The Lizard Cage

by Karen Connelly

  The tiny clippings are laid out before him. He picks his favorite one and places it in his opposite hand like a piece of jewelry.

  loved

  despite everything

  rain

  understood

  Teza reads the small shred of paper again, and again. Part of the discipline of the cheroot ceremony involves sitting as though in meditation, not allowing himself to wander into memory and fantasy. He will keep this filter paper, and the one about reincarnation, instead of shredding them up with the others and dropping the pieces into his shit pail.

  Until three years ago he kept all the scraps, using and reusing them, trying and sometimes succeeding in fitting bits of an article together from the same brand of cheroot. Then his cell was raided.

  The warders found his little cheroot documents wrapped up in his spare shirt. He had made a kind of daily crossword game out of the bits, and the Chief Warden said they were political messages, so the warders had to beat him and threaten him with the dog cells. They used to keep dogs in them, but during a prison riot the prisoners killed and ate most of the hounds. After that, the Chief Warden decided the cages would become punishment cells. Men live in them now, exposed to the elements and trapped for months at a time with the accumulation of their own urine and feces. Teza wasn’t sent to a dog cell because he would have had too much contact with other politicals. He was just given a good thrashing.

  He doesn’t know how that particular session ended. The beatings melt into one another because they’re so similar. You have to assume a certain position—it’s in the regulations. Half squat on your toes with your legs farther apart than your shoulders. Hold your hands at the back of the neck with elbows in the air. It’s like stopping in the middle of a deep knee bend. Now you are ready, fully exposed: your genitals, your abdomen, your back, your face, your armpits. Your feet are bare and you are as terrified for them as you are for your balls. When the blows begin to fall, you must not move your hands from the back of your head. That is not part of the game. You must not fall over until you lose consciousness (even then they will kick you) or until they get tired, or bored, and stop.

  Everything around him—the other voices, the sounds of his body being hit, the shadows and light in the room, the smells and tastes—recedes, then disappears next to the sudden intimacy of violence and the pain it creates. That pain in his body becomes the center of the world, and they keep kicking him, keep hitting him anyway. That is how they break apart the world over and over again.

  It’s odd, but when he thinks about the beatings, later he always thinks about making love with Thazin. It’s the only other touching he’s ever experienced that was as unbounded and total. But when you make love, you begin the world with another person; two small gods build the first kingdom out of the body’s clay. That’s why another soul, a baby, might come from it. But when a man beats you in the cage, he wants you to know that he’s got the whole substance of you in his hands, your life and your death. The distance between those two points is all the agony a human body can feel.

  Almost a year after the incident, Sammy, who had just become his server, nonchalantly handed him a cheroot. Teza was jubilant but afraid. “You must know I’m not allowed to have them. You’ll lose your job. You’ll be punished! And I’ll go to a dog cell.”

  Sammy guffawed, in his contorted way, and waved the cheroot back. Grinning as he gave Teza a lighter, he put the V of his fingers to his lips, as though to say, “Shut up and have a smoke, man!”

  So the singer began to smoke again, and returned, with heightened gratitude, to his ritual. But now every time he performs the cheroot ceremony, he throws most of the old filters away, keeping just one or two of them for a few days. He could eat the scraps of paper very quickly if he had to.

  He used to throw away whole sheets of paper just because the edges were torn, or because a few unimportant words or spots of ink marred them. His old extravagance saddens him as much as the food he once left on his plate—whole pieces of chicken—because he wasn’t hungry.

  When he and Aung Min were small, they used to walk on the street of the bookbinders in Rangoon, near Sule Pagoda. They called it Paper Street, and discussed the possibility of working there when they grew up, just to be close to so much fabulous paper. Women carrying mountains of blank paper on their heads walked past the brothers, carefully maneuvering through the crowds and the traffic on their way to the government and shipping offices, to the printing shops. Boys walking bicycles and carts loaded with paper pushed past them with an air of adult importance that Teza envied.

