A Dream of Lights (18 page)

The day passed like a thousand hours. A blur of sickness and pain, of sweat and aches, of dizziness and spinning rooms. I moved with a deliberate slowness, concentrating on each movement, every one an effort both physical and mental. How I survived the day, how I made my quota, avoided the guards and walked out of there twelve hours later, I cannot even begin to understand.

Would I have made it without the help of the old woman? Her voice was a beacon of calm in my chaotic head, guiding me along the path a step at a time until the end came.

I can go back now
, I thought,
to the hut that has become my home. I can lie in my bed with my grandfather next to me and with his hand holding mine. I can close my eyes and let myself drift away for ever. A better way to die than at the hands of that guard.

I staggered home with the pain intolerable and unimaginable, the woman at my side, holding me upright, urging me forward. “Don’t let any guards see,” she said. “Stand up straight, look up, look normal, don’t let them see, don’t give them reason to stop us. Forward, keep going forward.”

I couldn’t see any more; kept my shoulder touching hers; stepped one shaking foot in front of one shaking foot, thinking not of the distance in front of me, how far it might be, thinking only of that step, that one, and one more now. One more. One more.

And I felt the wooden step beneath my foot, smelt my home fusty with dust and damp, heard Grandfather’s voice so small.

“Thank you,” he said to the old woman. “Thank you.” I could hear the sob stuck in his throat and could imagine the tears held tight in his eyes. “Please stay, help me, I beg you.”

Arms guided me in, laid me in my bed, and rough hands felt my forehead, tugged at my clothes, rested on my stomach. I heard a sigh.

“How long?” the old woman asked.

“I’m not sure. It was springtime. Maybe eight months.” He shrugged. “It was the guard. The one—”

“I know which one.” She sighed again. “I’ll stay and I’ll help, but when it’s over, whatever happens, I have to go. Don’t tell me your plans, I don’t want to know. But you owe me.”

I stretched my eyes open, staring at the shapes around me through tears and sweat and darkness. I was confused and scared. And the pain came again, tearing through me. My back arched, my head flew back. I wanted to shout out, to scream. I wanted to die.

“What’s happening to me?” I sobbed. “Please, please.”

Cold water dripped on to my head and down my face, spindly fingers stroking my cheek, a kind voice in my ear.

“You’re having a baby,” she whispered.

It didn’t register at first. I didn’t think it could be true. How could it? Surely I would’ve known? But then nothing was normal in here. Nothing happened as it should. Nothing should be a surprise.

It was like I’d been woken with an electric shock. Suddenly I was awake and aware and my eyes focused. “What?”

“You didn’t know?” Her question was kind and gentle.

“But…” I knew so little about life, no lessons at school, no talks with parents, had needed to piece everything together instead. I thought and I remembered, and it all fell into place.

The guard. He had made me pregnant.

The contractions came thick and fast, and with each one Grandfather held his hand over my mouth, frightened I would shout, would scream, would give us away.

Outside, the wind battered against our hut, snow swirling round us, a flurry through the gap under the door, a blanket dropping on to our roof, melting and dripping through the holes and making puddles on the floor. We had no windows so nothing lightened, and I was glad I could only see the horror around me, the scene I never dreamt I’d be part of, in flickering candlelight.

Reasoning and logic left me. I imagined, in my incoherent state, that this snow had been sent by Kim Jong Il, angry with me, his temper and disappointment in me manifested in this storm around me.

Visions passed in front of my eyes, as vivid as the real world. There was Father, his warm eyes upon me, muttering apologies – I couldn’t imagine what for; my mother, her lips on my forehead, her hand stroking mine; my grandmother even, no longer angry with me. They all passed round me, stayed with me, waiting, waiting…

How much time passed, I have no idea; the air was stiff and warm with the heat of bodies and pain. Darkness smothered us, and candlelight flickered on us, and he was born so very quietly.

She lifted him to me with sadness in her face. I took him in my arms and looked down at this tiny, tiny being, his body so thin, his skin a pale blue tinge, his mouth puckered. I had never seen anything so sad, yet so wondrous.

I traced my hand down his face and his body, edged his cheek with my fingers; he was beautiful. I blew on him gently and I saw, was sure I saw, his head move, just a fraction. I brought him closer to me, blowing across his face, and his eyes flickered and his mouth moved and he breathed.

He was alive. Tiny and thin, fragile and delicate. Toes smaller than my fingernail, eyes swollen but when he peered out into the world, black as pieces of coal. And alive.

I held him to me, cupped in my hands, and cried tears of relief, of joy, of disbelief and of amazement, that this could happen, this little thing, this tiny miracle, this life in a place of only death. And I lifted him to me and I fed him as I had seen others do back in our village.

