A Dream of Lights (21 page)

He looked away from me, thoughtful, nodding. “Train’s coming,” he said.

I sighed. I’d have to wait for it to go, watch it disappear into the distance so much faster and easier than me walking behind it. I strained my ears, thought I could hear it, not a powerful sound, thudding and beating and screeching into the station, but a tired, quiet chug of effort.

I turned and there it was. I had never seen a train before. It wasn’t impressive and awe-inspiring, or shiny and new as I’d expected. And there was no sudden outpouring of passengers, no hustle or bustle, no whistling of guards or announcements over the Tannoy. It arrived almost apologetically. But I saw, and couldn’t believe, that there were people sitting on top.

“You better hurry,” the boy murmured. “You never know how long it’ll be here. Could be hours, could be a few minutes.”

“But…” I looked from him to the train and back. “The people… on top…”

He nodded.

“I don’t have a visa. Or a travel permit.”

“Neither do they,” he said.

I stared, my chest tight, my stomach hot. “But… what if…?”

“Two stops.”

I glanced back at the train. Kids were scrambling up the sides, and so much space was already occupied.

“Thank you,” I whispered. And I ran. To the train, green and rusting, with faces peering out obscured and contorted by the glass. I held an arm across me, cushioning the baby, and I got to the train, staring up at the bulk of metal in front of me, the tiny faces of the
kochebi
trying to escape, dangling above me.

No hands were offered down to help me, to pull me up, and I glanced around, desperate to see how I could get up there. The engine breathed in deep and I started to panic. I ran to a gap between carriages and clambered on to the tracks, hoisted a foot on to the metal holding them together. Then I put both hands on a window frame, and one foot on a door handle, and my fingers grabbed on to a lip of metal at the top of the train. I turned my body as much as I could, scared for the baby, that I was going to squash him against the train.

I felt something. I glanced down and saw the gravel between the tracks disappearing. I looked to the side. We were moving. Slowly, but we were moving.

With every bit of strength I had left, I pulled myself up, my arms screaming at me, my toes pressing against the train, keeping my body from hitting the side, desperate for the baby to be safe. My feet found the window sill and my elbows scrabbled to the top of the train, and a push and a stretch from my legs and I was up. Lying on my back, staring up at the blue sky inching away above me.

I rolled on to my side, looking over the station, searching for the boy. I could see him, his back to me, his head lifted a little, watching people walk by, waiting for something to drop. I looked at all the others who had nowhere to go and no one to care for them. Their faces so young and innocent, staring up at the bodies passing by with their mouths open and their eyes full of wanting.

Like baby birds. Like swallows.
Kochebi
.

The town slipped away behind me. The houses, the streets, the apartment blocks and the people. I sat with my back to where we were going, sheltering the baby from the cold air that blew through my clothes and jabbed into my skin, lifted my hair from my head and pinched at my face.

But I had been so lucky. I had seen no police, no soldiers, no guards of any sort. Were they searching for me? They must be, surely? How long had it been since I escaped? Two days? Three? I stared at the mountains dwindling into the distance behind me, horror hidden behind them. Grandfather by now surely dead.

I had imagined trains to be faster, thought I would be clinging on to survive, but it plodded and chugged steadily onwards with little more speed than that of a fast bicycle, speeding up sometimes, slowing down at others.

I wished it would go faster and the countryside would be a blur at the side of me, hurrying towards me and away, further from the camp and those footsteps I thought were following me. And closer to Mother.

I tried to be positive, kept telling myself I would be fine now,
we
would be fine, that we would find her. Nobody was following us because nobody cared. But I couldn’t believe it, and I pored over every piece of countryside as it came into view, over every house, every field and every tree. Looking, checking, searching. For a car, a tank, a soldier, a policeman, someone who would see me, know who I was, where I had been, what I was hiding.

It was written all over me. Wasn’t it?

I’m an escapee. Wanted. Report me. Take me. You’ll be rewarded. They will love you. They will kill me. And the baby.