  It can’t be any different now. The printing shops are still there. Every house on both sides of Paper Street is crammed with paper. Paper in all the colors of a Hindu temple, paper for children, for kings, rainbow-covered notebooks and looseleaf sheets of blue and green, paper with elaborate letterheads and misspelled letterheads, coarse and woody to the touch, sand-grained, or smooth as the skin of a young woman’s back. Before the glut of morning traffic, the whole street smells of raw paper waiting to be filled with the stronger smell of black newsprint and love letters and rebellious missives sent from one underground cell to another.

  As long as there is paper, people will write, secretly, in small rooms, in the hidden chambers of their minds, just as people whisper the words they’re forbidden to speak aloud.

  The generals can’t stop them. Ne Win himself can’t stop them. He never could. Words are like the ants. They work their way through the thickest walls, eating through bricks and feeding off the very silence intended to stifle them.

  Teza reads out loud:

  siblings existence remained boy flawlessly

  loved despite everything rain understood

  He falls asleep holding these words in his hands. By morning, the cheap ink has worn into his skin.

  . 7 .

  Nine days of betel-mouth’s idle chatter and dirty jokes, but no chance to wash his hair. His father always used to say that bathing should be made a national pastime. He believed it was good to take two showers a day, but three were even better. In the cage, Teza gets fifteen scoops of water, more if the warder or jailer is kind. Jailer Handsome is not kind, but the last time Teza had a shower, Handsome left the room to smoke, and Teza was able to clean himself properly with forty-two lightning-speed scoops.

  “First I don’t get to eat and now I don’t get to bathe. What would my mother say? Fuck!”

  “Does your dear mother have such a filthy mouth?”

  “Shut up, Ko Sein Yun, this isn’t funny. I am scratching my legs and arms off. I need a proper wash. Why is Handsome being such an asshole?”

  “At least he lets me put extra water in your cell.”

  “Splashing water all over the floor attracts more cockroaches. And I need to wash my clothes.” He picks up a tightly wrapped bundle of dirty cloth and throws it down on the floor again. “This is stupid. I’m calling him.”

  “Oh, Songbird, I don’t think that’s a good idea. Really, that is a poor idea.”

  Teza’s voice fills the cell, then breaks out of it as he pushes past Sein Yun and sticks his head out the door. “Jailer! Sir! Sir! I request permission to make a complaint!”

  Silence.

  The silence stretches uncomfortably, but Teza is not intimidated by silence, his most intimate cellmate. He bellows, louder still, “Sir! Sir! I request permission to make a complaint, sir!” Euphoria warms his throat. This is almost as good as singing. It doesn’t matter what happens now. As soon as he opens his mouth and yells at one of them, he is free.

  When Teza hears the jailer shout back, he turns gleaming eyes on Sein Yun, who whispers, “You are a bloody idiot.” Slouched against the far wall, the palm-reader has shrunk his already diminutive frame further by hunching his shoulders. The boots are coming now.

  Teza steps away from the door. The jailer’s voice drowns out the sound of his own heavy boots. “What the fuck is going on here? Why is he yelling?” There is no time for Sein Yun to r
eply. Handsome walks past him into the singer’s cell. He’s a well-built man with a broad chest and strong forearms. Teza glances up at him. As usual, he is surprised that the jailer is so handsome, like a movie star, with a perfect wave of black hair combed back from his high forehead. Mothers warn their daughters against those square-jawed, full-lipped good looks, the half-raised, rakish eyebrow. Now the large, fine eyes are bright slits of anger, and Handsome’s nose has wrinkled; he’s smelling something unpleasant. Teza smiles very slightly. Maybe the junior jailer smells his own stinky prisoner.

  Handsome’s deep voice rattles off a round of rapid-fire questions. “What the fuck is so funny? Hmm? You stupid little shit, who do you think you are? You’re not allowed to yell like that. Now put your head down. Put it down, I said!” He steps forward and cracks his knuckles on Teza’s skull. In the presence of a jailer, prisoners are obliged to keep their heads lowered in deference, but hitting Teza like that counts as a grave offense. For a Buddhist, the head is the most sacred part of the body. Handsome pushes in, close to Teza’s face, his spittle pelting the singer’s cheek.

