Tim Parks - The Server

He shook his head.

‘You wouldn’t fight to stop me?’

‘I’d do everything to dissuade you, Beth.’

‘You’ll never find anybody like me.’

‘I know that.’

‘Never. You can never replace me.’

‘I don’t want to replace you, Beth.’

He was smiling. A bit sadly. Did he suffer? I think he enjoyed smiling sadly. Did he realize how much he was making me suffer? Yes. He did. He really did. What kind of craving is it sends me back to this stranger’s diary? I acquiesce to my punishment , he writes. Acquiesce?

I liked it that Jonathan knew he was making me suffer. That’s weird but true. Why wouldn’t he fight for me? Why? He did care for me. I’m trapped in a process . This is stuff the diarist wrote. What process? I’m writing down another person’s thoughts. But they feel like mine. Thoughts are peelings. You’re turning over someone else’s peelings, Beth. Waste. Leavings. You live in a bin full of crap. Yours or someone else’s. Who cares? Meditation equals sifting through crap. Old thoughts, old peelings. When will they decompose? Six months? Six years? Six lifetimes? One day Jonathan did this — OK, but now, peel it off. Another day Carl said that — fine, now peel it, chuck it. Mum screamed, ‘I’ll kill the bastard!’ — into the bin. Dad says: ‘Your mother’s impossible, Elisabeth.’ Hoover it up. What about waste separation? Sort the shit into separate boxes? No need. It recycles itself anyway. I must have chucked that thought a thousand times already. The peel grows back. Like a scab on a scratch. So peel it off again. Chuck it again . If only we’d never met — feed it to the dogs. If only I hadn’t got drunk that night — kill it, bury it. If we hadn’t met the French boys, if we hadn’t camped on the dunes — stop, Beth, stop ! In January — get rid of it! Born in January, an Aquarian — I said, Get rid of it!

But I did. I did get rid, I did I did I did get rid.

Jesus.

Peel till there’s nothing. Think till it’s all thought and gone. But there is nothing. Nibbana ’s what’s left after the peeling, after you find there’s no self under all that thought? Nibbana is anatta , then? No self. Nothingness.

Where did you put the veg, Beth?

I peeled it all, Ines.

But I can’t find it, Beth, I need to get the stew on. I’m head cook today, you know. I have my responsibilities.

I’m afraid there was nothing there, Ines. It was all peel.

Heaps of peelings, years of sticky fingers and now all this crap I’ve been writing through the night, all this dirty paper to be thrown away too. Paper peel. Scribbles. Why does it cling to my fingers, why won’t it go? Oh, just go . Fuck off!

What craving is it makes you go back and back and back to the diary of a bloke you don’t even know , a bloke who hates himself, hates his wife. Nothing special there. Doesn’t even seem to love his girlfriend. The craving to suffer, to suffer again, to suffer the same things through someone else. I was so alive when I was dying. Fantastic. And now I’m dead I wish I was dying again. I’m dead I did get rid of it, I did get rid I’m dead.

Oh, do go on, Beth. On and on. Keep repeating so the moments pass. As if they wouldn’t anyway. Keep writing. Fill the pages. The pen is a peeling knife, peeling the thoughts from my head. Throw the pages straight in the bin, recycle the paper. Why not? Then write it again. And again. It would be exactly the same . What else could come out? My songs were all the same in the end. They all sounded the same said the same meant the same. An Aquarian. Forgive me forgive me forgive me.

If I have offended anyone in today’s Dhamma Service, I seek pardon of him or her, I seek pardon of him or her. If anyone has offended me in today’s Dhamma Service, with all my heart I pardon him or her, I pardon him or her.

Loving kindness.

Marcia farted right through the servers’ evening metta . You have to laugh.

So laugh!

Why aren’t you laughing, Beth?

May all beings visible and invisible on this Dhamma campus be free from all suffering, all attachments. May all beings be liberated, liberated, libbberated.

I love those words: I seek pardon, seek pardon. With all my heart, I pardon him or her, I pardon him or her.

Kneeling in the silence with the others, sinking into the ache of knees and thighs. I love the metta . What’s with the invisible beings, though? What do they need to be liberated from? Imagine if the thoughts go on after you die. In invisibleness. Fruit all gone and the thoughts still peeling off. Nobody, but still thinking. Or in the unborn, the miscarried. Unborn but churning thoughts.

Whose are the faces I see? And the eyes that gaze when my eyes are closed? A face turns to me. A little girl. A young man. The eyes, peeled eyes. Incinerate. The mind burns and burns but never burns out.

The Buddha meditated and meditated and meditated until he found the Third Noble Truth: the cessation of suffering. That’s good news. Video day four. ‘Buddhism is not a pessimistic doctrine, my friends. Not a shred of pessimism in it. What does the Buddha say? He says your suffering can cease. Your suffering can cease. Is that pessimism?’

Dasgupta on his armchair in his white suit. He has a folded handkerchief to dab at the sweat. Narrow shoulders, big bulk. Bombay Rotary in the sixties. My diarist’s words. The cessation of all suffering. Dad asks if Pocus will play at the Ealing Rotary. They’ll pay five hundred pounds. Better than a kick in the crotch. Me blind drunk. Blind as a Beth. A batty Beth.

‘Beth, this is Jonathan.’ Dad introduces the famous painter. Supposedly. He was painting someone’s portrait. A founding member.

‘Beth, Jonathan. Jonathan, Beth.’

Jonathan Beth Jonathan Beth Jonathan Beth Jonathan Beth. Say it a million times. Say it for years and years while the world turns and the stars fall.

Romance. I sang, Better off on my own . The acoustics were awful. Mum shocked. ‘Your skirt, Elisabeth!’ Carl played brilliantly. What a brilliant guitarist Carl is!

‘There’s some famous painter here,’ I told him, ‘said he’d like to paint my picture.’

Peel it, bin it. Nibbana . Cessation of all mental formations. All your old sankhara s burned away. Peel peeled and gone. Fruit of nothingness at last. Passion fruit. Nothing fruit. ‘I can’t believe this numbers crap,’ my diarist wrote. ‘Three refuges, four noble truths, five precepts, seven stages of purification, eightfold path to enlightenment, ten perfections, and counting counting counting, all to get to zero, to nothing.’

Bliss.

AT FIVE O’CLOCK I took Marcia to the cells to listen to the Dhamma Service CD. There were no cells free. What a relief. I had no desire to sit with Marcia for an hour and more. She was a lawyer, she said. I hadn’t asked. She specialized in cases of child abuse, which required ‘experience and sensitivity’. People are so proud of their lives, their jobs, the words they use. ‘We mustn’t talk when we are in areas where we might meet meditators,’ I told her. ‘They mustn’t even see us talking.’ In silence we headed to the female leader’s bungalow to hand back the CD.

This was only the second or third time I had been to the bungalow. I never volunteer to bring the teacher’s lunch tray. Why not? I would rather clean the loos or mop the floors. Mi Nu lives in the bungalow. Her whole life is lived between the bungalow and the Metta Hall. That’s thirty yards. Maybe fifty. Does she ever leave the campus? Every day I plan to go to Mi Nu and ask a question, at interview time after lunch, or in the evening kneeling before the others. I have never spoken to her. Has she noticed I never volunteer to bring or fetch her tray? I hope so. I’m waiting for the day when I’m ready to ask her my question. What question? I don’t know. It’s the question Mrs Harper would like me to ask her , but that will only make sense because I am asking Mi Nu Wai. Mi Nu Wai. I don’t know what the question is, but it will come. It will come quite soon now. Oh, but why am I so mysterious? Isn’t it silly?