The Lizard Cage

by Karen Connelly

  Fighting off the urge to grab the waist of Chit Naing’s trousers, the boy grips his rat stick tighter. The two of them begin to walk toward the records office, then along its long western wall.

  The moment they round the corner of the building, they stop. Chit Naing recalls the banging from half an hour ago and immediately understands. He looks down at Nyi Lay, who stares dry-eyed across the compound.

  The boy knew it. He knew something awful would happen. He heard Handsome go into the warders’ quarters and start yelling at the men. Heart beating in his throat, Nyi Lay knew he had to get away. After digging up the pen, he crept out of his shack, then ran across the open tract of compound to the records office.

  The jailer touches his shoulder. He speaks in a quiet, even tone. “Come on. You can gather up your things. I won’t let him hurt you.” Chit Naing takes a step forward.

  The boy doesn’t move. He didn’t know that it was going to be this bad. He thought Handsome would tear down the door and search everything. But the little house is gone.

  Chit Naing looks over his shoulder and waves him forward, murmuring something the boy doesn’t hear.

  Nothing will be left of the butterfly’s wing. It was so crumbly and anteaten he rarely took it out of its hiding place anymore. He thinks of his mother’s thanakha tin and the beetle in its box. Where is the small lizard now? Two warders are still picking through the debris, making occasional comments to each other in mocking tones.

  The boy’s eyes rove over bits and pieces he can and cannot recognize from this distance. Cloth from his rag bed; white and colored squares of paper on the gravel, which must be his little collection of postcards and pictures, flung out of their plastic bag. He fearfully recalls his photocopied picture of the Bogyoke’s daughter, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. He knows it’s illegal. The books too: they’re illegal. And the piece of broken transistor radio. He sees very plainly, trampled on the ground, the big pair of underpants. That’s all right—he would never be fat enough to wear them. He was just waiting for the right moment to trade them for something more useful.

  He wonders, practically, if his green school longyi and white T-shirt are still whole and dry. If Handsome doesn’t kill him first, he would like to change out of his wet clothes. There’s a piece of material on the ground that might be the longyi, but everything’s drained of color under the floodlights—maybe it’s just one of his bed scraps. It would be such a relief to be warm and dry and sleeping under his blanket and old longyis. But Handsome has thrown his rag bed all over the ground. He sees the torn blanket of Chinese felt. He will pick up all the scraps and wash them and make his bed again. But where will he sleep?

  He’s ashamed to see his treasures thrown about like this, his very own good things. His eyes are drowning again. Stupid! He will not cry. He must not cry in front of the warders. Unshed tears thicken his voice. “Saya Chit Naing, why did he do it? He could have looked inside without tearing it all apart.” Staring straight ahead, he picks and pulls at a thread of dry skin from his lower lip, until the soft skin bleeds and he stops pulling and bites the thread away and sucks at the blood. One pain reminds him of another. He carefully puts his fingers up to his cheek and touches the cut in the center of the bruise.

  Chit Naing leans sideways and whispers, “Dwa-may. Ma-jow-ba-neh.” Let’s go. Don’t be afraid. Nyi Lay sighs as the jailer steps forward, but he falls in beside him so willingly, so trustingly, that Chit Naing feels a pang of regret.

  A warder has seen them. As he straightens up, one of the child’s belongings falls from his hand. He vacillates, looks to the warders’ quarters and back over to Chit Naing. He mumbles something to his workmate, who lifts his head and sees the boy. Without a moment’s hesitation, this man calls Handsome in a loud voice. “Jailer Nyunt Wai Oo, you better come out here right now.”

  Many months later, after his court-martial and interrogation, after the beatings, the kneeling in glass, after the vat of excrement where they leave him for an entire day and night, with maggots crawling into his nose and ears, burrowing at his closed mouth, into the corners of his eyes, he will be transferred to a prison in the north, where he will have plenty of time to think. In his cell, pondering, remembering all that went before, he will recognize this as the defining moment in which he could have chosen between yes and no.

