The Lizard Cage

by Karen Connelly

  Sein Yun’s smile is nothing like the Buddha’s. His wrinkled face squeezes up like an old mango. His lips rise; the two gold eyeteeth glint. Sein Yun jerks his chin downward, meaning Kneel beside me.

  The boy has a good excuse. “My father never went to the temple.”

  The palm-reader stops smiling. His face becomes less squeezed and more sad, but the boy doesn’t believe that moony look. “Your father has been dead many years.”

  Nyi Lay glances down at the cement between his feet. What does the palm-reader know about it?

  As though reading his mind, Sein Yun says, “I knew him.”

  The boy’s throat squeezes like a vise around two words. “My father?”

  “Yes. He played cards with us. He was a good card player when it wasn’t for money. When it was for money, the poor fellow always lost. But he used to win cheroots by the dozen. Remember when we played at the little tea shop in your village? You’ll remember if you try—you kept asking to go home. You were very, very small then. Maybe you’ve forgotten. Or do you remember?”

  The boy drops his head. He forgets-remembers many things about his father, whose image has blurred in the midst of so many men. Cage faces—even the warders’—share a certain tightness, as though the bones are too large for the skin that contains them. It’s like a mask the prison gives to every man who passes through the gates. The boy sees it on Sein Yun’s face too.

  He forgets-remembers so much. Now a clear memory from the other world rises up and takes hold of him. He is a small child again, walking past a late-night noodle shop, his fingers tucked into his father’s longyi as they rush through the rectangle of bare electric light that falls from the small building. The boy hears voices first, then turns and sees the happy ruckus, men at the tables, the laughter and shouts that mean toddy rum and cards. The father feels his child turn, sees the hungry look, the longing. The child wishes, inarticulately, deeply, that his father could be there, among those laughing men in the unshaded light. He has almost never heard his father laugh. But the man misunderstands. Yanking the boy forward, he growls, “If you ever start that nonsense, I swear I’ll lock you up. Never play cards. There’s enough gambling in this life as it is.” The child has no idea what gambling is and only the merest comprehension of cards, but he doesn’t try to explain. He only replies, “Yes, sir,” like a tiny soldier. The two of them keep going, walking quickly along the dark road.

  The boy looks into Sein Yun’s face. Liar, he thinks. Stupid liar. My father never played cards. He smiles at the palm-reader. “What was my father’s name?”

  Sein Yun’s mouth gapes open. Then closes into a dark red O surrounded by deep betel wrinkles. “I …” He taps his head. “You know, I’ve forgotten! I must be getting old.”

  Nyi Lay would like to spit, but he does not—he is at the shrine. So he just removes his eyes from the palm-reader, like an adult looking away from something unpleasant, rotting food or a dead animal. He shifts his gaze back to the Buddha, hoping that the secret smile is still there. It is.

  The palm-reader is like a man trying another key in the lock. “Nyi Lay, you can worship here, even if you don’t know the words. The Buddha will not mind. He is very generous. Besides, your mother was a Buddhist.”

  Anyone who knows cage business would know his mother was a Buddhist.

  The palm-reader smiles, more ingratiating now. “Come, why don’t you kneel down and pray with me?”

  “I have to deliver the tray. Then I have other jobs.”

  “Ah, yes, you’re doing the singer now. I was his server before you, you know. It’s important work. Well done.”

  The boy doesn’t want the man to compare them, to make them the same just because he has taken over Sein Yun’s job. The skin on his back contracts, shivers, the way it does before he throws up. He is surprised at himself, confused by this tumult within him that suddenly wants to get out. Before he knows what’s happening, the words begin to escape, though they are not rushed or fearful. They do not act like escapees. “His mouth is all broken. I take him his food, but he cannot eat. Because of you.”

  “My dear boy, what do you mean? What are you talking about?” Sein Yun’s smile disappears as he becomes wide-eyed with incomprehension.

  The boy’s voice sounds clear in his own ears. “You know. You were the singer’s server before me.” It’s a voice barely used, like a new bell but sharper, different in function, closer to a very small silver blade. He stares into Sein Yun’s eyes. “You ratted on him, remember? And the politicals in the dog cells. They are there because of you.”

