gloomy and shy, he had listened to Siddhartha,
who greeted him as his son and welcomed him at his
place in Vasudeva’s hut. Pale, he sat for
many days by the hill of the dead, did not want to
eat, gave no open look, did not open his heart, met
his fate with resistance and denial.
Siddhartha spared him and let him do as he pleased,
he honoured his mourning. Siddhartha understood
that his son did not know him, that he could not love
him like a father. Slowly, he also saw and understood
that the eleven-year-old was a pampered boy, a mother’s
boy, and that he had grown up in the habits of rich
people, accustomed to finer food, to a soft bed, accustomed
to giving orders to servants. Siddhartha understood
that the mourning, pampered child could not suddenly
and willingly be content with a life among strangers
and in poverty. He did not force him, he did
many a chore for him, always picked the best piece
of the meal for him. Slowly, he hoped to win
him over, by friendly patience.
Rich and happy, he had called himself, when the boy
had come to him. Since time had passed on in
the meantime, and the boy remained a stranger and
in a gloomy disposition, since he displayed a proud
and stubbornly disobedient heart, did not want to
do any work, did not pay his respect to the old men,
stole from Vasudeva’s fruit-trees, then Siddhartha
began to understand that his son had not brought him
happiness and peace, but suffering and worry.
But he loved him, and he preferred the suffering
and worries of love over happiness and joy without
the boy. Since young Siddhartha was in the hut,
the old men had split the work. Vasudeva had
again taken on the job of the ferryman all by himself,
and Siddhartha, in order to be with his son, did the
work in the hut and the field.
For a long time, for long months, Siddhartha waited
for his son to understand him, to accept his love,
to perhaps reciprocate it. For long months,
Vasudeva waited, watching, waited and said nothing.
One day, when Siddhartha the younger had once again
tormented his father very much with spite and an unsteadiness
in his wishes and had broken both of his rice-bowls,
Vasudeva took in the evening his friend aside and
talked to him.