Carriages stretched out behind me and in front of me, dark green bodies and rusted metal tops that stained the palms of my hands and the knees and elbows of my clothes orange. Kids sat and stretched and lay and sprawled; adults too, but not so many. All with blank faces and empty eyes. Nobody speaking a word or making eye contact. All of us lost in our own thoughts and reflections.

I hunched forward, my shoulders high, my neck and face disappearing inside my clothes to obscure my face. I swung my feet to one side, shuffling around and turning my back on as many of the others as I could, and I loosened the front of my clothes to feed the baby, hoping he would take it before his murmuring began. So desperate I was to keep him hidden and keep him secret from all those staring eyes.

I ran a finger along his cheek, his skin so fine, barely able to believe he was still alive, that he was mine. And he was. Just mine. Nothing to do with that guard. I didn’t see his face when I looked at this baby’s. I didn’t replay what happened that day. I didn’t feel the pain again, or the humiliation. He wasn’t a reminder of that place of torture; he was hope in an impossible situation. He was a future.

The miles dragged on. We passed an old man walking with an ox and cart, watching us with little comprehension in his eyes and no concern on his face. We passed a woman on a bicycle, another carrying a bundle on her head.

The tracks, old and worn, led us on, until eventually we came towards a village. Too close to a village. It came like a storm on the horizon, deep and ominous, threatening and worrying. It looked so much like my own: rows of harmonica houses with white walls and corrugated roofs, children bent double in frozen fields, a van parked nearby with a loudspeaker spouting songs, tinny and distorted, of the greatness of our Dear Leader. Songs I knew by heart, my lips mouthing the words without conscious thought. Women struggled here and there with buckets swaying from hands, men with spades and rakes and hoes.

And soldiers. Their green uniforms with red collars, their oversized caps with shiny badges and their brown belts pinching in waists. Black boots marching. Eyes watching, scanning, waiting. Guns slung across shoulders. Fingers too close to triggers.

I slunk down, though I was the only one who did, laying myself flat on my side as we passed perhaps 200 metres away, one hand resting under my cheek, the other supporting the baby.

Watching them all: the women, the men, the children and the soldiers.

A few years ago I had been one of those, before my life had exploded around me. What a simple time it had been. Would I wish away everything that had happened since that day and be back there?

In a breath I would.

I felt the baby stretch his body, felt his cheek turn to me and I heard a murmur so slight.

I’m sorry, little one
, I thought,
but in a breath I would. How could I not wish my family back? Or wish I’d never said those words, had that dream, met that boy?

But there was no going back. There were no wishes. And I could never change anything, undo anything, bring anyone back to life. The guilt made me feel sick, and my frustration at Sook made my head pound.

That’s not your village
, I told myself.
He’s not there.

My eyes filled and my tears fell, but I didn’t make a sound. I cried for everything that had gone; for the people in front of me struggling through life, for whatever lay ahead of me, and in fear that a soldier would turn round, stop the train, pull me down and shoot me dead.

I watched one soldier, with his olive green and bright red and shiny black, through my blurred vision, past the trees with bare branches and across the fields empty of crops. And I saw him turn, saw his eyes fall on the train, following it from the first carriage to the last and back again. Was he focusing on us balanced on top? No visas, no permits, no tickets.

Murmurs flowed down the train, fingers lifted and heads nodded cautiously. Some sat down, some lay down, some stared right back at him. I didn’t dare move, my breathing slow and shallow, my hands shaking, watching and waiting.

The music sounded louder, the words echoing in my head:

“
Brought up in a brilliant culture

The glory of a wise people

Devoting our bodies and minds to this Korea

Let us support for ever.
”

My body prickled, my head and my thoughts fuzzy and difficult, spinning and turning. The train seemed to slow and I wanted to scream at it to go faster, as fast as it could, to tear through this land and away from that soldier.

I saw him reach for his gun and pull it to his shoulder. Saw his head cock to one side and his right eye peer down the barrel.

“Please, no,” I whispered. “Please. Please. Not me. Not my baby.”

The sound came sharp. Rattling and belting through the air. A string of shots. Someone screamed. Someone else gasped. I held my breath and my whole body tensed and I waited to be hit. And I watched him wave the gun back and forth, pointing high to avoid the carriages.