  Caught off-guard, the palm-reader is at a loss for words. In that silent gap, the boy turns and walks away, his orange flip-flop and his burgundy velvet flip-flop slapping against his heels.

  . 37 .

  Sein Yun doesn’t stay at the shrine for long. He never does, unless he has business to conduct with someone. The little rat-killer was not business, he was just a thought, a probing. Little sack of bones. Shit with eyes. And a tongue.

  It’s not so strange that the kid knows something about Sein Yun’s part in last month’s raid. It’s no longer a secret, because the pen search didn’t exactly go as planned. Where did the damn thing go? During the past month he’s read palms for free and chatted up the guys left, right, and center, feeling through metaphorical pockets like a whore. There’s nothing to find.

  The warders did the main convict halls, they did the sentencing hall. They tore up the gardens and combed the compound three times. They even stirred up the latrine holes—what a stink that must have been. The palm-reader’s done his part too. He got the cook to harangue his work details and helped him search the kitchen. He sucked up to the medics and prisoner-helpers in the infirmary and the hospital, but there’s nothing to find, anywhere. Or a lot of things all over the place—pens, pencils, razor blades, notes, love letters, newspapers, an American five-dollar bill (a sheer miracle, kept for good luck, and pocketed immediately by Handsome), a working transistor radio, batteries new and old, magazines, makeup and pantyhose and sexy nighties (the faggots have nicer clothes than his wife), even a broken telescope, but no white pen, razor-nicked at the bottom, razor-nicked at the top. Scuffles broke out among the convicts in Halls One and Four. Some jerk in Hall Five, angry about the raid, attacked one of the warders and the whole place went crazy, had to be locked down for two days. Four cons were sent to the hole for a week, with nothing to eat for forty-eight hours.

  That stupid little brat. Sein Yun realizes he is too polite—he should have smacked that kid a good one. As if the palm-reader doesn’t have enough shit on his plate. Handsome’s pissed at him, and Tiger’s making noises about finding someone else to do his heroin runs, all because he lost his pens and a few sheets of scented paper. Unbelievable. Sein Yun walks away from the shrine. Without knowing it, he’s developed a curious tic, one he shares with Handsome. He scans the brick-chip ground as he walks.

  Where did it go? The singer could have eaten the damn paper, but who could eat a pen? Impossible. You can’t eat a pen. It would make you choke.

  Really, it verges on obscene, that brat making his accusation, as if the palm-reader has broken some sort of code. Little twat. There’s nothing more annoying than a voice full of its own innocence.

  He doesn’t feel guilty. No. Absolutely not. He didn’t touch the singer, didn’t lay a finger on him. The thought never entered his mind. He doesn’t like violence; he is a civilized man. And Teza’s not a bad guy, for a political. Sein Yun tried to be good to him. Remember the cheroots? And that time he took him papaya? Pure altruism! Merit-making!

  Besides, this is a prison. If you were charitable every day, you’d be eaten alive. People do what they have to do.

  He had no idea that Handsome would fly off the handle like that, none at all. Let’s face it, the guy’s dangerous; everybody knows that. He wants to be an MI. The warders say he had orders not to do any work on Songbird and he’s in shit now for breaking the guy’s face. But that’s wh
at happens in the cage.

  Little brat rat-killer. It’s none of his business. Sein Yun had nothing to do with that savage beating, it wasn’t his fault. It’s not like he was standing outside the teak coffin, cheering them on.

  Sein Yun stops walking.

  He is a restless, sick-yellow man, stricken most of the time with a frightful inability to keep still. But he has gone very still.

  The pen.

  He’s found it. Right there, staring him in the face. It’s wearing mismatched flip-flops, in a monsoon storm, waiting for rats near the shower-room drain.

  . 38 .

