The Son

Shy 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 to stay with him in Vasudeva’s hut. Pale, he sat for days by the hill of the dead, would not eat, closed off his gaze, closed off his heart, fought and struggled against his fate.

Siddhartha spared him and let him be; he respected 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 spoiled boy, a mother’s child, raised in the habits of wealth, used to finer food, to a soft bed, used to giving orders to servants. Siddhartha understood that the mourning and spoiled boy could not suddenly and willingly be content among strangers and in poverty. He did not force him; he did many a chore for him, always picked out the best morsel for him. Slowly he hoped to win him, through friendly patience.

Rich and happy he had called himself when the boy came to him. But as time flowed on and the boy remained a stranger and gloomy, as he showed a proud and defiant heart, would do no work, showed the old men no respect, robbed Vasudeva’s fruit trees, Siddhartha began to understand that with his son it was not happiness and peace that had come to him but sorrow and worry. But he loved him, and he preferred the sorrow and worry of love to the happiness and joy he had had without the boy. Since young Siddhartha had been in the hut, the old men had divided the work between them. Vasudeva had taken over the ferryman’s office alone again, and Siddhartha, in order to be with his son, 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, perhaps to return it. For long months Vasudeva waited, watching, waited and was silent. One day, when young Siddhartha had again tormented his father badly with defiance and moods and had broken both of his rice bowls, Vasudeva took his friend aside in the evening and spoke with him.

“Forgive me,” he said, “I speak to you out of a friendly heart. I see that you are tormenting yourself, I see that you are grieving. Your son, my dear, is a worry to you, and he is a worry to me too. The young bird is used to another life, to another nest. He has not run away from wealth and the town out of disgust and surfeit, as you did; he has had to leave all that behind against his will. I asked the river, O friend; many times I have asked it. But the river laughs; it laughs at me, it laughs at you and me, and shakes with laughter at our folly. Water wants to go to water, youth wants to go to youth; your son is not in a place where he can thrive. You too ask the river; you too listen to it!”

Troubled, Siddhartha looked into his friendly face, in whose many wrinkles a constant serenity dwelt.

“Can I part with him?” he said softly, ashamed. “Give me more time, my dear! Look, I am fighting for him, I am wooing his heart; with love and with friendly patience I mean to win it. The river shall speak to him too one day; he too is called.”

Vasudeva’s smile bloomed more warmly. “Oh yes, he too is called; he too is of the eternal life. But do we know, you and I, what he is called to, to what way, to what deeds, to what sufferings? His suffering will not be small, for his heart is proud and hard; such people must suffer much, go astray much, do much wrong, load much sin upon themselves. Tell me, my dear: you are not bringing up your son? You do not force him? Do not beat him? Do not punish him?”

“No, Vasudeva, I do none of that.”

“I knew it. You do not force him, do not beat him, do not command him, because you know that soft is stronger than hard, water stronger than rock, love stronger than force. Very good; I praise you for it. But is it not a mistake on your part to think that you do not force him, do not punish him? Do you not bind him in bonds with your love? Do you not shame him every day, and make it still harder for him, with your kindness and patience? Do you not force him, this arrogant and spoiled boy, to live in a hut with two old banana eaters, to whom even rice is a delicacy, whose thoughts cannot be his, whose hearts are old and quiet and keep a different pace from his? Is he not forced, is he not punished, by all this?”

Taken aback, Siddhartha looked at the ground. Softly he asked: “What do you think I should do?”

Vasudeva spoke: “Take him to the town, take him to his mother’s house; there will still be servants there; give him to them. And if there are none left, take him to a teacher, not for the sake of the teaching, but so that he will be among other boys, and girls, and in the world that is his own. Have you never thought of that?”

“You see into my heart,” Siddhartha said sadly. “I have often thought of it. But look, how can I give him, who has no gentle heart as it is, into this world? Will he not become dissolute, will he not lose himself in pleasure and power, will he not repeat all his father’s errors, will he not perhaps be lost altogether in Samsara?”

The ferryman’s smile shone out brightly; he touched Siddhartha’s arm tenderly and said: “Ask the river about that, friend! Hear it laugh about it! Do you really believe that you committed your follies in order to spare your son them? And can you protect your son from Samsara? How? Through teaching, through prayer, through admonition? My dear, have you entirely forgotten that story, that instructive story of the Brahmin’s son Siddhartha, which you once told me here in this very place? Who kept the Samana Siddhartha safe from Samsara, from sin, from greed, from folly? Could his father’s piety, his teachers’ admonitions, could his own knowledge, his own seeking keep him safe? What father, what teacher could protect him from living life himself, from soiling himself with life himself, from loading guilt upon himself, from drinking the bitter drink himself, from finding his way himself?

