A Dream of Lights (16 page)

The thought of that hole in the fence stayed with me like torture. Tempting me back up the mountain, daring me to push my body through it, taunting me with thoughts of freedom and the life that could await me beyond, and ideas of heading for the protection of my mother. And the thought that I couldn’t do it, couldn’t risk it, didn’t dare.

It stayed with me more than the memory of my grandmother.

Maybe
, I thought,
if it was just me, just my life. Then if I didn’t make the jump, if I fell into the ditch, landed on those spikes, at least it would end it all, release me. But what about Grandfather? How could I give him another person to say goodbye to? How could I leave him by himself?

It made such a difference, having someone with you, even if it was only to share a look of exasperation as the sun rose on yet another morning, or to hear your sigh as you came home exhausted again.

I was staying alive for him and, I believed, he was doing the same for me.

A few weeks after we buried Grandmother, I began to get sick.

I threw up everywhere, all the time. And when I had nothing left in my stomach, I would retch and retch, dropping on to my knees with my arms gripped round my body, pulling up dregs of yellow bile, and feeling like my stomach was turning inside out. I would sweat and I would shake. My chest sore, my back stiff, my throat on fire.

And my head would throb, and the white of one of my eyes turned red with blood from the pressure. It was a sickness like I had never felt before. One that never stopped, that I could never forget, that consumed me day after day after day.

Grandfather would hold me and rock me, wipe the sweat from my face and kiss my forehead, hold a spoonful of food to my mouth, or a cupful of water. I had been tired for so long, and now I was exhausted; I was draining away, disappearing and weakening.

Dying?

We went through all the possibilities: poisoning from food or some leaves or plant I’d eaten, or a virus, or a stomach bug – but it could’ve been anything. Every day someone died from some illness, something, no doubt, that could’ve been cured with the right medicine, prevented with clean water or proper toilets. But we had none of those. Not even a doctor. I was sick walking up the mountainside and I was sick coming down it, and eventually the guard, that awful guard whose face I couldn’t bear to look at, took me from my work unit and swapped me for someone else. Maybe he thought someone might find out what happened. Maybe he wanted someone stronger or fitter, who could work better. Or someone different to pick on and to harass. Or maybe he was just done with me. I hoped that would be the last I saw of him.

They put me instead into the shoe factory and I didn’t know whether I felt happy about it or sad. I would never again see the girl I thought had been my friend, be able to make up for what had happened, or apologise any more. But I would be away from the guard, wouldn’t have to walk so far or work so hard, and when winter came back again I’d be inside.

But I went through the doors on that first day and into a wall of heat and noise, and realised how much better the outside was.

Steam rose from huge vats of melting rubber, heat billowing out into clouds of hot air that hung around, obscuring everything from view, drenching the floor and the people and the equipment as they cooled. And the smell of the rubber flowed over and around me, a foul, acrid stench that made my head feel thick, my throat close up and my stomach pull as sickness plagued me again. Huge cutters thundered on to sheets of rubber, threatening arms or fingers that were too slow, yet were always tired. Blades were scratched and sharpened before slicing away at leather, machines groaned, doors slammed and pots hissed. But nobody said a word.

My head spun, sweat poured from me, my body tipped and tilted with dizziness, the heat bearing down on me, the humidity.

With two other people, I tilted a vat of boiling rubber, still so heavy, watching the black liquid, like tar, bubbling and oozing into the mould, the smell overwhelming, my stomach turning and my body retching, but I couldn’t let go. If I did, the vat would fall, the rubber would be ruined and we would be punished. All of us.

But the second it was down, I would run outside to throw up, or the smell would overcome me and I would pass out, waking sometime later, propped in a corner, or left on the floor with people stepping over me. There was no concern, or doctor to be requested, or leave granted; only complaints that I had not worked hard enough or long enough, or punishments given for not meeting my quota.

But how could I?

Grandfather’s work changed too. It was a piece of good luck for us, a small change but a blessing. He was out of the coal mine with the narrow tunnels that were making his back crooked, away from explosives that the children were forced to light and then run away from, and leaving behind the black dust that he breathed into his lungs every day and tried to cough up every night.

Instead he was on the land in the fresh air, preparing the crops, or the ground, or tending to the few farm animals. And now, instead of sneaking out one piece of coal if a guard wasn’t looking, it would be a handful of animal food here and there. Anything to eat we were grateful for, even more so if it wasn’t cornmeal. I saw the change in him, however subtle: his eyes a little brighter, his skin a little clearer and his back a little straighter.