  “Have you forgotten where you are? Huh? Think you’re still out there, do you, spreading lies, filling people’s heads with shit? Don’t you know what you are, you stupid fuck? Don’t you know what you are?”

  Silence.

  Teza’s ears ring as he considers Handsome’s question, seriously, and begins to answer it, seriously. “I am Ko Teza, fourth-year student of English literature at Rangoon Univ—”

  The blow catches him off guard. Suddenly he is on the floor, shaking his head, opening and closing his jaws mechanically, like a puppet. But Teza’s jaw isn’t broken. He has fallen beside the aluminum tray that Sein Yun has just carried to him. Out of the corner of his eye he sees the movement, the flash and blur of the boot; he knows it so well. He rams his head into the crook of his elbow, grips the back of his neck with his hand to keep his eyes lodged there, blind but protected, ready for the first kick and the ones that come after. Handsome doesn’t kick him, though. He kicks the food tray instead, mightily, launching watery curry and rice all over the prisoner and the cell. The aluminum bounces off Teza’s elbow and clatters on the cement floor.

  Silence.

  But it’s a conversation. It has been the same conversation since the first interrogation center, the first protest, the first song.

  He waits for a kick to his stomach, or his back, but nothing comes. Carefully, slowly, he moves into the half squat, wasted rice dropping off his shirt between his bare feet. Quietly, he replies, “Sir, I request permission to make a complaint about the irregularity of my shower times. Sir.”

  “You stupid asshole, I’d like to break your neck right now. Permission denied, you motherfucker.”

  Shut up, bellows the coffin door as it slams. Shutshutshutthefuckup. Crack of metal bolts, rattle of keys, the jailer’s voice yelling at Sein Yun, whose reply is muffled. Teza strains to hear the words they exchange, wondering why the warder doesn’t hit Sein Yun too.

  He stands up to survey the damage. It’s always a shock to see the enormous mess made by such a small amount of food. This isn’t the first time Handsome has kicked his tray. At least the jailer didn’t kick him. He cleans, stooped over like an old man, picking up bits of cauliflower and pinching clumps of rice between his fingers, tossing all in the shit pail. This proves Sein Yun right: Teza is not as hungry as he thinks he is, because he doesn’t consider eating any of the food. He wets an old undershirt and washes the floor, squeezes out the dirty water over the shit pail, washes again. It’s not really clean. It never is—he has only a bar of soap to work with.

  Eventually he places his sleeping mat in the center of the cell. The cleaning took him away from his anger for a while, but as soon as he sits down it floods his body and his mind. Every breath is rage. Teza wants to kill Handsome, or the Chief Warden, or one of the generals. Or all of them—he would kill them all now, if he had a gun and they were standing in the cell with him. His mouth fills with the worst curses he knows and he whispers them in a low, growling voice. He hears Handsome’s words again, the shouting, feels the crack on his skull, the sudden wrenching of his jaw. When he begins meditating, he has to turn these sensations over and over until they begin to change.

  The breath teaches him that. And it was his mother, years ago, who insisted on the lesson. When he was about fifteen, he started to resist going to temple with Daw Sanda. There were always things he wanted to do on the weekends, which was the only time his mother could go to the pagoda. She said, “All right, you don’t have to come. But during the week, in the evenings, you have to go on your own.” He was to sit down and breathe. That’s all. Meditate, at least two or three times a week. Why? “Because your breath is your teacher. Your whole life, that won’t change, so you must learn to pay attention to your teacher now, while you are young. When you grow up and go away from me, your breath will always be there to guide you. If you know how to follow it, you will never get lost.”

  He prostrates himself three times before an invisible altar and chants a low-voiced prayer. Then he sits cross-legged, hands upturned, right on top of left. Inhaling from his stomach, he follows the breath through his nose into his body. His mother used to tell him stories about the great meditators, the most learned and holy men, who can fly free through the air and walk through walls. With the inward breath they levitate. With the outward breath, they move forward. They can ignite fires with their eyes and speak directly to animals and to the spirits of the dead.

