Zoë said: ‘Tell him you’ve got another man’s sperm in your pussy. That should wake him up.’
‘I already did. I told him I’m fucking you too.’
We were in the hotel after the gig. I was crying.
‘Drama queen,’ she said.
People are fidgeting. Kristin has arrived to my left, Marcia to my right. Even without seeing, I feel who is there. I know them, I know the space. I know the vibrations they send, the way the air changes when they sit. Someone starts to breathe very deeply, rhythmically, behind us, some new student who can’t find her breath. She’s heaving like a bellows. We are preparing for vipassana, preparing to work diligently all day long: the in-breath, the out-breath. Across the lip. For half an hour at least, nothing but the breath. In and out. Preparing. A silver stream of breath parting an ocean of deep water. A silver lifeline through the dark. Somewhere it must reach the surface. Somewhere it must connect with the future. I DIDN’T BREATHE FOR TEN MINUTES, JONATHAN. TEN WHOLE MINUTES! I SHOULD BE DEAD. NOW MY BRAIN IS SWELLING. THEY HAVE TO PUT ME IN A COMA, OTHERWISE I WILL DIE.
Silence. My chest is rising and falling. Without breathing I watch myself breathe. It’s such a gentle movement. A slight rising and falling of the chest, the diaphragm. The sea has calmed and the water is lapping ever so gently on the sand, rising and falling ever so gently, like a kiss, a caress. In the darkness the faces begin. A woman’s face, distinct in every feature, generous mouth, pale skin, grey eyes in a web of wrinkles. Now a black man, a real Negro, looking up from far below, below the floor of the Metta Hall. He’s resigned, tired, sympathetic. Now a little girl with honey blonde hair, right close up. A snub nose. She’s about to smile, she’s about to shake her head. If she does her hair will touch me. All these faces are very distinct. Very calm, very knowing. Is it me they’re gazing at? I’m not sure. Maybe at someone beyond me, behind me. They appear and fade. Now a young man, now a Chinese boy. They’re not there, then they’re there, then they’re gone. Faces glimpsed between the stars. You are lying on your back by your tent on the dunes. You know you shouldn’t have come. You really shouldn’t have come on holiday with a man you don’t love, you shouldn’t have told him you are pregnant. He is so happy. He is so near his goal. Marry Beth, Carl, marry Marriot’s. You look up and find a face in the stars. Why did you tell him? It’s already gone. But each face is too real, too present to be imagined. Who are these people? I don’t know. Do they have anything to say? They are silent. Are they my past lives, come to watch over me? Beth’s past lives? For Christ’s sake! Are they lives to come? An old black man? Are they friendly? I feel they are. Friendly and equal. Yes, I feel they are all equal. No, they’re the same. I’m not sure how it can be, but in a way they’re all the same face. I am one of them. We are companions on a journey. I’m the same too. My face appears to them as they appear to me. Are we the Sangha? Sangham saranam gacchami. I take refuge in the Sangha, in the community of meditators. How can I become a Dasgupta person? Is that the question I must ask Mi Nu? These are the faces of Dasgupta people. They have that look. I must take refuge in the Sangha. They appear and fade. I understand now why Mi Nu wouldn’t speak to me when I cried for help. To blather out your story would plunge you deeper in. Isn’t that what happens when you start to tell? You make things worse. You plunge deeper. Writing is forbidden at the Dasgupta. If you have chosen to sit in silence, Elisabeth, you have chosen well. So sit in silence. Don’t ask for help. When you have betrayed and broken a lover’s heart, then you have betrayed and broken a lover’s heart. There is no remedy. When you have been betrayed and your own heart is broken, then you have been betrayed and your own heart is broken. You cannot have it back. When you have killed, you have killed. There is no help. Sit in silence and be still.
The world as it is, as it is.
Vipassana
‘ARE YOU ALL right, Elisabeth?’ Mrs Harper asked, the evening of the fifth day. I nodded. I didn’t break the Noble Silence, just nodded. There was nothing to say. Wasn’t it Mrs Harper who warned me there was no God to forgive me, no God to punish me? When you have staked your life on a passion and it has gone wrong, what can you do but sit still, accept? You came to the Dasgupta to forget. You discharged yourself from hospital and came straight to the Dasgupta Institute, to another kind of hospital, with another kind of anaesthetic. You came to forget. You did forget. Then you remembered. A little bit. To check what had been forgotten: the beach, the sea, the French boys, the tent, the texts, the sea, the dark sea, the violent sea. Now forget it again. Bury it again, Beth. Bury Beth.
Breth.
How crazy of my diarist to suppose he could get his troubles out of his mind with a summary. One summary leads to another. As soon as you’ve said it you have to correct what you said. Mental proliferation, Dasgupta says. Painful projections. Sankharas. Say it again and you’ll have to correct your correction. Is the third version better than the first? Is it more or less painful? Was the second the right one? Try a fourth. A fifth. Mum had at least ten versions of her life. All wrong. And a thousand combinations of the ten. Each new story guarantees another will be needed to correct it. The Thirty Years’ War was over. But not Mum’s battle with Dad. I spent my childhood listening. My adolescence. My life. I joined in. No, I was already in. I was born in. I made their story more complicated, more exciting. I was part of their war. Part of Mum and Dad’s talking. Part of their not talking. I knew more about Dad than Mum did. Less about Mum than Dad did. I tried to break the stalemate. Silly Beth. What about seeing it this way, Mum? What about starting again? It was just a mistake, your marrying. What’s the point of trying to explain it to yourself? When your marriage has been a bad marriage, it has been a bad marriage. What’s the point of the new twist, the definitive version? Who cares whose fault it’s been? Every time you play a song it’s different. None of them is right. You had a bad marriage, Mum. A crap marriage. Your life is ruined, Beth, you ruined someone else’s life, you killed a living being. There is no way back. You chose the wrong man, the wrong job, the wrong songs, the wrong beach.
Shush.
The minutes pass. Four thirty to six thirty. I’m happy. I’m very calm. I have less pain before breakfast. Someone has got up to leave. Someone is arriving late. Not many sit the full two hours. Kristin gets up. She has to prepare breakfast. Then Marcia. Marcia hasn’t farted, she hasn’t been noisy. She’s settling in. I want to laugh. Maybe Marcia is a really nice person. I have let my fellow servers down. I wasn’t indispensable. I let everyone down.
‘Was it the kitchen?’ Mrs Harper asked. ‘Was there some kind of problem with the other servers, Elisabeth?’
Yes, there was. The kitchen is too close to life, Mrs Harper. In a kitchen things start to happen. Words get said. A boy looks at you with doggy eyes. A woman bothers you with her pride. A man irritates you with his laziness, his snacking. You tease the boy you trick the woman you snub the man. Reaction reaction reaction. Sankhara sankhara sankhara. Your mind begins to buzz, to burn. The tomatoes are too red. The carrots are too bright. The beetroot stains everything. A girl arrives and you begin to like her. She takes the mattress off her bed. You want to win her over. Why? Because she suffers? Because she’s dignified? A woman arrives and you begin to hate her. You want to show your contempt. Reaction. Reaction. You try to bless her but you can’t. You can’t bless farts. Time to bail out, Beth. You are not ready for the kitchen. You open a door and find a man’s diary. You can’t resist. He adores his daughter. The thought drives you crazy. The girl has chosen the wrong man. He writes a letter to save her from her stupidity. He can’t finish it. His head is full of his own mistakes. He is too full of himself to help his daughter. You ask a man what he does for a living and he tells you he gets paid to make dying children laugh. Children are more in tune with life. Children can laugh while they die. How can I get in tune, Mi Nu? How can I enter the stream?