  But right now Chit Naing acts with such clarity of purpose that no one, including himself, could imagine a choice exists. Handsome comes out of the warders’ quarters with the wooden baton already in his hand. The smile on his face is indistinguishable from a grimace of pain. The warders file slowly out of the building behind him. Chit Naing is surprised to see how many men there are. Most of them should be at home by now, except for Soe Thein, who ought to be standing guard duty. Chit Naing inclines his head to the boy and quietly makes a promise: “You will be all right.” They begin to walk forward. The boy’s small fingers tighten around the senior jailer’s belt.

  When they are ten paces away, Handsome bellows, “Give him to me.”

  Chit Naing calmly replies, “There’s no need to yell.”

  “Give him to me!”

  “Officer Nyunt Wai Oo, I will not give him to you. What do you think he is, a dog?”

  “A dog who can talk, and I intend to interrogate him.”

  “You will do no such thing. The boy is not an inmate, and you have no right to interrogate him. I think it’s time you went home.”

  “Don’t talk to me about that little fucker’s rights. He has the pen. I know he has the pen—he’s hidden it somewhere. Under interrogation, he’s going to tell me exactly where it is.”

  Chit Naing raises his voice and speaks slowly, enunciating each word, making sure the other men can hear. “Junior Jailer Nyunt Wai Oo, you are not going to interrogate a twelve-year-old child. Destroying his hut and attacking him earlier this evening were quite enough.” He runs his eyes over the group of warders, noting the range of expressions on their faces. Curious. Embarrassed. Ashamed. That flat, uninterested look he reads as secret glee. It’s not often they get a chance to observe their superiors engaged in open combat.

  He addresses the men, none of whom will meet his eye, not even Soe Thein. “Your duties do not include destroying the shelter of an orphan.” The boy, horrified to be the object of so many eyes, shuffles behind Chit Naing. “Did anyone check with the Chief about doing this?”

  Handsome answers, “The Chief’s not here tonight. He’s in the city.”

  “So you thought you could have some fun. Is that what this is all about?” He glares at the men again and then steps to the left, so the boy is in clear view. “I suppose this is the enemy, if you could do that to his house.” He looks from the face of one warder to another and another. “Why didn’t anyone come to find me? Look at this kid! He’s armed with a stick against the whole troop of you. He came to find me with the news that Handsome tried to drown him, because he supposedly has the pen. Well, here is your terrible thief! But you didn’t find anything, did you?” He turns his head to Handsome. “Did you?”

  “We found books and a picture of that bitch Suu Kyi.”

  “He probably doesn’t even know who she is.”

  “Oh, fuck off, Chit Naing! Why would he have a picture of her, then?”

  Chit Naing sucks in his breath at the risk of it and turns to the boy. “Nyi Lay, why do you have a picture of Suu Kyi?”

  “Who is Suu Kyi?”

  Chit Naing smiles at Handsome. “I rest my case.”

  Handsome roars, “What an answer! That’s exactly why he needs to be interrogated.” He rushes forward, spitting out the words, “Why did you have that picture, you little bastard?”

  Chit Naing puts his hand up. “Don’t come any closer.” Still holding his hand between the two of them, Chit Naing addresses the boy again. “Suu Kyi is the woman in the picture that was in your shack. Why was it there?”

  The boy is staring at his bare feet.

  Chit Naing nudges him. “Go ahead. You can
tell us.”

  He begins to talk very quietly, and Handsome shouts, “Louder!”

  Without looking up, the boy says in a clear voice, “Tan-see Tiger has a nice picture in his cell, and I wanted one too.”

  Chit Naing says, “You wanted a picture of a woman.”

  The boy wrings his hands and whispers, “A smiling picture.”

  Chit Naing puts his hand on the boy’s shoulder again and calls out, “Did you hear that, men? The kid wanted a picture of a smiling woman! Who can blame him? Which one of you dangerous elements put up the picture of that pretty lady singer in the warders’ quarters? Officer Nyunt Wai Oo wants to interrogate you too!” When several warders start to laugh, Chit Naing knows he has stepped on firmer ground.

  Handsome yells, “This is bullshit. Everyone knows that only politicals have pictures of her.”

