A Dream of Lights (10 page)

But I couldn’t imagine not caring.

The guard watched me for the rest of the day, pushing me over or kicking me to the floor, hitting me in the face, and though never for nothing, it was never for anything much: a slip perhaps, a weak blow from the axe, working too slowly, walking the wrong way.

Every second his eyes were there, anticipating every mistake even before I’d made it. Waiting, it seemed, for some excuse, though never needing one; he was playing with me, teasing me and torturing me with this constant threat of punishment, of violence, of pain and repercussions.

It was a long day, a hard day, passing slowly as if it was a week, my head swimming and flashing with images and thoughts and memories, of my father, my mother, of Sook, of that boy killed with my axe. I felt sick, whether with exhaustion or shock or guilt or frustration I don’t know, and I ached and hurt so much that every step I took, or every lift of the axe or the saw, I thought would be the last.

I thought I would collapse.

Somehow I made it to the end and if I could get through that day, I thought to myself, I could get through however many days stretched out into my future.

Still the guard’s eyes were on me as I picked up the axe again, and took a few steps down the mountain, a few steps nearer to my hut and my grandparents, to whatever food we had, and to my bed mat so welcome.

“You!” he shouted. “Come back here.”

I stopped and turned, my body and my breath frozen.

“And you,” he added, pointing to the girl who’d spoken to me earlier. “Both of you, get rid of the boy.”

I didn’t breathe, I just watched him, his back disappearing, imagining the look I felt sure must be on his face, a look of smugness and relish. He had the final say; he had the only say. There could be no arguing with him; I would always be the loser. He hated me. Maybe he hated us all. But I wasn’t anonymous to him any more and that felt dangerous.

And the boy… I sighed. I didn’t want to look at him, touch him or carry him. I was going to walk down the mountain and back to the hut and forget about everything.

“Come on,” the girl whispered to me. “We’ll have to take him away from here.”

“I can’t,” I replied, shaking my head.

“You don’t have a choice.” She walked over to where his body rested. “Come on,” she repeated.

“What are we going to do? Where do we take him? Shouldn’t we… shouldn’t we take him to his family? Tell them?”

She shook her head. “Only do as you’re told. Nothing more, nothing less. You’ll learn. You have to. If you don’t, you’ll die. Simple as that.”

“But… it can’t be right… what he did… surely…”

She shrugged. “What does it matter? Who are you going to complain to?”

The whole thing was beyond comprehension.
How can people be so cruel?
I thought.
Because they’re told to? Or because they can? Because there’s no one to complain to, nobody who’d find out?

I looked down at the boy, his body splayed out on the earth, his legs at uncomfortable angles, the dry grass bent over under his fingers, the features that made up who he was still visible. But he was pale, grey almost, and nothing was behind his eyes, no glimmer, no spark, just an empty shell. Life so fragile, taken so easily.

Yet I looked at the girl by my side, so thin and so frail, and I thought of the other prisoners, those I’d seen when I arrived, clinging to survival.

Life can be so tenacious. But it’s always lost in the end.

We struggled deeper into the trees, further than I thought the camp extended, carrying the body of that poor boy between us, dragging spades that we’d tied round us. His body felt so heavy, and so many times he slipped from my grasp, or I would drop him to the ground with no strength left in my arms.

Every time he fell I cried, and every time I apologised to him, and the girl looked at me as if I was a child, shaking her head at me with impatience and incomprehension. But I cared. Still. Dead or alive, I cared. Finally we came to a patch of earth where the trees thinned out and we stopped, letting the boy down to the ground.

“Nobody usually comes this far out,” the girl said. “Unless it’s to bury someone.”

I looked around at the mounds of raised earth here and there. “Is this where…?”

“Not all of them. There are fifty thousand people in this camp, or so I was told. There are more areas like this.”

I turned and stared down the mountainside towards the camp. The rows of huts that were our village, the path leading away from them, a clump of buildings, a dirt road, the mine in the distance, more huts further away, hills lined with trees on the other side, snow-capped mountains away in the distance. We were held in a valley. The mountains and terrain imprisoning us just as much as the fence. No wonder nobody ever tried to escape.

“It’s so vast,” I whispered.

She gave a sigh, nodded and turned to me. “It’d take you a day to walk to the other side,” she said. “I’ve been here with my uncle and father eight years, since I was eleven, with no explanation or trial. But I’ve hardly seen any of the camp, only know our little bit. And a few of the buildings. You’re not allowed any contact with the other villages, but notes are passed now and again, about which guards are worse than others, or about food, or new arrivals.

