A Dream of Lights (15 page)

I must’ve closed my eyes. I must’ve slept.

I don’t remember hearing their voices stop. Or her breathing. I don’t remember him lifting her head from his lap, carrying her to her bed or laying her down. But when I opened my eyes sunlight was straining into the hut and her face and her body were covered as she lay peacefully.

I rested my hand on his, but he kept his head down, hiding his grief and his pain from me. And there were no words to say, or explanations, or apologies.

We were now two. Only two. And the two of us went to work that day because we had no choice and, it seemed, only the two of us grieved for her, or missed her.

There was no proper burial site, no place to go to grieve, no system of dealing with the dead. It seemed the bodies disappeared, or sometimes the people, still alive.

Why we were given Grandmother back alive was a question we would never be able to ask, nor would it ever be explained; as with so many other things, it was the whim of the guards. But it was our instruction to deal with her body, and so, after twelve hours’ work, with little food and no rest, we climbed back up the mountainside.

He carried her in his arms, clutched to his chest, her body wrapped in nothing because we had nothing, her clothes bloodstained and dirty. I wanted to help him, share the weight, but her weight was nothing; she was a doll, her stick arms and legs barely swinging as he walked along.

We moved in near darkness, and I guided him as best I could to where I had buried the boy with my friend, the perimeter fence a few hundred metres away. We dug into the earth with tin bowls from our hut, as we had no tools, hoping we had chosen a spot that was still empty, hoping the cold, dim light from a distant watchtower swinging intermittently near us would help us see if we had not.

Some hours later we sat, exhausted, at her shallow grave, with my flower replanted on top. The silence, for once, was beautiful, reminding me of evenings at home, of sitting with someone I cared for, and just being, quietly. I wished I could stop time at that moment.

I moved closer to Grandfather and felt his arm go round me, and I watched and waited for the swing of the light, hypnotic in its timing.

“Tell me more about my family,” I said.

“Yoora, I…”

“Tell me how all that was in my head, that dream of the city. Tell me before this happens to me.” I nodded towards the shallow grave. “Or you.”

His shoulders drooped. “Oh, child,” he sighed, then he looked up at me, shaking his head. “I shouldn’t call you that, should I? Because you’re not and haven’t been for a long time. And you shouldn’t be here. I wish to every god in every land that you weren’t. I wish you were a long way away, somewhere safe.

“The postcard of Seoul,” he said, “is where the rest of your family live. My brother’s children and their wives and husbands, and their children too. Like I told you the other night. That’s where the letters came from. And the magazines and newspapers. And all the photos. We’ve been writing to each other for years, since we first heard back from them when your father was a boy. The letters smuggled out across the Chinese border, smuggled back in again. They know all about you; we sent them photographs when you were born and as you grew up.” He touched my hand.

“When you were little I would read the letters to you, show you the photographs, share with you this family you had in a different country, a different world. I told you all about them. Their names, what they did for a living, what their houses were like, what they liked to do, and you loved it. But when you started school you mentioned to your teacher that you had an uncle who’d been on an aeroplane, and a cousin who liked pop music.

“Those things we managed to talk our way out of. We told her you had an active imagination and thought Kim Jong Il was your uncle. But it made it clear to us that it was too dangerous. It was a risk we couldn’t afford to take, so we stopped talking about them, and if ever you asked questions about them, we changed the subject.

“But somehow it stayed in your head and you had that dream, all those years later. You know what that dream was? It was made up of everything you’d seen or heard about South Korea and your family. All of the postcards we had, and photographs, and letters describing the buildings, food and music and the people. All that you saw us burn, apart from the ones your mother hid, and the postcard you took.”

I nodded. I remembered. I understood.

“You know we’ve been lied to for years. You know we
don’t
have it better than any other country,” he whispered. “We
do
have a lot to envy. There
are
places with more food than here, where prisons like this are against the law. Don’t you?”

I nodded. I did know that. But somehow hearing it spoken out loud, from someone else’s mouth and not my own thoughts spinning in circles, made it more real, made it daring, made it feel scandalous.

“And you understand that so much of what you were taught at school is wrong.”

I nodded again, and we fell silent. I did understand, had suspected, or known that much for a while now, but the scale of it felt so shocking, and that made it difficult to believe. How much there was, over these prison fences and across this country’s borders, that I knew nothing about. And how much I had believed, for a lifetime, that was wrong, that was lies, that was made up to manipulate and control.

“I wouldn’t lie to you, Yoora.”

I stretched my hand out to his. “I know.” And I really did.

“I wish you could get out of here somehow, some way, and live. I wish you could find your mother and the letters she has, with the addresses, and escape this country. Oh, I wish, Yoora, wish you could live your life. You could meet them, you could finally see them, your aunt and your uncle, your cousin, Jin-Kyong—”

“No.” I shook my head. “That’s enough. I don’t want to know any more. Don’t tell me their names. Don’t tell me what they look like.” It was all so useless. Thinking like that, even realising the truth – there was no point. There was no way out and there was no hoping for it. My life was here, as my death would be. I had accepted that now. But still he, Grandfather, had hope left inside him, and he was supposed to be the sensible one, the mature one, the adult. And it felt as if I should be telling him to grow up and face the truth.

