Читать книгу A DREAM OF LIGHTS - Kerry Drewery, Kerry Drewery - Страница 7

I heard him come into the room that night as I lay under my blankets, but I didn’t turn round to say goodnight. My eyes were closed as I listened to him climb into his bed and pull the covers up around him, but sleep was far from me. I was tired and my head ached, but just as Kim Jong Il’s voice echoed round our house unbidden, so did my father’s in my head. There was no turning it off, no turning it down and no ignoring it.

My body trembled with cold, my stomach grumbled with hunger, and darkness swirled and moved around me, dancing in front of my eyes. And over the background of Father’s shocking words, my own came again and again – How could he even think that of our Dear Leader? How could he question Him?

And the loudest – I should report him.

I remembered, back at school, all the songs and poems, teachings and rhymes I had learnt by heart from nursery through to my last year, things that were unrecognisable to me as anything but truth: unquestionable and sacred.

“ Loyalty and devotion are the supreme qualities of a revolutionary.”

“ We have nothing to envy in this world.” But what about Father’s loyalty and devotion? And why would anyone question what we lived by? Why would anyone not believe?

But Father didn’t.

I should report him, I thought again. He should be taken away for re-education, to learn again how good our Dear Leader is, how to follow Him, to do what is right by Him.

And I remembered all the stories too, that we had been taught about our Dear Leader; how when He was born a bright star appeared in the sky, and a double rainbow, and a swallow flew down from heaven declaring the birth of a general who would rule all the world; that His mere presence could make flowers bloom and snow melt; that when His rule of our nation began it caused trees to grow and a rare albino sea cucumber to be caught.

How can Father not believe those stories? I thought.

For a second, just a second, my head was clear and I stopped.

I told myself the stories again, but this time I really listened and really heard the words, better than I had ever done before, and whether because of the stories or Father’s words or the images from my dream, I allowed the smallest grain of something to settle in my head. Not of doubt, or disbelief. No. It was more like curiosity, or a desire to understand, a continuation of something that had begun a year earlier, when I met Sook.

That, for me and for my family, was the beginning of the end.