Tim Parks - The Server

Ralph said: ‘Zat pan’s too heavy for you, Bess. I do it.’

‘Evidently not,’ I said.

Saaadooo .

I heaved the pan for the women’s side off the burner and banged it on to a trolley.

Saaadooo .

‘And for Christ’s sake it’s Beth, Ralph, Beth, th th th, not Bess. Can’t you pronounce a ‘th’?’

‘Bess.’

Saaadooo .

Finished. They’re free. They’re hungry.

I slammed the trolley through the swing doors into the corridor then the door to the female dining hall and hoisted the pan on to the table. I love its sudden hard heat against my chest. When you take off the lid the steam rushes up with a hot, homey smell. I was shivery, my clothes sticking to my back. I bent over the pan letting the heat come up in my face. But people were already at the door. Only day three and already a group of early birds has formed. They must have left meditation early. They’re making sure they get a banana. I told Mrs Harper that by having only enough bananas for half the meditators we were creating a situation where some people would be producing bad karma for themselves by rushing to grab. The kiwis and oranges don’t attract anything like the same attention and there are apples galore. ‘Maybe we should drop the bananas altogether,’ I told her. You’d see people giving up their place in the porridge queue to go and grab a banana, then joining the back of the queue again, content to wait, fruit in hand. Before I wrote the notice, only one banana each, some new students took two.

‘Why are you watching them?’ Mrs Harper smiled. ‘It’s not for us to calculate their karma.’

If only I was having this conversation with Mi Nu, but she never comes to the dining hall. She eats alone in the female leader’s bungalow. Mrs Harper is a wonderful person. She’s very slow and full, almost swollen, very kind and vague, and she seems to move on wheels rather than walk, turning very slowly, in loose, ankle-length dresses. Perhaps there are rubber wheels hidden down there, driven by a silent motor. With only one speed. Snail’s pace. It’s fantastic how slow she is. But I like that. She never flaps. When I see Mrs Harper’s big pale face and self-cut fringe I think of words like ‘matronly’ and ‘Mothers’ Union’ and when I talk to her I always notice how her wedding ring has sunk into the puffiness of her finger. You could never imagine her twisting it off and throwing it in her husband’s face. ‘Fuck off, you two-faced, cheating bastard!’ If I’d been brought up by the Harpers I’d be completely different. They are so calm together. I doubt they make love, though. I doubt they have children. When I showed Mr Harper the anal massager, there was such a look crossed his face.

‘Do you think,’ I asked Mrs Harper, ‘that the servers should be eating the bananas, I mean with there not being enough for all the meditators?’

She smiled. She has a slight American accent. ‘Elisabeth, dear, if you feel like eating a banana, please do. No one wants you to go without.’

Her eyes are always surprised, in a generous way. Her voice drawls and coos. On the other hand, she’s always reminding us that the servers mustn’t eat before the meditators have finished, we’re here to serve them, so if we wanted bananas we would have to put them aside for ourselves before laying the fruit out. Which is not in the spirit of the Dasgupta, is it? The spirit of the Dasgupta is that we cook for the meditators and eat their leftovers. We don’t cook for ourselves. Those are the rules. We come second. ‘If you want a banana,’ I told Ralph, and I tipped him a wink, ‘you’d better put one aside before the hordes arrive.’ He was carrying out the toast tray for the men and his eyes fell. He’d already put a couple of bananas aside. I knew. Good job I loathe the things or there’d be a serious shortage.

I opened the dining-hall door and the meditators pushed through. There’s a sink in the porch to wash your hands, but nobody does. It’s six thirty and they’ve been up since four. They haven’t eaten since lunch yesterday, at eleven. People are always pleased with themselves after the early-morning session. We feel virtuous meditating before breakfast and at this hour virtue seems worth having. It brings peace of mind. I remember my first peace of mind at the Dasgupta came during a morning session. It was the first moment I caught myself feeling good after months of misery. As soon as I noticed, of course, the feeling went. I was straight back to the torment and confusion. But I had experienced it for a moment, and that gave me hope. Later I realized you must never tell yourself you’re at peace. This is a weird thing with the Dasgupta. You can learn to be calm here. You sort of perform calmness. You can make yourself serene and very slow so that you feel like you’re actually mixed up with the things around you. Your body is the rabbit in the dew at dawn, or the sycamores behind the hall when the wind shakes their leaves. I can’t explain. But the moment you notice it and congratulate yourself, the spell breaks and you’re in trouble again.

Often, especially in the early days, it seemed to me that this business of losing the calm and balance I’d been working towards always happened at mealtimes. In the Metta Hall, surrounded by a hundred and fifty people wrapped in blankets, sitting still, breathing quietly, you could settle yourself in a wordless trance. Where there are no words, there are no decisions, no names, no plans, no pain. Even your body grows transparent, like it was made of air. Then you’re happy. No. Happy is wrong. You’re easy, unworried. You are floating in a cool river and the water carries you down.

Then the gong sounds and you have to eat. You have to get up from your cushion, put on your shoes, walk to the dining hall. You have to decide what to eat and how much. You start wondering whether it’s better to be served first when the porridge is piping hot or later when the banana mob have grabbed their loot and gone. You start to watch the others, to think, to criticize, to calculate. You want to eat frugally, to be virtuous, but then your food is finished and you’re still hungry, no, you’re hungrier than before. You go back for a second bowl of porridge, pile up your plate with toast, slabs of butter, spoonfuls of jam, two apples, two oranges. Stuffing yourself, you remember the pig-outs after concerts, beer and biryani, joints and whisky. Then you see yourself four in a bed in some slum hotel or hostel. Doncaster. Dortmund. Or huddled together in sleeping bags in the van. Carl, Zoë, Frank. A huge hand for Frank Halliday on DRUMS! Suddenly you realize how peaceful you were ten minutes ago in the hall on your cushion and how completely that peacefulness has gone. It’s gone. The porridge is poisoned. The apples are sour.

Don’t eat, Beth. Stop eating.

I skipped meals. It’s never been a problem for me not to eat. It’s harder for me to eat moderately than to cut out food altogether. One thing or the other, that’s me. Gluttony or starvation. But you have to eat at the Dasgupta, the same way you have to meditate. Not eating is not allowed. The same Dhamma workers who count you in for the hour of Strong Determination are there to check that you go to lunch. Course managers is their official name, though they don’t really manage anything. They have their registers and clipboards. You have to meditate with the Dasgupta method and you have to eat Dasgupta food at Dasgupta times. Vegetarian. Six thirty and eleven a.m.

‘Elisabeth.’ Mrs Harper took me aside. ‘You’re not eating.’

This was before I became a server. I’d been here a month maybe, sitting one retreat after another. They’re free after all. Obviously they’d realized I was a case.