Tim Parks - The Server

‘Well, not a carrot.’

The carrots we’ve got look like they’ve been in the ground a thousand years. They’re gnarled and knobbly.

‘Not a cucumber,’ says Stephanie.

Meredith’s voice is squeaky and Stephanie’s deep. The opposite of what you’d think looking at them.

‘Or a leek,’ I agreed

‘Ralph is a carrot,’ Meredith announces.

‘Maybe. The neat garden-salady kind. Perky and pink. And Tony is an old turnip.’

I’ve played this game before. The grinder roars. The peelings are heaping up. Thoughts are peelings maybe. Scraped from the mind’s surface and chucked. Think of all the thoughts in all your life. You are the fruit beneath. You peel and peel, every moment a thought scraped away, and never get there. No self, only thoughts peeling off.

Is that what anatta means?

‘Let’s make it easier: between a leek and a cabbage, Paul is?’

‘A cabbage!’ says Stephanie.

‘My turn,’ Meredith shouts. ‘Between a broccoli and an onion, Mrs Harper is?’

‘Mrs Harper is an aubergine. That’s obvious. Sorry, two aubergines.’

I pretended I was holding them just above the stomach. Meredith cracked up.

‘And Mi Nu is an asparagus. The kind so white you can almost see through it.’

‘That make your pee stink.’

We’re all giggling when Mrs Harper says, ‘Is this Right Speech, girls?’

She’s standing behind us, smiling sadly. I hope she didn’t hear the stuff about the aubergines. Meredith apologizes in a posh voice. ‘Sorree,’ Stephanie says.

On second thoughts, I hope she did hear.

Mrs Harper says: ‘The wise man does not speak unless his words bring benefit. His speech is full of mindfulness.’

She’s saying this for me, not the others. She doesn’t give a damn about the others.

I stay bent over the celeriac. ‘We’re not men, though, are we, Mrs Harper? We’re girls.’

She studies me. ‘But you do want to be wise, Elisabeth.’

‘Is that something a person can choose?’

‘You have already chosen, Elisabeth. You know that.’ She smiles. ‘Actually, I came to suggest you take Marcia to hear the Server’s Discourse at six. Always assuming you’ve got over your little problem.’

What’s she talking about?

‘The problem that obliged you to leave Strong Determination in such a hurry.’

She always has that generous smile.

‘Oh, right.’

I start on the onions. Ten big onions. Sliding off the crackly brown skin, I wait for my eyes to water. There’s no question of an onion being just a product you move from plastic pack to pot. An onion goes on the attack. You chop it up, but at a price. Jonathan was an onion. Slithery inside, with so many layers. I never got to the heart. Carl was a baked potato. With melted butter. Now I’m smiling through onion tears. Whatever Mum and Dad were, it’s long past its sell-by date.

When Mrs Harper is well gone, Stephanie whispers, ‘And you, Beth?’

‘Me what?’

‘What vegetable are you?’

I laughed. ‘I’m a beetroot, of course.’

You stain everything red, Beth, Jonathan said. You really do. You stain the whole world red.

THINGS ARE COMING to a head. Why? Are they? I’m so excited. So frantic. I’m trapped in something. Not a cage. A process . My diarist’s words. Midnight, one, two o’clock, three. Day four now. In the female servers’ room, the kitchen, the dining hall. In the male servers’ room. Why not? Hunting for paper. The men have a tin of chocolate biscuits. How did that get there? Writing on the back of server admission forms. Rota sheets. The kitchen hygiene protocol. Leftovers can be heated once and once only . Couldn’t agree more. And drinking Rooibos. I hate Rooibos. I love chocolate biscuits. Yum. They’ll never suspect one of the girls. I remember Zoë saying that. ‘Nobody’ll suspect it’s a girl, Beth.’ Jonathan had bitten my neck. I told Carl it was Zoë. ‘You know how nutty she is. She just grabbed me, kissed and bit.’ Jonathan couldn’t believe it. ‘You’re a genius, Beth.’ I mean, he couldn’t believe Carl believed it. ‘You don’t know Zoë,’ I told him. ‘I wish I did,’ he said. And I wish I could be free from this, free from this, free from this. This crap clinging, these seeds and slime that won’t scrape out.

The Buddha meditated and meditated and meditated until he found the First Noble Truth: suffering is universal. Is it? Really? What’s so noble about that? Mum suffered, no doubt. She was treated like shit. Imagined she was. Dad suffered, in his way. I think he did. The world was never as he wanted. I made sure of that. Carl definitely suffered. Carl suffered with Dad. With Mum. I just could not be what he wanted me to be . Love Dylan. It’s funny Carl was such friends with Mum and Dad. He was the only friend they had in common, maybe the only thing they agreed about at all. Carl would save me. ‘Help yourself to the Scotch, lad. Have yourself a chocolate, son.’ They knew Carl would chuck the music soon enough, and that would be the day he married me and we had a kid, pets, a house. ‘Our Elisabeth’s a kamikaze, lad. Slow her down before she does for all of us.’ Marry Beth, have a kid, get out of the music, make some sensible money. Marry Marriot’s! There’s work for everyone. If only mad Beth would say yes. Why doesn’t she? He’s such a nice boy, so handsome. The son we should have had. Carl. It drove them crazy that they couldn’t force me. Marry Carl, make us happy. Give us a son. Then a grandson. How they suffered! Dukkha . The more blindingly obvious the solution, the more it drove them mad I wouldn’t go for it. Did Jonathan suffer? I don’t think so. I did my best but I couldn’t hurt Jonathan. I didn’t even draw blood. What do you expect from an onion?

The Buddha meditated and meditated and meditated until he found the Second Noble Truth: the origin of suffering. Video day two again. Near the end. ‘The origin of suffering, my friends, is our craving. We are always craving this and craving that. Are we not? Our hunger, our thirst. Our materialism. Or the opposite: we are craving to be free from this, to be free from that. Aversion. We hate this task. We hate this headache.’

Is it true?

My diarist was furious after the video: ‘I crave nothing but to be left alone.’ Words to that effect. ‘Nothing but not to be myself, nothing but to have L vanish into thin air.’

Already a long list, if you ask me.

I craved a man who didn’t crave me. Craving success I could handle. Pocus would have made it, with time. We would, we really would. And I could handle being craved without craving. That was flattering. It was fun. Friends were so impressed by Carl. He was so good-looking, so in love . With me!

‘You’re so lucky ,’ Zoë sighed. ‘Why in God’s name do you screw around, when you have a guy like that?’

Because I was craving Jonathan. Who didn’t crave me, didn’t crave anyone, didn’t crave at all.

‘So you would let me go, Jonnie, if I told you I’d found someone else?’

‘Yes, Beth.’

‘Just like that?’

‘Is there any other way?’

‘Carl would never let me go, never. Carl loves me.’

‘I know, Beth. Carl’s young.’

He was smoking. He didn’t crave cigarettes. It was one of my roll-ups. Jonathan could take them or leave them. Take chocolate biscuits or leave chocolate biscuits. Beer, dope. He could take love or leave love.

‘What if I said I’d kill myself, Jonnie? What then?’

I loved to say his name. I’d been drinking, from the flask in his coat pocket.

‘My mum tried to kill herself, you know.’