Читать книгу A DREAM OF LIGHTS - Kerry Drewery, Kerry Drewery - Страница 8

One year earlier

Winters were long and cold, came fast and left slow. Every year school stopped for four months from November until the beginning of spring, yet still our days were filled, with homework – books about the childhood of our Dear Leader to learn by heart, quotas of paper or of metal to collect for recycling – or jobs for my parents, searching for food to bulk out our rations.

There was little time to do anything else, and little else to do.

The year before my dream, which we called Juche 97 – ninety-seven years since the birth of our Great Leader, Kim Il Sung – was the harshest winter even my grandfather could remember. We struggled through every day of it, waiting for spring to come while we watched helplessly as the cold made victims not only of our crops, but also of our neighbours. Too many times we dug into the frozen soil to bury our dead.

It was drawing into December and I stepped from my bed with feeble sunlight straining through the ice on the inside of the windows behind me, the cold clawing at me, icy and damp and unwelcoming. I pulled long socks up my legs, a jumper over my head, watching Father rushing to relight the fire, his body shaking through his layers of clothing.

We were the first up, my mother and grandparents waiting for some warmth to slide across our two rooms before their strained faces emerged from their blankets and duvets. A little while later I stepped from the house into air so cold it hurt your skin like a million needles and made your eyes stream, and I longed for spring and the summer following, the warmth of sunlight on my face, green shoots in the ground promising food, coloured petals opening into a smile.

I walked across the village towards the public toilets in near silence, a metal bucket swinging in one hand, an old spade and a pick in the other, listening to the crunch of stones under my feet, the breeze rustling at bare tree branches and my breath heavy in my ears. No birdsong – it was too cold – and no cars roaring or buses rumbling.

I loved the quiet, the calm and the stillness; no awkwardness to it, just spacious and free; and I loved the countryside, even in winter with its covering of frost over empty fields of mud, rows of houses with wisps of smoke from their chimneys, leading off into the sky and over the tops of trees.

It was rough and it was basic, but it was home and it was beautiful.

It was Monday, my usual day for collecting night soil, a time I liked because I knew no one else would be up yet. But that day, as I turned the corner, someone else was already standing there, his legs stretched over the ditch, his head bent low, his hands scrabbling at chunks of frozen faeces. I stared at him, not believing quite how tall he was, or how filled out his face was, or how developed his muscles looked, how bright his skin. Or, as he glanced up at me and smiled, how friendly, how content and at ease he seemed to be.

Most of us children of whatever age – no, all of us – were slender verging on skinny, were short to the point of being stunted, had skin that was dry and hair that was brittle, nails broken, muscles thin.

He stood upright, and I looked away from him quickly, not wanting him to know I was watching.

“Hello,” he said, inclining his head.

I gave a courteous smile and a slow nod back, but didn’t look up to meet his eyes. I moved to the ditch closest to me, trying to think who he was. I didn’t recognise him, didn’t know him from school, couldn’t place him in the village, what house he lived in or who his parents were. I couldn’t understand how he looked so healthy, where he could be getting food from.

He must be an excellent citizen, I thought. And his family too.

I rested my bucket nearby, my shovel next to it, and lifted my pick, swinging it in my hands, crashing it down.

“I’ve never done this before,” he said. “We never had to.”

I tried not to frown, didn’t understand why he wouldn’t have had to do this. “It doesn’t smell as bad when it’s frozen,” I offered, “but it takes longer.”

We continued in silence, and occasionally I risked a glance upwards, stopping to catch my breath, rubbing my aching back, watching his arms. With those muscles, they should’ve been so much more capable than mine, but they seemed surprisingly weak. My eyes drifted across the village and I noticed a woman watching me – someone else I didn’t recognise. As I struggled to lift the pick above my head and bring it down into the ditches of frozen excrement, her eyes never strayed from me. And it wasn’t until I’d finished, when I’d thrown the last lump into the bucket, bringing the level to the top, that she unfolded her arms and walked away.

First this strange boy, I thought, and now a peculiar woman.

“Can I walk with you?” the boy asked. “I’m not sure where to go.”

I stared at him. A simple request. A few words. But it felt like more. I nodded my reply, though, and we struggled down the path, alongside the fields and away towards the buildings, and I watched his feet walking, his fingers stretching round the handle of the bucket, and I listened to his laboured breathing next to me.