  Teza is just a beginner. He cannot do any of these things.

  But he can breathe. The breath rises from the center of his belly, up, up along his vertebrae into the back of his skull, then down, down, out the toes of his right leg. Beginning again, he follows the breath out his left leg.

  After years of practice, sometimes moments lengthen into hours and his mind opens outward, past the smothering isolation of the cage. These are good long meditations, when he finds his own skeleton and is able to discern separate bones and muscles as the inhalations and exhalations flow through them. His breath can cool him in the hot season and warm him during the chill of the rains. His grandfather shows himself, but never his father. At peace, his grandfather has the strength to comfort him. The old man speaks very little. Often he simply appears, inclines his head, departs. Sometimes he smiles. His mother doesn’t appear either, but she is always with him. She is inside him now, as he was once inside her.

  As in so many other things, how right she was about meditating. As he follows his breath, he finds himself again. Despite his anger, he knows he would not kill any of the men who have hurt him. How could he, when there has been so much killing already, so many murdered and tortured?

  With the in breath, he can feel the pain where he was punched. With the out breath, he can feel the pain. But each exhalation and inhalation changes its nature. His awareness moves from the ache in his jaw to his fury at Handsome. As soon as he begins to examine the fury, though, it stretches into something else, directed not so much at Handsome as at the generals who form SLORC, the State Law and Order Restoration Council. Teza exhales again and looks up.

  The spider is above him, crossing his web.

  Teza’s mind is agitated, uneven, and he repeatedly loses the thread, but the attempt itself brings him calm. Past meditations guide him. He tries to remember all the Pali he knows from the Buddhist scriptures. Intoning the various words and phrases, he is mindful that the Buddha himself spoke Pali. It’s a dead classical language, but it always feels very alive to him.

  He lists the Divine Abidings: metta, karuna, mudita, upekkha. Metta is the First Divine Abiding: love and benevolence, wishing for one’s good and for that of others. Karuna is the Second Divine Abiding: compassion for oneself and others. Mudita is the Third Divine Abiding: joy in the good fortune of others. Upekkha is the Fourth Divine Abiding: equanimity in the face of those things that should be let be.

  “Metta, karuna, mudita, upekkha.
Metta, karuna, mudita, upekkha. Metta, karuna, mudita, upekkha.” He chants the words in a low voice for a long time, until the chant is part of his breath and the syllables flow together without separation. Teza realizes he is a poor Buddhist. He feels no metta for Handsome. He tries, in his meditation, but the well of the breath, rising and falling, is filled with anger and sadness.

  Sadness? For himself—yes. Is there anything else there, in the chest? It would be there, the place where the ribs anchor in the breastbone. When he releases a long exhalation, he feels a sharp ache.

  Sadness for the jailer? Could that be it?

  There might be a small gift of sadness for that arrogant, good-looking face. During the uprisings, the students believed that their struggle for freedom was for everyone, including those who didn’t understand what they were doing, even the generals and those who supported them. Therein, he knows, is the heart of the matter. Metta means to love the enemy also. In one of his Buddhist texts he once read, The only way to end the war is to stop hating the enemy. But he can’t really do it. He tries, but he cannot. He cannot get out of the cage. None of them can get out of the cage.

  He starts to whisper a prayer. “Whatever beings there are, may they be free from suffering. Whatever beings there are, may they be free from enmity. Whatever beings there are, may they be free from hurtfulness. Whatever beings there are, may they be free from ill health. Whatever beings there are, may they be able to protect their own happiness.”

  When Teza opens his eyes, the first thing he sees is three large cockroaches licking up traces of curry water, nibbling away at bits of rice he missed in his cleaning. He feels mudita for them, joy at their good fortune. He doesn’t disturb his cellmates but lets them protect their own happiness. They eat as much as they want.

  Listening to the rain of late afternoon, he decides to sing, quietly at first. “The Father’s Tale,” one of the Twelve Songs. The words resonate in the back of his throat, expanding to fill not only his body and his memory but the cell itself, as though the teak coffin has become the hollow darkness inside an instrument.