‘To your girlfriend? Or girlfriends?’
‘To my mum!’
‘Oh, tell me another.’
‘Read it for yourself.’
I lean over his head. His hair is freshly washed.
‘I don’t understand German.’
‘Liebe Mutti. You are understanding zat.’
It’s the smell of the boy who loves the shower, who loves being clean.
‘Vant me to translate?’
I lowered my mouth right to his ear, his cute little silver earring. It’s a tiny Buddha.
‘Want a kiss?’
His body trembles. Fantastic. He really trembled and tightened.
‘Bess.’
‘I’m not Beth.’
He’s super-tense.
‘We shouldn’t.’
‘Then don’t.’
I don’t take my hands away and he doesn’t struggle to get free. Or to move his head from my tits.
‘Do you like me?’ he asks.
‘What kind of question is that?’
‘A closed kvestion.’ He laughs. ‘Yes or no?’
‘Would you kiss me if I were Meredith?’
‘No.’ There was no hesitation.
‘If I were Stephanie? Stephanie’s very sexy. Very French.’
‘No.’
‘If I were Kristin?’
‘No.’
‘If I were Marcia?’
He laughs. ‘You know I vouldn’t.’
‘If I were Beth?’
He sighs deeply. ‘We shouldn’t.’
‘Why Beth?’ I ask. ‘Why do you want to kiss dumb Beth? That girl’s such a loser.’
I’ve got my lips right by his ear now. In his ear. It’s amazing how handsome he is, what a pretty boy. I couldn’t care less. The pretty boy every girl’s mother loves. Please marry my daughter, Carl, please, before she ruins everything.
‘Beth’s a little scrubber, Ralph. Flashing her big tits around. They should tell her to cover up. She should wear a proper bra.’
‘I like Bess.’
‘Beth, th- th- th.’
‘Bessth.’
‘You’re hopeless. Why not Stephanie? She’s a nice girl. She’s your age.’
‘I like Bess.’
‘Beth’s a fucking drama queen. Oh, I’m in such deep trouble.’
He doesn’t answer. He’s very excited.
‘That whole scene with Harper just to get out of a bit of cooking and washing up. Oh, I’m sorry, I can’t serve, I can’t, I need to sit. Poor thing I am. Just to get out of a bit of work. Beth’s a cheat.’
‘I like you, Bess.’
‘I’m not fucking Beth!’ I stamp my foot and pinch his ear, right where the earring is. ‘I’ll pull your precious Buddha off.’
‘Ow, stop!’
‘Maybe I’m a man.’ I make my voice deep.
‘You’re not a man.’ He’s laughing.
‘How do you know?’
He breathes deeply, hesitates. ‘I can smell you’re not.’
‘Smell? All you can smell is the food you’re filching. You’re an animal! Coming here to steal at night. Filling your animal belly.’
Then I realize. ‘God, you’ve even put a banana in your muesli. You’ve deprived the students of a banana. You’re a pig!’
He’s grinning. The skin creases under my fingers. ‘It is you, Bess.’ He’s enjoying himself.
‘I repeat, you’ve stolen a banana. You should be ashamed of yourself.’
‘I was hungry. I couldn’t zleep.’
‘Hungry, eh? That’s your excuse?’
He hesitates. ‘Yes.’
‘Craving, you mean. You were craving. You’re a bad boy.’
I look around. The light’s pretty bright in the kitchen. He’s been eating cereal from a white bowl on a stainless-steel surface. His BlackBerry is glowing with his email to his Mutti. I lean down again and make my voice super-breathy and moist.
‘Are you craving for a kiss?’
He sighs. He’s very still now.
‘I said, are you craving a kiss, Ralphie? Would a kiss help you get to zleep?’
‘Ve shouldn’t, Bess.’
‘I’m not Beth.’
‘As you like.’
‘You’re too scared, is that it? You don’t want to store up some deep deep kissy sankhara.’
‘Bess,’ he says softly. ‘Please.’
‘Please do, or please don’t?’
He sighs again. I move my lips down his cheek, breathing ever so lightly.
He wriggles.
‘OK, if you keep your eyes closed, Ralph, I’ll kiss you.’
