Before the day had passed into evening, Siddhartha reached a big city, and he looked forward to having human company. He had lived long in the forests, the straw hut of the ferry man where he had slept the previous night was the first time he had slept under any roof for a long time.
Before he entered the town, near a pleasant wood enclosed within a fence, the wanderer met with a group of servants laden with baskets. In the middle of them was their mistress on a decorated palanquin borne by four men, she was seated on red cushions and protected from the sun under a brightly coloured roof. Siddhartha remained at the entrance to the wooded pleasure garden and watched the procession as it passed, saw the servants, the maids, the baskets, the palanquin, and on the palanquin saw the lady. Under a high tower of black hair he saw a face that was very fair, very tender and very wise, he saw a mouth that was pink like a freshly opened fig, eyebrows that were carefully tended and painted into tall arches, eyes that were intelligent and dark, a tall, a fair neck that rose up from the green and golden clothing around it, fair hands that lay at rest, long and slender with wide gold rings over the joints.
Siddhartha saw how beautiful she was, and his heart laughed. He bowed deeply as the palanquin came near, and as he righted himself he looked into that fair and noble face, into the intelligent eyes with their arched brows, he breathed in a fragrance he did not know. The beautiful woman smiled and briefly nodded to him before she disappeared into the wood, followed by her servers.
That is a good portent for the city I am now entering, thought Siddhartha. He felt the urge to go into the wood but then thought better of it, and only then did he become aware of how the servers and maids at the entrance had looked at him, with what contempt, with what mistrust, with what dismissal.
I am still a samana, he thought, still an ascetic and a beggar. I will not, as such, be allowed to stay, not be allowed into the wood. And he laughed.
As soon as he met someone on the road he asked about the wood and what the name of that woman was. He learned that it was the grove of Kamala, the famous courtesan, and that she owned a house in the city as well as the wood.
Siddhartha then made his way into the city. Now he knew where he should go.
In order to arrive there he allowed the city to drink him in, followed the crowds in the streets, stood still in the city squares, rested on the stone steps beside the river. As evening fell he made friends with a barber’s assistant whom he had seen at work in the shade of a dome. He came across him later that day as he prayed in a temple of Vishnu, and told him the stories about Vishnu and Lakshmi. He slept that night among the boats on the river and then, early in the morning, before the first customers arrived in his shop, he had the barber’s assistant shave him, cut his hair, comb his hair and dress it with fine oil. Then he went down to bathe in the river.
Late that afternoon when the beautiful Kamala was approaching her grove on her palanquin she found Siddhartha waiting at the entrance. He bowed to her and accepted her greeting to him. When the train of servants had nearly passed him he caught the attention of the last of them and asked him to inform his mistress that there was a young brahmin who wished to speak with her. Siddhartha waited, after a while the servant came back, invited him to follow him, led him in silence into a pavilion where Kamala lay on a couch and left him alone with her.
“Was it not you who stood outside there yesterday and offered me greeting? Kamala asked.