Tim Parks - The Server

‘I can’t serve, I’m sorry, everybody. I need to sit. I need to be still.’

‘That’s going to be difficult,’ Paul began, ‘since Elisabeth really is the only one …’

I turned to Mi Nu. Mi Nu could help. She had wrapped her shawl round her hair. Her hands lay joined in her lap. Her head was bowed. Her eyes were closed.

For the evening discourse the meditators hurry to get a place by the wall. It is hard to sit still when you’re not meditating. It is hard to keep your back straight. There’s a rush for the side wall, the back wall. I remember when I first saw this, at the beginning of my time here, I was struck by the power of what we do when we meditate. Focused on your breathing, behind closed eyes, you can sit cross-legged, straight-backed without fidgeting. You can slip outside time. But listening to Dasgupta bang on about the Triple Gem, the Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path, the Ten Perfections, you itch and twist and turn and scratch. You can’t help it. That fourth evening, vipassana day, I went to hear the discourse, even though I knew that day four meant Krsa Gautami.

Of course, the walls aren’t long enough for all one hundred and forty students to find a space. People rush to stake their claim, the same way they rush for bananas at breakfast. They throw their cushions against the wall, knowing that they are taking a place from someone else, maybe someone who needs it more than they do. Along the back wall a couple of yards have to be kept free between the women and the men. You can’t have a man and woman shoulder to shoulder, resting their backs against the wall while they watch Dasgupta on video. Something might stir. Something impure.

The course manager goes over to whisper in someone’s ear. A petite, white-haired woman brings her cushion back to her mat and sits with her arms clasped round her knees. The videos go on an hour and more. She rocks slowly forward and back. It is disrespectful to lie down or to prop yourself on an elbow. The course managers cruise around, they crouch beside the culprits and whisper. It is also disrespectful to stretch your legs in the direction of the teacher, in the direction of Mr Harper and Mi Nu Wai. The course managers seem to like their jobs. The students who haven’t found a place by the wall sit on their mats crossing and uncrossing their legs. They grab their ankles. They organize and reorganize their cushions.

I had been assigned to clean-up. I hadn’t meant to come. Evening discourse is not obligatory for servers. Vipassana day means nothing to us. Walking between the rows of cushions, I was looking for him . I know where he sits now. Middle of the row towards the back. No doubt he was looking for me. Soon I would feel the pressure of his eyes and he of mine. My weak eyes. There. I can just make him out, in the blur and shuffle. All day his eyes have been asking me why I was in his room, what exactly I read in his diary. And I have a hundred questions to ask. What is Susie giving up that is so important? Why doesn’t he leave his wife, if he hates her so much? So everything has changed. There is a disturbance in the Metta Hall. It isn’t a refuge any more.

‘It’s pretty odd you staying so long at the Dasgupta,’ Rob said, during clean-up. He was sweeping the kitchen. I was wiping the work surfaces. I hadn’t talked to Rob before. He’s burly, jowly, with small, bright, protruding eyes. In his thirties. No chin. We were working silently. Perhaps he was observing an attitude of segregation. Then he came and started sweeping round my feet, so I asked him what he did, ‘in the real world. For a living?’

He stopped sweeping. ‘Clown,’ he said. He laughed. ‘No, really.’ He clowned for sick children in hospitals. He put on red noses and giant shoes, one green one yellow. ‘Cancer wards mainly,’ he said, ‘and leukaemia.’

‘God, how sad!’

‘Not as sad as you’d think. They’re always glad you’ve come. They always have a giggle.’

‘But I mean …’ I wished now I had kept the Noble Silence. ‘It’s very brave of you.’

‘Not at all.’ His smile seemed to be challenging me. There’s a quiet meatiness about him, completely different from Paul or Vikram. ‘Kids find it easier than adults,’ he said. ‘They’re more in tune with life, with their bodies.’

‘Find what easier?’

He hesitated. ‘Dying, I suppose.’

I bent down and started to drag out the saucepans and colanders from one of the lower shelves. There was quite a clatter. He leaned on his broom.

‘So what do you do, Beth?’

It was filthy at the back behind the pans. But on even days we go to meet aversions. On odd days we bless the things we like, bless them, not crave them, bless them and let them go. On even days we embrace the things that bother us, we accept them completely, even if we can’t bless them. I’ve always hated everything dirty and sticky and old, places where old shit has stuck. Places that smell.

‘You must do something,’ he said.

‘I clean shelves, n’est-ce pas ?’

‘I said, “What do you do?” not “What are you doing now?”’

When I went on wiping, he told me, ‘Actually, I don’t think that shelf’s part of the regular clean-up. We never use those things.’

He went back to his sweeping, between the sinks and the bratt pan. There were peelings, rice grains. Rob is conscientious, but without the zeal Ines has. He’s a sprout, I thought. Rob’s a stout Brussels sprout.

He stopped again and said: ‘You know, it’s odd your being so long at the Dasgupta, Beth.’

I said nothing. My damp cloth went to meet the filth.

‘You’ve been here quite a while, haven’t you?’

I don’t answer this question.

‘But you’re not really a Dasgupta person. You know what I mean? Like Livia. Or Paul.’

He swept the mess into a pile.

‘You don’t have that look on your face.’

Now he began with the hand brush and dustpan.

‘Ever thought of clowning?’ he asked. ‘I reckon you’d be good. It was pretty funny how you came out with the chicken-sandwich line.’

I stood up and asked if he’d mind finishing clean-up on his own so I could hear the discourse this evening. I particularly liked the day-four discourse, I told him. There was the story of Krsa Gautami.

‘Maybe I’m more of a Dasgupta person than you think,’ I said.

I took off my apron, hurried through the female dining hall and stopped at the loos to pee. It was pure nervousness. Nothing came. When I pushed into the hall, Harper was dimming the lights. But it didn’t stop me seeing my diarist. GH hadn’t found a space against the wall. He was cross-legged, on his mat. His head was turned towards the female side, looking for me.

‘Men will always look at you, Beth. Always.’

‘But what use is it, Jonnie, if the only person I want isn’t willing to fight for me? What use is it?’

Look away. Fix your eyes on Mi Nu.

The servers never sit against the wall. We mustn’t. We sit still in our regular places as if the long, dull discourse were a normal meditation session. Straight-backed as tombstones. A little cemetery of servers in three neat rows. Dead still. Dead pure. In this way we give the new students an example. Of what? Focus, concentration, other-worldliness? Or are we showing off? Was the Buddha showing off when he sat for days under a tree? Watch how still I can sit, how long I can sit. It’s hard to stop pride creeping in. Kristin and Marcia were in their places. I stepped over my cushion and sat between them.

With the lights dimmed the video is bright. Dasgupta glows in a white suit on a plush red chair, pretty well a throne. It must have been hot when they recorded day four. Sweat trickles down his chubby cheeks. His face glistens. He pats himself with a white handkerchief. I settled myself and closed my eyes. ‘Day four is over,’ the voice began. He left a pause. Dasgupta loves pauses. ‘You have six more days to work.’ Even without looking I knew he was smiling and nodding, as he scanned the crowd.