‘You are young, Beth. All the same there must be parts of your life you don’t think about any more. An old school friend. A holiday with your parents.’
‘Quite a few boys.’ I chuckled. ‘A singer is sort of obliged to seduce everyone.’
Mi Nu said, ‘We soon stop thinking about most of the things that happen to us. They don’t leave much impression. And this can be true of the memories that torment you too. You can look to the light beyond them. Let anicca do its work, enter the flow and let yourself change.’
This was a bit hard for me right then. I’d been awake a long time.
‘I don’t want to forget everything,’ I said. ‘It would be like not knowing who I am.’
She smiled. ‘So, who are you, Beth?’
I tried to think of a good answer.
‘I’m a mess, I suppose. But a good musician. Or, at least, I’m good on stage. I give people their money’s worth.’
Mi Nu waited, sitting in the shadow with the glow from the passageway behind her.
‘I can’t play again, though, after what happened. I feel I can’t. That’s the trouble. I mean, I don’t know what to do for the future. My mum and my sisters are so proper. All church and don’t do this or that. I’m more like my dad. He’s ruthless. Their religiousness drives him nuts. But he never helped me. Dad was always having affairs with his PAs, and Mum wanted me to be his PA so he wouldn’t be able to — she tried to commit suicide once, she stuck her head in the oven — so then I got roped into the office doing Dad’s secretarial work. I hated it.’
I stopped. I couldn’t figure out if Mi Nu was really listening, or if I was just making a fool of myself.
‘There’s a dream I keep having. I’m walking hand in hand with a man. We’re escaping, we’re happy, except then the road goes through a tunnel and the tunnel is blocked with snow. How can it snow in a tunnel?’
I hadn’t talked this much in ages.
‘Another dream I get is I’m in the tube with my guitar on the way to a concert. I try to go up the escalator, only it’s a down escalator and I look at my feet and see I’m barefoot.’
I waited.
‘I bet you have beautiful dreams.’
Still she said nothing. She could make her face completely expressionless.
‘You know, when I left the meditation hall just now, I heard an owl. The sound seemed to get right inside me. Woo, woo. And I thought it was you. I thought the owl was you. Mad, I know. That’s why I came here.’
She cocked her head slightly.
‘Then when I came in, do you know you were snoring? Actually, it’s a pretty funny snore you have.’
She smiled. ‘Is that so?’
‘When I got into bed I was really worried because my period’s due. I mean, I wouldn’t want to dirty your sheets.’
The smile didn’t fade. I couldn’t tell whether she thought she knew me through and through and was being indulgent, or whether she couldn’t make me out at all. Or it just didn’t matter to her whether she knew me or not.
‘Did I do the right thing coming here, Mi Nu? Please tell me I did the right thing.’
She asked: ‘Do your parents know where you are?’
‘No.’
‘They must be anxious.’
‘They could find me if they put their minds to it. In fact, I can’t believe they haven’t. You can find anyone in this day and age.’
‘Why do they have to find you when you could tell them where you are?’
‘If they want me, they can find me,’ I said.
‘Are you punishing them?’
‘I never think of them.’
‘And these men? Are you punishing them? Would you like them to come and find you?’
‘I’m through with men.’
Mi Nu sighed. She was looking at me very steadily. Then she said: ‘I think it’s time to change your name.’
‘What? What do you mean?’
‘It’s time to leave these unhappy moments behind. You’ve changed. You’re not the same person. It’s time to be different.’
‘I wish I had changed.’
‘Tomorrow we will give you a new name. But you should sleep now.’ She smiled. ‘Take rest, Beth. Sleep.’
I did feel terribly sleepy all of a sudden.
‘And you?’
‘I’ll sit here. I’ll watch over you.’
I smiled. ‘I wish I could kiss you, Mi Nu. I wish you’d let me hug you. A goodnight hug.’
She laughed out loud. ‘You’re a bad girl, Beth. You’re a bad girl. Go to sleep now.’
They were Jonathan’s words, exactly.
Lisa
SOMEONE LEANED OVER my shoulder and asked, ‘So, when do I get my reader’s report?’
It was not the sort of voice I’d expected. High-pitched for a man. Very South London.
I went on eating and he sat beside me. He put his hands on the table. There were small age stains, more hair than you’d want.
‘What did you think of the food?’ I asked.
‘Some days nice, some days so so.’
‘You can’t remember which?’
He thought about it. ‘I remember a good curry. Did you do that? An honest baked potato. A horrible nut roast.’
‘The porridge?’
‘Never touch the stuff.’
‘The toast?’
‘Nice if you could get it warm.’
I was eating chocolate whip. My lips must be dirty.
‘Let me finish and we can go for a walk in the field.’
‘I’d like that very much,’ he said.
Older men are so polite.
I’d woken in a mess of blood, in my own bed. How had that happened? Had I mucked up Mi Nu’s bed too? I’d definitely fallen asleep there. Had she chucked me out? There was a strange gap in the night, like when you’re meditating and you can’t feel anything between your head and breasts. You don’t have a neck. You don’t have shoulders. Your mind isn’t focused enough to feel them.
The other beds were empty. I got up and stripped off the sheets. I mustn’t feel aversion. Confront your slime with equanimity. Now there was a buzz of voices. I went to the window. People were hurrying out of the Metta Hall, chatting and laughing. It must be lunch already. Day ten. They had lifted the vow of silence.
I’d slept a long time. But then I’d been awake a long time before that.
It’s time to change your name, Mi Nu had said. It would have been so good to wake up in her bed and find her watching me. What kind of name? I like Beth. It was typical that I had gone to see her right when I didn’t have a proper question to ask, when I couldn’t think of anything smart to say. Do I have to have some weird Oriental name to become like Mi Nu?
I cleaned up in the shower then went back for the sheets. There’s a plastic cover on all Dasgupta mattresses. Good job. But I needed to know if I’d dirtied Mi Nu’s bed. How can I speak to her without knowing how we left each other?
Gathering the sheets, I remembered how I’d once stained Jonathan’s sofa. It must have been the second or third time we made love. He had a big blue sofa in his studio and the blood was brown and smeary, like wet rust. I was upset. Jonathan put a finger in it and rubbed it round his mouth. He turned the cushion over and laughed. ‘Life is all dirtying and cleaning. Of the two, I prefer dirtying.’
‘But your place is always so tidy.’
‘The better to muck it up, Beth.’
Going down the creaky stairs, I thought, Jonathan and Mi Nu are the same person. I said it out loud: ‘They’re the same person.’ What a stupid idea! How do these things come into my head?
Outside everyone was talking ten to the dozen. That’s how it is when the Noble Silence ends. There’ll be about a minute’s hesitation, as people come out from the Metta Hall. They know they can talk now, but they’re not used to the sound of their own voices. They open their mouths and close them again, think a bit. Then they take the plunge and that’s it. All of a sudden everyone’s spilling out their experiences, pains, complaints, impressions. Now they can’t talk fast enough. They can’t stop themselves. A hundred and fifty motor-mouths. I did the same after my first retreats. Later you start to feel superior, you learn to stay detached. When people are silent they seem so dignified, so considerate. You don’t know where they’re from, what class they are. You don’t criticize. You’re not tempted to flirt. Then on day ten, eleven o’clock, all of a sudden, yap yap yap yap yap. Northern, southern, foreign. Downmarket, posh, smart, dumb. You want to stop your ears.