I was an innocent fifteen, had never had a boyfriend, never kissed, never held hands, or even thought that way about anyone. I didn’t know about sex, or how babies were made. We had no dating culture, just marriages, arranged usually through parents. Our Dear Leader gave special instruction that men should marry at thirty, women at twenty-eight, and children should be had only in marriage.

But as I walked with this unknown boy, I felt the possibility of something – something I didn’t understand.

“Tell me,” he said, his voice warm in the cold air, “why do we have to do this?”

My heart smiled at his naivety. “They use it as fertiliser for the crops,” I replied, my own voice quiet and trembling with nerves. “Every family provides a bucketful each week, then it’s defrosted and spread on the fields. But we don’t have any toilets at home.” I shrugged, took a breath, gathered my thoughts and glanced again at his face. “We used to be given a chit in exchange. Then when we handed the chit over, we’d be given food. But that doesn’t happen any more.”

“Why?”

I paused a moment. I’d never thought why. “I don’t think there is much,” I replied. “Food, that is.” But the second the words were out, I regretted them. What would he think I was saying about our Dear Leader? That He couldn’t provide for us, the Father of our Nation? I hadn’t intended that meaning, but I didn’t know who this person was; he could be a spy, reporting back those not faithful, who would then be arrested and disappear. All for an innocent comment misconstrued.

“Because of the floods and the cold weather,” I said. “And the bastard Americans,” I added for good measure.

He nodded.

I wanted to ask him where he’d come from. Why he was here. What life was like outside the village. Who his parents were. What they did. If he knew that woman who’d been watching me. But I didn’t dare.

I struggled along with my bucket and spade and pick, my fingers stiff from the cold and the metal handle of the bucket burning my skin. Every now and then I sensed the boy’s head turn and his eyes rest upon me.

We reached the building without another word and it was strange, not because it felt awkward, but the opposite; because the silence between us didn’t feel empty, it felt comfortable and natural, like there was no need to speak.

Our buckets were emptied when we arrived, our chits, despite them being unnecessary, were given and together we wandered out.

“My name’s Sook,” he said, tilting his head towards me.

“Yoora,” I replied.

He smiled, and I watched his eyes flit over me. “You look hungry.”

I didn’t reply. Weren’t we all?

“Here,” he said and pulled his hand from deep inside a trouser pocket.

My eyes struggled against the cold, trying to focus, frowning at a bun sitting in his palm. I shook my head. Nobody, nobody, gave food away for free. “I can’t take that,” I said.

“Please,” he whispered.

“But… where did you get it? The… the markets are miles away and you’d need a permit to go… and…”

“My mother bakes them. Then sells them.”

“But I don’t have any money.” I knew how valuable it was, was sure she’d miss even one.

“Just take it,” he said.

I reached out my hand, my fingers long, stretching, daring, and I didn’t care who his mother was or where she got the ingredients from or whether this was going to get me into trouble or not. I just saw food, and I just wanted to eat.

Hunger does strange things to a person, and I had been hungry for a long time.

I held the bun in my fingers, turned away from Sook and lifted it to my mouth and nose, closed my eyes and smelt it, stretched out my tongue and touched the crust, gently. My mouth watered and slowly, slowly I sank my teeth into it.

It was so good.

“I have to go,” I heard him say. “My mother will be expecting me.”

I turned to him, not chewing, just holding the piece of bun in my mouth, enjoying it for as long as possible.

“I live up there.” He pointed to the biggest house in the village, with far more rooms than the two we had. I knew the house: it used to have an orchard in the back before the village kids destroyed it looking for apples, stripping off the fruit and the leaves and the bark and everything. It had been empty since the last family were taken away for treachery. “We moved in yesterday,” he said.

He paused a second and I watched him look left and right and back to me. “Meet me sometime,” he whispered.

My eyes shot to him.

“After the sun’s gone down.”

I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. I simply stared at him, not believing what he’d said. But I caught movement behind him and I saw her, the woman from earlier. She was marching towards us, her black hair scraped away from her face, her hooded eyes piercing.

I didn’t stop to reply, or wait to see who she was, or what she wanted. Instead I muttered an apology, spun round and walked away.

I headed home thinking of my family: my mother and father who would be going to work, both thin and tired, hardworking despite the hunger in their bellies that was never sated. I thought of my grandparents: at home all day, too old, too weak to work, their skin stretched like old leather across their bones, their eyes hollow with sadness and disappointment, my grand­father’s stomach growling with hunger like a beast inside slowly dying.