  Chit Naing smiles and gestures at Nyi Lay. “Now he’s a political prisoner? It must be some kind of record. The first illiterate twelve-year-old political prisoner in the history of incarceration in Burma. Officer Nyunt Wai Oo, look at him! He’s lived in here since he was seven years old—he has no conception of politics. I suggest you write up your extraordinary findings in a report, then you and the Chief Warden can have a long meeting about it. But now it’s time for you to leave. Your shift is over. If you hurry, you’ll make the nine o’clock bus.”

  Handsome speaks through clenched teeth, “Just give me five minutes with that little fucker and I’ll find out everything. Come here, dirty kala-lay!” He reaches out to grab the boy’s T-shirt, but Chit Naing steps between them and pushes Handsome hard in the chest, sending the heavier man into a backward stumble.

  If not for the shovel lying on the ground, Handsome might have recovered his footing, but his heel catches it and his opposite leg with its bad knee can’t take the full weight of his body. He falls on his backside, arms akimbo, and screams, “Don’t think you can get away with this, prick! You’ll pay for it, both you and that stinking little bastard.” Still cursing, Handsome twists over and tries to jump up, but the ripping sensation in his knee is so fierce that he’s stuck there, off balance, still touching the ground with his hands and trying to rise up on one leg. He bites his lip and raises his upper body slowly but surely, furious at looking so ridiculous in front of the men. The fall has turned him around, so he’s facing the pack of them now. “What the fuck are you staring at, you assholes? It’s my knee—he’s fucked up my knee.”

  Tint Lwin takes a small step forward, his arm extended, but the gesture is more than Handsome can bear. “Don’t you fucking touch me. Stay away! You useless shits, what are you looking at!”

  Soe Thein is the first to move. Without a word to anyone, he walks past Handsome, past Chit Naing and the boy, and disappears around the corner of the records office, ready to begin his guard duty at the white house. The other warders disperse more slowly, some back into the quarters to fetch their things and to whisper to each other as they glance out the window. Three men, including Tint Lwin, go off toward the gates and home.

  While they’re leaving, Handsome tries to turn around to face Chit Naing again, but he can’t place any weight on his bad knee. The torn joint is loose and burning. Once he’s steady on one leg, he bends down and grabs the shovel. Using it as a cane, he hops around to face Chit Naing and the boy.

  “Where is it, kala-lay? Where’d you put the pen?”

  The boy stares into Handsome’s eyes like a fox about to disappear into the forest. He has never spoken back. Until recently, he has rarely thought about retaliating against insults, slaps, cuffs on the head, stabs of laughter. His fear and obedience were absolute, and life-preserving. So he is surprised at the feel of the words in his mouth, like a taste of something new. Fuck off, he wants to say. But he just tells the truth. “I don’t have it.”

  Handsome lifts the shovel and strikes the ground. Grit flies into the air as he strains to keep his footing.

  Chit Naing steps forward. “Officer Nyunt Wai Oo, you should have that leg looked at.”

  “Fuck you,” Handsome says. “This isn’t the end of it, I promise you that.”

  Chit Naing smiles. “I know. Who can tell when we will come to the end of it, Officer Nyunt Wai Oo? It might take years.”

  “You and I will be done sooner than that.” Handsome hobbles over to the warders’ quarters, where he yells to one of the warders for his jacket.

  After the junior jailer is gone, Chit Naing watches the boy search through the various bits of cloth on the ground. He’s looking for dry clothes. Eventually he finds them and changes into his green longyi and white T-shirt. He shakes out his muddy felt blanket and wraps it around his shoulders. Then he starts to pick methodically through his possessions. In what used to be the center of the shack there is a knee-deep hole, like the beginning of a grave. When Handsome saw the disturbed earth under the rag bed, he made the men dig deeper.

  The boy sits cross-legged at the edge of the hole, examining various things, turning them over and over in his hands before throwing them into the little pit. The iron-beater strikes out nine o’clock. Chit Naing looks reflexively at his watch, thinking that it’s probably too late for a trip into the city. If he goes tonight, he’ll have to call his wife, give her some explanation. And he will have to leave soon. He looks at Nyi Lay, wondering what to do with him.

  The boy is relieved to find his father’s tooth, but the thanakha tin he kept it in is crushed. He keeps the tooth but drops the tin into the hole. Boot treads have defaced the postcard of the Buddha from Pagan, but he’s keeping it, along with the torn postcard of the Shwedagon Pagoda. And he finds his nail. The idiots trampled it under the brick chips. He carefully scrutinizes the torn matchbox, but there are no signs of beetle blood. And the lizard must have run away.