  Free El Salvador brings a new gift with the five o’clock tray. He pushes three cheroots into Teza’s cell, along with a lighter. Then he sits back on his haunches to watch what the Songbird will do with the offering. All prisoners are pigs for cheroots. The singer who cannot sing sits down, holds a cigar to his crooked mouth, mimes lighting it. His eyes squint shut with pain as he speaks. “I still can’t smoke. Hard to suck, you know?” He exhales a stuttering laugh and nudges the lighter back out through the trap. It’s like playing a very odd game of checkers. The boy looks at the little red rectangle, then back at Teza, who says, “Watch.”

  He breaks the filter off the first cheroot and removes the green wrapping of dried leaf. There they are: small words on a thin band of newsprint. He finds the place where the newsprint is glued, picks at it until it opens. He unwraps the words, letting the inner filter of straw leaf fall away. Holding two small pieces of paper in his palm, he leans forward, close to the bars, closer; his hand reaches through. Cautious but curious, Nyi Lay stretches his arm out. Teza drops his paper offering into the grimy open hand.

  The broken mouth doesn’t make any difference; the singer’s eyes smile and smile. He whispers, “Zaga-lone-dwei.”

  Words. The boy looks down at the two curled pieces of newsprint, all covered in the circles and dots that make words.

  Then, as though it were a secret, Teza whispers, “Bathazaga.”

  Language.

  A light comes into the boy’s eyes. Bathazaga. This is a word he knows, but he thinks only of its first half, batha. That’s a different word altogether, separate but part of the other one too. One word lives inside another, he thinks, surprised. Batha is a word for every day, like breathing or drinking water. It means to bring the Songbird gifts, or to visit the nat’s tree and make an offering of flowers, a little clump of rice placed on a leaf. Batha.

  Batha is religion. Bathazaga is language. What does it mean when one word holds the other? He doesn’t know how to think about it, yet something is there, like the lizard in the grass who can change color. Batha is the Muslim men praying in daylight and darkness, their voices an echo of his dead father’s voice. Batha. Zaga-lone-dwei. Bathazaga.

  He can’t understand how one word gets inside another, and why, and what it means. He turns the newsprint over in his fingers, roughly. One of the pieces tears, and he squeezes both scraps in his small fist. Why is the singer making him think about farther-away things, words he can’t understand? Many thoughts rush into his head. He thinks of the tattered paperbacks in his shack, his hoarded treasures. He thinks of the white pen. The singer’s pen. He thinks of writing.

  Here is a silence filled with many voices. Though neither child nor man speaks, they are talking—their thoughts drift into the air and ribbon together like smoke, twisting, dissolving. Teza thinks, When he’s frustrated, how much he resembles Aung Min! The boy opens his hand again, glares at the crumpled scraps of newsprint, then lifts his eyes. Suddenly they flick away from Teza, toward the sound of footsteps crunching gravel.

  Their reactions are identical, resembling those of lovers caught in a guilty embrace. The boy springs to his feet. Teza rises and steps backward unsteadily, tucking the cheroots into the waist of his longyi. He and the boy lower their heads.

  Both of them expect to see the old warder who sometimes comes to open up Teza’s cell so Nyi Lay can take away the latrine pail. Their guilty surprise turns into something else again when Chit Naing rounds the corner of the white house. His official mask breaks open when he smiles, first at the boy and then at Teza. “What are you two up to? A football game? Playing cards?” The boy’s guarded expression cracks enough to reveal a smirk. The jailer peers into the cell.

  “Has Nyi Lay given you a file to escape with?” Chit Naing laughs, then notices the boy’s indignant expression. He smiles and touches the bony shoulder. “I’m only joking, Nyi Lay. I know you’re doing a very good job, as usual. Here, why don’t I open up and you can do our inmate the favor of emptying his pail? I’m sure he would be very grateful. Correct, Ko Teza?”

  The singer replies, “Yes, that’s a good idea.” This is the first time since the beating that he’s seen Chit Naing in such an easy mood. The ring of heavy keys clanks against the iron bars as the jailer unlocks the grille and lets the boy through. Nyi Lay hoists the pail and rushes out.

  Chit Naing knows he’s walked into something. It’s like stepping backward through a spiderweb in a dark room. He feels it pulling, stretching behind the boy, who has already disappeared behind the outer wall. When he turns and looks more carefully at Teza—his hands folded in front of his body, his slightly hunched back—the jailer is sure of it. Some private act has taken place between them.