I should share this bun with them, I thought, staring at it in my hand. But how can I explain where it came from? What will they think?

I took a guilty bite, and another, and before I even realised, there was too little for me to take home. So I finished it, and it was wonderful: the anticipation as I lifted it to my mouth, my senses screaming as I sank my teeth into it, that wonderful thick feeling as it slid down my throat. I missed proper food so much, couldn’t remember what a full stomach felt like, or what it was like to not be hungry.

When I neared the house I could hear voices, low and mumbling, lifting and dropping again, and I slowed my pace, trying to make out what they were saying as they spoke over each other. I stepped closer, resting my hand on the door. The wood creaked.

The voices stopped, and I stood for a moment, waiting for someone to speak again. But nothing came. I took a breath, steadied my face and stepped into the house.

The tension was palpable; my mother standing next to a cupboard, pushing the drawer shut as she watched me, my father at the fireplace, my grandparents seated at the table. I felt their eyes, all of them, upon me, all with the question behind them – What did she hear? But the guilt I was trying to hide was from eating the bun all by myself, not from overhearing their conversation. Yet I knew for the first time, as I stood watching them, that something, some secret, was being shared in my house, only it was not being shared with me.

It scared me.

“I’ve met somebody new in the village,” I said, hoping for the tension to ease. “He lives up in the big house.” I looked around, expecting curious glances and inquisitive faces, but instead saw my father fidget, heard my grandfather’s intake of breath, saw their eyes shoot to each other, and my mother’s almost imperceptible shake of her head.

“Stay away from him,” hissed my grandmother, her eyes narrowing at me as if they could see the smile he’d brought to my face earlier. “We don’t have any business with them. Remember your place, Yoora.”

Uncomfortable, I looked away, and saw my grand­father’s eyes drop. “His mother’s the new Inminbanjang,” he whispered.

“What?” I asked, staring at him.

But my mother was marching towards him, wagging her finger in his face. “No,” she whispered. “She doesn’t need to know. She’s only fifteen.”

“Know what?” I whispered back.

Over her shoulder my grandfather was shaking his head, and I could hear his mutterings. “Fifteen. She’s nearly a woman. She leaves school this year. She’s old enough to know the truth, and to be trusted. She should know.” Calmly he stood up, tucking the chair under the table and striding from the house. Nobody stopped him. Nobody said a word.

But even among all this confusion, the guilt I felt over the bun didn’t go away. At least not until that evening, when stomach-ache hit me, my body not used to the richness I’d given it, and I passed my share of thin noodle soup to my grandparents. My guilt then, to some degree, was assuaged.

I lay on my bed mat on that long winter night, watching the flames of the fire die, the embers fade and turn to black, and I felt the gradual leaking of cold from around the window frame and under the bottom of the door, felt it like ice forming across my face and cracking my lips, and I thought of Sook. I thought about meeting him, being with him, his face, his smile, his company.

He had given me a spark of light in my life of dark.

Yet his mother was the new Inminbanjang, and I did know what that meant, even though I had pretended not to, had suspected it as soon as Sook told me where he lived. She was the new head of our local neighbourhood group – a spy for our government.

Every few weeks she would have to report to an agent from the Ministry of Public Security. Inform on people who hadn’t worked hard enough, or had said something against our Dear Leader, or failed to wear the badge with His face on over their hearts, or let dust gather on His picture. An endless list.

Other people would work for her too, all reporting back to her, even if only gossip; they had to say something. Some of those reported would be sent to re-education lessons, some to prison, some executed in the fields. I had never known anyone accused to then be found innocent.

It hung over us as we tried to live, shaping everything said and everything done, not because of guilt – we had none, we were good citizens, working hard, doing our duty – but because of the power these people held. Even the most patriotic, the most innocent and best behaved and hardest working could be accused and found guilty of anything, if someone wanted it enough.

“Is anyone incorruptible?” my grandfather used to say to me as a warning. “If they’re hungry enough, or sad enough? Or need money to try to buy medicine?”

Or if they want to keep someone away from their son? I wondered.

I didn’t think for one moment, though, that the idea of a government spy was the truth my mother was trying to hide from me. There was something more going on in my home that I was not deemed old enough, or sensible enough, or trustworthy enough to be allowed to know.

But as I lay there in the cold, my thoughts again strayed back to Sook, and as my eyes grew heavy with the image of him, a warmth spread through me, sending me to sleep with a smile on my face for the first time I could remember.

Yet not for one moment did I think I was being naive.