  Gone, all the beloved paperbacks. The picture of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is gone too. The photo of her father, stuck on the corrugated metal with rice paste, tore in half when the walls fell down. There’s not enough left of the great Bogyoke to bury him. Dry-eyed and thoughtful, the boy carefully examines the wrecked beetle box. Only one side is torn. He will fold the cardboard out and use rice paste to glue it back together. It’s a good matchbox, extra-large. He doesn’t want to lose it.

  Chit Naing crouches behind him. “What did you used to keep in there?”

  “A beetle.”

  “A live beetle?”

  The boy sighs. “Yeah. I used to feed him and everything.”

  “Maybe they took him away to interrogate him.”

  Nyi Lay quickly twists his head around. “Saya, they could not interrogate a beetle.”

  Chit Naing smiles. “I’m sure Handsome would like to try.”

  Nyi Lay allows himself a faint, bitter grin. “Yeah, he’s such a fucking idiot.” Shocked by his own audacity, he glances up to see if Chit Naing will scold him. But the jailer only laughs, which encourages the boy, who goes on in a low voice, “I bet he could interrogate a rat.”

  “He certainly speaks the language.”

  Nyi Lay grins. Clearly he has permission. “Handsome could interrogate flies. And maggots. He speaks maggot-language.” He pauses to search for the end of the insult. “And he wants to interrogate the maggots about shit.” Chit Naing and the boy both start to laugh.

  When the laughter peters out, the boy throws a mangled candle stub into the hole and returns, in his practical way, to the problem at hand. “Maybe I should go and stay with Tan-see Tiger. He’ll let me sleep there.”

  “In his cell.” It’s not exactly the ideal solution.

  In a stern voice, the boy reminds Chit Naing, “But I’m not a prisoner, Saya.”

  “No, Nyi Lay. I know you are not a prisoner.” The senior jailer scratches the back of his neck. All right, then. He will call his wife with a good excuse and travel tonight into the city. If he goes on a bus most of the way, then takes a cab, it can’t take more than an hour to get there.

  The boy is staring into the hole. Suddenly he cocks his
head to the side and leans back, frowning at the pile of boards and corrugated metal that used to be his shack. “Listen, Saya. Do you hear that?”

  Chit Naing raises his eyebrows. “Hear what?”

  “He’s scratching!”

  The jailer stands at the edge of the hole. He can’t see anything but raw clay and the bits and pieces the boy has discarded.

  “He’s scratching, Saya! That means he’s hungry!”

  “Who’s hungry, Nyi Lay? What do you hear?”

  The boy jumps up and starts throwing things in the air, like a dog searching for a bone long buried. “Not in the hole, Saya—he’s somewhere over here!” He tosses a board out of his way, and a tangle of rope from the corner posts. He pushes aside a long narrow scrap of corrugated metal. “He’s here, look! They didn’t steal him!” He whirls around to face Chit Naing. In his fingers, he delicately holds a carrion beetle by the carapace. Six sturdy black legs march purposefully through the air. The boy places the creature in his palm and lets it crawl from one hand to the other. He walks over to the eastern wall of the warders’ quarters and carefully sets the beetle down in a jungle of weeds. Noticing the boy’s reverent expression, the jailer stops himself from laughing. He turns in the opposite direction, toward the watchtower, but he can still hear Nyi Lay whispering to the beetle as it disappears into the green tangle.

  . 48 .

  Thankfully, the bus is almost empty, and the tired people already on the line don’t raise their heads to look at him. Staring down at cheroot butts and betel stains and ticket stubs, he falls to examining his own tired feet, separated from the dirty floorboards by the thin soles of his flip-flops. Chit Naing’s feet are like the rest of his body, long and angular, a collection of finely sculpted bones. The second toes are longer than the first. His feet are much paler brown than his face and hands, because he’s worn boots six days a week for more than twenty years. When he leaves the cage in his street clothes, there is often this moment of unrecognition, sheer surprise, as he looks down and sees his toes clinging to their simple slippers, just like everybody else, like a regular man.