Teza tries to draw him out. Some days he points to the sky or smokes an invisible cheroot, but the boy gives him neither a childish monologue about the weather nor a single smoke. Planning a new solicitation, Teza pushes yesterday’s dented tray out of the cell. Picking it up, the boy glances at the singer, who jerks his thumb back toward the latrine pail with comical exaggeration, then rises into a half-squat and graphically mimes his need for toilet paper. Free El Salvador tosses him a lopsided grin, which might just as well mean You are a fucking nutcase. Then his face goes cool again. Teza sees that unreadable mouth and knows the boy won’t come back with a few squares of toilet paper.
He’s looking past Teza now, deeper into the cell, where he’s glimpsed something on the floor. Plastic bags, small squares of laundered cloth. A little oblong block of thanakha. Things from Outside! Now the boy lifts his head slightly and actually sniffs. Teza sees him searching it out. Through the latrine pail and the damp and the prisoner’s sweat, the boy catches the old-seaweed odor of dried fish.
Free El Salvador glances up fearfully, as if caught in a new act of theft. That spark in the boy’s eyes has become a flare lighting his face. Without a word, the child speaks, and Teza recognizes the familiar cry: Give me something to eat!
But when the boy looks from the food to the singer, his expression is not one of supplication. No, he glares at the man. Teza blinks. He can’t talk yet, can’t move his mouth to make the words Wait, I will give you something, though he takes a step back, ready to turn and get a fish. But the boy is already standing, an angry sneer on his face. Teza gurgles sound out of his throat, trying to call him back, but Free El Salvador has turned, he’s marching away. His jutting shoulder blades, the nicked velvet of his skull, and his rapid stride all proclaim that he is a boy who does not look back.
And he does not.
. 31 .
The boy hurries across the compound, fists clenched at his sides.
Even that old broken-face gets food from Outside. So what? The boy doesn’t care. He knows how to find his own food. He doesn’t like the way the singer needles him with desperate eyes, trying to find things out. Whatever the boy’s secrets are, he will keep them to himself.
He thinks of the pen. It’s his now, not the singer’s. Anyway, Handsome would have confiscated the pen from the Songbird. The boy’s glad he buried it in his shack. No one can take away his treasure.
Wearied by this unexpected storm of emotion, the boy would like to crawl into his shack right this minute and pull his rag blankets up over his head.
But he has things to do.
First of all, he’s going to fetch his own damn fish. When he returns the used tray to the kitchen, he also picks up his payment. This is a fine new job, because it gets him a fried fish every day. A small one, but not stinky and dried; this fish is cooked in oil.
Unfortunately, he must ask Eggplant the cook for his payment. Eggplant is the only fat man the boy has ever seen, a giant, oil-sweating pervert in the kitchen of the world. The boy has learned to stay away from him. He does nasty things to the young convicts who get sent up for kitchen duty. Sometimes these new inmates seem barely older than the boy, and they are much less savvy about the cage. They stumble out the back door with a beaten look on their faces even though they’re not bruised.
The boy wipes his mouth and lifts his chin, trying to get a better view of his enemy. Though he hates Eggplant, this food-filled kingdom attracts him. Sometimes there are smells of fried chicken. Sometimes big bones still laced with meat sit on the chopping counters that line the entire west wall of the long building. The boy looks over the wet concrete floors, past hundreds of pots and pans, piles of vegetables, big sacks of beans and lentils. Beside the last row of gas burners, near the back doors, the cook is stretched out on a small mountain of bagged rice. His eyes are closed, but he’s not sleeping. One fat hand covers his mouth as the opposite hand picks away at his teeth.
Just inside the entrance, the dishwashers squat among piles of battered trays, talking and joking among themselves. They pay no attention as the child silently adds Teza’s tray to the others and then takes off his slippers, darts over to the chopping counters, and stealthily makes his way toward his fish. If the chance arises, he will steal something to eat. Beyond the cook, against the back wall of the building, two important pots contain the chief warden’s food, rich curries with tender lips of fat still hanging off the meat. The boy thinks about them every time he visits the kitchen, but he’ll have to wait for months before he can touch them again.