We sat down at the table to our bowls of corn one evening, still muttering the thanks we had to give to our Great Leader for the meal in front of us, and although I tried to eat, every time I lifted the spoon to my mouth, I could feel bile turning in my stomach. Grandfather would look at me with such concern on his face, the same concern he had worn for a long time now, but more intense lately, more lines on his face and worry in his eyes.

“I’ve got something for you to eat,” he said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a couple of cockroaches, some worms and a few bugs. “It’s good protein. It’ll help build you up.”

I stared at them, for a moment disgusted. I had no memory of when I had last eaten meat, but if it helped me to feel better, gave me more energy so I could at least work and make my quota, then there was no reason why not. But still I stared at them.

I picked up the worm, holding it between my fingers, watching its body writhing. “I wish it was dead already,” I whispered. “I feel like he’s watching me.”

“He is,” Grandfather said. “He’s shouting,
Don’t eat me, don’t eat me.
”

A smile crept across my face. “You eat one as well,” I said.

He paused and I watched him, waiting for him to say that I needed it more, or he would have some tomorrow, or some other excuse. But he didn’t. He picked up a woodlouse, its tiny legs wiggling in the air, and he popped it into his mouth. I watched him swallow, open his mouth, stick out his tongue and prove to me it had gone.

And he smiled at me. “Your turn.”

I nodded, took a deep breath, opened my mouth wide and dropped the worm straight down my throat, swallowing before I could even think what I was doing. “It’s like a noodle,” I spluttered. And this strange thing happened, this noise I hadn’t heard for so long, that I thought I would never hear again – my grandfather’s laugh. Not a snigger or a chortle hidden behind cupped hands, but a laugh, big and booming and hearty.

A smile lifted my face, and I laughed too, the sound like honey, like warmth and family and love.

“The cockroach now,” he said.

With a face of disgust, I picked up two brown bodies, passing one to Grandfather, its legs itching away, trying to find the ground that had disappeared from under it.

“And you have to chew this time,” he said.

I glared at him with wide eyes, my mouth clamped shut, the creature dangling in front of me. I looked across to Grandfather. He opened his mouth, stuck out his tongue, placed the cockroach on it and drew it back inside his mouth. My eyes stayed wide as I watched his mouth move up and down and side to side, saw his throat swallow and again his mouth was empty.

He lifted a palm to me. “Come on.”

I opened my mouth and with shaking hands put the cockroach on my tongue, and I could feel its legs moving in my mouth, feel its antennae on my lips. I shook my head.

“Yes, you can,” he urged.

I closed my mouth. Grandfather leant towards me. “Imagine,” he whispered, “that the cockroach is Kim Jong Il.”

My eyes widened further.

“Imagine you can crush him with your teeth. Destroy him. Get rid of him for ever.”

I couldn’t open my mouth to tell him that he shouldn’t say that.

“Or the guard,” he continued. “Or Sook’s mother, or…”

I didn’t wait for him to list any more names. I bit down on that cockroach with every piece of hatred inside me. I chewed it and destroyed it and swallowed it, and I looked up at him with a smirk on my face. “Let’s eat the rest,” I said.

Our laughter turned into giggles like schoolchildren, echoing across our walls of mud. Whatever the neighbours thought, I didn’t care. A laugh was not a sound heard in this place, only perhaps from a guard, but then a laugh of cruelty, of pleasure taken in someone else’s suffering. This, with Grandfather, was of sharing, of humour, of love, but most probably a sound few would still recognise. That was the true sadness.

For the first time in what seemed like months, after eating those insects that day, I wasn’t sick, and as we finished our mixture of creatures, I caught the look of relief on his face, a glimpse of contentment in his eyes. The smile stayed on his face too, and he reached out his hand, scrawny and thin with skin like paper that had been left out in the sun for years, and patted my arm. “We’ll make you better,” he whispered, and I honestly think he believed it.

As time passed, we ate whatever we could find: cockroaches, worms, spiders, beetles and bugs. We ate leaves, though we never knew whether or not they were poisonous, bark that we’d peeled off trees and softened in water. Once we ate slops stolen from the pigsty, although only once, since a colleague of Grandfather’s was seen licking it from his hands and was shot on the spot. We even ate gratings of leather I stole from the shoe factory floor, softening them as we did the bark.

Some evenings I would walk back from the factory past the fields where Grandfather worked, and I could smell the soil, freshly turned and covered with autumn drizzle, and I could feel my mouth watering, and I wanted so badly to crouch down, lift the earth to my mouth and take the biggest bite. Feel it filling my mouth and sliding down my throat. But I never did.

