How did it all begin?
When I met her across the table at Dad’s office party?
Bright red mouth, flowery smell.
She was immediately, but immediately, the mother I wished I’d had. The one who would find time to notice me, to love me.
I was immediately, but immediately, the child she was leaving it very late to have. The child she needed so she could feel she’d lived.
Nothing clear in our heads, of course, but definitely a sense of destiny.
She saw the danger. One drunken fuck and she fled.
I couldn’t let her get away. A guy with five older brothers isn’t going to hear a woman say she needs an older man.
I tracked her down, laid siege to her phone, stood under her window.
‘What you need is a child.’
‘You’re too young.’
‘And you can’t wait.’
She’d had an unhappy time with a married man. She drank too much. She was interesting. I could help her. I fell in love with the story of helping her. She had the money to help me. And the expertise.
Fatal meeting of needs. Conditioned arising.
Newts, real newts, don’t have to deal with any of this. Newts don’t have mothers who ignore them, or who they think ignored them. Newts don’t live in stories, projecting and planning and regretting and reconstructing. They don’t tell and retell. They don’t shoot second arrows. Newts slide in and out of slime catching insects on their tongues. Wordless, worryless. L and I had to concoct the most elaborate stories to justify the folly of a twenty-three-year-old male marrying a thirty-nine-year old female. I was a brilliant young man, much older than my age, in need of money and stability to launch an adventurous publishing house that would mark a turning point in English literature. I really believed that. She had recognized my genius, she had cash, she would withdraw from the law courts, bring up her baby, support my project, Wordsmith.
Mum wept. She couldn’t believe it. She couldn’t suspend disbelief.
First time Mum noticed me was when I escaped her. And fucked up big-time.
So. Susie born into a story of special love, special achieving, special denial. A tall story. If Susie and I weren’t amazingly special we couldn’t justify L’s having blown her career, L’s having blown her family money for Wordsmith, L’s having withdrawn from the world. She had invested in us and we were locked in her investment. We had to yield. A high return.
L obsessed by achievement: mine and Susie’s, not her own. We mustn’t let her down. Otherwise she starts drinking again. We have to succeed to stop her drinking herself to death.
Everyone else disparaged. Everyone else despised. We her only contact with the outside. Accomplices against the world. Conspiracy of three. She the queen bee, we the drone and the worker. She at home, we roving. She the mind, we the body.
When I was criticized she defended me. She was counsel for the defence. I needed her.
When I was successful she was envious, critical. Counsel for the prosecution. I needed to be rid of her.
When she understood I was looking at young women, she loathed and despised me. Judge and jury.
She had nourished a viper.
Her bowel problems. Her constipation. Her rages.
Communication went out along with sex. No fuck, no talk.
How can Dasgupta imagine that the mental trap we are in can be nullified just by stepping back from attachment and identification? It’s not a question of a second arrow but of third fourth tenth twentieth hundredth thousandth arrows all shot ages ago, all dead on target.
San Sebastian.
I am locked in a story and can’t wish it away. It won’t dissolve because I say, ‘Story story not my story.’
It’s not a play I can get up and walk out of.
Or, rather, it is a play, but I’m one of the paid-up actors. They don’t let you leave. Or if you do you die of hunger.
Disappointed with me, L suffocated Susie. If Susie took piano lessons, L also took piano lessons. To help her daughter, to outshine her daughter. If Susie studied Spanish, L also studied Spanish, with better results. To show her husband how much genius and potential had been sacrificed when she gave up her career for me, for Susie.
Then she drank for a couple of months.
Susie took up dance because L couldn’t. L is too awkward. L has a bad hip. Susie excelled in dance rejoiced in dance gloried in dance because her mother couldn’t dance, but soon learned everything there was to know about choreography. L soon knew every opening, every career track in the world of dance. L bought the clothes, the shoes. L drove her daughter to dance classes and back, talked about her to everyone she met. L promoted her at every possible opportunity.
L didn’t dance: she dazzled. With dance talk.
L stopped drinking to admire her daughter dancing.
I feel ill.
I feel there is nothing between us but the awareness that there is nothing between us. It’s the only thing we share. The knowledge of defeat. What intimacy.
That makes it more and more important to achieve.
Do L and I really care about Susie, or is it that we don’t want to have to tell people our daughter is a failure? Susie’s failed. We don’t want to have to tell people. We can’t enthuse about our daughter running off with a middle-aged alcoholic facing a gaol sentence for manslaughter. Our marriage hangs together thanks to shared pride in Susie’s success, career success. Without that, L’s sacrifices were in vain. Our daughter’s beauty and success justify our continuing (gangrenous) marriage. Gangrenous, paralysed, mouldering.
Is that it?
Is that what Dasgupta means by deep, deep sankharas?
I must do everything I can to get Susie to change her mind so we can keep our old stalemate going.
Stalemate. Stale meat.
Is that it?
Reminds me of The Keeper. Hero embalms whole family to keep everything as it is. House and home exactly as it is.
If Wordsmith goes under, we’ll definitely lose the house. Lose the bay window. Lose the garden. Lose the wisteria. I love the wisteria. Meditating this morning, strange moment, I unlatched the back gate, smelt the jasmine along the fence. It was so present. I brushed aside a few leaves and went through to the terrace. I was home. Safe at home. It was so intense.
If I had come to the Dasgupta twenty years ago, maybe there would have been some point. How can I detach in the middle of this drama that obliges me to be myself? I can’t change the conditions that long ago determined how my consciousness arises. My wife won’t let me. The banks won’t let me. The bookshops won’t let me. My authors won’t let me. I can’t tell the banks, sorry no self. They’re not familiar with the doctrine of anatta. They tell me what my responsibilities are, they show me where I signed on the dotted line. You are your signature.