Now I Know (14 page)

Tom said with deliberate whining scorn, ‘All your connections and you can't come up with
anything
?'

Irritation flickered round Sharkey's eyes. For a moment Tom was sure he was going to hit him. But instead he slouched against the wall and said, ‘You're full of shit, Tommy.'

Tom grinned. ‘And you'll be full of porridge before long.'

Sharkey sniffed. ‘Yeah, well, I need more time. Nobody who'd really know is around yet. Too early.'

They stood side by side in silence, Sharkey waiting for Tom, Tom turning over his next move. Was Sharkey testing him? Trying him out for size? Or maybe he'd heard something and was holding back till he was certain he really did need to give it away? Should he push him hard now, or play him along?

While they stood there the sun found a break in the cloud and, like a theatre spot, cast a beam that fell on a window in a house across the valley, which reflected a brief flash of light at Tom's thought-glazed eyes, making him blink and attracting his attention.

As if the sunflash was a heliographed message, the event perked up his senses, sharpening his mind. Not that he knew at once what the message was. But he knew something important had come to him. A clue to the answer he wanted, if not the answer itself.

Natural instinct—the instinct that would make him a talented cop—as well as his yet unfinished training told him to stay silent for a minute till he could act without betraying any of this to Sharkey.

Then he said, ‘Look, suppose I can keep the super happy, how long do you want?'

Sharkey shrugged. ‘Dunno, do I? Till tonight when there's more of the lads around. Half-seven? How about then?'

Tom pretended doubt. ‘Risky. Not sure I can hold him off that long. I'm putting myself on the line for you, Sharkey, if I do this. You'll have to turn up something. Okay?'

‘Yeah, yeah, sure, you're a big mate, Tommy. All ready to go down with me, aren't you.'

‘Best I can do.'

‘Best I can do as well. And I don't like meetin like this neither. Can't you think of nowhere better?'

‘How about the nick?'

‘Very comic!'

‘Seven-thirty sharp, bottom end of the railway car park, back of the old goods shed. Nobody'll spot you there. Okay?'

‘I must be a proper mug,' Sharkey said, and slouched off, leaving Tom to nod at his back unseen, and grin to himself with satisfaction. Hooked or not as a regular, Sharkey was damn good practice, a useful rehearsal for bigger shows.

ADVANCES

JULIE
:   Dear Nik: Today they took the bandages off my chest. Not the ones round my eyes or hands, though. So I still can't see or do anything for myself. But isn't this good news?

They drugged me beforehand, of course, and clucked and cooed, trying to reassure me, like midwives at a rebirth. And it did feel like a kind of resurrection.

Afterwards, I asked Simmo to tell me honestly how I look. She said the wounds are healing very well but that it's too early to tell how bad the scars will be.

At first I was so glad to be rid of the bandages I wanted to shout for joy. I can't tell you how good it was to feel air on my skin again, and to move my arms and legs without being fettered by those suffocating wrappings.

But this afternoon I slept for a while and woke up feeling very low. Depressed about everything again. A kind of emotional relapse, I suppose, or perhaps just a hangover from the drugs. Whatever it was, I began to loathe myself. I kept imagining my body covered in repulsive scars and gashes, and my face disfigured, and my hands paralysed like claws, and my skin all scaly like a reptile's. I was sure I'd turned into a freak, something hideous that people wouldn't be able to look at without feeling ill. It seemed as if I'd been bandaged up a reasonably normal human being, and had somehow changed, like a caterpillar in its chrysalis, but instead of coming out a beautiful butterfly, I'd come out a monster.

After going on like that for a while, I began to hate myself all the more for being so defeatist.

Mother arrived just then. She'd come over because she knew about the unveiling. They'd told her yesterday, apparently, when she rang as usual to ask about me. They didn't tell me they were going to do it until they were ready to start this morning. Mum had thought they might take the bandages off my eyes as well and wanted to be here so I could see her if they did. That's what she said. But I know that really she was worried I might be blind, and wanted to help me through the ordeal.

[
Pause.
]

Well, I still don't know. And I can't use my hands because they're covered in what feel like boxing gloves. Now I know what it's like to be incapable, and totally dependent on other people for even the simplest things. Worst of all is that they have to do all your most private things for you. Everything from wiping your bum to picking your nose.

Don't laugh!

[
Chuckles.
]

You'll think it a bigger joke than Sister Ann in church, but they do! Even pick your nose, I mean. They use those little sticks with cotton wool on the ends. Though, to be honest, they aren't entirely successful. When Simmo does it, she gets on with it, using her own finger! ‘Let's see what we can find up here,' she says, matter-of-fact as always, just as if she were clearing out a cupboard. But I can't tell you what a relief it is. I never thought picking your nose is so important. But if you don't do it . . . well, I suppose you'd clog up and always have to breathe through your mouth, which would be awful.

At school there was a girl who always seemed to breathe through her mouth. We used to hate her sitting beside us. Though, I have to say it was more usually boys than girls who did it. And then we made fun of them. Used to call them Gobgasper. How rotten we were! Perhaps they'd never discovered about picking your nose. Because it's one of those silly things that everybody must do but nobody talks about.

Well . . . I'm talking to you about it now, I know. But that's different somehow. I'm allowed to because of the state I'm in. Sick people—or very sick people anyway—are allowed to break the rules a bit, aren't they? They are in here. You can tell how sick people really are, no matter what the doctors tell them, by how much they're allowed to get away with, like being rude to nurses or messing the bed or shouting all night long and keeping everybody awake. If you aren't very sick, you're soon told off.