“Are they still alive?” I whispered. “Your family?”

She looked away. “My uncle died the first month we were here. I don’t know why, he just didn’t wake up one morning.” She shrugged and looked down at her feet. “The following month my father was put in a sweatbox for two weeks for looking at a guard the wrong way. He came back, but I hardly recognised him.” She paused, drew in a long breath and looked at me. “Some days I think about dying. Some I dare to think of release. Mostly, though, it’s better not to think at all.”

I stared at her, her skin taut against her bones, the lines and wrinkles on her face, yet she was still a teenager.

I turned round on the spot, then stopped. A short distance away I could see a mesh of silver reaching up into the sky and a tall concrete tower to one side. “Is that the perimeter fence?” I asked.

I watched her gaze drift away and her head nod in reply, and for a moment, just a moment, we didn’t say or do anything. In my head was just that fence, what it meant and what lay on the other side.

Then, without the need for acknowledgement, I lifted my spade and followed her to a place to dig. We jabbed and jabbed into ground still cold from winter, while behind us the sun dipped below the mountains, leaving a trail of orange over us and the earth, the boy and the tops of the trees, and down to the valley and the huts and the prisoners.

We struggled on and on, darkness growing and a chill spreading. And by the time we’d finished digging a hole that was barely big enough, we had only the light from the moon to show us where we had left his body.

“We need to take his clothes off,” the girl said.

I stared towards her outline in the darkness. “You’re only given new uniform once a year,” she said. “Sometimes not even that. We can’t bury them, they’re worth too much. And his boots.”

“Shouldn’t we give them to his family?” I asked.

But she scoffed, shaking her head. “You won’t survive long in here if you don’t think about yourself first,” she said. “I’ll take his clothes, you have his boots. If they don’t fit, you can swap them with someone for food, or seeds, or a cooking pot. Check his pockets too.”

I crouched at his side feeling so callous and cold, so selfish and disrespectful. His colour was gone and his lips were blue, and taking a deep breath, I stuffed my hands into his pockets that were stretched against his stiff arms and legs. But there was nothing there. We pulled and tugged, twisted and grappled and yanked until his clothes were off.

I had never been so close to a dead body before, touching it, watching it. I looked at his skin prickled by moonlight. I’d never even seen anyone naked. He was undignified not peaceful, awkward not beautiful. Vulnerable.

We lowered him into the shallow hole and I paused with a shovelful of dirt in my hands. I couldn’t do it. Couldn’t drop it on to his face, which I couldn’t see but knew was down there in the darkness, so young and so innocent, looking out at the world that had been so cruel to him.

But I did. And I convinced myself that he would be glad to be away from this place of suffering and pain and unhappiness.

How unfair it is
, I thought.
What a short life he lived, and what sadness he endured. Nothing, no crime, no guilt, could warrant this.

I imagined, as we stumbled back down the mountainside, feeling and scrabbling our way, his life before this camp, his childhood. I imagined it happy. I imagined the house he lived in and the food he ate, the brother he played with and the parents he loved. And I saw him laugh, and I saw him smile. And I hoped it was true.

“What about his family?” I whispered as the ground grew level and the outline of buildings guided us one way then the next.

“Their hut’s close to mine,” she replied. “I’ll tell them.”

Where our paths split, we stopped a second, and I was surprised to feel her hand rest on my arm, and although I could barely make out her face, the seriousness in her warning was clear.

“Look out for that guard,” she whispered. “He’ll make trouble for you.”

And he did. Every day until my decision was made for me.

The decision he forced on me.

The camp felt eerie and quiet as I made my way back, a strange blue moonlight touching the roofs of huts as I passed by. So many of them – the family quarters – some with only three people like us, others with far more, parents and grandparents and children and aunts and uncles, but barely a sound coming from any of them; a tiny whisper through the thin walls, or a sob so quiet I could barely hear it, the scrape of a bowl, the crack of a piece of wood.

Nobody walked about, nobody sang or whistled or raised a voice. They were – we were – kept like animals, put to bed at night, controlled through fear. It wasn’t just sadness I could feel in the stale air around me, it was apathy and hopelessness.

