Read Now I Know for Free Online Page A

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,