The Lizard Cage

by Karen Connelly

  Go, go, he thinks, watching the doctor’s mouth move. The loud voice still booms off the walls, but within minutes it no longer hurts Teza the way it did before. Wherever the morphine is coming from—his mother or Chit Naing’s private dealings or that most powerful nat, the Chief Warden—the singer is very glad to have it. Once he feels the drug sliding in and through and all around, coating him from the inside out, he can pronounce that he doesn’t need it. He can manage the pain on his own.

  Twenty minutes, half an hour later—whenever, perhaps a century after the fucking doctor has gone—there it is, here it comes, the pain. It’s like this sometimes, a series of unexpected spasms. Or contractions. He is giving birth to … What?

  The fracture throbs up and down like a bloody grasshopper. Trapped grasshopper. How will it get out? The doctor must be wrong—clean break, ha! I am stoned. Isn’t this a good time to be honest? There’s a mess inside, a grasshopper with razor legs jumping, flying inside his flesh.

  But the pain is foreign, apart from him. It’s like watching a horror movie happening inside his own body, but instead of being frightened, he just stares at it, fascinated. What grasshopper? If he indulges in metaphor this way, is he breaking one of the Eight Precepts? Only if poetry counts as a sensual pleasure. Does it? He is very stoned. Is being stoned on morphine breaking one of the Eight Precepts?

  Relax, Teza. He lies down on his mat. Just breathe. He pulls his gray blanket up over his body. There is no bloody grasshopper in your mouth.

  It is very similar to meditation—you can still feel the pain, but it doesn’t really hurt. Or it hurts, very much, but you are far, far away from it, listening to some other music.

  There’s a sudden flicker at the wall’s edge. Free El Salvador, his grubby little hands!

  But it’s not the boy. It’s a lizard, scurrying up the wall. Hunting.

  Watching the reptile, the singer feels various emotions expand and fill his chest like clouds that change with the wind, curiosity shifting to sadness billowing into grief. But not only grief, something else. He sees and hears pieces of the strange dreams he’s had these past few weeks. His grandfather’s disembodied voice calls out through tall trees. Ants devour a fetus. Lizard claws curl around his arm. The visions of a man, he thinks, who wants to leave his cage.

  His eye flits up again, following the lizard on the outer wall as it rushes forward, eats a black speck of insect. An unexpected gratitude washes through him. He’s happy to see the creature but have absolutely no interest in eating it. The days of that awful hunt are over. They will not come again.

  What will come in their stead? With this question shimmering in his mind, he closes his eyes and immediately drops into a deep, blue-dream sleep. He’s floating in the sky. No, it’s water. Yet he’s not wet.

  And I’m not really sleeping! he thinks craftily, like a child who has succeeded in fooling his parents. I’m just dreaming. No, it’s not a dream. I am remembering. But the memory has the measurements of a dream, the same lucidity and length and weight. He is sneaking into their neighbor’s compound. And Aung Min is just ahead of him, crouched like a warrior.

  My eyes are closed, yet I see everything. He knows he’s in the cage, but the memory-dream pulls him down inexorably. Teza’s the rear guard this time. Aung Min’s the scout. His own little brother. He recognizes his longyi, the shape of his body, and feels a sharp jab of pain in his jaw. He mustn’t shout out loud. Only inside the dream. The memory, where he can say anything he wants. He could even sing.

  Aung Min!

  Aung Min turns and grins, then waves him forward. He creeps along, eyes on the wall. Teza glances back to the low gates of the long, narrow yard. They don’t want the wrong person to catch them at it. Though they’re allowed to enter U Toe Khaing’s compound, what they’re doing could get them into trouble. Old Uncle Toe Khaing wouldn’t care. If he were sitting outside his little flat right now (as he likes to do, in that saggy canvas chair), he might not even notice, because he’s always reading a dogeared magazine, his thick glasses perched at the very end of his wide, flat nose. Sometimes you can’t tell if he’s snoozing until the magazine falls out of his hand. Teza’s not worried about him. But if May May finds out …

