A Dream of Lights (14 page)

I lifted my head from the ground and he was there. Standing over me, leering at me. Not even bothering to raise his gun. Hatred poured from his eyes as they narrowed. Spit flecked on his thin lips as they sneered at me. Specks of blood on his cheek.

My chest burned, and I lay with my mouth open, sucking air into empty lungs. He grabbed my collar and pulled me to my feet, holding me just too high so I balanced on tiptoe, then he leant towards me, his nose not quite touching mine, his breath on my face, stale and putrid.

“Where were you going?” he hissed.

I couldn’t speak. My mouth and my throat were dry, my body trembling. I couldn’t make a sound.

“I asked where you were going!”

I swallowed hard, took a jagged breath. “My grandmother,” I gabbled, breathing in again, the trees around me tipping and spinning, the sky tilting forwards and backwards, and I felt myself rocking and swaying. “I… I… wanted to see… wanted to see my grandmother.” I closed my mouth, trying to steady myself, to breathe normally, to think, think, think clearly.

I watched his head move from one side to the other as if in slow motion and I saw the sneer lift and spread across his face of evil. The power he held over me lifting his chin up and his shoulders back, and his laugh raucous and exploding into the air around us.

“Move,” he ordered. His voice was low and vicious now, and he grabbed me by the hair, pulling and dragging me down the mountainside. My feet struggled to keep up. I tripped, the hair yanking from my head. He changed his grip, holding tighter, pulling harder, marching faster. I lifted my hands, trying to hold on to my hair and stop the pain, but every few steps I stumbled, and it would rip out again, and he would drop handfuls of it to the floor and grab me again. And still when we made it back to flatter ground, he didn’t let go.

“Please,” I said. “I’ll walk. I’ll keep up.” But he didn’t reply.

The stones on the ground tore at the skin on my knees and legs. I put out my hands, but my palms were shredded by the gravel, and all the while my mind was running madly with questions and thoughts.
Where is he taking me? What will he do? What did he do to my friend? Is she alive? Will I be by the end of the day? And Grandmother?

We stopped at a door to a staff building, my hair clamped in his left fist, my head at an angle, so I couldn’t move. With his other hand, he pulled out a bunch of keys and fingered through them for the right one. He was humming a song. I recognised it. I remembered it from school, and wished I was back there. I thought of the words, remembered the last time we sang them, my last day:

“
The bayonet gleams, and our footsteps echo

We are soldiers of the Great General

Who can withstand us?

We shine with fine assurance

We are the army of the Comrade Leader.
”

His humming stopped, and he leered at me again, dragging me through the doorway and throwing me to the floor. I looked around: this wasn’t a place for punishment, it was some sort of office, but it seemed old and unused, dusty and dirty. And empty. We were alone.

He closed the door and stepped towards me. I struggled halfway to standing, but his fist hit the side of my face and I went down. I tried again, crawling backwards, but he hit me again. And again, and again.

I lost myself. I was nothing.

I stayed down, put my arms up round my head and pulled my knees to my chest. I had no more fight left in me. He came at me again, and I closed my eyes, waiting for the blow that I hoped would take me away from that place. But it didn’t come. Instead I heard the chink of a belt, and my senses prickled. I tried to sit up, drag myself further backwards, get away from him, but there was nowhere to go, and his hand grabbed me and pulled me.

And from somewhere I found the strength and the will to fight, kicking and kicking at him, my arms flailing and my fingers scratching, but it did no good. He held me and I couldn’t move. Couldn’t. He was simply bigger and stronger. He leant towards me, his weight on me, his face looming in front of me, and I closed my eyes and put my head to one side, and I felt his mouth close to my ear, and the words he said echoed in me and around me.

“If you struggle, or shout, or scream, I’ll go back up that mountain and I’ll whip your friend until she dies. Then I’ll do the same to your grandmother. And your grandfather.”

I held my breath, trying not to cry out, or sob, or plead with him to just please let me go.

My tears were silent. My eyes I kept closed. I didn’t want to see, wished I couldn’t feel the pain and humiliation, wished I was somewhere else, far, far away from there.

In my head, my imagination, my memory, I drifted away, and I saw the fields of my village, the rows of tiny houses scattered here and there, the children walking to school with their uniforms on and red scarves flapping against the greying background. I stepped through the doorway to my house and sat at the table with my family, their faces smiling more than reality would’ve let them, and I loved them all so very much.

I watched night fall in a summertime heady and warm, staring out of the window from my bed mat, listening to my mother and father’s breathing growing heavier as sleep claimed them. Stars pinpricking the deep blue sky and the light from the moon shining down. I listened to the insects, heard an owl. And I sighed with happiness and anticipation.