“Do you believe, my dear, that this way might perhaps be spared anyone? Your little son, perhaps, because you love him, because you would like to spare him sorrow and pain and disappointment? But even if you died ten times for him, you would not be able to take the smallest part of his fate from him by it.”

Never before had Vasudeva spoken so many words. Siddhartha thanked him kindly, went troubled into the hut, and for a long time could not sleep. Vasudeva had told him nothing he had not already thought and known himself. But it was a knowledge he could not act on; stronger than the knowledge was his love for the boy, stronger his tenderness, his fear of losing him. Had he ever lost his heart so completely to anything, had he ever loved any person like this, so blindly, so sufferingly, so unsuccessfully, and yet so happily?

Siddhartha could not follow his friend’s advice; he could not give up his son. He let the boy give him orders, he let him treat him with disrespect. He was silent and waited, began every day the mute struggle of kindness, the soundless war of patience. Vasudeva too was silent and waited, kindly, knowing, forbearing. In patience they were both masters.

Once, when the boy’s face reminded him very much of Kamala, Siddhartha suddenly had to think of something Kamala had once said to him long ago, in the days of their youth. “You cannot love,” she had said to him, and he had agreed with her and had compared himself to a star, but the child people to falling leaves, and yet he had also sensed a reproach in those words. In fact he had never been able to lose himself wholly and give himself to another person, to forget himself, to commit follies of love for another’s sake; he had never been able to do that, and this, so it had seemed to him then, had been the great difference that separated him from the child people. But now, since his son had been there, now he too, Siddhartha, had become wholly one of the child people, suffering for a person’s sake, loving a person, lost to a love, become a fool for love’s sake. Now he too felt, late, once in his life, this strongest and strangest of passions, suffered from it, suffered miserably, and was nevertheless blissful, was nevertheless renewed in some way, richer by something.

He did sense that this love, this blind love for his son, was a passion, something very human, that it was Samsara, a turbid spring, a dark water. Yet at the same time, so he felt, it was not worthless; it was necessary; it came from his own being. This pleasure too wanted to be atoned for, these pains too wanted to be tasted, these follies too committed.

The son, meanwhile, let him commit his follies, let him woo him, let him humble himself every day before his moods. This father had nothing that delighted the boy and nothing the boy would have feared. He was a good man, this father, a good, kind, gentle man, perhaps a very devout man, perhaps a saint—none of these were qualities that could win the boy. This father, who kept him prisoner there in his wretched hut, bored him; he bored him, and that he answered every naughtiness with a smile, every insult with kindness, every malice with goodness, that was precisely the most hateful trick of this old sneak. The boy would much rather have been threatened by him, mistreated by him.

A day came when young Siddhartha’s mood broke out and turned openly against his father. His father had given him a task; he had told him to gather brushwood. But the boy did not go out of the hut; he stood there defiant and furious, stamped on the ground, clenched his fists, and in a violent outburst screamed hatred and contempt into his father’s face.

“Fetch your brushwood yourself!” he cried, foaming. “I am not your servant. I know you won’t beat me; you don’t dare; I know that you want to punish me constantly and make me small with your piety and your indulgence. You want me to become like you, just as pious, just as gentle, just as wise! But I, listen, I would rather become a highway robber and a murderer and go to hell, to spite you, than become like you! I hate you; you are not my father, even if you were my mother’s lover ten times over!”

Rage and grief boiled over in him, foamed out at his father in a hundred wild and wicked words. Then the boy ran away and did not come back until late in the evening.

But the next morning he had vanished. Vanished too was a small basket woven of two-colored bast, in which the ferrymen kept the copper and silver coins they received as fares. Vanished too was the boat; Siddhartha saw it lying on the far bank. The boy had run away.

“I must follow him,” said Siddhartha, who had been trembling with misery since the boy’s abuse the day before. “A child cannot go through the forest alone. He will perish. We must build a raft, Vasudeva, to get across the water.”