  They are both avid slingshot warriors. Aung Min holds his hand behind him—Wait! They both go still, eyeing their prey on the plastered brick wall. Slowly the younger brother cradles a rock in the thick rubber band of the sling, stretches it back, and sends the missile flying through the air. A small gray-green house lizard gets it right in the head—there’s the bull’s-eye of blood on the whitewash—and drops into the grass below. Aung Min always hits more than Teza. But both of them are delighted enough to let out bloodthirsty shouts of triumph as they rush to the wall and squat over their kill. The creature’s still convulsing in the weeds, flipping around like a burned leech. The head is all red and misshapen, but look—he’s trying to run away and keeps falling over instead, legs kicking the air. To see a lizard fall over and wriggle like that is very odd—they’re usually so quick, so agile. The sight of it makes the boys feel strange, embarrassed for the pathetic thing. Looking for distraction, Teza takes aim at a bird, shoots, misses so badly that his prey doesn’t even fly away. It just squawks, as though irritated, and hops to a different branch. Aung Min laughs. “You’ve never hit a bird in your life!”

  Then they both hear the sound and freeze. A she-tiger. Other mothers nag or scream in high-pitched voices. But when their May May is angry, she mutters so quietly under her breath that it sounds exactly like a growl. Teza whispers, “Oh, shit.” The brothers turn around together. There she is, slowly walking in their direction. By the time Daw Sanda is standing before them, her arms crossed over her chest, she is silent. Aung Min squirms beside Teza, who stands very still. Daw Sanda pierces her sons with eyes like black-tipped darts.

  “May May—” Teza begins, his voice cracking.

  “Go home. Now.”

  Back in their own flat, they have to sit in tall wooden chairs in the front room, where the black-and-white photos hang on the wall. Teza looks at the altar above the pictures. He can smell the incense lingering in the air. Because the boys are sitting, May May glares down at them from a great height. “You know that when you kill anything, you break the First Precept—I refrain from killing.”

  Guilty sons. They cannot look at her, their good mother, who ostensibly goes without meat to purify herself but in fact gives her share to the boys.

  “And can you imagine how afraid you would be if some giant, boy-hating nat came and started aiming stones at your little heads?”

  Squirming, Aung Min interjects, “But we were just playing—”

  “Playing? That’s how you play? By taking the lives of other creatures?”

  They shrink in their chairs.

  “Imagine if some angry nat was playing with you that way, throwing stones at your head, making you run this way and that in the street, without a place to hide, like the lizards on U Toe Khaing’s newly plastered wall? Not even a single crack to make an escape! You’re so much bigger than they are!”

  Aung Min has killed more lizards, so he cries more. Tears drown his eyes and spill down his face. Teza is less remorseful but more ashamed. As the elder son, he should know better.

  “No, no,” she announces, imperious. “No crying. Go to Sule Hpaya before it gets dark. And get up with me in the morning to give alms to the monks. Making merit is better than crying.”

  It’s not the first time she has sent them alone to the pagoda. This puzzles Teza. Normal mothers do not send their children alone to temples and pagodas. But Daw Sanda is not normal. She is very tough. She wants her sons to become responsible for the religion.

  They stand immediately, eyeing the door. “I will give you enough to buy flowers and incense. Nothing else! And keep in mind, this is your allowance money.” Teza pockets the change. Once outside, they walk quickly through the late-afternoon heat. In an attempt to remain solemn, they discuss the possibili
ty of a giant nat pounding down Mahabandoola Street like Godzilla, pelting them to smithereens with stones.

  “Do you really think it could happen?”

  “No, Nyi Lay, she told us that because she doesn’t want us to kill lizards.”

  “But maybe it could happen.”

  “There are no giant nats.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Nats are always the same size as people. Or smaller. Maybe sometimes just a little bigger. She was only making it up to scare us. And you’re scared.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Yeah, you are.”

  “No, I’m only thinking of where I would hide. He wouldn’t get me. I would hide. I would run away.” At this word, Aung Min’s feet tumble into running, but it’s far, four blocks. Teza catches him by the shoulder and declares, with the unquestionable authority of an older brother, “If we run, we’ll drop dead in the sun before we even get there.”

