He reported everything, he was able to
say everything, even the most embarrassing parts, everything could be
said, everything shown, everything he could tell. He presented his
wound, also told how he fled today, how he ferried across the water,
a childish run-away, willing to walk to the city, how the river had
laughed.
While he spoke, spoke for a long time, while Vasudeva was listening
with a quiet face, Vasudeva's listening gave Siddhartha a stronger
sensation than ever before, he sensed how his pain, his fears flowed
over to him, how his secret hope flowed over, came back at him from
his counterpart. To show his wound to this listener was the same as
bathing it in the river, until it had cooled and become one with the
river. While he was still speaking, still admitting and confessing,
Siddhartha felt more and more that this was no longer Vasudeva, no
longer a human being, who was listening to him, that this motionless
listener was absorbing his confession into himself like a tree the rain,
that this motionless man was the river itself, that he was God himself,
that he was the eternal itself. And while Siddhartha stopped thinking
of himself and his wound, this realisation of Vasudeva's changed
character took possession of him, and the more he felt it and entered
into it, the less wondrous it became, the more he realised that
everything was in order and natural, that Vasudeva had already been like
this for a long time, almost forever, that only he had not quite
recognised it, yes, that he himself had almost reached the same state.
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