  The thought of a sexual transaction crosses his mind, but he dismisses it. Teza is not a homosexual. Even if he was, the boy never makes himself available.

  “Was I right? Has he really given you a file to escape with?”

  “No, no. I gave him a file to escape with.” Teza winces. Too much talking. He breathes out the next stinging words, “Why is he here?”

  “I suggested to the Chief Warden that he would be an excellent server. I know he’s not much of a talker, which the Chief appreciates. He’s also very obedient.” And, as the Chief was only too happy to point out, completely uneducated, therefore without politics.

  Teza shakes his head. Chit Naing has misunderstood his question. “Why is he here, in the cage?”

  “Well, he … ah, lives here. His father was a warder who died several years ago. There was nowhere else for him to go.” That was another reason why the Chief let the boy have the job. He lives in the cage, knows nothing but the cage, so he could never be bribed to take messages out or bring contraband in.

  “Why not an orphanage? Prison is too hard. He’s only a boy. Why isn’t he living in a monastery school?”

  “He doesn’t want to leave the prison. I talk to him about it sometimes. He’s never even been to Rangoon, if you can imagine that. He’s afraid of the city.”

  Teza steps closer to the open door. “But he’s only a boy.”

  It dawns on the jailer that this is it, this sympathy is the illicit interaction. Teza’s feeling sorry for the kid! Chit Naing smiles slightly and asks, “How are you? You sound better. Far too thin, but better. I see the swelling is down.”

  “Yes, I can open it now.” Teza blinks his black eye.

  “The doctor will come by before he leaves today to give you a shot of morphine. And you’re still getting your double ration of rice, aren’t you?”

  Teza nods, though he doesn’t add that it has been many days now since he’s eaten the evening meal. He knows Chit Naing will be angry with him if he finds out about the fasting.

  “I have good news for you.” This must be why the jailer is so relaxed, even making jokes. The haze of guilt and reticence that has surrounded him for weeks seems to have lifted. “The Chief Warden is tired of this search for the pen. He gave Handsome a bit of an extension, to keep looking, but he and his men can’t find anything.” Chit Naing looks carefully at Teza, whose face doesn’t change. “It’s been almost a month since the raids started. They still have no evidence to incriminate you. The papers for the list of the defendants and the charges against them have been drawn up. Your name is not there. You know what that means, don’t you? You won’t go to trial. They can’t extend your sentence.” The
jailer tries to gauge Teza’s reaction to the good news. Chit Naing doesn’t tell how he removed the court files last night and replaced them this morning with trembling hands. While they were in his possession, he copied them at a safe shop and dropped the copy off at a small hut in an open-sewer satellite town outside the city. Today or tomorrow, the papers will be picked up by an old man, an agent who carries information to the revolutionary and dissident groups on the border.

  Chit Naing likes to imagine that Teza’s brother will read the files before they are compiled and published. All tribunal records within the prison system are highly restricted documents. The jailer wonders if any copies of prison court proceedings have ever left the country. He’s already planning to smuggle out the trial documents themselves, when the hearings are over. The thought of doing that fills him with an excitement indistinguishable from happiness. That is how the singer perceives it too. Chit Naing is happy. Though the jailer is deeply relieved that Teza is not among those charged, primarily he’s sailing on the adrenaline of his own subterfuge.

  Waiting for something from Teza—some celebratory gesture, however subtle, or an indication of relief—Chit Naing pushes his glasses up his nose and leans through the slightly open door. Teza only nods, as though distracted, and looks past him. Chit Naing wonders if Teza’s injuries have rendered him apathetic. The jailer carefully examines the dark green and purple skin around the eye, the broken jaw hanging loose, various bruises and swelling still visible on his face and neck. Between the injuries and the shaven head, Teza has changed so much that it’s hard to remember what he looked like before, and before was only a month ago.

  It was the beating that pushed Chit Naing deeper into measured recklessness. That’s why he was able to steal the list of defendants and pretrial papers. Though he comes to the prison every day, he’s not working for the generals anymore. He wants a response from the singer, not of gratefulness but of recognition.