Tim Parks - The Server

What shall I do?

It comes to me now that that’s the only question I could ever honestly ask her. What shall I do next, Mi Nu? Where do I go from here?

That is the only thing I need to know. What is the other side of this blockage?

Who am I?

An owl called. What a lovely sound — tu-whoo — in the night. A spiritual sound. But it was getting damp. I was getting damp. I’d let my fag go out without lighting another from it. That was stupid. There was no point in smoking just one. Binge the lot. Get it over with. What is it decides that for months and months you keep the rules, you even enforce the rules, you spy on people, you make sure they stay in line, then suddenly you’re breaking every rule you can, in the most obvious way you can, talking, kissing, smoking? Next it’ll be shagging. How does that happen? Go the whole hog, I thought. Do it.

‘I love how reckless you are,’ Jonathan said. He must have said it a thousand times. It wasn’t true. He loved how reckless I seemed to be , but without ever going the whole hog, without ever putting him in danger. Peeing between cars on Acton Vale, flashing tits in restaurants, blowing him in the cinema — there was never any serious danger. I didn’t go to his ex-wife, his wife that is, and say, Look, your old pig of a husband is shagging me senseless every day, he licks my pussy inside out and likes to come deep in my arse. I didn’t tell Carl, I’m leaving you for that paunchy old painter, the guy who always forgets to zip up. I didn’t tell my father, Your old Rotary pal, the would-be Picasso, is porking me rotten. He’s the man of my life. I didn’t have the courage of my diarist’s daughter, who is giving up everything to be with her man , whatever awful things he’s done, however much he doesn’t deserve her. The thought of this girl and what she’s doing makes me dizzier than any smoke could: giving up everything, but everything . Total surrender. For love. I’m dizzy with envy. And your man says, Do it, Babe, come to me, Babe. I might be a useless criminal, but I won’t let you down. I’ll never let you down.

Jonathan only loved how crazy I was, because I wasn’t crazy at all. I played crazy to please. I was neither fish nor fowl. I never have been. ‘Did you like it?’ Zoë asked. Her face was glowing and grinning and gazing. ‘Did you like it, Little Beauty?’ ‘I don’t know,’ I told her. ‘I just don’t know.’ What was really weird was being called Little Beauty by my bass player.

Tu-whoo. The owl again. The owl is a pure spirit. I jumped up, walked back to the female dining hall, crossed to the connecting corridor that leads to the kitchen, then doubled back through the male dining hall and out into the night again on the men’s side. I’ve no idea where Ralph sleeps. Who cares about Ralph? Someone was coughing in the bathrooms, someone who needs to pee in the night. I thought I’d better wait till he was safely back in his bed and went to stand where they keep the garden tools in the open shed.

There were a few clothes lines for cover and I stood peeking out between damp towels and T-shirts till the guy came out of the bathroom and headed for Dormitory B. He stopped in the drizzle, breathed and looked around. It was Tony. He looked sad and stooped. Tony’s a parsnip, I thought. A vegetable no one wants any more. A tired parsnip. Maybe I should have kissed Tony, shared my merits with Tony. He would have understood it was a joke. I went straight to Dormitory A and counted the doors down the corridor till I came to the fifth on the right.

What had I written in his diary four days ago? I couldn’t remember. I honestly couldn’t. Four days is an age at the Dasgupta. An age and a blink. It’s four times ten hours of eyes closed sitting still on your bum. It’s four times ninety minutes of Dasgupta’s video discourses. And the chants. It’s adzuki-bean stew, nut roast, curried tofu, baked potatoes with melted Cheddar, dahl, dahl and more dahl. It’s dozens of cups of Rooibos and herb tea. I hate Rooibos. And as many trips to the loo. Four days of drinking and eating and pissing and shitting and breathing in and out in and out endlessly observing the air crossing the upper lip, the in-breath crossing the lip, the out-breath crossing the lip. I’m not the same person who wrote whatever it was four days ago. He’s not the same person who read it. Why write anything, then?

To see how much you’ve changed when you re-read.

I had a cigarette in my mouth but nothing to light it with. It felt good having it there, but frustrating. When I pushed my hair from my face it was sticky and dead. God knows what I look like. My period is coming any moment. I can feel it. I looked up and down the corridor. I listened. Very carefully, I pulled the handle towards me to keep the door shut tight, then pressed it down, slowly slowly slowly. It opened without a click. Burglar Beth. Zoë noticed how stealthy I was. She saw me more clearly than the blokes did. Now here I was again watching a man sleeping.

He’s facing the wall under a couple of blankets, breathing easily, not snoring at all. It killed me that last night with Jonathan, how easily he breathed. I sat and smoked and watched. He knew it was over, I’m sure he did, and all the same he slept easy. I should have told him I was pregnant. That would have kept him awake. I should have told him I was going to keep the baby and tell the whole fucking world it was his and that he would have to pay for it. In cash. Then we’d have got some change out of him. Then he really would have had a reckless girlfriend. He knew it was over and went to sleep before eleven absolutely as usual so as to be up on time and fresh for his morning flight, his annual trip to New York.

Carl also slept pretty easily, except I never thought twice about waking him. We were in sleeping bags, on the dunes beyond Bayonne. You could hear the surf.

‘Why are you getting texts in the middle of the night?’ he wanted to know.

‘From Zoë,’ I lied.

‘But it’s three in the morning.’

‘She’s having some fantastic affair with a woman in Edinburgh,’ I lied.

I lied and lied and lied.

Carl slept with his face towards me in a mess of curls. He breathed easy as an angel in the dark of the tent.

‘I’m pregnant,’ I told him.

‘What?’

That woke him up.

‘But that’s fantastic!’ he said. ‘That’s absolutely fantastic!’

Then lying down again he said he couldn’t figure out how it had happened since he was always so careful.

‘What are you saying?’

‘Nothing. Hey, Beth, nothing.’

He talked for ten minutes and fell asleep again. Pretty well mid-sentence. He was chattering away and then he wasn’t, he was asleep, breathing lightly and easily again.

Mr GH Diarist hasn’t even stirred. He hasn’t registered my presence at all. I haven’t sneaked into his dreams or altered his breathing or anything. He’s just lying there, time flowing over him like water over rock. Actually, I quite like being awake while others sleep. I could kiss him, if I wanted, or kill him. Or I could just observe. ‘Just observe, my friends, just observe the sensations as they arise and pass away. Without a trace of craving, without a trace of aversion. Only in this way can you change the behaviour pattern at the deepest level of the mind. Only in this way can you come out of your misery.’

Except there’s not much to observe, really. I lean over. His hair is thinning. His face is quite lean, but wrinkled round the eyes. His mouth is full and quiet. He hasn’t shaved for a couple of days. Why bother at the Dasgupta? He’s stubbly. Not much else to say. A man. An ordinary man. I could go into every room along this corridor and watch them all sleeping, all the men. That’s a nice thought. To be there while they sleep. To watch over sleeping men. Their stale breath. Maybe run a fingertip over their stubbly cheeks. Or I could sit on the floor beside them and meditate. I could sit like a statue beside each sleeping man. Like an angel. My men.