Siddhartha

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

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her body had swelled. She was given a restorative and her consciousness returned. She was lying on Siddhartha's bed in his hut and Siddhartha, whom she had oace loved so much, was bending over her.
She thought she was dreaming and, smiling, she looked into her lover's face. Gradually, she realized her condition, remembered the bite and called anxiously for her son. 'Do not worry,' said Siddhartha, 'he is here.'
Kamala looked into his eyes. She found it difficult to speak with the poison in her system. 'You have grown old, my dear,' she said; 'you have become grey, but you are like the young Samana who once came to me in my garden, without clothes and with dusty feet. You are much more like him than when you left Kamaswami and me. Your eyes are like his, Siddhartha. Ah, I have also grown old, old - did you recognize
me?'
Siddhartha smiled. I recognized you immediately, Kamala, my dear.
Kamala indicated her son and said: 'Did you recognize him, too? He is your son.'
Her eyes wandered and closed. The boy began to cry. Siddhartha put him on his knee, let him weep and stroked his hair. Looking at the child's face, he remembered a Brahmin prayer which he had once learned when he himself was a small child. Slowly and in a singing voice he began to recite it; the words came back to him out of the past and his childhood. The child became quiet as he recited, still sobbed a little and then fell asleep. Siddhartha put him on Vasudeva's bed. Vasudeva stood by the hearth cooking rice. Siddhartha looked at him and Vasudeva smiled at him. 'She is dying,' said Siddhartha softly.
Vasudeva nodded. The firelight from the hearth was reflected in his kind face,
Kamala again regained consciousness. There was pain in
her face; Siddhartha read the pain on her mouth, in her pallid face. He read it quietly, attentively, waiting, sharing her pain. Kamala was aware of this; her glance sought his.
Looking at him she said: "Now I see that your eyes have also changed. They have become quite different. How do I recognize that you are still SiddharthaYou are Siddhartha and yet you are not like him.'
Siddhartha did not speak; silently he looked into her eyes.
Have you attained it?' she asked. 'Have you found peace?'
He smiled and placed his hand on hers. 'Yes,' she said, 'I see it. I also will find peace. 'You have found it,' whispered Siddhartha.
Kamala looked at him steadily. It had been her intention to make a pilgrimage to Gotama, to see the face of the Illustrious One, to obtain some of his peace, and instead she had only found him, and it was good, just as good as if she had seen the other. She wanted to tell him that, but her tongue no longer obeyed her will. Silently she looked at him and he saw the life fade from her eyes. When the last pain had filled and passed from her eyes, when the last shudder had passed through her body, his fingers closed her eyelids.
He sat there a long time looking at her dead face. For a long time he looked at her mouth, her old tired mouth and her shrunken lips, and remembered how once, in the spring of his life, he had compared her lips with a freshly cut fig. For a long time he looked intently at the pale face, at the tired wrinkles and saw his own face like that, just as white, also dead, and at the same time he saw his face and hers, young, with red lips, with ardent eyes and he was overwhelmed with a feeling of the present and contemporary existence. In this hour he felt more acutely the indestructibleness of every life, the eternity of every moment.
When he rose, Vasudeva had prepared some rice for him,
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