It was Harper said that, quite a while ago now, but the words come back. He’d been talking to the servers. ‘I’m aware that you can’t have proper male-female segregation in the kitchen,’ he said, ‘since obviously you have to cook together.’ Harper always does this talk for the servers the first evening of every retreat. He sits on his cushion, on his platform stool, in his grey jumper, and grey slacks. We kneel in front of him, women to one side, men to the other, in the quiet of the hall, after the meditators have gone to bed, and he says: ‘All the same, servers should try to adopt an attitude of segregation. For example, when you need two people, to cut veg, or to clean up at the end of the day, make sure it’s always two men or two women. Don’t mix. Never eat together. Don’t chat.’
He paused and blinked. Harper has a bland uncle sort of face, friendly but distant. His eyes are set deep, so that you can never figure whether they’re closed or open. ‘Otherwise,’ he sighed, ‘well, you know what can happen.’
Sometimes someone sniggers when he says this and once a girl asked, ‘I’m sorry, Teacher, but what is it that might happen, exactly?’
Harper sat still. He must have known this girl was pulling his leg. At last he said, ‘The truth is, our minds are not strong enough to have the right relationship with certain things.’
I closed the loo door and went back to help with the dishes. We all share the washing-up. I grabbed the overhead hose in the first sink, spraying the crap off the dishes. Kristin stacked the trays over the second sink, slid them into the dishwasher and slammed down the hood to set it going. Two minutes later Meredith hoisted the hood, pulled out the trays through a cloud of steam and began to check and sort.
Ralph trundled back and forth from the dining halls with a trolley. Mr Professor was scraping the dirtiest plates into the bin. It’s the only thing he doesn’t need to be shown how to do. Stack after stack of dirty plates and bowls. The pans, the utensils, the cutlery. There’s quite a din. All the knives, forks and spoons have to be separated and sprayed. The machine can’t cope with too many solid bits.
‘You should vare rubber gloves,’ Ralph says.
When the sink blocks he reaches in to fish out the filth for me. I spray the sleeve of his sweater and he yells. I’m laughing all my teeth at him. Our minds are not strong enough to have the right relation with certain things. It’s true what Harper said. But I’ve no problem at all with Ralph, I could tease this kid for ever and never feel anything. ‘I love your teeth, Beth,’ Jonathan said. ‘I love how mad they are, how big.’ Carl wanted me to wear a brace. I’d be in trouble when I was older. ‘Why didn’t your parents do something?’ ‘Because they only talked to me to moan about each other.’
Meredith asked Ralph what sign he was. I sprayed rice and beans off a bowl, the same rice I’d moved my fingers through a couple of hours ago, but changed again now, sticky and soiled. Anicca. If the river keeps flowing, one day the rock will budge. The nuttiest things come into my head when I’m working, like I’d swallowed the Dhammapada. ‘As the bee collects nectar and departs without injuring the flower, so let a sage dwell in his village.’
But the spray-gun is fantastic. Squeeze the trigger and a jet of steaming water blasts away the filth. I love that. The big dishwasher is great too: fierce, hot and fast. Two minutes forty seconds and the plates come out scorching white and pure. I hate putting my hands in the yuck when the sink blocks. ‘Please don’t be spraying me again, Bess.’ Ralph reaches in his arm. He has strong wrists with fine blond hair. His sign is Aquarius, he says. Carl’s sign. ‘I’ve never had an Aquarian boyfriend,’ Meredith informs us. So much for an attitude of segregation.
Tony is scraping saucepans now. Perhaps he’s a professor of waste disposal. Kristin has said nothing. She is stacking the dishes fast so we can finish and get our lunch. No one wants to eat before the dishes are done. IF YOU KNEW HOW HANDSOME THIS GUY TRYING TO CHAT ME UP IS! That’s the kind of text I would have sent to Jonathan and Carl a year ago. Sometimes I sent the same text to both. BLOKE TRIED TO KISS ME AS I WAS COMING OUT OF THE TUBE. NOW HE’S FOLLOWING ME UP SHAFTESBURY AVE! Carl would drop whatever he was doing and come running. THERE’S A ROADIE BOTHERING ME. I’M AFRAID TO GO TO THE LOO IN CASE HE FOLLOWS. Actually, that was true. I was in the 12 Bar. Carl turned up spoiling for a fight. Carl was such a cavalier. TAKE CARE, BETH, Jonathan wrote. He was in a restaurant with his wife. Sorry, ex-wife.
When we take our food to the female servers’ room to eat there’s always someone wants to be silent, or observe the strictest rules of Right Speech, and someone who wants to talk, needs to talk, has to talk. Kristin is Latvian. She must have cut her own hair. It has that lank look. And her grey eyes are a bit out of true. When she was assigned to our room the first thing she did was drag the mattress off her bed and lie down on the bare wooden slats. ‘I know the Buddha said not to sleep on luxurious beds,’ Meredith giggled, ‘but isn’t that overdoing it?’ She does use a pillow, though. She plumps up the pillow, pulls a blanket over her and lies down straight on the slats. I like her. I like her big hands and clumsy, stooped walk. I like her energy. She does everything with too much energy. At lunch she sits on a chair in the corner with her couscous on her knee and eats fast in silence. She has big bones. Kiss-kiss, Zoë called it. We had to heat some from the freezer because the curry was all gone. Paul got the quantities wrong. Third day running.
At table, a new arrival was filling out the Dhamma Service Form, a hefty type in her forties. ‘What do I write,’ she asked, ‘if I haven’t exactly kept the five precepts since the last retreat?’ She had an Aussie accent and a double chin.
Kristin went on eating.
‘Everyone gets thrown by that question,’ Meredith said.
‘Tell the truth.’ Ines beamed. ‘You can never be wrong when you tell the truth.”
‘The exact question,’ the Aussie said, ‘is: “Have you scrupulously kept the five precepts since your last Dasgupta Retreat?” I suppose they’ll still accept me if I haven’t.’
‘Listen,’ I interrupted ‘they’re not asking for details, are they? You don’t need to tell ’em you got razzled every night.’
The Aussie didn’t smile, but Kristin burst out laughing. She roared. Out of nothing.
Mrs Harper came in with Livia, the female course manager, and a French girl called Stephanie. Livia was saying she kept meeting people she must have known in other lives. She’d be checking off the list of meditators in the hall when suddenly she’d see a face she just knew she knew. More than knew, somebody she must have been close to once. Mrs Harper said this happened a lot at meditation centres because these places drew together people who had been on the Dhamma path for a number of lifetimes, people who were close to becoming arahants. Meredith began to say how her mum knew her dad’s name and star sign and even ascendant the very moment she set eyes on him. ‘She always says it’s a marriage that’s lasted a thousand lives.’