During March and April, when heat puts Eggplant to sleep like a drugged pig, the boy sneaks in after the morning trays have been collected. The cook lies on one of the cool wooden counters, a trail of saliva on the lower half of his cheek as though a snail has just emerged from his mouth. When the boy hears his guttural, sloppy snoring, he steals into the back part of the kitchen and tiptoes past the cook. By the time he reaches the big frying pans, his heart is thumping and his mouth is salivating uncontrollably. Careful not to knock any of the aluminum pots off the burners or hit a stirring spoon to the floor, he slowly lifts the large pans to his lips and drinks the leftover curry oil. There is no other taste like that of spiced, stolen oil.
He sighs. It’s late August now. The sleep-inducing heat of March is still very far away.
Eggplant rolls over on his side. A crease parts in the man’s oily skin, a single eye slivers open. “Come here, Little Brother, I’ve got something nice for you to put in that mouth of yours.”
“I’m here for my fish, sir.”
With surprising ease, the big man sits up and swings his legs off the sacks. “Yeah, yeah, I know what you’re here for, you little brat.” The cook throws his toothpick on the floor. “Are you sure you just want fish? Huh? Have you eaten rice yet? How about some nice curry? I’m sure you’d like it.” He rumbles a low laugh, his hand moving back to the knot of his longyi. The boy knows better than to make any trades with Eggplant.
“I’m here for my fish, sir.”
They stare at each other. The cook snorts and goes into the back kitchen, a large, covered area outside the main building, where prisoners, under Eggplant’s direction, take care of the rice-boiling and soup-making for thousands of men and fry the fish for those who can pay for it.
The cook turns to one of the big scalloped frying pans, grabs the boy’s payment by the tail, and quickly turns around, tossing the fish onto the slick concrete, where it flips and slides as though coming back to life. “Oh, no! The oil made it slip from my hand! But don’t you worry, the floor’s so clean back here you can eat off it.”
The boy does not make a move to retrieve his payment from the filthy cement, but calmly stands and stares at Eggplant.
“What the fuck are you looking at? Pick that thing up and get out of here, you little Indian bastard!”
But the fat man leaves first, shaking his fat fist, calling out angrily to the dishwashers. When Eggplant has gone back inside, the boy bends down and collects his payment.
Just outside the back kitchen, he rinses off the fish at the water tap and eats it whole, bone-ladder and all. After drinking from the tap, he watches the water rush down a twisting gutter and feed into a shallow stream. On the narrow strip of land between the buildings and the high prison walls, several streams of refuse from the kitchen join other ones from the hospital. During the monsoons, this dirty confluence transforms a meandering thread of water into a real current.
The boy scans the gray-bellied clouds. It won’t start raining for a while. There’s time to follow the stream down to the prison walls. He steps into the water. When the stream becomes shin-deep, the gravel under his feet gives way to velvety silt. He stops to wiggle his toes and dig them deeper into the cool mud. Plastic bags bump against his calves, and thick messes of dirty cotton, oily rainbows, old leaf-wraps from betel nut, clumps of gristle, chicken feathers, the occasional chicken foot from the kitchen or a tumbling knuckle of bone. The stream is his classroom:
he studies the precious refuse it carries, the creatures who drink from it and the spirits who gather between the water and the prison walls.
The current disappears under the first wall and the second wall. A warder told the boy that crocodiles and poisonous snakes live in the ravine between them, and the boy is sure that when the snakes and crocodiles go to bed, all the ghosts wake up. They are the restless spirits of everyone who has ever died in or near the prison, whether they went in a poke-bar fight or with a knife or after a beating or with dysentery or hepatitis or malaria or any other plague, including madness and sorrow and speeding trucks.
Outside the cage, the water filters into a great cesspool where mosquitoes breed by the millions. When they smell the blood of the prisoners, they rise up and fly over the snakes and the crocodiles and even the ghosts. Mosquitoes enter the cage of their own free will and torment everyone who lives there.
