Tim Parks - The Server

I squeezed by. His smell was strong. The room changed colour. I opened the door. There was no one in the corridor now. Why did I look back? He had half opened his mouth. Something had occurred to him and he needed to say it. I put my finger to my lips again. No! Then he raised a hand in an offer to shake. Now that he had the window behind him and was free of his pullover, I got a different impression of him. He was an animal, but on a chain. He was pretending to be tame in the hope he’d be released. And though he hadn’t spoken I knew he was lying. I knew he was dangerous. His hand reached out and stayed there. I shook my head and hurried down the corridor and back to the kitchen for evening clean-up.

‘STTART-TAGAIN.’

Those words drove me nuts the first days. The hum of the recording, then his voice: ‘Sttart-tagain. Sttart-tagain.’

The one-thirty session is the hardest. I’ve had too much lunch. The day is mild. The field is full of grassy smells. The leaves are alive in the breeze. The trees are all very alive, very there. ‘I’m in trouble,’ I said, after the servers’ evening metta , day four, vipassana day. ‘I’m in such big trouble.’

As soon as I’d spoken, I looked away. I didn’t want to catch Mrs Harper’s eye. The students were gone and the light was dimmed. I turned my head and looked behind at the muddled rows of dark blue cushions, the grey blankets and the white and the empty hall, and suddenly I saw they were the sea. They really were the rumpled waters of the sea. I was on the beach again.

‘My friends, let me give you another example of the Buddha’s wisdom and compassion. One day, in the town of Kapilavastu, Krsa Gautami, the wife of a very rich man, was plunged into deep grief by the loss of her baby son.’

Take a deep breath, Beth.

At one twenty-five after a stupidly heavy lunch I go to my place and sort out my cushion. Two foam slabs. Kristin and Marcia must be in the kitchen. There is space around me. I tuck in my ankles, I let my back sink and settle. The thigh muscles stretch. I can feel their heat expanding. My knees press into the mat, they’re one with the mat. Today I’m going to sit still, very very still. My still body will still my mind. I’m going to be vigilant. So vigilant. I won’t be distracted. I will not think of Krsa Gautami.

Really Dasgupta should say Stop again not Start again. Sttop-pagain, my friends. Return to the still point, to the breath on the lip, where everything is suspended, everything is transparent, where there is no conflict. To start again I think would be to leave here, to leave the Dasgupta Institute, to go off with GH, for example, my diarist. Yes. Or with any man. I know if I went back to his room, if I let him find me there again, on his bed, if I said to him, Graham, or Garry, or Gordon, whatever, let’s get out of here, let’s run away together, he would say yes. I know he would. I saw it in his eyes, greedy men’s eyes. He would say yes yes YES ! He’s better-looking than I thought, thinner, fitter, more real than the words in his diary. A real man. Let’s get out of here, Graham. Come on. This place is death. We won’t achieve anything at the Dasgupta. In the dead of night I smuggle him through the dining hall to the locker room. He grabs his mobile and we walk out on to the moonlit lane, striding towards freedom, towards a fresh start. Of course after we’ve been walking a while he puts his arm round my shoulders and we begin to talk and talk and talk. In a hotel somewhere we talk ourselves deep into each other’s minds, deep under each other’s skin. We talk ourselves between the sheets. We make love. He’s better-looking than Jonathan, lean and pale, sad and funny. I’m sure he can be very funny. I know it. He’s excited that I’m so young. He’s adoring. All the spotlights turned up on your shining face . Jonathan adored me. He did. He wouldn’t fight for me, but he did adore me. Your eyes, Beth, he said. He adored my eyes. I don’t think it made him suffer. We hug ourselves into one. His pleasure sinks into mine. Even learning how to take is a way of giving, in love . You’re with a man again, Beth, you’re laughing and smoking at a hotel window. ‘Start-tagain.’ His hands are on my hips. Sighing, smiling.

‘I’m in such deep trouble,’ I said.

We were kneeling after the servers’ metta . Mr Harper and Mi Nu on their raised platforms at the front, the male servers to one side, the female to the other, on our knees in a line in the dim light of the hall after the students had gone to their beds to mull over the story of Krsa Gautami and the three sesame seeds, to reflect on the Buddha’s wisdom, to remember their first day of vipassana . The field of paññā . The world of sensation and suffering.

Harper smiles. He says, ‘Well, vipassana day is always tough. I thought it went quite well.’

The servers listened.

‘Hard to know what to do when someone starts crying like that,’ he added.

As Harper talks to us, he scans our faces, smiling in a restrained sort of way.

‘In the end, I thought it best to ask her to leave the hall.’

Mi Nu nodded.

One of the male course managers said: ‘I thought it was rather wonderful how people’s faces were glowing afterwards. Really glowing.’

Harper nodded.

Tony the professor said: ‘I thought they looked shell-shocked.’

‘That too.’ Harper smiled again. ‘That too.’ He sighed. ‘But how did it go in the kitchen today?’

He asks the same question every evening. His voice is gentle, and distant.

‘Hectic,’ Paul said. ‘The problem is that no one’s familiar with the appliances. And there aren’t enough of us.’

‘Beth is,’ Meredith said.

‘Oh, I’m sure we can manage.’ Ines beamed. ‘Each day gets a bit easier.’

‘Now you have Marcia as well,’ Mrs Harper said.

Rob said he thought it was a question of being better organized, dividing up the tasks better.

I looked across to the men and found Ralph gazing at me from his soft, doggy eyes. Ralph’s been sniffing around me all day. He knows something’s up.

‘Well, don’t let it stress you,’ Harper said cheerfully. ‘The fig cake was wonderful, by the way.’

‘Thank you.’ Ines was still beaming.

‘And the dripping roof?’ Livia asked. Two students had wanted to be moved away from the puddle, she said, and others were grumbling about the distraction. Wasn’t there any way of fixing it?

One of the maintenance servers explained that since the roof was curved, the water didn’t fall to the floor inside at the point where it actually came in from outside. They couldn’t locate the leak.

‘No harm done.’ Harper smiled. ‘It’s only a drip. No one’s getting wet. A good test for the students’ equanimity.’ He sighed. ‘Let’s call it a day and get to bed.’

He settled himself for the final few minutes’ meditation. He had closed his eyes.

‘I’m in trouble,’ I said then. My voice squeaked in the silence. I hadn’t planned to speak. It came out. People turned. ‘I’m sorry, folks. I know I shouldn’t.’ I was shaking my head. Then I said I couldn’t serve the following day. ‘I can’t. I’m sorry. I’m in such deep trouble.’

The words just came. I was going to cry. You’re not supposed to cry in the Metta Hall. There must be no passions here. Only compassion. Compassionate love. Sympathetic joy. Mrs Harper caught my eye. I turned and looked across the empty hall at the grey blankets and the white surf.

‘What’s the problem, Elisabeth?’ Mrs Harper asked. ‘Is it the kitchen?’

The tears were rolling.

‘Drama queen,’ Zoë would say. ‘Queen Beth.’