The woman gave a difficult smile. “Good luck,” she said, but she was shaking her head. I stared at her, my hands cradling my baby to me.

“I only agreed to help
you
survive,” she said. “Not the baby. It’s pointless.” She turned to Grandfather. “You know what’ll happen to him, what they’ll do. It would’ve been better if he was born dead.”

I looked down at the tiny life drawing breath, and back to her, a frown of confusion on my face. Anger at her. How could she say such things?

She stepped towards me, her voice low, her eyes keeping away from the baby, staring straight into mine.

“Don’t you judge me,” she said. “I was a nurse on the outside. Came here and they got me doing everything from treating the guards’ cuts and grazes to amputating prisoners’ limbs and pulling rotten teeth. And delivering babies. Not many though.” She shook her head. “Sometimes prisoners were pregnant when they came in and I was ordered to get rid of the babies. Sometimes by injections. Others, if they were born, we had to leave to die. In a box left by the mother’s side as a reminder of the wrong they had done. They weren’t allowed to feed them or hold them. They had to listen to their babies’ cries until they died. Imagine that. Imagine the torture that is, listening and watching, but not being allowed to do anything.

“Others, what they did to others, I couldn’t even start to tell you, gives me nightmares still, their little faces.” She paused, her eyes closed for a moment, as if trying to get rid of images she didn’t want to see. “So don’t you dare judge me because I know, I’ve seen what they’ll do if they find your baby, what will happen to him. Something shocking and dreadful is what he’ll suffer, and what you’ll suffer as you watch – because they’ll force you to. Is that worth the few hours you might have before they find him? Because they will find him, you know they will.”

She turned and I didn’t know whether to thank her or order her to leave, whether to be grateful to her for helping me, or hate her for what she had just said.

So I said nothing. I just watched her back as she left.

And outside, the storm raged on.

“Now we
have
to go, Grandfather,” I said with more certainty than I’d ever felt. “We have to escape. Tonight.”

I watched him, waiting for him to shake his head, or tell me again
not yet
, or to try and argue with me. I was ready to argue back. But he just stared at me.

“If we don’t, he’ll die.”

He dropped his head and I heard his breath wheezing through his old lungs.

“Grandfather, we have to try. We can’t just give up; we have to give him a chance.”

He gave an almost imperceptible nod. “Yes, yes,” he whispered.

He began moving around the room, gathering things up and collecting what was hidden under cupboards or in corner shadows.

“Eat this,” he said, passing me something wrapped in cloth. “All of it. But slowly. You need some energy.” It fell open as I pulled at the edges, a mixture of dead insects, dried food, scraps of rat meat and leaves or bark, grains of some kind, some softened leather.

I frowned at him.

“I’ve been collecting it for a while.”

“Did you know this was happening? The baby?”

He shrugged. “Thought,” he whispered. “Just thought.” He leant over me, touching the baby’s head.

“I don’t know what to do,” I said. “But I know I can’t give up. I know I can’t let them kill him. I have to try.” I swung my legs around slowly, looking down into his face. “For him. I have to try.”

Grandfather nodded.

The snow swirled round us as we trudged away from our hut, up the hillside and towards the mountains. Our feet, with bags tied round them to keep us dry, crunched and left footprints, and I hoped so much that the snow was coming down heavily enough to cover our tracks.

Again I felt sick, but this time with nerves. It seemed ludicrous, impossible, hopeless, but then if we stayed, so was our survival. If we wanted to live past tomorrow, when we would be found, if we wanted the baby to live, we had no choice but to escape. Or at least try. So I took a deep breath, and I trusted myself, trusted that I would do everything I could.

“The ditch will still be there, like it was when we saw the tiger,” Grandfather said. “And the spikes.”

“I know,” I replied, and in my head I saw myself jumping across it, clearing it – because I had to. “But there are hours and hours until roll call.” I let myself think of the guard, and for a moment I let my imagination show me what he would do to me, to Grandfather, to the baby, and I walked on with strength and determination.

The baby was under my clothes, tied across my chest with fabric from Grandmother’s old dress, rags wrapped round him to keep him warm. He was quiet, didn’t cry, barely moved.

Every step we took I felt I was being watched, someone letting me make another move, get a little closer, let that glimmer of hope grow brighter in my chest, allowing me to believe that maybe, maybe… My pockets were stuffed with all sorts of things Grandfather had been collecting, and as we moved, I nibbled on them.

I was tired. So very, very tired. And I was scared, and now not just for myself. Now I had this tiny being relying on me and yet still it all seemed so impossible. I wanted to stop walking, go back to the hut, sit down, hold my baby and stare at him. And sleep.

