Tim Parks - The Server

What makes me think Vikram might be gay, or have been gay, is this prissiness he has, speaking so correctly, always very Indian and very posh. The Dasgupta must be great for gays who don’t want to come out. You can forget the whole issue. Why bother telling the truth about your inclinations in a place where all physical contact is forbidden, even handshakes? I will never hug Mi Nu. Or touch her. Vikram wants each retreat’s servers to make the kitchen tick like clockwork, to turn out the Dasgupta recipes time and again, always the same, the way the Dasgupta chanting turns on at six in the morning and the Dasgupta video at seven in the evening. He pins up printed sheets with cleaning rotas, days across the top and tasks down the side: ‘Servers’ Toilet — Male/Female — Kitchen Drainage Grids, Hats and Aprons (laundry)’. We’re supposed to initial a box the day each job is done. Everything must happen so regularly it doesn’t really happen at all. Does that make sense? I mean it would only be a happening if it didn’t happen.

‘Where’s Paul?’ he asks. ‘Tea-towels should be laundered, not dried on the radiators. They’re breeding bacteria.’

I like Vikram. Whatever problems he’s had in the past, he’s on top of them now. That’s how I want to be. He goes round the kitchen checking things. The veg grinders haven’t been cleaned properly. That’s Rob. There’s always someone who loves using the grinders but hates cleaning them. Why do I chuckle when Vikram shakes his dark head and wags his brown finger? I wonder why he doesn’t tell me my hair has got loose from my hat. He scolds everyone but me. Perhaps I’m incorrigible. When I flash him a toothy smile he turns away. Never mind. I’ve forgotten my diarist for a few minutes, forgotten the envelope in my pocket.

The kitchen gets pretty wild after ten. People hardly know each other’s names yet, never mind the equipment. There are still new servers arriving and old servers leaving. We’re starting to panic. We must have lunch on the table at eleven. After three hours on their bums the meditators must find their food. They’re suffering serious deprivation. Day one, adzuki bean stew. Day two, baked potatoes with grated cheese. Day Three, rice, kichada beans and curried tofu. People eat mountains. Plus the salads. Plus the special-needs menus: cheese and salad sandwich for Maureen Moss, glucose drink for Rita Howell. And the notices to write for vegan and non-vegan. And the covered portions to take to the teachers’ bungalows. Meredith has sliced into a fingertip. I love the sharp knives here. I love choosing the right knife for whatever vegetable I’m chopping. There’s blood on the broccoli. Kristin forgot to zero the scales and her soya mayonnaise is wrong. Everything’s so frenetic, so completely un-Zen. Kristin is calm, though. She has that Baltic dourness. Big pale lips, wry smile. She knows soya mayonnaise is not important. Ines is in tears because the bratt pan keeps turning itself off. Her curry won’t cook. Paul’s fretting. Paul should never have been made kitchen manager. I pull out my steamed rice and kichada beans from the Rational Oven. There’s a lovely fluffiness to the white and yellow. Like a cuddly toy. A million miles from the hard grains I washed.

‘Ladle it into saucepans,’ Tony proposes, ‘and cook it on the stove.’

Tony only arrived yesterday. He’s the oldest server this retreat. A professor, he says. Every job he’s assigned he needs to be shown how to do it: how to scrub a turnip, how to peel a squash, how to mash potatoes. Some professor.

‘It’s too late!’ Ines is wailing. ‘It’ll take for ever.’ She’s forgotten the rule about going to the hall to meditate if you can’t stay calm. They’ve just started ladling the curry into saucepans when I go over and show them the trick with the thermostat.

‘It sticks. See? You have to jiggle.’

The bratt pan sizzles. Ines holds tight to the big wooden stirring paddle while I twiddle the knob. She’s afraid I’m trying to take over, I’ll steal her glory. I’m still leaning over the pan — the curry does smell good — when I realize Tony is gawping down my cleavage. God! Ralph I’d have expected, but not the professor, balding with bushy eyebrows, bad breath, needing to be shown how to undo a bra, no doubt. What is it with me and older men?

But wrong. When I stand up, it’s Meredith . She’s planted right there beside me, holding out her bandaged finger, smiling, looking .

‘Beth!’ she shouts ‘You cracked it!’

The red Ferrari syndrome, Jonathan called it. ‘Or, rather, the two red Ferraris.’ Even people who weren’t remotely interested, he laughed, just couldn’t help looking. ‘Your tits are so there , Beth. Two spanking Ferraris double-parked on a zebra.’

Jonathan. Jonathan Jothanan Thanajon. I thought I’d got you out of my head weeks ago and now you’re creeping right into the pre-lunch commotion. It’s the diarist’s fault. Damn you both. The curry has started to bubble. Ines is happy. Her tits went the way of all flesh years ago. Two old bangers. Bless them. Bless everyone. Accept everything.

‘Too bad we dirtied the saucepans,’ Tony says. He’s realized I deliberately left it late before telling them about the pan. He’s not stupid. A professor of psychology maybe? Meredith says since she can’t chop or wash up she’ll help me lay out the dining hall.

At the Dasgupta we move constantly back and forth between the same four or five spaces. The double doors of the kitchen open on to a short corridor. Ahead and left are the swinging double doors of the male dining hall. Ahead and right the female. We crash back and forth with our trolleys, pushing stacks of plates, cutlery, the salad, the rice and beans and, today, in the nick of time the curry. Done it. It’s all in place. No, we’ve forgotten the dressing. ‘Who was on salad dressing?’ The recipe book says tahini. I rush to find the ingredients. Ralph starts to measure and mix. Paul comes over and says, ‘Perhaps it would be better if you worked with Kristin, Elisabeth.’ Meaning what exactly? Then I remember the gong. ‘God, I’m on gong, Paul. Have to rush. You do the dressing.’

The gong hangs from a branch of the hawthorn tree a few yards from the Metta Hall. There’s a fresh stillness here after the steamy excitement of the kitchen. The low hills are damp and silent. Nothing stirs in the hall. It’s hard to believe there are a hundred and forty people in there. The gong is big and has a weird triangular hat shape with upturned corners. The hammer sits in a cleft between trunk and branch. It’s heavy, all of old wood, probably oak or something, with a felt cover to protect the surface of the gong, which you have to hit at the corners, not in the middle.

Boing!

I’m playing an instrument again. I’m calling the meditators back from their trance.

Boy-oy-oyng!

What a great sound. So loud and long. The meditators will be feeling it on their skin. Your whole body rings when the gong’s struck. The sound soaks through you. It’s the opposite of a siren. Loud, but calming. No, it’s the opposite of some small scratchy noise that irritates. The gnawing at night in our bedroom. Behind Kristin’s bed. Or the drip from the hall roof when it rains.

Boy-oy-oy-oy-oyng!

I’ve released my diarist from his pains. Stand up and walk, old man. Come and get your Brazilian curry, courtesy of Ines. Then I’m sad that I didn’t write those words in his diary. Your pain is a door, go through it . I mean, I did write them, but I tore the page out. I’m courageous, but not totally reckless. I hate that. Why can’t I be totally reckless and the hell with it, or not self-destructive at all, sensible and serene? A good wifey for Carl. Why am I never one thing or the other?