Kamala looked steadily into his eyes. She thought of how she had intended to make pilgrimage to Gotama in order to see the face of a perfect one, in order to breathe in his peace, and now instead of finding Gotama she had found Siddhartha, and it was good so, just as good as if she had seen Gotama. She wanted to tell him so, but her tongue would no longer do as she wished. She looked at him in silence, and he saw in her eyes how her life was fading. When her final pain filled her eyes, when the final shudder ran through her limbs, he put his finger to her eyelids and closed them.
He sat there long, looking at her now lifeless face. He looked long at her mouth, her aged tired mouth with its lips, that now had become thin, and he remembered how once, in the springtime of his years, how he had once compared this mouth with a freshly opened fig. He sat there long, studied that pale face, those tired creases, filled himself with what he saw there, saw his own face lying in the same way, just as white, just as extinguished, simultaneously saw his own face and hers with its red lips, its burning eyes, and the sense of the present and of simultaneity permeated his being, the sense of eternity. He felt it deeply, more deeply than he had ever felt it before, now in that moment of the immortality of every life, the eternity of every glance.
When he raised himself Vasudeva had prepared rice for him. But Siddhartha did not eat. In the stall where they kept their goat the two old men prepared a beds of straw for themselves, and Vasudeva lay down to sleep. Siddhartha, though, went outside and spent the night sitting in front of the hut, listening to the river, the past flowing over him, all the ages of his life at the same time touching him and embracing him. From time to time, though, he would raise himself, go to the door of the hut and listen to find out whether the boy was sleeping.
Early in the morning, even before the sun had become visible, Vasudeva came out of the stall and went to his friend.
“You have not slept,” he said.
“No, Vasudeva. I sat here listening to the river. He told me much, he filled me deeply with the healing thought, the thought of unity.”
“You have gone through pain, Siddhartha, but I can see that there is no sadness that has entered your heart.”
“No, my friend, what do I have to be sad about? I used to be rich and happy, and now I have become even richer and happier. I have received the gift of a son.”
“Your son is also welcome. But now, Siddhartha, let us go to work, there is much to be done. Kamala died on the same bed as my wife did, long ago. Let us make her pyre on the same hill where I made hers.”
They built her pyre while the boy still slept.