And wake in the morning and find that everything was fine.

But that was the stuff of dreams. This was my reality. My baby in my arms. My baby who somehow, against everything, had grown in me, had survived childbirth and was alive. What he was a product of, I didn’t care; it didn’t matter.

We reached the treeline, and we walked together, my hand in Grandfather’s, his strength pulling me along, willing me, guiding me.

“You remember what I told you about your mother, where she’s living? The border town, Chongyong? That’s where you need to go. You need to remember it, the town, and you need to head there. Straight there. Understand?”

I nodded. “But you’ll be with me anyway,” I said.

He ignored me. “Don’t go back to our village. Not for anything.”

I thought of Sook then, for the first time in a long time. I wanted to find him. Shout and scream at him. Demand to know why he did that to me and to my family. Why he hated me. Why he’d betrayed me.

What did I feel for him? Why did his face still come to me? Did I love him still? Did I hate him for what he’d done? Did it matter any more, after all this time? Could I walk away and never know the answers? Leave it, forget it?

No. I wanted to find him. I wanted to kill him.

“You hear me, Yoora? Forget it. Head to your mother and from there you can escape the country and over into China.”

The trees were thinning; we were near the fence. “But—”

Grandfather stopped, staring down at me. “Whatever revenge you’ve been thinking of all these years in here, you need to forget. There’s no point. It’ll only get you found.”

I looked down at the baby and back to him, nodding. This little one was more important now.

We walked a few more paces, stopping with the fence a few metres away.

“Head west from here,” Grandfather said. “Think of where the sun sets. The town’s on a train line. If you can get to the train tracks, you can follow them.”

I stared at him, snow melting and dripping down his face. “You’ll remember that, Grandfather,” I said. “You’ll be with me.”

“No, Yoora, you have to remember alone.”

“What?”

He stared at me for a moment, and I could just make out his head slowly moving from one side to the other. “I’m not coming,” he whispered.

I wiped the snow from my face and away from my eyes, searching through the darkness, wishing I could make out more of him, see his expression better. I didn’t understand.

“I’ll slow you down. We won’t make it together.”

“No, that’s not true… I can’t leave you.”

“I’m too old and weak.”

“But I’m weak too, we can—”

“No.” His voice was firm. “I don’t think I’ll fit through the gap. I know I won’t make it over the ditch, but even if I did, I don’t have the strength to keep going.”

I could feel the panic in my chest, the burning, the shortness of breath, my head dizzy, tears filling my eyes. “But… but… why can’t you try?”

“If we both go, in about seven hours, at morning roll call, they’ll realise we’re missing, someone will go to the hut, work out that we must be trying to escape and they’ll come after us. Seven hours isn’t a lot when you’re as tired as you are. You’re going to have to rest when you get clear. If I stay, I can try and bluff them, tell them the other guard sent you somewhere, try and buy you some extra time, and maybe,
maybe
, it’ll work. Even if it only gives you an extra hour, it’s something.”

“But… but…” My tears were pouring, looking up at the face of this man I loved so much, who had always been at my side, through everything, who never judged me for the mistakes I made, for his son being killed, for being in the camp, for what happened to his wife. “I don’t want you to stay. I want you to come with me.”

“I can help you more like this.”

I stared at him, couldn’t tell what were tears and what was melted snow, and I reached out my hand and held on to his. My head was shaking; my body was screaming at me to throw myself at him and snuggle into his arms and rest my head on his chest.

“I don’t want to be alone,” I hissed through gritted teeth.

“You’re not,” he whispered. “You have your baby now. Look after him. Get him to safety. Give him the future I could never give you. Please. Do that for me.”

“What will they do to you?” I whispered.

His reply was a shrug, but we both knew the answer. A question I should never have asked. We stared at each other in silence, acceptance rolling over me. Tears fell from his eyes, but I could see the hope within them still. Hope he’d given to me. Hope for survival. Hope, and a chance, for a future.

And I loved him. I loved him so much.

Yet I was the tiger now, my young one in my arms, my eyes clear and bright, daring to believe that freedom could be mine. I was the animal.

He turned his face away from me, watching the security light swoop along the length of the fence, making sure we weren’t in its beam. He waited, he timed the sweep of the light, then he grabbed me and scurried forward, stopping at the fence, edging along it, searching for the hole underneath it. When he found it he stopped. My eyes struggled to see through the fence, through the darkness, and across the snow to the ditch, and I looked back at him.

My head was screaming at me –
I can’t make the ditch, I can’t jump that far, I’ll fall on the spikes, I’ll die.
I looked down at the baby.

No
, I reminded myself.

We’ll die.