Tim Parks - The Server

‘Just like that?’

I took a piece of raw broccoli and pushed it into my mouth. It was tough and cold, like the thing the dentist pushes between your gums.

‘If you start telling me your past you’ll go back to whatever unhappiness there was. You’ll get involved again.’

I bit my lip. Something was in the air.

‘Maybe if I tell someone I can get it out of my system.’

She fished the teabag out of her tea and sipped. When she turned to the counter I saw her broad back, her big backside.

‘Let’s try an experiment,’ she said brightly. ‘If you really need to, you can tell me your story, but why not tell it as if it had happened to someone else? Someone called Elisabeth. Someone you used to know before you came here.’

I found I was shifting my weight from one foot to the other. Something trickled down my thigh. I needed to get to the bathroom.

‘That’s stupid. It’s stupid pretending not to be who I am.’

‘I said it was an experiment. It can’t harm, can it?’ She dipped her face to her cup. Her lips were sipping and smiling.

I tapped the scissors on the counter. It was an incredibly slow conversation. A chat in slow motion. The trickle moved slowly and stopped. She was watching me over the top of her tea. Her body wheezed slowly, her breasts, her flabby stomach. Waiting for a stab from my scissors maybe.

Then I said: ‘I’d rather tell Mi Nu.’

‘Ah.’

She nodded, as if we’d made progress. She didn’t seem hurt.

‘If I have to tell anyone.’

‘Elisabeth, as I said, you don’t have to tell anyone at all. It was you who talked of needing to tell.’

‘I’d rather tell Mi Nu.’

‘Well, do . She receives people after lunch. Make an appointment.’

I couldn’t understand why I was so wired up, why I was gripping the scissors so tight.

‘I can’t,’ I shouted. ‘I keep trying to tell people but I can’t. I get scared.’

She sighed deeply.

‘What have you got to lose, Elisabeth? What is at stake?’

I was praying the morning gong would interrupt us. It must be nearly four. I really needed the bathroom.

‘Well?’

‘She won’t be able to help me, will she? It will be a waste of time. She’ll despise me.’

I dropped the scissors, put my hands on the counter behind, jumped up to sit on it and started to kick my heels on the cupboard door beneath. Thump thump thump. I could get one of the knives now, I thought. They were on the wall. I could grab one. We’d both be bleeding.

Then Mrs Harper said a beautiful thing. ‘Elisabeth, Mi Nu will help you just by being there and listening. Mi Nu helps all of us just with her presence.’

She paused. ‘I sometimes think that to look at Mi Nu is to look at vipassana itself. Watching her is all the instruction anyone needs. You are quite right to want to talk to Mi Nu. And don’t worry, there’s no question of her despising you.’ She laughed very naturally, as if we were at a nice tea party. ‘I doubt if she’ll say much, though.’

I was surprised, like I’d betrayed someone and they didn’t mind.

‘Isn’t Mi Nu fantastic?’ I jumped down from the counter, feeling really cheerful. ‘You know, though, sometimes I think all I need is a good hug.’

I shook myself in a shiver like a dog and looked straight at her, grinning. We were about a yard apart. The trickle moved again.

‘Would you hug me, Mrs Harper?’

She let her tongue slip over her lips and set down her mug.

‘The Dasgupta is not a place for hugs, Elisabeth.’

I felt evil.

‘I know it’s against the rules.’

‘I’m afraid, it is, yes.’

‘Does that mean you’d hug me, if the rules were different?’

She stood, unblinking, slow and pale and swollen in her baggy nightdress.

‘Even with your husband you don’t hug?’

She shook her head.

‘You don’t?’

‘We took a vow, Elisabeth. For as long as we’re at the Dasgupta.’

‘So why are you married?’

She wasn’t smiling now. After another sigh, she said slowly: ‘There’s more to marriage than physical contact.’

‘Like what?’

She didn’t answer.

‘Do you have children?’

Again she shook her head. She didn’t want to talk about herself.

‘What did you do before coming to the Dasgupta?’

She thought a moment, as if she could hardly remember. ‘I was an insurance executive. In Hartford, Connecticut.’

‘Hug me.’

I moved towards her. The trickle was down at my knee.

‘Please, Mrs Harper. It’s been ages. Hug me tight.’

When our bodies were almost touching, she opened her arms. I could already feel what a warm, soft, motherly embrace it would be. As her hands closed around me I wriggled free and ran.

WHAT DID THE Buddha do about the bathroom? I mean when he decided to sit for as long as it took to be enlightened. Did his bodily functions stop, under the Bodhi tree? And what shall I do about my bleeding? Do I have to get up and change my tampon every few hours? Is enlightenment a kind of endurance test? You sit and sit and sit till it happens?

It’s raining now and the only sound in the Metta Hall is the dripping from the roof. Plosh — one two three four — plish — one two three — plosh. You concentrate on body and breathing for twenty-four hours at a stretch maybe, letting go, letting go. Or forty-eight hours. When there’s pain you don’t react. When there’s pleasure you don’t react. Or a week even. Leaving behind all attachment, all aversion. Layer after layer after layer, deeper and deeper. Without even a trip to the bathroom? Without food, without water?

I’m tempted now to turn and look at the drip hitting the carpet. Why? Why do I count the seconds between the drops: three, nine, five? What could there possibly be to look at? If I didn’t have eyes there would be no danger of distraction. I’d be resigned to sitting in the dark. If I didn’t have ears I wouldn’t listen for the drops and count the intervals between. Why do they vary so much? The rain sounds steady on the roof. But sometimes I only get to three between drops and sometimes I count to eight. If ever I reach enlightenment, these temptations will disappear, I know that, these questions will be gone. The drops will splash on my consciousness and slide off like rain on rock. I’ll ask no questions. Or they’ll just fall through my mind without splashing at all. There’ll be no friction, no distraction. I’ll hear them and not hear them. Is that what enlightenment means? Something will change and I’ll see clearly. I’ll know what things I’ve been between here at the Dasgupta Institute, what the past was before I came here and what the future holds after I leave. Enlightenment would set me free.

I wonder if nature is always irregular: heartbeats, raindrops, my periods, waves at sea. ‘It’s not natural to have a perfectly regular beat,’ Frank used to say. ‘It’s too mechanical.’ He and Carl argued for hours. The excitement was in the shifts of tempo. Frank always tapped on the rim of his snare while he spoke. He never put his sticks down. But not planned and rehearsed, he said, intuitive. ‘That’s the difference between live music and recordings, Carl. Things happen, right there on stage, right as you’re playing, things fuckin’ happen. You’re alive!’

I was on Frank’s side. But Carl wanted to rehearse with a metronome. He’d leave the band if we didn’t, he said. He wanted to play in a serious band, not with kids on a night out. He wanted to play the concerts as if we were using a metronome. He wanted total predictability. A guitarist could only improvise, Carl said, when he knew exactly what space he was working in. How could he play his solos if the beat was all over the place? Zoë said she needed an absolutely regular beat, otherwise she got lost. Zoë was always lost.