The boy absentmindedly scratches one of his mosquito bites as he walks with the current, enjoying the mud-suck at his toes. When he spots a half-rotten potato bobbing along the litter-strewn bank, he grabs it, wipes it on his longyi, and drops it into his sling bag. A few paces farther on, he finds a smooth green stone, and picks it up. Treasure.
He watches the banks, squints into the monsoon crop of grass and weeds. Soon one of the guards will scythe the plants down again—long grass can be used as a place to hide weapons—but for now he enjoys the green profusion with its show of purple morning glories. After checking for scorpions, he steps into a patch of grass and wipes the mud from his feet and legs, all the while humming low so no one can hear him. Sometimes in his little shack he sings a few lines over and over, a scrap of song he doesn’t know how he knows. Singing makes him small again. It changes his face and gives him gooseflesh, just like when Nyi Lay, his pet lizard, comes out for a visit and eats a moth from the boy’s fingers. His eyes shine then with the luster and lust of a real child, as they do now, because he’s spotted the prize, a few steps away. The green lizard with a blue neck has come out of his hiding place.
This lizard is nothing like his pet; he will never live in a shack. He needs the long grasses and the rocks and stones. He’s wild, like a snake. And magic, because he can change color.
The boy loves to watch the lizard slowly transform from deep green to the color of dusty aluminum. If you didn’t know he was there, you would just go tramping stupidly along. The guards and the warders would never see the lizard unless he ran away from them. But the boy sees. First the blue neck fades, then the blue around his legs, then the whole bright length drains away, slowly and quickly both. The lizard can’t know how it’s happening, but it happens. Now he walks with lordly steps to a clump of greenery nearer the stream. He delicately stretches his head up to a blade of grass and licks at a drop of water until it’s gone. Then his head clicks downward on a little hinge, and he drinks another drop. His tongue is pale red. The boy watches until his mosquito bites get the better of him. After giving the lizard a polite nod, the boy rises and backs away, scratching.
The air smells of warming earth and green stuff and flowers. Two old generators, gutted of all usable bits, sit at odd angles against the first brick wall, sunk in several inches of water; they are surrounded by a few desiccated car batteries and some discarded latrine pails. Morning glories have taken over one generator, and vines grow through the rust holes in the pails. The boy steps close to the burgeoning purple flowers and carefully gathers a collection. They wilt almost immediately, but that doesn’t matter. Flowers in one hand, new stone in the other, he turns and scans the back of the kitchen and the hospital. A guard stands outside the hospital, smoking. The boy waves. The man raises his hand for a moment, then bends his head away to relight his cheroot. The boy hopes he won’t watch.
Behind the hospital, close to the first of the prison walls, there stands a small tree, rooted valiantly in a bare mound of earth. The boy doesn’t know the proper name of a single plant on earth, but he calls this one holy. Some of the warders have tied red and pink and orange ribbons around the narrow, sand-colored trunk. It’s not impressive, nothing like the groves of mangoes and palms across the highway, but it’s the only tree left in the cage. The guards who believe in the spirits of trees come and leave flowers at its base or tucked between the smooth bark and the colored ribbons.
When the boy reaches the nat tree, he lowers his head, puts the stone under his arm, and self-consciously folds his hands together for a moment. One breath. Two breaths. Then he jumps forward and quickly tucks the flowers into one of the ribbons. He doesn’t bow down or say words, though he thinks of his father and his mother. He could ask for protection, but it doesn’t seem right that he should ask for anything, because he’s just a boy offering wilted flowers. Should he leave the stone as an offering? But that would be the only one, among the dried-up chains of jasmine and branches of foliage. Some of the warders, along with prisoners who work in the hospital, come and place tiny glasses of water and clumps of rice in the altar box, which is painted red and sits in the crook of the tree’s lowest limbs. The boy never touches this food. It’s for the nat.
