A Dream of Lights (13 page)

I dreamt that night, not of the guard, or of the girl, or of my parents or grandparents. It was of a person, a somebody, a boy or a man. And I followed him from a distance as he walked through streets, tired and broken and empty, his head down, his shoulders low, his scuffed shoes dragging along the path, his arms slack at his sides.

Rubbish blew along deep gutters and bodies lay face down in the road, and no music played or shops existed or lights flashed or colour glowed. Everything was a shade of grey and he was the only person there and the only person alive.

I followed him. Down one road, round a corner, down another. And again. In circles. Over and over. But after a while I stopped, waiting instead for him to come around again, and as he did, I saw his face.

Sook.

He looked at me with such love in his eyes that it took my breath away. He walked towards me and I watched him, and I felt myself smile at him, stretch my arms out to him.

“Sook,” I whispered.

But hands and arms and bodies came from nowhere and grabbed him, pulling him one way then the other, tearing at him, dragging him away to what I knew was his death.

And I woke. Breathless and panicky and incredibly,
incredibly
sad.

Isn’t that what you want?
my head screamed at me.
Isn’t that what he deserves?

I lay down again, closing my eyes, trying not to remember those evenings we shared, the times we laughed, the smile he had that had warmed my heart. I didn’t want to think of what he’d done to us, how he’d betrayed me. Or what a fool I’d been.

It hurt too much.

I woke in the morning to birdsong. To rays of light streaming through the slats of wood that was our roof and on to my face. To the flower I had picked, it seemed like in another life now, with its petals open to the sun. To peace that meant not remembering. To happiness that was ignorance.

I wished I could lie there for ever with no thoughts or memories or worries. Calm. Stillness. Forgiveness. Wished I could stay in that suspended moment of innocence. But I heard my grandfather’s sigh, his rattling cough from too much time in the mine, and I jolted back to our life and sat up on my bed mat. Still there was no Grandmother.

I stared down at my shoes waiting for me, caked in dry mud that seemed to be holding them together, and my clothes that I had no choice but to wear, the armpits stiff with sweat, and covered in dirt and grime, stains and mud; never washed, too slow to dry and no spares to wear.

I had become the same as all the others. I was a living skeleton, with skin covered in sores and eczema stretched over bones threatening to snap and hair matted like a bird’s nest. Despondency dragging at my legs and pulling at my shoulders.

We got up, me and Grandfather, and got dressed, with barely a word shared, and as we left our hut to head for work, I caught the look in his eyes as he pulled the door closed behind him, hoping, I’m sure, as I was, that she would be there waiting for us by the time we returned. Hoping, I think, that he could tell her again how sorry he was and how much he loved her.

And I hoped she would say it in return.

How sad it was, to be that age, to be grandparents, to have been together so long, and still be so in need of hearing those words, and of being so scared they were no longer felt.

I stood with our ‘villagers’, our work colleagues, our fellow prisoners, receiving orders and quotas for the day as if it was any other, and I stared at the space where she should’ve been, and didn’t know what to think or what to do. I didn’t want to consider the possibility that she might not be coming back, didn’t want naivety to let me believe she might still be alive.

Why? For Grandfather because I didn’t want to see his pain any more than I already had.

I caught the eye of the girl I thought of as a friend, watching as she nodded her head, looking first to the gap and then to me, and I gave the slightest shrug of my shoulders. But as the lines broke up and people moved away, I edged towards her, trying not to attract the attention of the guard as I altered my path to reach her. We passed, slowing, keeping our eyes away from each other, and she whispered with barely enough breath to make her words audible, and I nodded my head just a fraction to acknowledge I had heard.

“She’s in solitary.”

I walked away with no possibility of asking why or how long for, and without the chance of thanking her for saying three words that gave me some comfort, but risked her own life, even though she was barely ten paces ahead of me. And I was oblivious to the mutterings of the guard as I struggled up the mountainside, and the mood of the people around me, and even the sunlight flickering through the trees as I passed in and out of shade.

