The Lizard Cage

by Karen Connelly

  In 1988 many brave monks protested this way. The famous student leader Moe Thi Zon led a group of young monks in thabeik hmauk. As the monks marched along, holding their lacquered bowls upside down, more and more people joined them, until the crowd was thousands strong.

  Chit Naing speaks too loudly, clearly impatient, “Thabeik hmauk makes for very moving stories, Ko Teza, but you’re not a monk and the cage is not a monastery. Nor are you well enough to begin a hunger strike. It’s—” He wants to use the word crazy but says, “Dangerous. Why would you do that? Why now? What are you going to protest?”

  The question strikes the singer as horribly funny. “Give me paper and a pen. I will make a list.”

  The joke is lost on Chit Naing. Agitated, he walks out of the cell, strides down the short corridor, then pivots around in military fashion and returns, his face wearing its official mask. He’s about to speak, to say how ridiculous this is, but Teza quietly repeats himself, “My friend, before the strike begins, I need your help.”

  “You need my help?”

  “The boy needs to learn how to read.”

  “Ko Teza, what does that boy have to do with you?”

  Teza responds by scratching his left underarm: bedbugs or lice? Usually he can tell the difference, but right now he’s too tired. Nor does he have the energy to answer the jailer’s question. No matter what he says, he fears Chit Naing will misunderstand. It’s true: the boy has nothing to do with Teza. Yet it is also true that the boy is inseparable from him. “I want to help him leave. He has to leave the cage if he’s going to go to school.”

  At first, Chit Naing laughs. Another glance at the singer’s face tells him that Teza really thinks the jailer can do something. The beating obviously has affected the poor man’s mind; he’s delusional. “Ko Teza, the boy lives here. He doesn’t want to go anywhere.”

  “He might be afraid to leave, but he wants to learn to read and write. He will never do that if he stays in the prison. Will you help him?”

  An irrational bolt of fury hits the jailer. How dare the singer ask this of him! Not only is it a ridiculous request, but he asks it without anadeh, the proper decorum. “Haven’t I already tried to help you as much as I can? Now you want me to do more.” He stares indignantly into Teza’s face. The crooked mouth is parted slightly, the lower lip hanging open, his teeth and blackened gums visible. Saliva drools unnoticed from his mouth, down his numb chin. But Teza returns the jailer’s gaze with deep calm and self-possession, apparently unmoved by—and not at all afraid of—his angry words. At the same time, the deepened wrinkles around the dark eyes suggest that the singer is about to smile.

  Teza speaks first. “You have helped me, and others. You know I’m grateful. If I ask you to do more, it’s only because there’s so much to be done. We are all tired, U Chit Naing. Daw Suu must be very tired. I know my mother is tired. I imagine the generals are very tired too. And the ones who are fighting on the border, both sides, they must be exhausted.” He expels a little laugh. “All this fighting. It’s so tiresome.

  “I ask for your help because I have no one else to ask. You are one of the few brave enough to make choices. That’s what freedom is. We are fortunate, you and I. Even here, I have made my choices. But the boy doesn’t have that power. His life is this cage. He barely understands that he wants to leave.” Teza hesitates. “Before I begin my hunger strike, I would like him to go away from here.”

  Chit Naing breaks his gaze and looks nervously to the wall that blocks the white house from the rest of the compound. Soe Thein should be here any minute now for his shift as guard.

  Teza doesn’t care. Calm he may be, but his voice has a feverish intensity. “There is an old monastery school in Rangoon, in Kyee Myin Daing, on a short lane called Aung Ban Street. My mother knows the Hsayadaw who runs it. You could go to the abbot himself or to Daw Sanda—they would make it possible for the boy to live there. You can tell them he is my little brother from the cage. The Hsayadaw will take him, I know it. Tell him the boy wants to read. That will be recommendation enough. If the boy is called by the Hsayadaw for initiation, the Chief Warden has to let him go. He would lose face if he deprived the boy of the chance to become a novice.”

  Chit Naing heaves a great sigh. “Ko Teza, it’s not so straightforward.” The jailer backs away and steps out of the cell, pushes the grille door shut, locks down. Safe on the other side of the bars, he notices Teza watching him with that strange almost-smile on his face. “I’m not sure if you understand that the boy is afraid to leave the prison.”