He’s not trying to hit us
, I realised,
he’s trying to scare us. Show us he’s still in charge.

The noise stopped and I watched him lower his gun. On the train nobody moved or screamed or shouted or even whispered. I looked back at the guard, his gun pointing now to a flock of birds in the sky, and the shots rattled out again.

No
, I thought,
no matter how much I love my family, I would not have that back. Not in a breath, a second, a week, a month, or a year. Not ever.

The train carried on, speeding up slightly, and the village disappeared into the distance until it was nothing but memory.

I breathed the air deep into my lungs, fresh and clean, and I loosened my belt and tied myself to the top rail with it. And with the weak winter sun trying to warm my face, and the train gently rocking me, I laid a hand on my baby and let my eyelids fall.

The rest of the journey passed long and slow and uneventful. I drifted in and out of sleep, with dreams vivid and frightening, made from memories left in my head and from threats challenging my future.

They woke me with a jolt: with fear, relief, trepidation or hunger.

I finished what food I had left: insects and bugs and bits of leaves I had collected, keeping them hidden from the starving eyes around me. And even when the baby gave his murmur and his feeble cry, few people heard, and fewer still turned to look. Nobody was interested in anything but their own survival.

The hours disappeared behind us. The first stop came and went and slowly my stop, the town where I hoped to find my mother, crept towards me, and the houses, apartment blocks, flat buildings and the concrete station loomed larger and grew more and more intimidating.

As did the nerves in my stomach.

This is it
, I thought.
This is the all or nothing
.
I’m doing what you said, Grandfather
, I whispered to him in my head.
But what if I can’t find her? What if she’s not here? What do I do then?

And that struck me for the first time as a real possibility. What
would
I do then? Escape by myself? Across the border a few miles away and into China? Then what? To Thailand, Grandfather had said. Then to family in Seoul. By myself?

With stiff legs and fingers so cold I could barely move them, I struggled down the side of the train, waiting as long as I could before dropping on to the tracks, watching and copying those around me. I didn’t dare still be on the train when it pulled into the station, couldn’t risk getting this far and soldiers or guards or police capturing me now. And all the time I was thinking how ridiculous this was, how I could even dare to hope to find her, or think of escape, or believe that things could work out all right for me and the baby. But I could either carry on walking and looking and trying, or I could give up.

I fled across the tracks, following the others like rats, half running, half stumbling, darting here and there as my legs came back to life, until we made it far enough, and then we scattered away from each other and disappeared.

I felt lost. And I felt alone.

Think, think, think
, I told myself.

This was not like the first town where I could stay on the edges and all I had to do was find the train tracks. This was huge. This was like a city. And now I had to walk into the centre and down every road until I found her. And I couldn’t look suspicious. And I had to look as if I belonged there and had a purpose there, when in reality every turn of the corner, or glance to the side, brought me to streets that led somewhere unknown, and houses full of strangers. It seemed hopeless and ridiculous.

Roads stretched into one another, wide and smooth, and everywhere I went it seemed I was flanked by grey and concrete, with that flash of red staring down at me from some poster somewhere; or a gleaming statue rising up so far into the sky above me that it hurt my neck to look at his face and I had to shade my eyes from the sun gleaming down at me from behind his head.

I wandered. I meandered. Glancing at every face, looking for those eyes I had last seen full of fear not for herself, but for me, begging me to leave, to run, to hide, to not be found. And here I was, after all that time. Did she know I’d been caught? Did she know Father had been shot? Did she know we’d been sent to a camp?

Or maybe all these years she’d been waiting for me to knock on her door, wondering what had happened to me, wanting to know where I was, why I hadn’t been in touch.

I found myself at the edge of a market, and I tried to blend in with the other people; shopping bags in hands and coats of muted green or faded black, trousers all dull colours and drawn faces peering out from under hats or headscarves.

On every chest, in front of every heart, was a blot of red, the badge of our Dear Leader, his face round, his smile bright and wide with the happiness his leadership brought him. The widest smile and happiest face I had ever seen.