Just as dying people can tell the truth about themselves no matter how bad they've been, and everybody thinks they're wonderful for confessing, and forgive them at once. Whereas if they'd stood up in a crowded room and confessed when they were healthy and strong they'd have been arrested. Or else become one of those sordid people who appear on TV talk shows and tell about their criminal or wicked private lives while the audience ogles and gasps and thinks how daring they are.

[
Pause.
]

I've lost myself, as usual. Where was I . . . ? Oh yes—picking my nose, and what an affliction it is not to be able to do it.

I keep thinking about affliction. Only natural I suppose. And I did say I'd try and make it into my God-work, because I couldn't do anything much else.

Actually, I said I'd think about pain. And affliction isn't the same thing. One of my discoveries. I might as well tell you about it because talking to you is raising my spirits again, and talking about what I've been thinking might help me sort it out better than just keeping it in my head. I've found I can only get so far thinking to myself. The thoughts start going round and round, getting nowhere and confusing me more than I was before I started.

As a matter of fact, I found that out before. And I used to write my thoughts down, which helped make me sort them out so that I could think clearly in my head again. But as I can't write in my present blind and boxing-gloved state, perhaps saying what I've been thinking will have the same effect. If you don't want to be bothered with it, just switch off. I'll never know if you do, so you won't upset me.

Usually I give my written thoughts a title in the book I use to write them in. I'd better do the same now. So let's see . . .

[
Pause. Then in a more formal, thoughtful voice
:]

The best example of affliction I know of is Christ nailed to the cross.

She wasn't ill. She hadn't committed any crime. She didn't nail herself up. She was put there by other people. Not because of anything dreadful that she'd done, but because of what she was.

She was Christ, just as a man is a man, a woman is a woman, a black person has black skin. These are not choices people make for themselves. They are accidents of birth. Inescapable facts.

You can rejoice in being what you are. But you can suffer for it too. So what you are can be an affliction. An affliction is not something you bring upon yourself. It's something visited upon you over which you have no control. As being black can be an affliction in a country of white, prejudiced people. And being a woman can be an affliction in a society ruled by men.

That's why Christ can be for everyone, because she came to earth as a man and was herself afflicted by the men who ruled at that time. So she is an ally of all the afflicted, who are the touchstone of human frailty. Not because of themselves, but because of what they reveal about everyone else. As a black person walking into a room full of whites very quickly reveals the real attitudes of the majority.

My suffering here is an affliction. I know now it's the first real affliction that's come upon me in my life. And like all the afflicted, I'm a victim of the actions of others. Actions of which I was innocent. I mean, I lacked knowledge of them, and was given no choice about them. Being afflicted is therefore like being a slave. You have no choice about what happens to you.

When affliction comes upon you, it always brings with it two consequences. The first is physical pain. The second is an uprooting change in your life.

Physical pain can often be lessened or even ended by someone taking action—yourself perhaps or a doctor, for example. Just as Simmo gave me drugs this morning to dull the pain of my unveiling, or the pain of hunger can be ended by eating a meal. Then happiness returns. The pain is forgotten. So physical pain is not the same thing as affliction. I used to think toothache was an affliction. But now I know it isn't. It's simply a pain. I can do something about it.

[
Pause.
]

The real pain of affliction isn't physical. It's the pain of knowing you can't escape the disaster that's befallen you. This pain isn't physical, and it isn't emotional, though both can be part of it. No. It's a spiritual pain. It's like sorrow, which is the pain of separation. The affliction separates you from the life around you—the life you would prefer. It separates you from other people. But worst of all it separates you from the fulfilment of your self. Of your
being
.

I'd prefer to be walking, seeing, doing things with my hands. This affliction that's come upon me has changed my life. Stretched out on this bed, shut up in this room where others are not allowed unless they're tending me, I'm separated from people. From everyday, ordinary life. Often, I feel I'm not even a member of the human race any more. And it prevents me from fulfilling myself in the work I chose.

So my body, my mind, my life with others are all nailed to a cross of affliction that removes me from my true self.

No wonder Christ, nailed to her cross, cried out against God. Now I know what ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' really means. For I have heard myself cry out those same words in the most painful time of my affliction when there seemed to be no one out there. Not even God. But only an absence. A hell made of nothing. A place alone, for myself alone.

Then I felt accursed. Marked for ever as a reject. Abandoned. Prevented by the evil of my affliction from helping myself.

And no one else can help. Not even the afflicted can help each other. Their afflictions prevent it. Christ, nailed to her cross, couldn't climb down and help those hanging on either side of her. And I can't get up and go next door when I hear my neighbour's alarm call sounding in the night.

And people who are not afflicted can't help—can't remove the affliction—because they don't, they can't,
know
what it is like. For affliction can't be described. Other people might be able to relieve the physical pain but they can't remove the deep soul-strangling knowledge of separation that an affliction gives you.

[
Pause.
]

Affliction makes you into a thing. An object. Something like a machine that needs attention now and then to keep it going, and makes noises, and sometimes causes trouble. An object that can be kept ticking over if it's given the right fuel and maintenance. And that can be switched off and even dumped if you get fed up with it.

Affliction makes you anonymous. It takes away your personality. Just as happens when one person thinks of another as only an object for sex, or as a slave. Or as a racist will say of those he dislikes, ‘They all look the same to me'. Or as a pagan will say, ‘The trouble with Christians is . . .', as if all Christians were one kind, one thing that lacks any individuality.

[
Pause.
]

Looking on the bright side, not all afflictions are for ever, thank goodness. Christ came down from the cross. But the wounds were still there, of the nails and the spear, and the crown of thorns. Even in her glorified body, when she wasn't flesh and blood any more. So, though affliction may not be for ever, it leaves its mark on you for ever. Its name is engraved on your soul if not on your body.