  Teza glances down at the aluminum tray, scraped clean. “I understand that very well. But I see something else too. Every time he stands there, right where you are standing, I see how brave he is. His courage is stronger than his fear. He wants to go out and live in the world, but he has to fight to make that choice.” Teza looks up at the jailer, who can’t avoid his eyes. “The monastery school is called Pyinna Wadi. U Chit Naing, how could you not help him?”

  . 46 .

  Sometimes Chit Naing wishes he smoked. He has tried many times to start, but both cheroots and cigarettes irritate his throat. One drag of a cheroot can send him into paroxysms of sneezing. It’s too bad. If he were a smoker, he would be able to look occupied while doing absolutely nothing. As it is, he pauses some distance away from the white house and pretends to wind his watch. His mind careens forward and back as he tries to fathom all the singer has told him. The sound of Sammy the iron-beater thumps in his ears.

  He has never been so relieved to get away from Teza. He would be happy to keep walking at a brisk pace, past the records office and the Chief Warden’s building and the warders’ quarters, right out the gates and onto the road. Soon enough he will do exactly that, but Soe Thein hasn’t shown up yet. Chit Naing looks at his watch; twenty minutes late. He surveys the compound. The regular guards are stationed at their points, but Soe Thein is nowhere to be seen.

  The pounding hasn’t stopped. It can’t be Sammy the iron-beater. Chit Naing juts his head like a blind man toward the sound. Is someone finally fixing the hospital roof? That’s what it sounds like, a hammer banging nails into corrugated metal. Where is Soe Thein? The jailer doesn’t want to leave the cell unattended. He reminds himself to tell the warder to check in on Teza through the night—he’s unwell.

  This elaborate scheme to send the child out of the prison is impossible. Nyi Lay may be brave, but he doesn’t like going farther than the noodle stand outside the gates. He’s never been to a temple, so how could he go and live in a monastery school? Not just any pongyi-kyaung, mind you, but the place where Teza’s father used to treat the orphans—how many years ago? Twenty? Teza told him the name of the monastery, he named the street, but that doesn’t mean the place is still there. Since 1988, whole neighborhoods of poor people have been sent out to satellite towns. The SLORC has been very busy sanitizing the city’s neighborhoods, building up and tearing down, making room for business and tourist hotels. The place Teza remembers probably doesn’t even exist anymore.

  And—if Chit Naing understood correctly—once the boy is ensconced in this nonexistent school, obediently learning the alphabet and doing sums, the singer intends to announce his hunger strike. Maybe he is losing his mind.

  Who the hell is making all that noise? What are they doing? No one is fixing a roof at seven-thirty at night.

  He removes his glasses and rubs his eyes.

  Seven eight nine warders are clustered together outside. Soe Thein is at the front of the group, standing a little apart from the others. Just as he was leaving the warders’ quarters for his guard duty, Handsome sent him to fetch a shovel. Now, as the oldest man among them and well respected, Soe Thein is the only one who could say something. But guilt keeps him frozen there; he put that shovel into Handsome’s hands. The jailer wields it like a sledgehammer, raising it up over his head to strike, the sweat darkening the shirt on his back.

  At the rear of the audience, Tint Lwin shifts his weight from foo
t to foot, looking around, hoping Senior Jailer Chit Naing or the Chief Warden himself will appear and ask what’s going on, why is Handsome doing this—Stop! Stop it now! These words are stuck and silent in his own mouth, but he hears them, just as he heard them in the singer’s cell during the beating.

  Tint Lwin kneads his knuckles to keep himself from speaking. He doesn’t want to say anything stupid. But no one has asked if the boy’s still in there, too petrified to come out. The young warder is secretly fond of him; he’s a polite kid, and curious. Kaung-lay, Tint Lwin calls him affectionately, little creature. Tint Lwin stands on his tiptoes to watch another blow land on the corrugated metal.

  Surely the boy can’t be in there. Under those blows, he’d already be screaming, then he’d escape. He would run to the young warder, who would protect him fearlessly. Tint Lwin swears this to himself. His imagined bravery calms him. He takes a step closer.