I knew what it meant – being in solitary. Not as simple as it sounded, not a normal cell by yourself. Of course it wouldn’t be in this sort of place. Punishment was imaginative and for ever evolving it seemed, as they conjured more ways to make us suffer or to make themselves feel more powerful.

I don’t believe they all hated us. One or two, I believe, left a part of themselves at the gate when they entered, unable otherwise to carry out orders. But most, and definitely the one who hated me, took pleasure in hitting us and pride in themselves when they caused us to cry out in sadness or scream in pain. Or when one of us died. They enjoyed us and the opportunity we gave them to do the cruellest of things.

I had seen some of what man is capable of when no threat of repercussion hangs over him.

I struggled onwards, the gap to the girl in front growing as heaviness and sadness and hopelessness pulled me down. Images flashed in my head of that guard dragging Grandmother away, her bare legs scrabbling in the dirt, her mouth gaping open as she cried out, her eyes searching over the people who were ignoring her. It shocked me still. And it scared me.

I could see her in the cell that was more like a box; too small to stand up or lie down in, forcing her to crouch on her knees, hands resting on thighs, heels pressing into her bottom. Spikes on the walls stopping her from leaning. Her frail body not making the slightest movement. For hours. For days. Sometimes, I had heard, for weeks.

She was an old woman before she came in here and eighteen months had aged her like eighteen years. What would this do to her?

It will kill her
, I thought.

She will die.

And Grandfather…?

I reached the treeline with tears rolling down my face.

I owe it to them
, I thought,
to at least try.

Our work detail had changed a few days before. Medicinal herbs and wild ginseng were needed, they said, though I doubted any were for us. Maybe for the guards or their families in their living area with their houses and schools that were warm and clean and comfortable, with food that wasn’t corn or tree bark or grasses, that didn’t give you diarrhoea one day, constipation the next.

But this work gave us more freedom. We could wander out of earshot of the guard and away from where he could watch our every move. I wished he’d sit somewhere away from me, close his eyes and go to sleep and ignore us. I would work still, of course, we all would: quotas had to be met; punishments would still be inflicted if we didn’t.

How nice, though, it would be to work without those eyes staring at me, without waiting for him to come along and kick my legs from under me, or give half my quota away to someone else, or point his gun at my head as he had done so many times before, watching the fear on my face, the sweat growing on my brow and the shaking of my hands. Not knowing if that would be the day he would pull the trigger.

I watched him that morning as he moved from one of us to the next to the next, checking our bags, making sure we didn’t fill the bottoms with soil or the wrong leaves just to finish earlier. And I scanned through the undergrowth, thin and overharvested, searching for the right plants and the right leaves, but with my mind on other things.

An idea. A plan. Dangerous as it was.

I saw the girl again, my friend, bent over plucking at grasses, picking into the soil with her fingertips, and I made my way over to her, edging close, bending down, a glance over my shoulder to check where the guard was.

“How can I get her out?” I whispered. Her eyes flicked to me for just a second.

“My grandmother, how can I get her out of solitary?”

She shook her head. “Don’t be ridiculous. You know you can’t.”

“But… if I don’t… she’ll die in there.”

She shrugged. “Yeah. Or if not, she will when she comes out. Happens like that sometimes. There’s nothing you can do. You know that.”

“But—”

For a second she stopped working and turned on me. “No,” she said. “Forget it. Forget I told you. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“I’m glad you did,” I whispered.

“I’m not.” She plucked some leaves, lifted them to her nose and dropped them into her bag. “Because now you’re going to end up getting yourself killed. Or me. I should’ve known better than to try to be kind. That doesn’t help in here; you need to be selfish to survive.”

“Selfish is how I ended up in here in the first place,” I hissed.

