Tim Parks - The Server

It is damaging you and it could destroy you .

You say that age doesn’t matter and that there’s a hell of a gap between myself and your mother too. All I can say is, that gap has mattered. There have been times when both of us have wished

The letter stopped. Damn. Just when it was getting interesting. Or, rather, it changed, it stopped being a letter. The neat, I’m-a-reasonable-guy handwriting broke off. Two lines had been crossed out, pretty violently, then it was all scrawl.

Tell the little idiot you won’t have the cash to bail her out this time .

Tell her it’s making her mother ill .

Tell her Sean doesn’t give a shit for anyone but himself. Otherwise he would never have been driving drunk .

Tell her if she drops him I’ll

No. The opposite. Tell her I’d give my right arm to be in love the way she is. My right arm. I envy her. I’d give anything to be as mad as she is now. She’s mad. She’s lucky. To be able to give up everything .

The truth is you hate yourself even more than you hate L .

Tell her bankruptcy will be comic relief compared with the rest .

Exhausted exhausted exhausted exhausted exhausted exhausted .

EXHAUSTED .

If you’d asked me a year ago, Can things get worse? I’d have said no .

L keeps me to punish me .

Or for supposed financial security?

OH PLEASE DO GO OVER THE WHOLE FUCKING NIGHTMARE FOR THE TEN MILLIONTH TIME .

The age gap with the older man is not the same as the age gap with the older woman. You and T .

Married now. You wanted T married. Can you believe that? You made her marry. Idiot .

What have you become? A worm? A snake? How did it happen?

You came here to avoid killing yourself .

Melodrama. Yawn .

Or killing her .

Alas impossible. Despite all the murder stories .

Kristin had come in. When I looked up she turned away.

‘I’m reading a letter.’ I waved it.

No one reads letters at the Dasgupta. Not during retreats. In the remote event of a letter arriving, it’s held back till the ten days are up.

Kristin lay on the slats of her bed, put her head on the pillow and closed her eyes. I stopped reading and turned on an elbow. She’s taller than me and broader, makes you think of words like ‘sturdy’, ‘staunch’, ‘stalwart’. Why do I like her? We haven’t even spoken.

‘Stttart-tagain!’ I said, imitating Dasgupta’s guided meditations. ‘With a caaalm and quiet mind.’

She stayed blank.

Stolid.

‘Does your boyfriend know you’re here, Kristin?’

She didn’t reply.

Steadfast.

‘What was so funny when I said that about getting razzled?’

Her skin is pale and solemn.

‘What’s your position on age gaps in relationships? I mean, could you ever see yourself with someone as old as Harper? Do you get a lot of that in Latvia? An older man can be fun. They have more cash.’

Nothing.

‘This letter’s from my dad. He reckons I’m screwing up completely staying here. Throwing my life away. He wants me to come home. Says he loves me.’ I laughed. ‘Can you imagine?’

Nothing. Noble Silence.

‘Speaking of which, I’d love a foot massage. Want to try? Me on you, you on me?’

She knew I was provoking her. Touching is forbidden at the Dasgupta. I wondered if she’d report me. No. Meredith might, but Kristin is different. She lay very still, on her back, her hands along her sides, palms upward.

‘Be vvery vvvigilant.’ I mimicked Dasgupta again, sighing deeply. ‘ Vvery aware. Vvery aware.’

The corner of her mouth curled slightly.

‘Alllert and att-ttentive. With a balllanced, eqquanimous mind,’ I tried to do his deep Indian voice. ‘Eqquanimous mind, eqquanimous mind, eqqqqquanimous mind.’

Her eyelids quivered. She was smiling.

‘If you are experiencing a free flow of subtle sensations, let your mind sweep freely across your whole body. If you find an area of pain, make an objective note. Pain. Pain. Not my pain. If you feel the little mouse that’s crawling over your blanket towards your chin, make an objective note. Mouse. Mouse. Not my—’

‘No!’ Kristin sat bolt upright. The slats creaked. ‘Where?’

Laughing, I gathered my dirty laundry, blessed her and went out.

I LOVE THE way wet cotton clings to your fingers. I was next to one of the meditators. A Chinese woman. We scrubbed our clothes in adjacent sinks. Five pairs of pants. I like watching them change colour when you plunge them into the water. Wetness makes them dark, but see-through too. I can see the pinkness of my fingers through the fabric. The Chinese woman sighs wringing out her jeans. Sometimes the meditators get on my nerves. They’re so proud of their big Dasgupta experience, their vows and visions. Sometimes I love being around them. Their heavy silence pulls you in. There’s a clinginess to it, like cottony wetness. The more you don’t talk to the stranger beside you, the closer you feel to her.

I would never disturb a meditator like I bothered Kristin.

I scrub at crotches. Blue, red, green, white, black. Five pairs plus what I’ve got on. The cotton stretches and wrinkles. The stains fade but won’t go. Stuff from my body. Me. I never hand-washed clothes till I came to the Dasgupta. At home anything dirty disappeared the moment you chucked it on the carpet. Mum loved to slave, then whined about our being spoiled. I never chopped a carrot either. On tour I wore the same clothes for days. Zoë was always happy to swap. I liked her black smell. ‘You mucky little beast.’ Jonathan laughed. He’d paint me so people could smell it, he said. They’d look at the painting and smell I was wet. Carl wanted me to shower with him. Carl loved long hot showers. The quality of a hotel was the quality of the shower, for Carl: how long you could stay there rubbing soap over each other. Carl was always clean. Now I’m scrubbing hard. I’m scrubbing the sweat out of the cotton. Don’t even try to scrub out the letter. Because we love you. Blind to reason .

What did he mean, all the murder stories ?

The kitchen servers ring the gong for meals and the course managers ring it for meditations. They carry their registers and their notebooks. They have biros. They are available if someone has an urgent question. They won’t offer an answer. They refer you to the course leader, to Harper or Mi Nu Wai. If people are skipping meditation, the course managers check their rooms. They catch them talking. They look for footprints in the mud along the fence at the bottom of the recreation field.

I’ve never been asked to be a course manager. Some people are invited the first time they serve. They must know I’m not the right person. I’d find it funny when people sneaked off for a pint. Sometimes it is hard to square the idea of having no self with the fact that they always know which person is right for which job. You are who you are even when you’re no one. That’s Anatta .

Another thing I wonder is how they decide which meditator will sit where. They have a plan of all the cushions. Rows A B C D, then the numbers along each row. Like stewards at a smart venue, they assign meditators to their places. That happens the first evening. It’s not alphabetical, but they keep a record, so when a cushion is empty they know whose bum isn’t on it, and they know what room that person sleeps in, they know where to find her. I had almost reached my place, late as usual, when I realized I was beside Marcia, the big Australian. They’d moved Meredith to the empty cushion on the right and put Marcia between us. When I sat down there was a smell of fart.