‘We shouldn’t. We took a vow. Ze Five Precepts.’
I’m laughing. ‘For fuck’s sake, do you want to or not? What kind of man are you?’
‘Bess.’
‘Bethththth! Listen, shut your eyes tight. After we’ve kissed I’ll let you see who I really am. You’re in for a big shock.’
I turned his head a little, crouched and took my fingers from his eyes exactly as our lips met. Honey on a razor’s edge. His hands lifted to my sides. Very lightly. Very respectfully. I put my hands behind his head now and pulled him towards me. Our lips pressed together, then began to open. Now he was excited and began to push his tongue in. I let him for a few seconds, then backed off and ran.
‘Bess!’
His chair scraped. I dashed across the kitchen and out through the swing doors.
‘Please, Bess.’
‘I’m not Beth!’
Just Observe
MY CIGARETTES WERE in the side pocket of my backpack under the bed. The others sighed and stirred but didn’t wake. The snorer was Stephanie. Who would have thought? Now there was the problem that I’d left four or five scribbled pages under a tea tray in the female servers’ room. I’d have to go back. I felt in the pack to check if the lighter was there. Damn. Meantime the mouse was gnawing pretty loudly. I stopped to listen. Gnaw gnaw, scratch scratch. I grinned and listened some more. Why was I so pleased about the mouse? Like I’d found a friend at the Dasgupta Institute. But if I went back, I might run into Ralph again as I went through the kitchen. If he was still there. Did that matter? ‘Life around you is a constant soap opera.’ Zoë laughed. I’d shown her Jonathan’s love bites on my neck. It must have been one of the first times we slept together. ‘If you want, you can tell Carl I did it,’ she said. I didn’t understand. ‘Carl knows I’m that way inclined. I’ll say you thought it was just a hug and I went for you.’ She squeezed me and sighed. ‘Actually, Beth, I wouldn’t mind taking a lump out of your neck.’ ‘Oh, be my guest.’ I laughed. Be my guest, I told the mouse. Go for it. I’m blessing the mouse, I thought. That was the feeling in my head. I’m blessing the fucking mouse!
Without a lighter I had to go back to the kitchen and use the gas. No sign of Ralph or his cereal bowl. A pity. Perhaps I should have gone the whole hog. Why not? Given him what he wanted. In the loos, or the servers’ room. A good shag. The flame leaped up and nearly sizzled my hair. I rushed out through the female dining hall before the smoke could trip the alarms, then walked in the dark past the toilets, past the Metta Hall to the female teacher’s bungalow. There was a bench outside beside the rose bush and I lay on it under the stars.
And inhaled.
‘Cher Jonathan, Je m’appelle Mariette. Je suis l’infirmière qui soigne votre amie, Élisabeth. Malheureusement, elle n’est pas sortie du coma. Je crains qu’elle puisse mourir à tout moment. Elle m’a dit de vous envoyer ce message, au cas où vous voudriez la voir avant qu’il ne soit trop tard.’
With vipassana, when you have a pain, in your back, in your legs, you don’t shy away from it, you don’t resist or fight, you go to meet it, gently. You move the mind towards the pain and explore the shell it is locked in. That’s the way with pains. They are gross, solidified sensations trapped in their shells. In a way, the shell is the pain. Nothing flows. Nothing moves. The pain is blockage, stoppage, paralysis. At most it throbs, it beats with an angry rhythm against the walls of its prison. Pulse pulse pulse. Or like a bee trapped in a box. But when you let the mind flow round it, patiently, quietly, attentively, after a while — sometimes a long while — the shell begins to soften, it cracks. The mind seeps in, the pain seeps out. The two mingle together like river and seawater, pain perception, pain perception, perception pain. Suddenly it’s gone. All the pain dissolves to mind, perception, pleasure, even bliss. This has happened to me many times at the Dasgupta. But not with memory pains. Then it’s the opposite. When you break the shell around a painful memory the hurt buzzes out and stings everything. You thought it was a tiny thing, a tiny pimple of misery. Now it’s poisoned your whole mind with its venom. And all the other pains come burning back. Your flesh is burning.