Nik: Now I Know Read online

  When I thought I was dying I thought: There you are, you’re going to die without any children after all. Dad was right to call you Sarah. SarahSarahSarah, I said. And saying it over and over made me feel like I used to feel when I was little, as if all my childhood was inside that name, and saying it made me into a child again.

  [Chuckles.]

  SarahSarahSarah I said in my head until it stopped making any sense at all but was just a sound that didn’t mean anything. As if I’d worn it out. And then my childhood faded away too and I was in hospital again, thinking I was dying and feeling the pain.

  I thought I was only saying those names in my head but Simmo told me I was saying them out loud some of the time. She told me this last week when we were talking about you. She said yours was one of the names I kept repeating. Nik . . . Nik . . . Nik. I shouted it sometimes, as if I was calling to you. That’s why they sent for you to come quickly. But most of the time, Simmo says, I just said Nik . . . Nik. Quietly, like it was a magic spell that would make something good happen.

  And names do, don’t they? Even babies know that. They soon learn if they say Mummy they get fed or hugged or looked at. If you speak a person’s name they come to you or look at you. And when someone else speaks your name you feel pleased. You feel wanted. You feel there. Alive. Even if they’re saying your name with dislike, at least you know you’re you, that you exist.

  Once, when I was little, about eight, I asked my dad, ‘Is there a God, Daddy?’ Dad said, ‘I’m not sure. I think so.’ And I said, ‘But there must be, mustn’t there, because he has a name.’

  Anyway, that’s why I kept saying your name and my own name when I thought I was done for.

  Does this mean anything? Am I just rambling? The drugs make me ramble sometimes.

  [Pause.]

  I’m only trying to explain that names make sense of the nothing you feel you’re going into when you think you’re dying. At least they did for me. Thinking you’re going to die is like setting out on a long journey that frightens you to a place you know nothing about. And saying the names of the people you love seems to bring them to you, to be with you. And your own name is like a space suit you live inside. While you’ve got it on you’re all right. You live inside it. Without it you’d melt into the nothingness and be nothing yourself and never reach your unknown destination.

  [Sounds of Julie drawing in and exhaling deep breaths.]

  Sorry! Simmo says if I breathe in deeply when the pain comes and let it out slowly I’ll feel better. As if the big breath comes inside, wraps up all the pain and fear and sadness like broken glass in cotton wool, and carries it away when you breathe out. Sometimes it works. This time it left some glass behind.

  [Breathing in. Breathing out.]

  I never knew pain is so . . . consuming. I mean real pain, not just hurt. Real pain sort of eats you. Gnaws you all over like a thousand rats chewing at your bones. And it burns you with sharp flames.

  Now I know why people in the old days talked about hell being a place of fire and torture. Real pain is a kind of hell.

  I’ve been trying to think about what pain means. Why do we have to have it? Why do people suffer?

  I haven’t got far yet. Except to hate it with a deep deep loathing. I’ve never felt such hate for anything before. Perhaps I have to get rid of the hate before I’ll be able to think about what pain means? Just as I had to stop thinking I was dying before I could begin to get better. I managed to take that step thanks to you, Nik. Perhaps I have to do this thing about pain on my own? Perhaps that’s what it means – what it’s for. For learning to be on your own. Do you think it could be?

  Doesn’t sound right somehow. If only you were here we could talk about it, like we talked from the first time we met. I remember our first time together, every moment. Frame by frame, you might say—or your leptonic Director might!

  [Quiet chuckles.]

  That’s another thing I’m discovering about illness. And about not being able to see anything, or move, or do anything at all. You remember a lot. Memories come flooding back—like remembering myself so vividly as a child when I say Sarah-Sarah. In the last few days I’ve remembered things I haven’t thought of since they happened years ago.

  Which reminds me of that poem . . . how does it go? . . . I expect you think it’s trite . . . but, there, you see, I’ve suddenly remembered it when I haven’t thought of it for ages . . . I’ve got it:

  I remember, I remember,

  The house where I was born,

  The little window where the sun

  Came peeping in at morn;

  He never came a wink too soon,

  Nor brought too long a day,

  But now, I often wish the night

  Had borne my breath away!

