Tim Parks - The Server

Why do I want to do that, Mi Nu?

I would feel strong and calm and happy meditating beside the men as they sleep, if they would let me do that. Or I could be a little mouse in the men’s dormitory, gnawing away in the dark. That would be fun. It drove me wild that Jonathan slept so easily on our last night together. But what did I do about it? I sat and watched over him. I gnawed round him. I felt motherly is the truth. The stupid stupid truth. Jonathan was a baby. Anyone could see that. He left his wife and reverted to being her baby. He was the child they hadn’t had. She had the keys to his studio and brought him food when he wasn’t there, brought him clothes, even booze. I felt more motherly to Jonathan than to the baby in my belly. And to Carl too. I felt motherly towards Carl. Even when I ran off to go skinny-dipping with the French boys. Maybe especially when I ran off. I was staggering with drink and dope. This will save you, Carl, I thought. This is going to save you so much shit, so much shit. It will all be washed away on the tide. Beth’s shit. The French boys couldn’t believe it, that I was up for a swim in a sea like that. ‘ C’est dangereux, bien sûr .’ They couldn’t believe how high those waves were. ‘Your cocks have shrunk to nothing,’ I yelled. ‘Shrunk to nothing, shrunk to nothing.’

Will I ever have a child, Mi Nu?

At least that might be a new kind of question for her.

There is nothing in this room but his clothes on the floor and the diary by the bed. Diaries. A pile of exercise books. It’s too dark to read in here. Jonathan’s room was stacked with paintings. I don’t know if he was a good painter. There was something childish about his pictures, a kind of stupid longing. You looked at them and felt filled by a sort of yearning. It didn’t mean anything. There was no connection with anything real, no chance of anything really happening. They were girls dissolving in abstract backgrounds, surreal collages. Clever, but stupid. Stupid because they were so clever maybe. There was something I didn’t understand. The cleverness was being used for the wrong thing, perhaps. Like when a musician wastes his cleverness on some tricky syncopation instead of concentrating on the song. The painting he did of me was different, though. It was more solid and fleshy than the others, more real, except for those silly birds flying up from my feet. They were tiny birds with really bright colours.

‘The birds are you too, Beth,’ he said. ‘The birds are my surprise that you exist.’

‘Give it to me,’ I said.

He thought a moment. ‘After I’ve shown it in New York. I’ll make a copy.’

‘No, now.’

‘It’s on the catalogue, Beth. I have to show it.’

‘By the time you get back from New York it’ll be over between us.’

‘Why, Beth?’

‘I’ve got other fish to fry. I’m not the kind of girl who waits around.’

He was quiet.

‘You too. You’ll shag anything that moves. I know you will.’

‘Come with me,’ he said then. ‘Come to the airport and get on the plane. Come to New York.’

‘You should have asked before. You can’t ask me the night before the flight.’

There was a pause. Our life was in that pause, in the carefully tidied space between his paintings and his bed. Jonathan was an amazingly tidy man. But he didn’t fight for things.

‘I guess I’ll go and fuck Carl,’ I said. ‘In his tent in France.’

He didn’t say anything. If he had grabbed me by the wrist, if he had said, Let’s go and get your passport, Beth …

If I went and got one of the kitchen knives, the one that whams the celeriac in half, I could kill this man sleeping here now. This unfaithful diarist. How many men could I kill along the corridor before they stopped me? Two? Three? Four? All unfaithful. Bank on it. All diarists. But the night is passing. I need to light this cigarette.

Grabbing the top exercise book, I sneaked out.

VIPASSANA SHIT HAS a special smell. Sort of sweeter, but staler. It lingers. At first I thought it was the diet, the oats, the veggies, no meat, no fish, no booze. Now I think it could be the thinking we do here. If mind and body are one why shouldn’t our shit smell of our thoughts? Anxious shit, laid-back shit. Anyhow, the female servers’ loo is the only place where I can smoke and read through the night. It stinks.

What a lot this guy’s been writing, though. I can’t find the line I scribbled. Something about pain. It must be way back. Or it was in another notebook. Flicking through the pages, it doesn’t seem to matter where you start. He hammers on like a drum solo at a druggy festival. Sometimes I find a few words I could have written myself. I mean, really could have written myself, as though we were the same person. I used to think that about Jonathan sometimes, that we were the same deep down. We had started to speak the same, think the same. Or I had started to speak like him. Now I wonder if we ever met.

Dawn session surreal. Since we started vipassana my body confused as my mind. Hands swapping over, left right, left right, mouth detaching from my skull, merging with my stomach, parts of my body disappearing for long periods, then resurfacing, like those exotic islands explorers kept losing and finding again. My knees behind me. My shoulders in my thighs. Cramps aches stabs burning pleasure pain happiness sadness hopelessness bliss all fading in and out of each other through calves ankles spine everywhere .

Just getting used to all this when L barges in. She looms up inside my skull like a shadow on the wall in a Hitchcock movie. I want a dog! she yells. She must have a dog. She needs to substitute me with a dog. Because a dog she can train. A dog she can trust. She can’t trust me. I betrayed her. She’s through with men. She wants a dog! Me shouting: But Linda, I am a dog! Can’t you see? I’ve always been your little doggie .

Lighting fag two from fag one, I remember Carl always complained I treated him like a dog. Carl, do this, Carl, do that. Meantime I’ve started to bleed. I’ll have to go over to the main loos and pick up some tampons.

Mum drove Dad crazy with cats. Five cats.

What a relief to read, though. Someone else’s shit. Read read read. I always hated reading. So the wife’s called Linda. It’s good to have a name for her.

Vipassana vanity. Heading for lunch, young bloke, tall, pale, sitting in lotus position on the bench outside the dining room in deliberate full view of everyone with his hands upturned on his knees, thumbs and forefingers joined, eyes ecstatically half closed. Jim Carrey in Ace Ventura. How many times with Susie? Almost made up for the awful lunch. What did they do to that nut roast? Dunk it in turps?

Yep, Ines fucked up big-time with the nut roast. Maybe I was indispensable after all. Lotus show-offs are two a penny at these retreats. Girl a couple of months ago used to block the stairs to the servers’ bedrooms. Meditating supposedly. Her spread knees pretty well touched both walls.

Meantime, I would like to learn not to feel superior to everyone, though I don’t suppose I ever will. Actually, I’m already thinking how superior I am, wanting not to feel superior. And how superior of me to have recognized this paradox. And to have admitted this stalemate. And so on and on. Seems there is no escape from my superiority .

What a prick!

But this is one of the bits I could have written myself.

You’re lying on the sofa and I touch your foot. You withdraw it. You turn away. Same thing in bed. You’re turned the other way and I touch your foot with mine. I want at least our feet to be together. You withdraw. I’m sleepy, you say. Leave me alone. Same thing with your hand over the table. You pull it back and lean down to stroke the dog. You turn away from me to the dog. I touch your shoulder while you’re cooking and you shake my hand off. You don’t want me. So why do you want to keep me? Why? Why can’t we separate? What is wrong with us?