Silent Island

I never thought I was a big talker. I’m just not one of those garrulous types. So, the silent retreat sounded like the place for me. Having just been through a recent, huge life change, it felt like the perfect timing to retreat from the world and to contemplate things with no background noise interfering with it. What added to the appeal was the fact that it was being held on a private island. I couldn’t wait to get into the wilderness and rediscover the parts of myself that had got lost in my divorce.

I brought a notebook with me. It was my prized possession: handbound and composed of backing paper I’d collected from trips all over the world. It was the perfect place for grand revelations. It was as regal as a journal can get. I’d neglected it for a while, consumed by the busyness of my outer world, but I planned to get down to putting pen to paper and rediscovering myself.

The island was truly idyllic. There were palm trees, ocean views and cerulean skies. I imagined it would always be that way. It was the type of place that Buddhist monks would inhabit and turn into a spiritual home. My spirit felt fed just by entering that environment. I didn’t think the silence part would be much of a challenge for me. I was always sparing with words. I thought they were used much too carelessly in the world. I had no idea who would be joining me on the retreat. In truth, I’d pictured myself alone on a hammock, writing long into the stretched-out-Summer evenings.

A group of others had already arrived when I got there. They were abiding by the rules in their muteness. I wondered if the lady dressed in the goddess garb was the one hosting the event, and it turned out she was. She didn’t even provide an introductory paragraph. She just gestured and held her finger to her lips, reminding us of the necessity to never utter a word.

We sat side by side in that tropical paradise, regarding each other with scepticism. We couldn’t share stories or bond or get to know one another. I realised what an impairment it was then, being deprived of words. But I was hopeful that we’d discover other more interesting pieces of information with the exclusion of verbosity.

I watched the swell of the sea, between writing in my journal. My pen raced across the page, filling line after line. I was writing without thinking. Reading back over my words would have been as much of a surprise to me as to any new reader. The leader of the group slammed down her hand, so it covered my page of writing. She shook her head at me, sternly. I took it to mean that the written word was barred too, but why? Weren’t we allowed to come up with ideas of our own? What was the difference between thinking of ideas and transcribing them onto paper? Maybe she thought it was a distraction from the silence? Maybe she knew just how easily it could be broken.

She took my diary, held it casually and then tossed it into the sea, giving it a parting wave. She made her point. I was angry, but I stamped the feelings down. I couldn’t express them anyway. We were bound by a contract signed long before we arrived: no matter what happened, we would not talk. It was essential to the success of the retreat. It was the entire premise on which it was founded.

I’d read up on the history of it and it had been started by a deeply religious lady that believed the opposite to confession was the key to spiritual awakening. She didn’t think catharsis should be allowed; we should just dwell on our own thoughts and actions until the full picture of them revealed something startling to us.

I knew the value of the retreat, which was why it was so strange that by three hours in I was struggling to stick to it: me – a person that had always sparsely worded everything I’d described and communicated. We sat in a silence that wasn’t comfortable. It was the place in which the most comfort should have been found in its silence: the entire purpose of the event.

We dined together, with only the chink of forks and knives against plates creating a sonic atmosphere. My typically large appetite was sated. The other residents and I made small attempts at eye contact, like unthinkingly shooting darts across a threshold without really pausing to look and choose the appropriate technique. We were snatching glances, lest we get told off.

We retired for the night extremely early, having everything to say to one another but the permission to say nothing. I knew then that it would be an interminable month. The stillness I thought I’d find in silence wasn’t there whenever it was imposed on us. As I was drifting off to sleep, I heard a scratch at the door. It was soft enough to be imagined, but it wasn’t. I got to my feet and opened my door. There was a lady I recognised but whose name I didn’t know standing in the doorway. She gestured to me to follow her. I put my slippers on and shuffled out of bed, padding down the corridor after her, like a nervous cat that shadows its purposeful owner.

She opened the door to an unidentified room. It could have contained an entire realm or a mere collection of cleaning products. There were no limits to the confines of my imagination. I felt like descending into a spell of feverish writing in my notebook, but then I remembered it had been dumped at sea, like a body never to be raised from its watery bed again.

A man from the retreat got to his feet and secured the door behind me. We were locked inside, and it was clear he didn’t want to take any chances of discovery. The leader of the group was nowhere to be seen, so I supposed it must have been a clandestine meeting. The man that had locked the door gestured for us all to gather closer in a circle on the floor. Then he started whispering. Everyone turned to face him, with eager faces, like they were gathering the last precious crop of summer berries before a bitter winter. They were the lucky, chosen ones.

“I can’t stand it here,” whispered one woman violently. “I’m Ruth,” she said, like her name was an inconsequential by-product of living.

“Aren’t we here by choice?”

“I’m not,” she said. “My family did it as a joke – said I talk too much.”

I observed her then, thinking the people that knew her best were probably right.

There wasn’t much to say, and we didn’t talk about anything Earth-shattering, but we went there every evening of our visit without fail, to whisper into the night, to break the rules. Even in silence, even in a retreat, there is always a quiet uprising. And then, the next morning, we exchanged our silent, knowing smiles while our ignorant host imposed stillness on us once again.