  [Pause.]

  Heavens, it’s much gloomier than I thought! How funny! I only remembered the sun peeping in at dawn. That’s why I liked it. I learned it when I was . . . what? . . . nine, I suppose. I found it in a book, and thought it was specially for me because the sun came peeping into my room at dawn too.

  But I didn’t remember the night bearing my breath away. Just shows what you don’t notice when you don’t need to! There’ve been plenty of times since what Simmo calls my little mishap that I’ve remembered the house where I was born and wished the night would bear my breath away so there would be an end to the pain.

  I don’t remember the rest of the poem, and now I’d rather like to know how it goes on. Could you find it for me?

  I wonder if the poet lived in her memories as much as I’m living in mine? I’m beginning to think we only know who we are, only know ourselves, through our memories. I mean, think what it would be like if we couldn’t remember anything. We wouldn’t be able to do most of the things we like doing, never mind the things we don’t like doing. We wouldn’t be able to learn anything. We wouldn’t even be able to learn from the mistakes we make all the time, because we wouldn’t be able to remember our mistakes no matter how painful they were.

  Grief! We wouldn’t know the people we loved, either! We wouldn’t have any memory of them so we wouldn’t be able to think about them, or what it was like to be with them. We couldn’t love them because we wouldn’t be able to remember what we liked about them so much.

  And how could we trust anyone? We’d have nothing to go on, no past experience to tell us this person is honest and this other one tells lies. If we could remember nothing of our past could we be anything now? Except confused, I suppose. And frightened, because we wouldn’t know what was safe and what was dangerous. We couldn’t believe anything because we wouldn’t remember anything to believe in. Not that we’d know what belief meant anyway. We wouldn’t know what anything meant.

  I’ve never thought memory was quite as important as that! But I suppose it is.

  [Deep breathing.]

  I’m tired out. Time for another drug-scoffing session. I eat more drugs than I eat meals. Till the knockout pills arrive I’ll think of you, Nik, and the memory will keep the pain away. You, the first time we met. All that rain! You, the first time I took you to church. Disgracing yourself! You the night before . . .

  [Snatched-at breaths.]

  Sorry, have to stop . . . Nurse! . . .

  [Cries of pain. End of tape.]

  MEETINGS

  NIK’S NOTEBOOK: The vicar of St James is pathetic. St James was the son of Zebedee, brother of John the Beloved, called Boanerges. Boanerges means ‘son of thunder’. St James’s vicar is no son of thunder. Son of silence more like.

  Except when speaking of golf (said: goff). Waxes chatty then. Goff clubs are the first thing you meet inside his front door. Along with pong of mouldy wellies and decomposing dog. Dog a podgy black labrador with watery eyes, slavery mouth, and a limp in the left foreleg. Turns you off animal rights. Vic calls him Bugsy when not calling him Old Chum.

  Vic is a bachelor. Tall, balding, pink-faced, smelling vaguely of Old Spice and musty incense. Also large-bellied. Rumour says
he’s oathed to celibacy. But what woman would have him? He came along the path from church in flapping black cassock, like a converted Dracula, Old Chum hobbling along behind.

  The vicarage is occupied by neglect. Cold even with sun shining in. Took me into what he called his study, a sort of religious knocking shop. Large gooky pic of Virgin Mary in fetchingly soulful pose staring from one wall. A fairly explicit full frontal crucifix made of carved wood hanging over the fireplace. A jumble of bookshelves crammed with heavy dull tomes, mostly holy manuals, tombs for dead words, covering most of the walls. A bulky desk big as a snooker table piled with controlled disaster of paper. (He should persuade the parish to stump up for a word processor, he’d save himself a lot of garbage, but maybe God wouldn’t approve? Is there a God in the machine? If there is in mine he-she-it only says what I tell him-her-it to say. That’s the sort of God I like.)

  He waved me into one of two exhausted armchairs beside the empty fireplace. The fplc mouth blocked by an old headstone, from the churchyard I guess, its inscription worn unreadable by weather. Made the room seem ominous. The room a tomb. Sitting with a memorial to your own death in the great reaper’s waiting room.