He squats down with his father’s graceful furtiveness, but he doesn’t kneel and bow before the tree as some of the men do. If they saw a boy whose father was Muslim bowing like a Buddhist, would they forbid him to come here? Squatting, he stares at the colorful ribbons while fishing a lighter and a half-smoked cheroot from his sling bag. The cheroot is strong, stronger near the stub. Swooning, the boy puts his hand on the ground to steady himself. He waves the smoke away from his eyes like Chit Naing, who often tells the boy he must not smoke. After another heady drag, he lets the coal go out, then tucks the remainder of the cigar behind his ear.
A faint breeze stirs the leaves above him, and behind, closer to the water, something sighs through the grass. The boy smiles at the sound, and holds his breath to listen. A lizard is licking water off the long green blades.
. 32 .
Inside the white house, the singer stares up at his narrow slice of bright sky, darkening cloud. He wonders if somewhere in the world grows a fruit whose flesh is the same intense blue. Heaven fruit, it’s called. From Africa. Or from the deepest jungle of Brazil. And what would it taste like?
Not that he wants to put anything solid in his mouth. The thought of chewing horrifies him. Managing his rice gruel in the morning is still excruciatingly painful. He has started to keep the Eight Precepts, which means he eats only his morning meal. This is a great relief for his jaw. There’s an old saying that it’s easy to keep the Precepts when the belly is full, but maybe it’s easier when the belly is empty. In solitary confinement. With a broken jaw. Ha-ha. He lists the Eight Precepts to himself, like a child memorizing a lesson.
To abstain from harming or killing sentient beings
To abstain from stealing
To abstain from wrong conduct in sexual desires
To abstain from telling lies
To abstain from alcohol and intoxicating substances
To abstain from eating food after midday
To abstain from singing, dancing, and indulging in sensual pleasures
To abstain from high or luxurious beds
A good Buddhist must try to keep the first five. People in meditation retreat keep all eight. Monks have an even longer list. Teza wishes he could say them aloud, but he doesn’t want to move his mouth. For the past few days his palate and his gums have been bleeding so much that he’s swallowed a great deal of his own blood. The doctor says he should spit it out or let it drain into his cup, but moving the spitting-out muscles is so agonizing that Teza just lets the blood slide down his throat.
As though on cue, he hears someone cheerfully greet the gray-haired warder, who has arrived to open the cell. The doctor in his dirty white coat steps around the wall, holding his black bag in front of him like a badge. Or maybe a blind man’s cane. “Né gaun la?” he asks, peering between the bars. Your health is good?
The fucking twit! How can
the singer reply?
He can’t. He just stands as the warder opens the grille. The doctor trundles in, glancing around nervously. Teza doesn’t understand why the man should be so anxious; he’s not the one who’s being treated, is he? And treatment is a misnomer. He does little more than listen to his patient’s heart (the clammy stethoscope sticks, as though dirty, to the singer’s bone-rack chest) and look at his deeply ridged fingernails (“Mineral absorption very good!”) and lecture him about moving his jaw. This is the only honest and useful counsel he gives. “You might be able to talk a bit now. But no talking!” Though he stands so close that Teza can see the festering state of the acne on his nose, the doctor still needs to shout. The singer closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. Loud sounds cut right through him these days.
The doctor yells, “No talking out loud! We have to stabilize the fracture. Your jaw is still very swollen.” When he touches the distended, discolored chin, Teza can’t feel a thing. “I’m worried about an infection. Today you get two needles.” His voice drops to a dramatic whisper—“Your morphine”—because the first needle is contraband. “And it’s a full dosage, more than you usually get.” Then the volume goes up again. “And some antibiotic, very good quality, from China. The Chief Warden himself makes sure you get this. The Chief Warden!” His voice deepens with awe, as though he’s talking about some powerful nat. One after the other, the needles go into Teza’s thigh, where the veins are bigger. The ache blossoms right there, then fans out, whoosh. He immediately recognizes the deep flood of morphine, then feels himself falling into it.
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