The Limits of the World by Andrew Raymond Drennan

Author:Andrew Raymond Drennan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cargo Publishing
Published: 2015-03-24T14:03:06+00:00

‘The Secret Reader; Talking Heads’

Chollima Street, 17th December

Han pulled the cello case out from under his bed, getting the same rush of excitement he had felt when he first opened it in Mae’s apartment. He wondered if the previous owners of Nineteen Eighty-four could have ever imagined it finding its way into North Korea, where its presence would be an on-going matter of life and death. The book had found a way to come alive, to prove itself.

He sat on the end of his bed and read the first line quietly, as if someone else were in the room who he couldn’t disturb: ‘“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”’ He held the book in a tight grip – the blood draining from the tops of his fingernails – scared that if he let go for even a second the spell he was caught in would break.

As the pages passed, he listened out for some sound of Mae coming home, but he found himself lost in the figure of Winston and his silent suffering in his lonely Ministry of Truth office. The pitiless way Winston looked at his fellow citizens, helpless to do anything for them except grieve the sad passing of time. Han dragged A Great Mind across the bedspread, now realising how long he had been sitting in what he thought would be a temporary position at the end of his bed, and took the pencil out of the book’s hollow centre. He lit a Commie Marlboro, letting his thoughts crystallize in the pause required to drag on it, then turned to the book’s empty back pages to write:

‘I have discovered the tourists and they have discovered me. There is nowhere left to hide now and we are getting to know each other.

‘There is still no sign of Mae downstairs, and now I realise how Werther felt. You see, I didn’t have anyone before she came along, and now I’m in love. There are limits to how long you should go without love, or at least desiring someone. Humans’ longing for connection requires a target, otherwise you’re throwing darts in the ocean as a means of fishing. You are just slowly decaying, by yourself, the sky’s invisible cage descending on you. I don’t know what kind of love would be good enough for me. How much love could I take? Is it possible to want someone too much? If I was with Mae would I not be like a young man having a whole bottle of whisky for his first drink? I’m not sure I could take it. Maybe my body isn’t built to withstand such love. Listen to me: I don’t even know her, yet I talk of loving her. How can I miss someone I don’t even know? Because when love appears inside you, you realise it’s what you’ve been waiting on all those other times you’ve been suffering. The Inmin Boanseong might take Mae away from me, they

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