My feet crunched on frozen puddles alongside rows of stalls, all run by middle-aged women sitting on upturned buckets, their wares in metal bowls in front of them, or on plastic sheeting covering the ground.

Tiny children of indeterminate age trudged along, wide eyes flicking across the ground. One stopped and bent down, his oversized head looking like it would topple him forward, his fingers, scrawny and dirty, picking at the icy mud close to one of the stalls, at things too small for me to see. Grains of rice perhaps, or kernels of corn, which he lifted, still caked in mud, and put in his mouth.

I wasn’t shocked to see it, had eaten things similar myself, but was shocked to see it here, outside the prison fences, where not so long ago food had been given in exchange for work, where markets weren’t needed or allowed. I looked around at the sunken faces, the spindly legs of children and the sadness in the eyes of mothers. Hunger, it seemed, was now just as prevalent here as in the camp.

I stepped through slush that splashed on to a row of potatoes, and headed towards stalls set up on rickety tables. There was food: some, but not much. But I looked at the sacks of rice or grain, a few bunches of carrots, a handful of spring onions, and read the pieces of card placed on them, the prices glaring at me – sixty
won
for 200 grams of rice. A month’s wage. One apple for ten
won
, an egg for five. How could people afford to eat? Or to feed their families and their children?

I looked at the faces and bodies around me.
They can’t
, I thought.

I glanced at a bag of rice standing open on the floor, a cup inside to measure, a flag and red writing printed down one side. I tipped my head to read it. I knew that flag. Those white stripes, and red ones too. Those stars in their columns and rows, so neat on that blue background. The flag of our oppressors, our enemies, or so we had been told. On bags of rice in our markets.
Food aid
, it said on it. But it was being sold.

I took a step away, turned round and read down the side of another bag. This wasn’t food to be sold, this was a gift to the people.

I didn’t want to believe it and didn’t want to think about the how and the why. I reached out a hand when nobody was looking, took a carrot and hid it in my pocket.

And at another stall selling rice, I took two spring onions, and at one more I pulled into my palm a small potato, and hid that up my sleeve.

I had become many things growing up in this country: an informant, a killer, a gravedigger for my grandmother, a slave, a mother in the harshest conditions and a fugitive from the authorities. And now I had become a thief.

I strolled back out of the market and towards a main road, not caring what I had done, pleased that I would eat that day and hopeful I would be able to feed my baby.

At the main road I stopped, staring at a beautiful girl standing in the middle of the junction wearing a uniform of blue skirt and white blouse, her red scarf flapping at her neck. Her arms reached high into the air, directing traffic with black and white sticks, pointing first one way then the other.

A strange sight. She was mesmerising as she clicked her heels and stepped ninety degrees this way and ninety degrees that, around in a circle, a dance, a routine performed with meticulous accuracy. But, as I stared back and forth down the joining roads, I realised there were no cars, no buses, no trucks or even carts. Absolutely no traffic at all.

I was about to move on when I heard a rumble, distant and vague, deep and throaty, getting louder and closer. An engine. Suddenly I was back in my village two years ago, and I was standing at the window, staring through the dirty glass at the clouds of dust following a car as it made its way towards me, my parents and my grandparents, all the terror and horror I would see in my future stretching out in front of me. That noise, that rumble, and my memories overwhelmed me without pause or hesitation.

My body trembled. My hands shook. My throat was dry. My feet, my legs, wouldn’t move.

The engine noise deepened, a growl of threat and power, and I turned for a second: a solitary car, slipping towards me down an empty road, smooth and gleaming. I had never seen a car like it, never heard the burr of tyres on tarmac, or watched anything move that fast.

This is it. They let me escape. They knew where I would go, knew I would head here to Mother. Of course they did. They just waited for me to arrive.

It came closer. Louder. And I stood still, with fear burning into me.

This is it. This is the end.

I could smell the exhaust. Could feel it in the back of my throat. I commanded my legs to move, one foot in front of the other, in front of the other. Everything blurring around me. Streets and buildings and…

This is it. They’re going to kill me.

People and…

I’m going to die.

The noise was deafening. And the fumes. The car slowed and pulled alongside me.