When the day began, Siddhartha asked his host, the ferryman, to get him across the river.  The ferryman got him across the river on his bamboo-raft, the wide water shimmered reddishly in the light of the morning.

“This is a beautiful river,” he said to his companion.

“Yes,” said the ferryman, “a very beautiful river, I love it more than anything.  Often I have listened to it, often I have looked into its eyes, and always I have learned from it.  Much can be learned from a river.”

“I than you, my benefactor,” spoke Siddhartha, disembarking on the other side of the river.  “I have no gift I could give you for your hospitality, my dear, and also no payment for your work.  I am a man without a home, a son of a Brahman and a Samana.”

“I did see it,” spoke the ferryman, “and I haven’t expected any payment from you and no gift which would be the custom for guests to bear.  You will give me the gift another time.”

“Do you think so?” asked Siddhartha amusedly.

“Surely.  This too, I have learned from the river:  everything is coming back!  You too, Samana, will come back.  Now farewell!  Let your friendship be my reward.  Commemorate me, when you’ll make offerings to the gods.”

Smiling, they parted.  Smiling, Siddhartha was happy about the friendship and the kindness of the ferryman.  “He is like Govinda,” he thought with a smile, “all I meet on my path are like Govinda.  All are thankful, though they are the ones who would have a right to receive thanks.  All are submissive, all would like to be friends, like to obey, think little.  Like children are all people.”

At about noon, he came through a village.  In front of the mud cottages, children were rolling about in the street, were playing with pumpkin-seeds and sea-shells, screamed and wrestled, but they all timidly fled from the unknown Samana.  In the end of the village, the path led through a stream, and by the side of the stream, a young woman was kneeling and washing clothes.  When Siddhartha greeted her, she lifted her head and looked up to him with a smile, so that he saw the white in her eyes glistening.  He called out a blessing to her, as it is the custom among travellers, and asked how far he still had to go to reach the large city.  Then she got up and came to him, beautifully her wet mouth was shimmering in her young face.  She exchanged humorous banter with him, asked whether he had eaten already, and whether it was true that the Samanas slept alone in the forest at night and were not allowed to have any women with them.  While talking, she put her left foot on his right one and made a movement as a woman does who would want to initiate that kind of sexual pleasure with a man, which the textbooks call “climbing a tree”.  Siddhartha felt his blood heating up, and since in this moment he had to think of his dream again, he bend slightly down to the woman and kissed with his lips the brown nipple of her breast.  Looking up, he saw her face smiling full of lust and her eyes, with contracted pupils, begging with desire.