  Selah.

  Vic says, suspicious: Wanted to ask about God, did you say?

  Me, nervous: Wondered if you could explain belief.

  Vic’s left eyelid twitches: Belief! Tricky subject. What was it you wanted to know exactly?

  Old Chum collapses between us like a whale expiring on the beach. The way he lies, the headstone becomes his. Maybe it is, because I’m not sure he’s alive even when he’s limping about.

  Me: Not sure, exactly. What belief means, I suppose.

  Vic smiles. Ah! he says with relief.

  He picks up a large dog-eared vol. from a stool beside his chair. (Underneath the dog-eared vol. lies The Times folded at the crossword puzzle, mostly finished.)

  He flips dog-eared pages and says: The dictionary tells us, let’s see: Belief. Noun. One: a principle, idea, et cetera, accepted as true or real, especially without positive proof. Two: opinion, conviction. Three: religious faith. Four: trust or confidence, as in a person or person’s abilities, et cetera. There you are.

  Thumps book shut, replaces on top of The Times.

  Silence except for heavy breathing from Old Chum. Vic bends forward and pats him. Decomposing doggy pong rises like a gag.

  I gag. Cough. Try not to breathe. Fail. Say: Might need a bit more, if you wouldn’t mind. I mean, how does belief feel?

  Vic, looking startled, sits back in chair and says: Feel! Good lord! Can’t say one honestly feels anything. Rather . . . that is . . . one does not feel belief . . . one . . . accepts it.

  I stare at him. He toys with a pen lying on the stool at his side and stares at Old Chum. Old Chum pluffles in sleep.

  Selah.

  Vic is not a man in a hurry. Eventually looks up, smiles, says: Warned you it was a tricky subject. I don’t mean one doesn’t feel anything about one’s beliefs, only that one doesn’t feel belief.

  Silence. Stares at pen as he toys with it.

  Then goes on: One decides that God is, by and large, bad. days taken with good, more likely to be than not. This . . . one believes.

  Pause.

  STOCKSHOT: Canst thou [Vic says] by searching find out God? Canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection? It is as high as heaven; what canst thou do? deeper than hell; what canst thou know?

  He looks up at me. Says: If you understand me.

  Pause. I stare at him.

  Not quite, I say.

  Vic says: No, thought you mightn’t. He sighs (sounding so like Old Chum I wonder if Vic ventriloquizes the dog, or maybe even vice versa. Then also realize they look pretty much alike as well, except Vic doesn’t have the watery eyes yet). He slumps further into his puffy chair and his own bulgy waist.

  Silence again. Vic stares between his hillocky knees at Old Chum’s hillocky body for so long I think he’s forgotten me or eternity has begun without me noticing.

  But then he stirs himself, glances up, says: Look, er . . . Nik? What’s all this about? Thinking of asking for confirmation?

  I explain. He laughs. Quite revived, he seems for a minute. (Old Chum lifts his head at the sound of Vic’s laughter, takes a bleary glim, and flops, comatose again. The millennium is not yet.)

  Vic: How splendid! A reluctant Jesus in search of belief in himself! That does appeal, I must say!

  I’m laughing too, because it is pretty funny.

  Don’t be upset, says he, I’m not laughing at you, dear boy.

  (I love the dear boy bit.)

  I say: It’s okay. I think it’s a pretty stupid idea myself.

  Not at all, no no, says he. Then, perking up even more: You don’t happen to play goff, do you?

  Sorry? say I.

  Pity, says he. You know . . . Nik? . . . what I’d do if Our Lord walked through that door this minute? After the required pleasantries, of course.

  I shake my head.

  Vicsays: I’d say, My Lord, will you honour me with a round? And, you know, Nik, it has always seemed to me that He would reply, My dear vicar, I’d be delighted. Or words to that effect.

  I say: Maybe we can make that a scene in our film. (I’m only half joking, I realize as I say it.)

  You could, Vic says in all seriousness, do worse. Better than pretending to perform miracles. More likely. More real. More to do with belief, in fact.

  But, I say, how would you know he was Christ?

