Helen Brown - After Cleo

A stream of disciples, mostly Westerners, flowed through the house to sit in his presence while he regaled them with updates on the monastery-building programme. A new kitchen was keeping the nuns happy, but his plans were much grander. He hoped some day to erect an enormous statue on top of the hill above the monastery.

In between visitors, I asked the monk about his background. He told me that after growing up poor in a village, he’d become attached to a great teacher. He showed me photos of the man, a dignified-looking monk who he said had lived well into his nineties.

As a young monk, our visitor had spent several years meditating in a cave, the entrance of which was ultimately transformed into a cottage. He’d since moved to more comfortable accommodation further up the hill. The cave cottage was currently occupied by a younger monk, an equally fervent meditator. It remained the central point of the monastery.

We took the monk to the botanic gardens that afternoon. As we stared out over the lake, I asked him about differences between Buddhism in Sri Lanka and Tibet. The answer was long and convoluted, and included unflattering asides about Philip’s potential for Enlightenment, which I hoped could be put down to the language barrier. Philip was mercifully out of earshot, engrossed in conversation with a black swan.

Changing the topic, I told the monk how I’d seen him sitting on the end of my bed not long after my surgery. He threw his head back and laughed with delight.

‘I did that thing!’ he declared, waving a hand in the air. ‘Yes! I did that!’

So, global self-transportation was in his repertoire. I wasn’t sure who was crazier – him for thinking he’d done it, or me for having seen him.

On the second day, a rare diversion from normal practice was announced. The monk would be willing to do us the honour of having lunch with us downstairs at the oak table providing, of course, it was fully vegetarian and occurred before midday.

Being Sunday, Rob and Chantelle were due to come over. I sent them a text, warning them to show up early if they wanted to be fed.

I have to say it wasn’t one of our more relaxed family gettogethers. Having a monk at the end of the table did change the ambience somewhat. Nevertheless, everyone did their best, politely offering plates of salad, bread and stir-fried beans to each other. At one point I caught Rob looking longingly at a plate of ham in the fridge.

Jonah, thank heavens, seemed to have recovered from his previous night’s obsession and was behaving semi-normally.

With our plates filled we raised our forks and were about to tuck in, when the monk reminded us it was time to give a blessing. Our forks clattered to the table and we lowered our heads.

‘ Does he mean he wants to say Grace? ’ I whispered to Lydia, who was embarrassed by our crassness. But honestly, who were we to know whether Buddhists said Grace? Though, come to think of it, the blessing of food is probably a universal religious practice.

The monk’s blessing was particularly elaborate. He blessed the earth our food had come from this day, the rain and the sun and the farmers who’d grown it. We nodded agreement and lifted our forks, but the blessing hadn’t finished. We lowered our forks and studied our plates as he blessed the people who’d transported the food to the city . . .

Awkward silence hovered over the table. The silence ballooned into a presence that filled the room and pressed against the French windows. Rob flashed a glance at me from across the table. Philip, on his right, appeared to be engrossed in some complicated mathematical equation. Katharine, sitting next to me, rested her chin on her chest and looked neither left nor right. Only Lydia and the monk seemed entirely at ease with the impenetrable absence of noise.

Then it started. A scuffling sound from the laundry followed by a slam. I caught Katharine’s eye. We both knew what it was. Jonah had chosen this sacred moment to use his litter box. The scuffling grew louder until it became determined scratching. Jonah was digging deep in his litter box and revelling in the sensation of his claws against the plastic base. Sccccrrrrrrich, sccccccrrrrach, he went, faster and faster, until it sounded like a ditch-digger was working away in the next room.

The monk drew a breath and started blessing the people who’d stored our food, and the shopkeepers who’d put it on their shelves. Sccccrrich, scccccrrrrrach. Jonah was letting us know exactly what he thought. Katharine’s chest started heaving in schoolgirl giggles. Immature, yet unstoppable . . . and, under the circumstances, extremely contagious.

I don’t know what it was – a reaction to stressful circumstances – but before I knew it, I was exploding with giggles too. I glanced sideways at Rob and Chantelle’s poker faces. Philip, too, was as solemn as a funeral director. They were so studiously controlled I only wanted to laugh more. The effort of trying to stop myself made my ribs ache. The more I tried to repress the giggles the louder they became, morphing into donkey-like hoots. It must’ve been at least thirty years since I’d been afflicted like this. I tried to disguise them as coughs but nobody was fooled, least of all Lydia, whose cheeks turned as crimson as her teacher’s robes.

Once the meal was mercifully over, the monk excused himself to rest upstairs. Clattering with the dishes over the kitchen sink, Lydia shot Katharine and I a look that could have frozen the tropics.

Next morning as we bobbed and bowed and waved the monk goodbye, parting was such sweet . . . relief.

Yearning

Happiness is a new pink ribbon

Soon after the monk’s stay, Lydia drove me to hospital to get a new nipple. Greg had assured me it was a simple forty-minute ‘tidy up’ that would be nothing compared to the massive body work he’d done seven months earlier in August. With a new nipple, he said, I’d be able to wear flimsy summer tops. We were obviously on different planets.

I could understand why some women who have a breast reconstruction don’t bother getting a new nipple. I’d only experienced a flicker of self-consciousness about having a miniature helicopter pad where the old nipple used to be twice – once when a woman walked in on me in a changing room, and another time when I caught Philip’s eye sliding sideways while I was stepping out of the shower. Still, seeing as I’d gone to all the trouble of getting a new boob, it seemed logical to add the final touch. And Greg was eager to put the final twirl of icing on the cake he’d created.

If there’s one way to stop a conversation, it’s announcing you’re about to acquire a new nipple. If you said you were getting a new earlobe or a new little toe, people might take polite interest. Mention the N word and they don’t know what to say. Nipples are sexual.

To those strong enough to ask, I’d explain Greg was going to cut a couple of centimetres of skin from my left areola and graft it to the helicopter pad, at the same time bunching up a knob of skin in the centre to create the new nipple’s dome. While he was at it he was going to ‘review’ a small flap that looked like a dog’s ear at one end of my abdominal scar.

What was a simple morning’s work for Greg was a whole other matter from my end of the scalpel. Those in the know say there’s no such thing as minor surgery. A slip of the knife or a tube put in the wrong place and . . .

I embarked on the now familiar routine of shedding clothes and jewellery, along with my dignity and everything else connecting me to the outside world, to stow them in a locker. Hospitals are like that. You succumb to them. It helps to remind yourself that surgeons and nurses are highly educated. They know your life sits quivering like a sparrow in their palms.