  Still pounding away, Handsome is livid with rage. The emotion is contagious. Every man is itching to know if the pen’s really in there, wrapped up in a rag or buried. Could this be true, or has Handsome fucked up again?

  The men lean forward, half smiling or grimacing. After another solid blow, the buried corner post, its base nibbled by termites, falls over with a hollow dhoomp. Roped to the posts, the front wall—three separate slabs of corrugated metal—gives way. Handsome hits the top of the shack once more and stumbles forward in slow motion as the wood squeaks and the metal roof falls in, rattling and scraping.

  To keep himself from falling, the jailer drops the shovel blade to the ground and leans on the wooden handle as if it were a crutch. He wipes the sweat from his face and looks at the warders. “What are you waiting for? Take apart this pile of crap and find that fucking pen. It’s here somewhere.” He spits onto the rubble of the shack because his knee is too sore to kick it.

  Chit Naing puts his glasses back on. As he balances the wire-rim frames on his nose and secures them around his ears, the awful pounding stops. He turns his head toward the cessation of the pounding, and there, materializing out of the records office wall, is the boy. He leaps over two puddles, rushing toward Chit Naing.

  Out of breath, Nyi Lay pulls up directly in front of him and pokes his rat stick at the ground. He’s drenched. The turquoise longyi has turned dark blue with water, though it hasn’t been raining. The jailer greets him in the polite way: “Hello, Nyi Lay, have you eaten rice yet?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  Chit Naing peers down at the small face. A bruise swells around a cut on his cheek.

  “I’m doing some night hunting. For rats.” The boy’s voice is shaking.

  “But Little Brother, you’re soaked to the skin. What happened?”

  As if the boy hasn’t heard him, he steps closer to Chit Naing and whispers, “Can I go and say a prayer with the Songbird? I do sometimes, you know. He bows and whispers his prayers and I follow along. Can I visit him? Sir?”

  The jailer glances at the bruise. “You can go and see him for a few minutes, no more. He was very tired when I left him. If he’s sleeping, you must not wake him.” When he sees the relief that washes over the boy’s apprehensive face, he realizes the child has come here, to Teza, to seek comfort.

  He’s already stepping toward the corridor entrance when Chit Naing says, “Stop.”

  The boy freezes in his tracks and slowly turns back toward the jailer. Chit Naing has never seen such naked fear in him, on him. “It’s all right, Nyi Lay, I just want to ask you a question.”

  “A question?” The words come out flat and high.

  Clearly, someone’s hurt him. “What happened, Nyi Lay? Where did you get that bruise on your cheek?”

  The boy touches two fingers to the blooming cut and represses a shiver, suddenly aware of his cold clothes. “I … I fell down by the stream.”

  “The stream?”

  “Behind the kitchen and the hospital.”

  “You fell down. That’s why there’s dirt under your fingernails.”

  “Yes, sir.” He immediately wipes his hands on his longyi and starts cleaning the clay out from under his nails.

  “How did you fall down?”

  “I … I don’t remember.” He stops picking at his nails and holds his right hand toward Chit Naing like a supplicant. “Please sir, I would like to see the Songbird before he falls asleep.” Let me go.

  “Go on, then, be quick. I’ll wait here for you.” Chit Naing, lacking a cheroot, looks down at his watch.

  Nyi Lay has already darted behind the wall.

  • • •

  The long black hand of his watch makes a full round. One minute, then half again, then two. The jailer can’t help himself. He approaches the outer wall that surrounds the white house cell and stands motionless, listening hard. He can’t hear a thing. He steps quietly along the wall, curious but reluctant to disturb two worshippers. The jailer had no idea that the boy prayed—surely Teza’s doing. Is it true, though? Are they really praying? Chit Naing stands close to the wall and leans his head around the corner.

  The boy is kneeling in front of Teza’s cell. He genuflects, bowing once, twice, three times, hands raised in the aspect of prayer. Chit Naing steps into the corridor, presuming he’ll see Teza in front of the boy, bowing to an invisible Buddha image. But the jailer is wrong; Teza is curled up, eyes closed, with his head near the bars for fresh air.

