“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.

THE SON

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.