  The buses of Mahabandoola Street roar past, men hanging off the window struts, dozens of people squashed inside. The roads around Sule Pagoda are filled with women and men going home from work or coming out to Anawrahta Street to sell their wares for the evening. Holding hands, the brothers cross the busy thoroughfare of roaring cars and buses. They maneuver around bicycle rickshaws and men pushing noodle and fruit carts. The moment they enter the pagoda, they move more slowly. They walk past the fortune-tellers and sellers of prayer beads. Ascending the stairs makes solemnity rise into their faces. Even though the flower-seller smiles, they buy their yellow and white bunches in silence, serious about the money passing hands.

  Teza reflects upon the lizards. Aung Min suspects there are giant nats, despite his brother’s doubts. They go up into the pagoda, where other people are sitting, praying, and chatting quietly. Buses honk on the streets below, a few girls laugh on the stairs, but the two boys step forward in silence, crouching down to offer flowers and light the candles and incense. There he is, the Buddha, looking calm as usual, good-humored. Teza knows he was a real man, from India. If he was a man, then he was a boy once too. He was a prince—so he must have gone hunting himself, before he gave up his rich kingdom and became a holy seeker. Long before Prince Gautama rid himself of desire and defilement and attained enlightenment, he probably had a slingshot. A trace of smile curves the golden mouth. Teza stares up at the smooth face and suddenly, unaccountably, feels very sad. He swallows, angles his head down. Already kneeling, he joins his hands palm to palm before his face and bows, hands opening to let his forehead touch the tiles. His little brother follows him, three times, almost in unison. After genuflecting, they sit motionless in the aspect of prayer.

  Leaving the pagoda, they step slowly down the stairs, silent, their boyish faces calm and still. They ignore the palm-readers and souvenir peddlers. They don’t have enough money to buy sparrows and release them for merit, but they stop, as they always do, and chirp into the small bamboo cages. Then they reenter the city. For a few minutes they will be immune to the noise and rushing energy of the streets. They walk without speaking through Paper Street and the street of moneychangers, where old Indian men sit at small tables, arguing over chipped white cups of sweet tea.

  Going to a temple or a pagoda always makes them feel serious and lighter at the same time. A little later happiness will come and knock sound out of them, like strong wind against bells. Teza announces, “We won’t do it again.” Distracted by the smell of frying noodles from a roadside shop, Aung Min replies, “Maybe not.” Teza gives him a push. “I bet she won’t let us keep our slingshots,” Aung Min adds with a sigh. They walk more quickly, their breath pulling them through smells of curry and bus exhaust and snapping oil. The leaves of the trees in the slant of twilight glow like green liquid jewels. When Teza suggests, “It’s not so hot anymore,” the brothers, understanding each other, begin to run.

  They move in pace, not racing, sometimes they skip and giggle like girls, they are boys, after all, elastic and strong, they can do whatever they want, their elbows and knees are endless pistons. They leap over the broken teeth of cement and exposed sewers, laughing for no reason but to claim the joy of their voices even as they release it, send it flying into the air of this township, in their own city, Yangon, a name that means the enemy is gone. The brothers hoot and jump and run without flagging, five blocks home and beyond, their breath lifting them like birds through the brilliant dusk.

  May May is watering her orchids. The expression on her face is the same one she wears for giving alms, praying, and thinking about their father. Some of the more common purple flowers rise spindly out of clay pots, their faces openmouthed, as if they’re surprised to blossom on such flimsy stalks. But her favorites are attached with twine to wooden posts, cradled in burlap sacks and growing more as they would in the jungle, on trees. Green netting covers them, keeps them safe from the sun. It’s early evening, the sky like faded mauve and salmon silk, the air around them that same silk fallen from the sky.

  Teza wants to know her secret. “May May, how did you find out what we were doing? Did U Toe Khaing tell you?”

  “No, he did not. I just knew that you and Aung Min were up to no good. It was a shiver at the back of my neck.”

  “May May, really, how did you know?”