“We will build a raft,” said Vasudeva, “to fetch back our boat, which the boy has made off with. But you should let him go, friend; he is no longer a child; he knows how to look after himself. He is seeking the way to the town, and he is right, do not forget that. He is doing what you yourself failed to do. He is taking care of himself, he is going his own course. Ah, Siddhartha, I see you suffering, but you are suffering pains one would like to laugh at, pains you yourself will soon laugh at.”

Siddhartha did not answer. He was already holding the ax in his hands and began to make a raft of bamboo, and Vasudeva helped him tie the stems together with ropes of grass. Then they crossed over, were carried far downstream, pulled the raft upstream along the far bank.

“Why did you bring the ax along?” asked Siddhartha.

Vasudeva said: “It might be that the oar of our boat has been lost.”

But Siddhartha knew what his friend was thinking. He was thinking that the boy would have thrown the oar away or broken it, to take revenge and to keep them from pursuing him. And indeed there was no longer an oar in the boat. Vasudeva pointed to the bottom of the boat and looked at his friend with a smile, as if he wanted to say: “Don’t you see what your son wants to tell you? Don’t you see that he does not want to be followed?” But he did not say this in words. He set about making a new oar. But Siddhartha took his leave to search for the runaway. Vasudeva did not stop him.

When Siddhartha had been walking in the forest for a long time, the thought came to him that his searching was useless. Either, he thought, the boy was far ahead and had already reached the town, or, if he should still be on the way, he would keep himself hidden from him, his pursuer. As he thought further, he also found that he himself was not worried about his son, that in his innermost heart he knew the boy had neither perished nor was in any danger in the forest. Nevertheless he ran on without rest, no longer to save him, only out of longing, only to see him once more, perhaps. And he ran as far as the edge of the town.

When he reached the broad road near the town, he stopped, at the entrance to the beautiful pleasure garden that had once belonged to Kamala, where he had once seen her for the first time, in her sedan chair. The past rose up in his soul; again he saw himself standing there, young, a bearded, naked Samana, his hair full of dust. For a long time Siddhartha stood and looked through the open gate into the garden; he saw monks in yellow robes walking under the beautiful trees.

For a long time he stood, reflecting, seeing images, listening to the story of his life. For a long time he stood, looked at the monks, saw instead of them the young Siddhartha, saw the young Kamala walking under the tall trees. He saw himself clearly, being entertained by Kamala, receiving her first kiss, looking back proudly and contemptuously on his Brahmin life, beginning his worldly life proudly and full of desire. He saw Kamaswami, saw the servants, the banquets, the dice players, the musicians, saw Kamala’s songbird in its cage, lived all this once more, breathed Samsara, was old and tired once more, felt the disgust once more, felt once more the wish to snuff himself out, was healed once more by the holy Om.

After he had stood by the gate of the garden for a long time, Siddhartha saw that the longing that had driven him to this place was foolish, that he could not help his son, that he must not cling to him. Deeply he felt in his heart his love for the runaway, like a wound, and felt at the same time that the wound had not been given him to dig about in it, that it must become a blossom and shine.

That the wound did not yet blossom at this hour, did not yet shine, made him sad. In place of the goal of his wish, which had drawn him here after his runaway son, there was now emptiness. Sadly he sat down, felt something in his heart dying, felt emptiness, saw no joy any longer, no goal. He sat absorbed and waited. This he had learned by the river, this one thing: to wait, to have patience, to listen. And he sat and listened, in the dust of the road, listened to his heart as it beat tired and sad, waited for a voice. For many an hour he crouched there listening, no longer saw images, sank into the emptiness, let himself sink, without seeing a way. And when he felt the wound burn, he spoke the Om soundlessly, filled himself with Om. The monks in the garden saw him, and since he crouched there for many hours and the dust gathered on his gray hair, one of them came and laid two bananas down before him. The old man did not see him.

From this stupor a hand woke him, touching his shoulder. At once he recognized this touch, tender and shy, and came to himself. He rose and greeted Vasudeva, who had come after him. And as he looked into Vasudeva’s friendly face, into the little wrinkles that seemed filled with nothing but smiles, into the cheerful eyes, he smiled too. Now he saw the bananas lying before him; he picked them up, gave one to the ferryman, ate the other himself. Then he went silently back into the forest with Vasudeva and returned home to the ferry. Neither spoke of what had happened that day, neither named the boy’s name, neither spoke of his flight, neither spoke of the wound. In the hut Siddhartha lay down on his bed, and when after a while Vasudeva came to him to offer him a bowl of coconut milk, he found him already asleep.