How could I do that to him?

“But, Yoora, I thought…” He didn’t finish his sentence. Suddenly his body tensed next to me and he pulled me closer, and I heard what he must have before me: rustling in the undergrowth around us, snapping of branches, soft footfalls on wet earth. My heart pounded, my mouth went dry and I was scared.

“The guard?” I whispered.

But as I moved my head around, the light swept in front of us and I saw it. Its eyes staring at me and Grandfather, unblinking, its body quite still, waiting. But then the light was gone, darkness around us again and in that space between us and the animal I was sure I’d seen, a space that could be getting smaller. It could be creeping towards us; it could be next to us, in front of us, a paw raised, its mouth open.

The tiger.

We waited in time that stretched out eternally for a movement or a sound or a glimpse, the threat of a growl or its breath in our faces. Again the light scooped over us, and I saw the animal’s massive head, its round face and its staring eyes still watching us, as if it could see right into us and read our every thought and feeling. Unblinking and fearless. And I didn’t feel scared now. I could breathe again.

And it turned and strolled away from us. “Follow her,” Grandfather whispered, grabbing me by the arm, pulling me along. “How did she get in here?”

“Follow her? What if she kills us?”

In front of us the tiger speeded up, her massive paws moving noiselessly and effortlessly through the snow.

“She won’t live in here. There wouldn’t be enough food for her.”

“But then…?”

We followed at a distance, her shape the only thing moving. And the light flowed over her again, catching her, the power in her shoulders, her fur made of colours I had never seen before, spreading around and across her. She was beautiful. But… I knew where she was heading.

“No.” I shook my head, slowing down, Grandfather pulling at me. “She’s going to the fence. We’ll be seen. They’ll catch us.”

“We’ve got to see how she gets out,” he hissed. “Come on!”

I stumbled forward, thinking, worrying, wanting to turn back. But… There was the fence. And I could see it. In darkness and in shadow, but I could see it. We were so close, so close to the outside.

The tiger stopped and looked back at us for a moment. Then she lowered her shoulders and pulled something from the ground with her mouth: a cub, so small, so young. I caught my breath, pinpricks running over my skin and down my back, and I watched her turn away from me, lower herself to the ground and drag herself forward and under the fence.

We froze. We stood without a word. Watching. Waiting.

For what? To wake up? To realise it was a dream? For a guard to appear, laughing at us for believing what we thought we could see? I don’t think either of us knew. But finally, finally, we stepped forward, dodging the light by timing, and we stood, staring in disbelief at the gap in the bottom of the fence, the hole in the ground underneath and the tiger and her cub on the other side of it.

“We can go,” Grandfather whispered. “We can escape. We can follow her through there and run. We’d fit through that gap. If she can, then we can.”

I was shaking. “Isn’t it electrified?” I asked.

“Maybe not this bit. Maybe the gap in it means it’s not working. She did it,” he repeated, pointing to the tiger.

I looked back at her. “Why is she still there? Why doesn’t she run?” We were so close. I stared at her, could just make out her white whiskers flickering in the moonlight, the different shades of her fur, her teeth, so big and so powerful, gently holding her cub between them. And her eyes, like pools, yellowy and glistening, staring back at me.

I took a step closer and she turned, and it was only then that I saw what had been stopping her. The ditch. I sighed. Of course, the ditch.

But I watched as she jumped it, that huge, powerful creature, with all that muscle in her body and her legs, her innate desire to protect her cub. She flew over it. And I held my breath, remembering now, of course, that at the bottom of the ditches were spikes sticking up as a final attack on any who might dare to make an escape.

No problem for the tiger. She disappeared into the darkness and away from us, as free as she’d always been. Just an animal, but an animal that could walk out of here, cross borders, do as she pleased.

“I can’t, Grandfather,” I whispered. “I can’t. I daren’t.” All I could think of was the spikes. Falling on them. The pain. The humiliation. Guards finding me, standing over me, laughing at me. Watching me die, slowly and painfully.

“Yoora, we could be free.”

I shook my head, it seemed so impossible. “But… but… it’s only a few hours until roll call. How far could we get? Even if we made it over the ditch. And… and… we don’t have any food. No,” I said. “No. It’s too much.”

What had happened to me? Where had my courage gone? My daring? Was I creating excuses, or were my worries legitimate? There it was, staring at me one minute through intermittent light, disappearing the next into darkness – an escape. What was I waiting for?

Before that moment, I hadn’t realised the control that this place now had over me, holding my head prisoner as much as my body.
Is it electrified?
I thought.
Can we make it over the ditch? Do we have enough strength to run far enough away into the night? Will we be found? What will they do to us if we are?

I turned and I ran. Because I couldn’t stand being there, so close to the fence, that hole, and to escape, so close to the memory and the smell of that beautiful creature, who had looked right into my very being and turned away to freedom with such ease.

And because, I realised, now that I was faced with a real chance, I didn’t dare. My fight, my spirit, had gone. I couldn’t do anything else foolish. I had learnt my lesson and I had lost a part of me. I had become a coward and that I couldn’t cope with.

“No more,” I whispered, shaking my head. “No more.”