  “I already told you. Something came into my head and I needed to find out what you were up to. Stop gawking at me like that. I don’t need to see you, or Aung Min, to know what you’re doing. You’re my sons. And you two are brothers. Never forget that. Wherever we are in the world, we will always be connected by something very strong, even if it’s invisible. A thousand little threads. Or ropes! I don’t know exactly what they’re made of. Your grandfather’s fishing line, perhaps, which was very strong indeed!” She laughs. “Now go play with Aung Min. And remember what I said. The slingshots are for target practice and mangoes only!”

  Where is my slingshot now?

  Less than a year later, Aung Min loses his trusty weapon, leaves it behind on a secret mission to Pazundaung Creek (they get into trouble for that too, because once again May May finds them out). The two brothers become a one-slingshot hunting party, but they never kill lizards again. The next year, in favor of other games, Teza no longer wants to shoot bottle caps off the fence or hunt for mangoes. In their little upstairs bedroom, alone, he wraps the thick rubber band around the hand-worn wooden crook.

  I kept changing its hiding place so Aung Min wouldn’t find it. I didn’t want him to outshoot me with my own slingshot.

  The two grown brothers eat in strained silence. Their mother keeps adding another spoonful of food to Aung Min’s plate. Teza looks askance at him gobbling down the curry. He himself has little appetite.

  “Aung Min, I think it’s a mistake.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Your leaving. It’s a mistake.”

  “We’ve already talked about this. It’s not as though I have a choice. I’ll be arrested if I don’t leave. You’re at risk too, you know. You think you’re not, but—”

  Teza interrupts, “Why don’t you go into hiding for a while? To Mandalay or Sagaing, into one of the monasteries until the situation quiets down? The monks have hidden other students.”

  “The situation is not quieting down.”

  Desperation spikes Teza’s voice, making him sound much younger than he is. “Think of what Hpay Hpay used to say.”

  “Oh, Teza, not this again. It’s not the same thing—we live in a different time.”

  “I think his words are still true. When you pick up a gun, you become a dictator. That’s what our father used to say.”

  Aung Min pushes away his empty plate with such force that it spins to the other side of the table. As Teza reaches to catch it from falling, his brother shouts, “Stop our father this and our father that. He’s dead. They killed him! It didn’t matter to them what he believed. How many more people have to die before the regime changes?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m asking you.”

 
“Then this argument is over, because our question is the same.”

  “But our answers are completely different.”

  “That’s democracy in practice. Get used to it!” Aung Min can’t restrain a grim yet triumphant smile.

  Daw Sanda presses her lips together and fights to keep her tongue still. Each of her sons must decide what he has to do on his own. She looks sadly across the table at Teza. He can see from her expression that she too thinks he should leave. This only hurts him more.

  She touches Aung Min’s arm and whispers, “It’s past nine.” He will catch a night bus upcountry, where he’s meeting a small group of friends. Together they will cross the border into Thailand near Mae Sot.

  “Teza, I have to go. You will not come with me?”

  “I’m staying in Burma. My own country. This is where I belong.” He believes what he says. He isn’t staying because he’s a coward. He doesn’t want to leave home, his mother, his beautiful Thazin, but that’s love, not cowardice. He and Thazin will get married next year, or the year after. If she would come with him, then he might consider leaving, but her parents won’t let her go. They think the border is too dangerous. And she is too good, too respectful, to run away.

  Teza stares at his hands as Aung Min turns, lifts his legs over the long kitchen bench, and stands up. He is still my only little brother. Nyi Lay. But we will never be able to protect each other again.

  When Teza walks into the sitting room, Aung Min is already at the door, a small knapsack on his back. The very last of the family gold—a bangle, two necklace chains—is sewn into the lining of his blue jacket. “Just wait, don’t go yet.” Teza sprints up the stairs and returns with a small gift wrapped in old brown paper.

  Aung Min accepts the package and gives it a squeeze. “What’s this?”

  “Open it when you get to the jungle. I’m sure you’ll need it out there, dodging bullets.” Teza laughs, though his throat feels tight and his jaw is clenched. Again he is the one being left behind. It’s already happened once, with his father. And this time it’s worse, because Aung Min is choosing to leave him. He can’t help but feel betrayed. When his brother embraces him, Aung Min whispers, I love you, but Teza doesn’t respond. The words in his mind can’t pass through the knot in his throat.