She said nothing in reply and I edged away, feeling confused and sad. The only prisoner in this place that had spoken more than five sentences to me in over a year, that I shared something with, that I thought could be a friend – I didn’t want to lose that. But how could I stand by and do nothing? When I knew what was happening to my grandmother? Because they might kill me? That could happen without me doing anything. I looked down at my empty bag, no herbs or ginseng in it.

I’ll never make my quota
, I thought.
He’ll punish me for that anyway.

As I edged further back, I caught my friend’s eye, and I could see the concern on her face as she shook her head at me. But still I turned away from her and carried on because regardless of what she thought, or of what the consequences were, I needed to at least try.

Everything muted around me, and everything was gone. Just me. And the guard. And my grandmother somewhere at the bottom of the mountain.

I was so scared I couldn’t even hear my heart trying to pound out of my chest, or my jittery, uneven breath.

I glanced over my shoulder towards the guard and saw him leering at some man, jabbing at his face, his mouth opening and closing as if he was shouting. But I could hear nothing. I pulled in a slow breath, held it and eased it out again. My decision was made. I edged towards the trees.

If I can just make it that far
, I thought,
then I can hide. He won’t be able to see me. Maybe won’t even notice I’m missing. At least for a while. Then I can sneak down to the camp. I can find Grandmother.

I paused, bending down, pretending to pick some plants as I peered to the side. He was walking further up the mountain now, taking something out of his pocket, lifting it to his mouth. He was eating while we starved.

I stood again, hurrying to the trees now, knowing this could be my only chance, hoping beyond hope that he wasn’t looking, wasn’t watching. That nobody was. Nobody’s eyes were following me, wondering, questioning what I was doing.

We’d been told where to look and where to go. And I was not in a place people were looking. I was not in a place people were going.

I was nearly there. I kept my eyes on the trees, but the branches seemed thinner now I was closer, the leaves not so dense.
This won’t cover me
, I thought,
won’t hide me; he’ll still be able to see me.
But my legs kept driving me forward and as I reached the treeline, I paused for the briefest of seconds.
I could still turn round. I could still change my mind, step back, step away.

I paused. Thinking… thinking… I took one step into the trees. Then another. And another.

I wished the trees would wrap their branches round me, swallow me, hold me safe and transport me down to the camp. I trod through the undergrowth thinking,
I have no plan for when I get down… I haven’t thought this through… What should I do? Where should I go? How will I find her?

And suddenly there was a gunshot. Just one. Tearing through the air. I stopped and ducked. Spinning around, trying to see where it had come from. I stared back at my work group, realising I hadn’t walked as far as I thought. I could still see their outlines, make out who was who.

I hid behind a tree, low to the ground. I could see the guard with a gun in his hand, striding back and forth, back and forth, and I saw someone near him, her shoulders hunched, her body trembling. And I knew it was her, my friend.

I sighed and closed my eyes. He knew I was missing. Knew I must be nearby. Assumed she knew where I was. And I
knew
what he would do to her to find out. I heard him shout at her, a mess of jumbled words, and watched her cower.

My friend.

He would beat her, I knew, hit her, kick her, punch her, stamp on her, whatever he wanted to do, and when she told him, because she would, he would beat her again. Because he could.

Would he kill her? I bowed my head. I didn’t want to hear the noises, or see whatever he did. Someone hurting again, and again it was my fault.

What am I doing?
I thought.

But… I turned my back on her, took a breath and scurried through the undergrowth. My senses were alive and wide awake. My heart thumping so loud, my breath screaming in my lungs as I dodged in and out of trees, my legs shouting out with no strength in them. Twigs snapping, branches bending and leaves rustling. Thorns tearing at my clothes, mud slipping under my feet, bark damp and coarse on my hands.

And guilt. And determination. Banging at the sides of my brain.

Then something behind me. Breath heavy and low, panting. Feet thudding, speeding.

Closer.

And closer.

My legs kept going and going. Faster and faster downhill. So fast. Too fast. A hand on my shoulder, grabbing my hair…

And I was down.