Siddhartha

Author(s): Hermann Hesse, Hilda Rosner
Publisher: Macmillan India

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Outside the town, by a beautiful unfenced grove, the wanderer met a small train of men and women servants loaded with baskets. In the middle, in an ornamented sedan chair carried by four people, sat a woman, the mistress, on red cushions beneath a coloured awning. Siddhartha stood still at the entrance to the grove and watched the procession, the men servants, the maids and the baskets. He looked at the sedan chair and the lady in it. Beneath heaped-up black hair he saw a bright, very sweet, very clever face, a bright red mouth like a freshly cut fig, artful eyebrows painted in a high arch, dark eyes, clever and observant, and a clear slender neck above her green and gold gown. The woman's hands were firm and smooth, long and slender, with broad gold bangles on her wrists.
Siddhartha saw how beautiful she was and his heart rejoiced. He bowed low as the sedan chair passed close by him, and raising himself again, gazed at the bright fair face, and for a moment into the clever arched eyes, and inhaled the fragrance of a perfume which he did not recognize.
For a moment the beautiful woman nodded and smiled, then disappeared into the grove, followed by her servants.
And so, thought Siddhartha, I enter this town under a lucky star. He felt the urge to enter the grove immediately, but he thought it over, for it had just occurred to him how the men servants and maids had looked at him at the entrance, so scornfully, so distrustfully, so dismissing in their glance.
I am still a Samana, he thought, still an ascetic and a beggar. I cannot remain one. I cannot enter the grove like this. And he laughed.
He inquired from the first people that he met about the grove and the woman's name, and learned that it was the grove of Kamala, the well-known courtesan, and that besides the grove she owned a house in the town.
Then he entered the town. He had only one goal. Pursuing
it, he surveyed the town, wandered about in the maze or streets, stood still in places, and rested on the stone steps to the river.
Towards evening he made friends with a barber's assistant, whom he had seen working in the shade of an arch. He found him again at prayer in the temple of Vishnus, where he related to him stories about Vishnus and Lakshmi. During the night he slept among the boats on the river, and early in the morning, before the first customers arrived in the shop, he had his beard shaved off by the barber's assistant. He also had his hair combed and rubbed with fine oil. Then he went to bathe in the river.
When the beautiful Kamala was approaching her grove late in the afternoon in her sedan chair, Siddhartha was at the entrance. He bowed and received the courtesan's greeting. He beckoned the servant who was last in the procession, and asked him to announce to his mistress that a young Brahmin desired to speak to her. After a time the servant returned, asked Siddhartha to follow him, conducted him silently into a pavilion, where Kamala lay on a couch, and left him.
Did you not stand outside yesterday and greet me?' asked Kamala. 'Yes indeed. I saw you yesterday and greeted you.
But did you not have a beard and long hair yesterday, and dust in your hair?'
'You have observed well, you have seen everything. You have seen Siddhartha, the Brahmin's son, who left his home in order to become a Samana, and who was a Samana for three years. Now, however, I have left that path and have come to this town, and the first person I met before I reached the town was you. I have come here to tell you, O Kamala, that you are the first woman to whom Siddhartha has spoken without lowered eyes. Never again will I lower my eyes when I meet a beautiful woman.'
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