I creaked open the door and my grandparents’ eyes flew to me. Grandfather leapt to his feet, tears in his eyes, throwing his arms round me, then holding me back again, his gaze flickering over my face and my body, the mud on me, the streaks of tears down my face, the cuts and bruises on my skin.

“What happened?” he whispered.

But I didn’t want to go through it again, didn’t want to remember it. I shook my head. “I don’t want to… don’t want to… talk about it, Grandfather. Please.”

He nodded, staring at me, touching his palm to my face. “But you’re all right?”

I tried to smile.
I’m here, aren’t I?
I thought.
I’m standing in front of you. I’m still breathing.
“Yes,” I replied, nodding, my eyes filling with tears. “I’m all right now.”

He held me. “We were worried,” he whispered into my hair. “Both of us.”

And I wanted to stay there for ever in the safety of his arms.

They’d saved me some cornmeal and we sat at the table in silence, Grandfather watching me struggling to lift the spoon to my mouth.

“I have stomach ache,” I told them, my eyes closing between mouthfuls, sleep dragging at me.

“So do I, Yoora,” replied my grandfather. “It’s eating corn all the time. Your body will get used to it.”

“Is there nothing else?”

I heard Grandmother huff, but I was too tired to wonder if I’d insulted her or said the wrong thing. I just knew how weak I felt, how hungry still, and that nagging pain in my belly.

“What do you expect me to do?” she said. “I don’t have any seeds to grow anything, and I have nothing to barter with.”

“Maybe something could be found further up the hills. Some bark off trees to boil down. Some leaves. Insects,” Grandfather suggested.

She glared at him, but didn’t reply, her face fixed into a look of disgust and anger.

“I’ve been there today.” My voice was a mumble and I stood up from the table, staggering across the room to the door. I picked up the boots I’d dropped when I came in and slid them across the floor towards the table.

“Here. Use those to barter with. They’re too small for me. He was only tiny.”

I sat back down, tired, hungry and cold. And sad. I’d had enough. I looked at Grandmother, then at Grandfather. And I took a breath.

“Tell me about Seoul,” I said. “The letters, the postcard, everything. Tell me why they were in our house. What they were to us.” I wiped my hands across my eyes.
I’m not going to cry
, I thought,
I’m not going to show Grandmother how sad I feel, and useless. I’m going to be strong.
“I have to understand,” I said slowly. “I have to know how… how… they got us in here… in this… this
place.
” I waved a hand around at the walls that held us. “You owe me that much,” I whispered.

Grandfather stared at me. And my grandmother too. But nobody spoke a word.

“How do you know about it? The world outside?” I asked, breathing heavy and deep, trying so hard to keep calm, keep in control.

“We… we…” he stammered.

“He doesn’t know anything,” Grandmother interrupted.

“He
must
do,” I hissed at her. “Because you told me, Grandmother, you told me that he put stories and ideas in my head.”

“Huh,” she scoffed. “Your memory’s tricking you, girl.”

“No,” I said. And I was so angry I wanted to shout and scream at her. “It’s not. Because you said that when we first arrived here.”

“I told you,” she said, leaning across the table to me, her voice low and angry, but her face full of sorrow. “He doesn’t know anything about Seoul.”

Her eyes flashed a warning or a threat to Grandfather, but as I looked at him, his head was already lowered and resting in his hand.

I stood up and leant over the table towards her. “You’re lying,” I breathed, my finger pointing in her face. “I know you are.”

I expected Grandfather to tell me off. Tell me to respect my elders, or not speak like that to Grandmother, but he didn’t say a word, didn’t even lift his head to look at me.

I’ve waited this long
, I thought.
I can wait a while longer.

I collapsed on my bed mat without taking off my clothes or washing the dirt from my skin. I didn’t tell them anything about the boy or the guard, although I wanted to tell Grandmother, go into every detail with her about what had happened and what I had seen. Because I wanted her to know how much I’d suffered that day, that I was taking the punishment I felt sure she thought I deserved.

Before I went to sleep, I lifted a splinter of wood from the floor, and in the mud walls I scratched a marker, next to all the others I’d scratched since we arrived, one for every day. How many now? Thirty? Thirty-two? I was too tired to count. How many more would there be? We had never been told. A lifetime’s worth? A lifetime wasted.

My life, it seemed, was a single breath in the vastness of time that would never be heard, or seen, or remembered. My life meant nothing, to anybody, anywhere.

I had no reason to exist. And I was waiting to die.