I once found a dead bird rotting away, and we picked off the maggots and stripped it bare to its bones. Then we ate the maggots. It was one of the best meals I had there.

I heard of prisoners eating clay, or swallowing stones so their stomachs felt full. Others taking flesh from dead family members before they buried them. Roasting it, frying it, boiling it; they said it tasted like pork.

Would I do that?
I asked myself.
Could I have done that? To Grandmother?

I had no answer. Hunger does strange things to a person. Those who ate the clay died the same day.

We ate these things as a way of trying to survive, yet never knowing if they would kill us.

The sickness came and went, but the tiredness stayed. I could’ve slept all day if I’d been allowed, and all night. In truth I could’ve fallen asleep and never woken again. I slept through storms, so my grandfather said, that made the hut feel as if it was being picked up and tossed around. I slept through screaming from the neighbour when her husband died. I slept through our door banging in the wind, and a visit from someone who hid a knife under my clothes.

Was it a threat? Or a warning? Was I being set up for something? I slipped it under my bed and carried on with everyday life.

And I didn’t tell Grandfather.

Every morning, for however many mornings I didn’t want to know and couldn’t keep track of, I dragged myself out of bed and smiled at Grandfather, and every morning he did the same.

I never stopped to think how long I could keep this up for, or to think of the friend I had had, yet lost. And I forced myself never,
never
, to think of that tiger or the fence or the hole. That would’ve been cruel; that would’ve been torture.

I was thankful for small things – I was away from the guard, I was alive and so was Grandfather. Too thankful too soon. Because despite how tired I was, and how heavily I usually slept, that night I woke. Not slowly or gently or with my eyes gradually opening, looking around and realising it was still night-time and I could sleep a while longer, but suddenly. Like a slap in the face, or the bang of a gun, or a light blazing through the dark.

I could hear it, I could feel it. Something in the hut. I slowed my breathing, quietened it, listened across the darkness and the silence for something that didn’t fit, something that wasn’t right. I could hear Grandfather’s laboured breathing – breathing in with a struggle and a rattle in his chest, breathing out with relief, then a pause and in again.

But something else was behind that sound. Something faster, sharper, cleaner.

A floorboard creaked and my head flicked round, and I saw a shadow move towards me so quickly. He was there. Above me. His face filling my vision. The unmistakable smell of him.

I wanted to scream, shout for help even though I knew none would be coming, wake Grandfather even though there was nothing he could do.

Help me
, I wanted to shout to the sky, to the world, to everyone out there,
somebody please, please somebody care. Do it to somebody else, not to me, not again.

His hand clamped across my mouth, forcing my head back on the pillow, and I kicked my legs and thrashed my arms, but he didn’t stop. I remembered the knife hiding under the bed and tried to reach around to it, but I saw the shape of his head move back and forth and his finger lift to his lips to silence me.

“Move, or make a noise, and I’ll kill your grandfather too,” he hissed in my ear.

So I stopped. As he pulled away the blankets, I kept my legs still, and as he moved one hand down, and every part of me wanted to shudder and scream and grab that knife and bury it into him, I didn’t move a muscle. Not even as his hand reached my stomach and silent tears rolled down my face.

I knew what was coming, but what could I do? I was stuck. I was helpless. And so I closed my eyes, resigned, sucked in one ragged breath after another, and waited. But his hand moved back up. And I felt his fingers at my face, forcing apart my teeth, and I felt something, some pill or tablet or capsule, drop into my mouth and fall to the back of my throat.

“Do you remember what I told you?” he whispered, one hand gripping my mouth closed.

I didn’t move.

“That one day, when I’d had enough of you, I’d kill you? You remember that?”

Through my tears I watched his face distort from anger to pleasure. A grin, a leer on his lips, of satisfaction and enjoyment. And power.

“Swallow,” he whispered.

I stared at him. I could feel the pill on the back of my tongue, big and wide and thick.
What is it?
my head screamed.
What is it?

His other hand went to my throat, rough fingers stroking down it. “Swallow,” he said again.

I sucked in breath through my nose and felt the saliva growing in my mouth.
No
, I thought.
No, no, no.

“You want your grandfather to die too?” he whispered in my ear.

I looked away from him and closed my eyes. And the face of my grandfather came towards me through the darkness, and then my grandmother, and my mother, and my father, one fading to the next. And after my father came the last. And I stared at him, at his smile, into his eyes, and I thought of goodbye.

How long will it take?
I wondered.
How painful will it be?

And I swallowed.