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.
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.