Tim Parks - The Server

I LOVE NOISE and I love silence. I ruined my hearing with headphones and amps. I miss my piano, my guitar, my wah wah. Not really though. I don’t really care what happens to the band without me. I gave up everything for the band then I gave up the band for nothing. I gave up Carl. I didn’t go home, or apply to college or university. I haven’t contacted Jonathan. Or looked for a job. May all beings be free from all attachment. May all beings be liberated. You like to think you miss things, Beth Marriot, but you don’t really. Not even singing.

Can that be true?

This morning I was up at four. I was out before the others were awake. I lay in the wet grass in the field beyond the hall. Today I am going to look at that diary again. I haven’t actually taken a decision, but I know I will. Like when you used to think you’d stopped smoking but in another part of your mind you knew you hadn’t, you knew sooner or later you’d light up again. Then it was a pleasure to think how much you’d enjoy the first ciggie. And shameful too. Yet again you’d failed to make a decision. Couldn’t decide to live with Carl, couldn’t decide to leave Carl, couldn’t decide to give everything to the band, couldn’t decide to leave the band, couldn’t decide to go to university — which university? to study what? — couldn’t decide about a job at Marriot’s, couldn’t decide to look elsewhere, couldn’t decide anything at all. Nothing. But that first ciggie will be great. The first puff. Of course, as soon as you know you haven’t stopped, you actually put off lighting up so as to enjoy thinking about it. Hmmm. It’s wonderful lying in the wet grass among the molehills, before dawn. There is nothing to decide here. The cold seeps into you. I can feel it spreading up my back. It starts at the base of the spine and climbs to the shoulders. Cold can be so good. The sky is grey, hushed. It’s too early for birds. There’s mist on the hills. Listen. The silence whines. Closing my eyes, I hear surf. It’s far away. Surf crashing on the coast, sucking the shingle. In the waves it’s cold, it’s truly cold.

Stop.

Breathe.

A DROWNING ACCIDENT, JONNIE. I’M IN INTENSIVE CARE.

Stop.

PLEASE COME. PLEASE, JONNIE.

I CAN’T, BETH. I CAN’T COME NOW.

Dukkha , Jonathan. All life is dukkha . Suffering and dissatisfaction. That’s a true thing Dasgupta says. Even happiness is dukkha . Yes. It’s fantastically cold on my back in the wet grass. My head is going numb. Except there must be an animal in the bushes behind me. Scrabbling. A rabbit or a hedgehog. Spring is coming. I’m going to look at that diary again.

Mi Nu Wai doesn’t join the early-morning session till six, when the chanting starts. I sat for an hour then went to the kitchen, pulled out the pans, filled them with jugs from the boilers, measured out the oats. I love the kitchen at dawn. Five and a half litres of oats to twelve of water. That’s for the men: four and a half to ten for the women. I love moving around, switching things on, quietly, alone. In their bin the oats are soft and dry and sweet. Oaty. Everything is very itself in the morning. Everything is just there, not waiting for my fingers to light lights and shift plates. Just there. Very still. The cooker, the matches, the ladles hanging from their rail, gleaming.

While the water was coming to the boil, I laid out the breakfast stuff in the female dining hall, replenished the cereals and the sunflower seeds, opened the tubs of jam, the peanut butter, the honey, the hummus. That sticky smell always gets me, always puts me in a breakfast state of mind. There was milk to fetch, dairy and soya. Teabags. The first rule for a Dasgupta server is never to imagine you are indispensable. ‘If you feel stressed and can’t work in a spirit of love, stop at once.’ That’s the rule. ‘Go to the Metta Hall and meditate.’ Better no server at all than someone spraying negativity about, multiplying sankhara s.

Except I am indispensable. I’m always here before the others, whatever the rota. The fact is Mrs Harper leaves a lot of the responsibility to me these days. I know the routines, the menus, the recipes. The others come and go. She never said in so many words she was delegating to me, I’ve never officially been kitchen manager, they wouldn’t trust me, but that’s what she’s done. This session’s manager couldn’t fry an egg. And he’s a snacker. Beanpole Paul. I hate snackers.

Meredith appears half asleep.

‘Your apron?’ I ask. ‘Your hat?’

Rob’s making chai for himself.

‘Has anyone put the prunes on? Is the men’s side laid out?’

I’ve always been indispensable. To the band, to Carl, to Dad, always. There would have been no gigs without Bossy Beth. We’d never have arrived on time, never have got paid. How would my parents have stayed together if I hadn’t been around to listen to them moaning about each other?

‘There’s no point in making the toast yet,’ I tell Ralph. ‘Just get the oven ready and the bread on the trays. No one wants cold toast.’

Ralph is the only server working hard. To impress me.

‘Your back is vet, Bess,’ he says.

I’m frowning. I’m not going to answer.

‘Why zo, Bess?’

Right speech is usually no speech. No speech, no eye contact. Noble Silence. Then the chanting pipes up — Ananta pūnyamayī . It’s time to get the oats in the water. Ananta gunyamayī . Everything is in a state of constant change, the Buddha said. Anicca, anicca . Arising and passing away. Pains, pleasures, relationships. Arising and passing away. But every day at the Dasgupta Institute the chanting clicks in at six sharp in the Metta Hall and in the kitchen too. They’ve piped it through. Ananta pūnyamayī . In the hall the new students with their sitting pains know they only have another half-hour to hang on and the servers know they have to hurry up to get the food on the table.

‘You must be freezing,’ Ralph says.

‘ Ananta gunyamayī .’ I like to hum along. I’ve learned whole sections now, even if I’ve no idea what it means. Like when Pocus did a number in Japanese. People told me I was pretty convincing in Japanese.

‘Vat happened?’ Ralph rabbits on. ‘You are zoaking, Bess.’

Soaking was Jonathan’s word. ‘You’re soaking, Betsy M. You dirty little girl. Sopping soaking poking wet.’ I was never indispensable to Jonathan.

‘Put the fruit out,’ I tell Rob. ‘Make sure the apples and pears are washed.

Ralph says, ‘If you vant to go and change your shirt, Bess, I’m doing porridge.’

‘This is the first time you’ve been a server, isn’t it, Ralph?’

‘Yes.’

He smiles. He’s got me to say something.

‘Remember what it says on the website, right at the beginning? The page about Dhamma Service?’

He really does have a cute face. Big full lips.

‘It says, “Being a server is an opportunity to grow in Dhamma by helping others, not a chance to socialize.”’

Bavatu sava mangelam .

It’s funny but I’ve never figured where the loudspeakers are, in the kitchen. It’s as if Dasgupta’s voice oozed from the oven vent or the drains. He’s reached the final blessing now. But he loves to drag it out. Three times. Each one longer.

Baavaatuu saavaa maaangelam .

May all beings be happy. I checked the porridge in both pans, grabbed the oven cloth.

Baaaaavaaaaatttttuuuuu saaaavaaaa ma-angeh-laaaaaaaaaaaam .

Dasgupta stretches it for ever in a last twist of torment to test the sitters’ equanimity. I think he has a sense of humour. Now the meditators are only three slow sadhus from relief, three amens from breakfast.