  As the boy rises, he senses Chit Naing in the corridor and gives the jailer a muted, embarrassed smile. He puts a finger to his lips. The Songbird’s sleeping. Then he bends forward, grips the cement with his toes, and stands up. Chit Naing, ashamed of his spying, retreats to the compound.

  Within seconds the boy leaves the white house and comes toward Chit Naing, whispering, “I did not wake him up. He was already snoring.” Nyi Lay closes his eyes, distorts the natural line of his jaw, and mimics the singer’s labored snores. Then he returns to his earlier task of quickly and nervously cleaning his nails.

  The two of them walk a short distance away from the cell building before the jailer stops. “Nyi Lay, I want you to tell me something.”

  The boy is a step ahead, but he obediently turns to face him. “Yes?”

  “I don’t think you just fell down. What happened to your cheek?”

  The boy clasps his hands together very tightly and stares at the ground.

  The events of the evening crash back into his conscious mind, the stream and Handsome, the drowning and after, water and food wrenching out of him. And then? Skip and leap and try-not-to-run to his shack, and dig cry dig. Between his own intent and the calm of Teza sleeping, it’s as though the boy really did forget; all the bad things went away for a while. Why does Chit Naing make him remember?

  “Nyi Lay. You don’t have to tell me. You can lie if you really want to—I won’t hold it against you. But it’s better if you tell the truth. All right?”

  The boy has fixed his eye upon a dark spot of betel juice on the ground.

  The jailer asks, “Do you know why the truth would be a good idea right now?”

  “Why?”

  “Because if someone has hurt you, I can protect you in the future, but only if I know what’s happened.”

  As the boy mulls over this dubious claim, his eyes travel to the jailer’s boots and trouser cuffs. The drowning rushes into him. He wants to cry. Staring down at Chit Naing’s trouser cuff, he freezes. It has worked in the past, when he’s in bed. If he doesn’t move, the tears don’t come—he just falls asleep.

  “Nyi Lay?”

  A tremulous feeling, the sensation of cracking, sweeps across his back. He is being broken open like the long thin shell of a tamarind pod. “I … I didn’t fall down.”

  “I know that. What happened?”

  “Jailer Handsome pushed me.” Now something pulls through his chest, like the length of the tamarind fruit yanked right out.

  “And you hit your face?”

  “No, he hit my face and he pushed me in the water.” Nyi Lay�
�s voice is high and shaky, but he’s angry too. “He was going to drown me because he thinks I have the pen that’s what he said he’s going to kill me and I was in the water and none of the warders stopped him and he hit my face and …” The last words are lost in a sob. Chit Naing puts his hands on the narrow shoulders.

  “But he didn’t drown you, Nyi Lay. Did he? You’re with me now. And I’m going to help you.”

  The boy lets out a low howl. “The warders could see but they didn’t care and now he’ll get me anytime he wants he’ll hurt me like he did the Songbird he’ll kill me that’s what he said.” He tries hard not to let the sounds get out of him, but he can’t help it, they’re bursting his throat.

  In the floodlit night of the cage, two shadows are thrown dark upon the ground. The jailer bends awkwardly. He embraces the thin child and lifts him up, calling him by his real name. Nyi Lay puts his arms around Chit Naing’s neck. There is only one shadow now, man and boy joined, crossing over the brick-chip gravel of the compound.

  . 47 .

  He’s all muscle, bone, and heat, crying hard but not making much noise. Holding in his sobs, the boy shakes and idles like an engine. Chit Naing wants to take him back to his little shack, give him a place to rest, but only when he has calmed down. There’s no need for the warders to see him like this.

  After a few minutes he has tired himself out. Chit Naing hears him catching his breath and swallowing. He wipes his runny nose on the back of his hand. By degrees, the small, frightened child disappears. Wriggling out of the jailer’s arms, he drops to the ground and lands back in the body of the wiry boy. Chit Naing reaches down and picks up his rat stick. Nyi Lay takes it, hesitantly.

  “We’ll go over to the warders’ quarters and make sure Handsome has left for the night.” Beyond that, the jailer isn’t sure what to do. The Chief Warden will have to talk some sense into Nyunt Wai Oo, but that’s not going to happen until tomorrow, and it may not be enough to keep the boy safe.