  Ah! says he, now there you have it, you see. That’s what belief is. I’d know because of believing. It doesn’t feel like anything. It’s just there, a fact of one’s life.

  Now it’s my turn to stare at Old Chum while trying to sort out this nugget. Then: Sorry, vicar, but I don’t find that very clear.

  Vic slumps even further into his own and his chair’s upholstery and looks deeply disappointed.

  He says: Convincing is what you mean.

  I do? say I.

  He nods, sighs: I’m not very good at this, I’m afraid . . .

  I didn’t mean . . ., I say, feeling embarrassed.

  Vic, flapping a hand: I know, I know. But I’m not. One must have the courage to acknowledge one’s limitations. And I have to admit that I’m not too good at talking about God. Never really have been. Every week I hold confirmation classes. Mostly young people of thirteen or fourteen, and mostly attending because their parents want them to. Rather like baptism, you know. Parents want their children done just to make sure. Hedging their bets. If God exists, having it done might get him on your side. If he doesn’t, who cares?

  He chuckles. Chummy fluffles and slobbers.

  Well, Vic says, I talk to them. Tell them as best I can about church and prayer, and about God. They listen – rather dutifully, I have to admit, and politely. Too politely, I sometimes think. Might be better all round if they argued. They do ask the odd question now and then, but just to show willing and to be kind, I’m sure.

  He smiles, but sadly, and goes on:

  Some drop out. But mostly they stay the course and go before the bishop in their best new clothes for the laying on of hands. All very pretty and pious and their mums and dads looking proud. But as I stand at the bishop’s side and witness the performance of this holy rite I know that six months later they’ll mostly have given up any pretence of being in the slightest interested in God or church or anything religious. And I wonder how much their falling off is a failure of mine.

  He pushes himself up in his chair, not looking at me. I sit stone still. I’m not sure he’s talking to me now. He might not even remember I’m in the room. Is he just talking aloud to himself? I feel a bit guilty, like I’m eavesdropping on a private confession.

  He speaks so quietly I strain to hear: Of course, if you suggest to them that they aren’t Christian any more, they’re most indignant, quite insulted in fact, and tell one sharply, and not so politely any more, how Christianity isn’t the same as being
a church-goer, and how, if it comes to that, the church has betrayed Christ because it’s more interested in old buildings and out-of-date customs than in people and their needs, and how the church supports evil rulers and amasses wealth while people die in oppression and hunger and terrible poverty. And frankly, Nik . . .

  He does remember I’m here after all!

  . . . I have no answer to such accusations. I’m quite inadequate to the task of explaining that what we’re really talking about is the Being who, by definition, is so all-containing of ourselves and the world and the entire universe, as well as whatever unimaginable wonders lie beyond, that it is impossible to say anything meaningful at all. God is a being who is beyond being. How can one speak of such a . . .

  He raises his hands, shakes his head, shrugs.

  I nod, meaning: I understand the difficulty.

  He sighs again. Says: And now you come, asking me to tell you what belief is. What am I to say?

  Now I have to shrug.

  And it’s his turn to nod and smile sympathetically: You’re quite right to ask, I don’t mean you aren’t, dear boy. But I find myself in a quandary. I’m like a man who’s found a sack of gold but can’t tell anyone where he found it because, if he ever knew, he’s forgotten now. And whenever he tries to share his gold with others, it turns to sand even as he pours it into their hands. You can imagine how embarrassing that is! For a vicar especially.

  He laughs, but for some reason I can’t join in.

  One even gets to the point, he says, of hiding the fact that one possesses gold oneself so as to avoid the embarrassment of people asking for some. One even sometimes tries to pretend that not having is the same as having. That the gold is an illusion. Which is a painful kind of betrayal. Of those people, like you, who ask, and of one’s faith. Worst of all, it is a betrayal of God.

  He mutters the last sentence so quietly, so shamefaced, that, though I sit forward to hear, I look away from him at once.

  Silence. Long, long silence.

  Broken at last by Old Chum. He wakes like a canine Lazarus, staggers to his doddering paws, shakes decomposition into the airless air, and hobbles to the door.