I strolled along a dirt path, the moonlight showing me the way, a warm silence cradling me, and there, on the corner, was a shadow, a silhouette, of him. And I saw him turn to me, his face smiling, welcoming, and I reached to take his hand with a rush of excitement and expectation as I moved towards him. I wanted to be with him. I wanted to hold his hand and touch his face, to smile and to laugh with him, to feel him at my side and know he was there with me and for me. I wanted to love him, and to feel love offered in return.

This was not memory. This was imagination; a dream I wished had been true, a happiness and satisfaction with life I had never known.

In front of me, behind my closed eyelids, Sook’s face froze and his hand didn’t grip mine. And slowly, slowly, the love and warmth slipped away from him, and his face turned from smile to grimace to leer, and his eyes filled with hatred and anger, mocking me and laughing at me: how easy I was to trick, how simple I was to betray.

I wanted to tell him I hated him, but as I opened my eyes to stare into those I had loved so much, Sook was gone. And I caught instead the guard’s sneer as he towered over me. His laugh at me. His words as he barked at me, “Get back to work.”

I was nothing but hated.

I was nothing.

Grandmother didn’t return that night.

And that night I didn’t scrape a mark into the wall to count the days as they passed. Nor did I tell Grandfather what had happened to me. Did he guess, from the state of me, the smell of me, that I couldn’t eat that night, couldn’t speak, couldn’t even look at him? I washed myself over and over, until, with his nerves already on edge, he scolded me for using too much water.

“How many walks to the stream do you think it took for that much water?” he said, pulling the bucket away from me. Yet still I felt dirty; I could feel the guard on my skin and in my hair, could smell him, see his face when I tried to sleep, wanted to scratch that image from my eyes and from my brain and pull at my skin until there was none of it left that he had touched.

I was done.

I was finished.

I wanted no more of anything.

I woke the next morning hoping to see Grandmother lying on her bed mat, hear the sounds of her breathing, her gentle snore. Or roll over and see her sitting at the table. For his sake more than mine. I was surprised what I felt for her when she wasn’t there.

But instead as I turned round, I saw only Grandfather’s eyes staring back at me, filled with the sadness his life had become, tears waiting to fall. And nothing was said, but a thousand thoughts passed, and I could see the hurt eating him, the guilt destroying him, and I wished I could do something for him.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

“So am I.”

I missed my mother. I missed my father. I missed my home and my past and my childhood stretching away from me. My memory was showing my old life as better than it had been, but even what it had been was an eternity better than this.

This was hell.

And I realised for the first time, as I lay in Grandfather’s arms, avoiding the day in front of me, that keeping hope alive, that release might just one day be possible, was torture in itself. It was a hope so slim it barely existed. A chance so minute that only belief in it being there made it visible. Glance away and back, blink, an infinitesimal pause in belief, and it was gone. And finding it again, a speck, a grain, was impossible.

Life here was no life.

Who am I in this place?
I thought.
What am I but waiting to die?

Yoora, the person I had been, was gone. I was a shell. I was empty. I existed only for free labour, for their amusement and an excuse for their cruelty. I was surviving on an impossible hope that stayed with me because the alternative, freeing myself from this pain, had seemed unthinkable before.

Yet still, on the window sill, with its gentle petals of white and pink, stood my flower.

That morning I waited with my work unit to receive my orders for the day, my body bruised and beaten and aching, a bag of bones with no energy, my hair matted, bald patches across my scalp, my skin dry and cracked, covered in cuts and sores.

My friend stood to the side of me and I tried to get her attention, see that glint, a wink maybe, or eyes wide with concern for me, but instead she looked at me with scorn and hatred, a cut on her face that should’ve had stitches, an eye so bruised it was swollen shut.

I looked away, blinking and blinking to stop tears from falling. I wanted to collapse on the ground and sob like a child until someone came along and stroked my hair and whispered in my ear that it was all going to be all right. I wanted my mother to wrap her arms round me. I wanted my father’s voice with its unwavering bravery, Grandfather’s welcoming smile and compassion expressed in words that understood. Even my grandmother, with her honesty and astuteness, who would tell me straight that it wasn’t all going to be all right, but we would keep fighting anyway.

Did I want Sook? Did I want to feel that love for him again? Or did I want to hate him? To kill him?

I trudged up the hillside with the sunlight reaching across the sky with shades of pinks and oranges and reds, highlighting the different shades of green and brown on the trees that stretched tall ahead of us. The feel of the air with the promise of summer to come. It was calm, serene and beautiful. But inside it, underneath it, was such ugliness.

And I looked at the prisoners just like me. Hair that had not been brushed or cut or washed for a long time, clothes of rags, skin stretched over bodies of bones, ribs that could be counted, shoulder blades sticking up and out, rashes and blotches on malnourished faces. They were dying, all of them, of starvation or sickness or exhaustion.

