“It seems kind of extreme, doesn’t it? To confiscate phones and laptops for ten whole days.”
“It’s the only way. You need complete concentration for this level of absorption. Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it.”
“I hope so.”
I had dinner that evening with the other Learners. It was strange at first to sit around a table with three or four other people and not even make eye contact. Once or twice, I couldn’t resist a glance, a smile, a nod of acknowledgment. But then I would quickly look away. We had paid a lot of money for this, after all, and taken time off. It wouldn’t work, they’d told us, if we didn’t follow the rules.
A staff member brought a serving tray to the table, doublechecked my wristband, and placed a meal in front of me, all without looking me in the eye.
“Thank you,” I said, reflexively, and received a curt shake of the head in return. “Oops, sorry!” I whispered and felt another silent reprimand. I spoke no more.
The starter was a slice of roasted eggplant topped with mincemeat and feta cream. It tasted phenomenal. I struggled not to share my pleasure with my dining mates but saw that they, too, were smiling. There were some contented nods to selves, and I heard an “mmm” or two. In this way, the appreciation was shared around the table, even if not explicitly articulated. The main course followed, an equally delicious spaghetti bolognese, the pasta perfectly cooked and the meat drenched in a thick tomato sauce that melted in my mouth. Then, for dessert, a bittersweet pear and chocolate cake, served warm and with a single scoop of vanilla bean ice cream.
“Are all the meals going to be like that?” I asked Shiba afterward.
“We definitely don’t hold back when it comes to food prep.”
Oh, one more thing. I’m not sure if this is even worth mentioning—I’m not one to indulge in gossip, after all, nor hero worship. But I saw someone famous there. I won’t say who, obviously. Maybe I’ll just give her a code name. Let’s call her, I don’t know, Darzi Tez. You know, I’ve always thought that celebrity confers a kind of aura on people, making them seem larger than life, but maybe it’s the other way around. Maybe larger-than-life people claim celebrity. Or, who knows, maybe it’s just the elite lifestyle. Hollywood trainers and nutritionists and all that. But Darzi, she was lit from within. Blond and petite and practically levitating, this woman, who I’m pretty sure claims to be vegan, was sitting cross-legged on her chair at the table in front of me, voraciously eating her bolognese.
“Is that …？” I asked Shiba afterward, pointing to her in the courtyard as we stood beneath the willow tree.
Shiba smiled in response, “We protect our Learners’ privacy here.”
“She’s learning German too,” I said, gesturing toward her blue wristband. “Is it her first time here?”
Shiba just shook her head discreetly. “Not telling.”
“I wonder why she’s here—”
“She comes, I think, because the experience adds layers to her work. Many come here, not precisely for the language, but for all that the language brings.”
The woman was a pop singer and had always seemed kind of straightforward to me.
“I mean, I don’t know her work all too well, but I didn’t sense that many layers.”
“She’s on a slow simmer, that one,” Shiba said. “She’s careful to pace her unfurling. The smart ones know to protect themselves.”
·
My days at the Centre were just as Shiba had outlined. Every morning, I woke up just before 5:00 a.m. and headed to the meditation room, where I sat cross-legged on a cushion while a soothing voice rose from the walls, reminding us to bring our attention back to our breath. Then, breakfast, consistently delicious: turkey sausages and hash browns, poached eggs and sliced, cured meats, vibrant fruit salads and buttery pastries. After that, a short walk in the garden before settling into the language booth.
At first, my courtyard strolls were tentative. Being such a city girl all my life, I’d never had much of a relationship with the outdoors, and the garden seemed to share my apprehension. Like Billee on his first day in my flat, it felt like the garden was crouched away defensively, staring at me warily from a distance, refusing to engage until I’d won its confidence. During my first few days there, I left our encounters with scratches from the rose bushes, a rash from some stinging nettles, and insect bites around my ankles.
And the language booth, which had sounded easy, turned out to be exhausting. The German man, Peter, spoke in an endless monotone, just hour upon hour of what sounded like gibberish. I tried to concentrate, to decipher what he was saying, but to no avail. Often, I would drift into daydream while his voice streamed into my ears. And sometimes, I would fall asleep altogether while he orated, then abruptly wake up, disoriented and annoyed with myself for doing it wrong.
Struggling with the boredom and lack of social contact, I cheekily entered my name onto the screen basically every day so that Shiba and I could talk. She didn’t seem to mind. She’d usher me into one of the speaking areas, and we’d spend the entire break period chatting about random things. I learned that Shiba, like me, had moved to the UK at the age of eighteen for uni. She’d studied engineering at Kent.
“My grandfather was an engineer,” she shared. “And my father felt like I shared his talent. Probably because I was good at maths. But yeah, you never know where life will take you.”
I learned that Shiba was actually the Centre’s manager. I found it fascinating that she, at her age, was basically at the helm of the whole institution. When other staff members approached her for direction and instruction, I noticed that she held her power with real comfort, with a kind of gentle but firm assertion that made an impression on me.
As the days passed, the courtyard gradually let its guard down. The jasmine-like perfume of the white wisteria revealed itself to me, and the enormous tree by the entrance to the Learners’ area, whose trunk branched out a few feet above its ivy-enwrapped base, offered itself like a cupped palm for me to rest in. Now, it seemed, I was permitted admission, but nothing more, at least not yet.
“What’s up with those ones?” I asked Shiba once, pointing at the spiky plants enclosed in wire. “Wouldn’t it be easier to just pull them out instead of fencing them in?”
“We find that the nourishing ones don’t grow as well if we get rid of the poisonous ones,” she said. “And besides, I think they add a nice kind of contrast. Don’t you?”
Sometimes when Shiba spoke, it sounded like she was saying something beneath her actual words, something that was imperative for me to understand but that lay just beyond my reach. But maybe it was just her large eyes and the way her full lips skewed slightly to the right that gave her this mysterious air. I think her tone of voice also added to the enigmatic effect; it was incredibly soft, almost musical, while also emitting a thick resonance of vibration, as if emerging from deep within her gut. I wanted, almost instantly, to be close to her.
During one of our chats, I mentioned how I’d noticed that the people associated with the Centre—the couple that had interviewed me, the receptionist, and, in fact, even Adam—had these sort of “neutral” accents, the kinds of unplaceable dialects you sometimes find in third-culture kids or global cosmopolitan elites raised in the international schools and gated compounds of Oman or Turkey or Singapore. My observation made her laugh.