And throughout the day, nobody spoke, or looked at me, or even acknowledged I was there; they hated me, for what I’d done the day before and the danger I’d put them in. All would’ve been punished for the actions I’d taken and my quota not being filled.

I had made so many enemies in such a short space of time, yet had achieved nothing. I felt disappointed with myself; annoyed for being so reckless; angry for not being faster. Ashamed by what had happened with the guard.

Would I do it again? I would’ve liked to have said yes because then I could say that at least I tried. And for that I could feel just a twinge of pride. But after what had happened, and not just to me, I wasn’t sure.

I dreamt again that night of my city of lights, but this time it felt like my mind was toying with me, playing with me, torturing me with things I would never know.

I would never stare into the white headlights of cars streaming towards me or up to those buildings with windows lit orange or yellow or white. I would never breathe in the smells of food drifting from restaurants and takeaways or feel the sweetness of the taste on my tongue. And I would never hear music blaring from bars or see people dancing in bright clothes with joy in their smiles.

I pulled the postcard from inside the mat and moved into the shafts of dusty moonlight filtering into the room, staring at its colours and images, watching them blur into one as tears filled my eyes and fell down my cheeks and on to the picture in my hand of that city called Seoul.

Holding the blankets round me, I stood up and with anger and hatred filling every part of me, I held the postcard over the last flame dwindling in the furnace. I watched it lick the corner, watched a line of orange creep along the white edge, watched the edge turn to black and crumble and fall away, watched that line of orange creep towards the buildings and the lights and my dream.

But I pulled it back, changing my mind, burning my fingertips as I snuffed out the edges, ash smudging grey on my hands. Again fire had nearly claimed it.

It was only then, as I turned round, gripping my postcard, that I noticed it: something lying on the floor, a crumpled heap that from a distance, in the half-light, was a pile of clothes, bloodied in places, dirty all over. Was this someone’s gift to us? A pile of clothes? Some kind of threat to me?

I stepped forward, an arm extended, my hand stretching out, and I knelt on the floor and leant in close, my hand touching the cloth, pulling it back. It looked like a face, and I peered in, closer and closer… and I stopped… frozen…

Grandmother.

And then I saw, backed up to the wall, his knees to his chest, shivering in the night air, Grandfather, staring at her body.

“Is she…?” I breathed, then paused. “Is she…?” But I couldn’t say the words. I waited for his response, watching him for some recognition, but he said nothing, his face a mask of shock.

I pulled back the material and touched her face; she felt cold. I placed my hand on her neck, feeling for a pulse, and I closed my eyes, concentrating through the silence, and I thought perhaps I could feel something. Couldn’t I?

I lowered my face to hers, my cheek to her mouth, and was sure, sure I could feel breath, and I put my ear to her chest, listening, feeling, waiting. A heartbeat, I was sure, faint, slow, but a heartbeat.

“She…” I began, my eyes staring through the shadows of darkness to Grandfather. He shook his head, and I looked back down to the body in front of me, stroking away the grey hair from her face, touching my fingers along her skin. And then I saw her eyelids flicker.

I gasped, turning to Grandfather, no words I could say, staring at him, my head nodding. He moved, crawling forward, his eyes never leaving her, and he saw her mouth ease open, her tongue reach to her lips, her eyelids flutter. Like magic his face lit up, his smile stuttering to life, tears of relief springing down his cheeks, his body bending to her, his arms lifting her, cradling her head to his chest, rocking her back and forth, staring down at the face he had loved for so many years. Brought back to him. Alive.

I watched them together for a moment, then I shuffled to my knees to move away – I felt an intruder. But I glanced back for a second and saw my grandmother’s heavy eyes looking at me.

She was trying to speak, but her voice was too quiet, rasping and painful. She was a pitiful sight. I scooped water into a cup and held it for her to sip, pausing for the briefest of seconds to look at her face of shadows and shades and darkness that was barely alive, then I lowered my face to hers to kiss her on the cheek, and heard the smallest whisper. “I was wrong.”

I frowned. “No…”

But she opened her mouth again and I stopped. “I was proud to be your grandmother.”

I couldn’t reply to that, I couldn’t speak. I edged backwards to my bed mat with tears streaming down my face and faded into the background, trying not to listen to their broken conversation of apologies and love and regrets.

I knew she wouldn’t see the morning light, that she would leave with the darkness, but I was glad for those words she’d said to me, and the few hours she and Grandfather had together, that they could say goodbye and part with nothing unspoken.

I hoped she accepted his apology, though I thought it unnecessary. And I hoped he forgave himself.

Whether she still blamed me for the time spent in prison, or was angry with me still for my loose tongue, didn’t matter – I wasn’t important.
He
was important. What she felt for him in those last few hours and what she said to him as they parted.