The Lizard Cage

by Karen Connelly

  In the middle of the corridor he sits on his knees, takes his old possessions and his new presents out of his market basket, and sets to rearranging everything, to hide the book and the pen. Teza watches anxiously, especially when the boy starts unrolling his bulky felt blanket. “Hurry, Nyi Lay. U Chit Naing will come back soon.”

  Wanting to reassure Teza, the boy quickly twists around, sweeping his hand lightly across the blanket, the floor, where his fingers hit the white pen. With a quiet whir, it shoots over the cement toward the cell.

  Teza and Nyi Lay watch it come to a stop. It points at the singer, who is close enough to reach down through the bars and pick it up. But at the same moment an awful, familiar sound distracts them both, and they look up, toward the crunch of boot on brick gravel. The boy blinks. Chit Naing is standing at the entrance to the corridor, not fifteen paces away, his expression neutral but for his mouth, which is open. He closes it and takes two steps into the corridor, not wanting anyone in the compound to see him hesitating there, between one cage and another. He isn’t looking at the boy. He isn’t looking at Teza. His eyes are riveted on the mute, insignificant, made-in-Thailand pen. He knows without examining it that the plastic casing is carefully marked, at the bottom and the top, little cuts with a razor blade. Identifiable.

  Teza stares at the jailer. He is worried for the boy. For himself, he is simply defiant. Very slowly, Nyi Lay sits back on his heels. His face is drained pale; his eyes are round black questions. The jailer watches him lean forward, his shadow covering the ledger.

  The pen seems to glow on the gray floor. Chit Naing blinks. How did it come to be here? There is no time to find out, to ask, to make the right decision. There is no time, yet how the moment lengthens, turns into a minute, a minute and a half, and swerves in Chit Naing’s mind, twists in on itself, the way the whole cage now twists into this one corridor, this cell, this man and child at the center of the labyrinth. Here. The pen. He shakes his head, then whispers, “You have to give it to me.”

  The boy remains motionless but Teza begins to protest. “But the writing is for—”

  “I don’t mean the notebook. He can take it out—no one will search him. But if I keep the pen, I can use it against Handsome. I don’t know how, I don’t know what I’ll do yet, but if I find the pen …” He silently corrects himself: I have found it.

  He steps forward very quickly and bends at the waist in a smooth, graceful movement, no one will know; the pen is already sliding with his hand into his trouser pocket as he straightens up. Then he feels awkward, to be standing above them, his boots close to the boy, who is still kneeling. The pen burns through the lining of his khaki trousers. He didn’t know until he saw it just now how much he cared about the mystery of its disappearance.

  The jailer looks from Teza to the boy. “Nyi Lay, look at me.” The boy solemnly raises his head. “This didn’t happen. Do you understand? I didn’t see anything. I am still standing on the other side of the wall.” He smiles hesitantly, trying to reassure the child, who just stares at him.

  Chit Naing takes an unsteady step backward, then turns with a pounding heart and leaves the corridor. Standing on the other side of the wall, he glances back and forth, wondering if anyone has passed by the entrance to the corridor. No, he would have heard feet on gravel. He takes a deep breath and tries to calm himself. What has he done? The slender piece of contraband against his leg is unexpectedly heavy. He tries to push it deeper into his pocket, hoping no one will see the top poking out.

  All right, calm down, he thinks to himself. It’s just a pen. I can throw it away if I want to. He watches a work detail pass by on its way back to one of the halls and waves at the warder at the end of the row. Then wipes his forehead. He’s sweating. Did the warder notice anything? He makes a silent wish: let no one pass by and talk to him. He slowly removes his glasses but doesn’t clean them. He simply stands there, motionless, unsure of what he’s done. If only he hadn’t stepped into the corridor at that moment. Of course he suspected something—most probably a message scratched onto a plastic bag. But a notebook—a prison accounting ledger, no less. And that bloody pen.

  Such a small weight. It rests against his thigh and slowly burns. There’s nothing I can do, he thinks. I picked the damn thing up. It belongs to me now.

  Something akin to fear cuts through him quickly, unexpectedly, faster than fear, like a blade so sharp and quick that the cut turning crimson shocks you. How did this happen?

  He wipes his forehead with his hand again and puts his glasses back on, telling himself once more to calm down. But regret is settling into him like sickness. He wishes he hadn’t seen it.

  He thinks, That’s the story of my life. There is so much he wishes he’d never seen. The beatings, the poke-bar stabbings, so many men violated and violating in turn, every year, tens, hundreds, thousands of them, angry, frustrated with the lives allotted to them, with the injustices they survive only to perpetrate upon others, returning to the cage the next year, two, five years later. Over and over again he has watched despair attach itself like an immense leech to the human heart. He wishes he knew nothing about all that.

  But now his knowledge of the other side doesn’t make him feel any better, and endangers him far more. He has seen the goodness that thrives in the human, the love that grows right here in the cage, among the most battered, the most insignificant. And what he has seen, what he knows to be the truth, can so easily become evidence against him.

  Why did he pick up the pen?

  If it’s not the pen that undoes him, won’t it be something else? The terror lies in this inevitability. The unraveling may be unexpected, accidental, the mechanism set in motion at a party, where the Chief Warden will mention a certain wife, niece of a senior MI officer, who donates to a certain monastery school; and a woman, daughter of the same officer, will raise her bejeweled head and ask in an arch voice, Oh, really? Where did you hear that? Or one of the underground agents from over the border will be arrested, and he also will know what he should not, that a jailer supplied trial documents and information about certain politicals. Or in the next ten minutes, if the boy is too nervous and makes the warders suspicious—so suspicious they become fearful—the net could close on all of them very quickly.

  He brushes his wrist against his trouser pocket. Yes, there it is, his own piece of contraband, his own crime.

  . 62 .

  I’m done!” the boy whispers breathlessly. He looks down at his handiwork; the thick felt blanket bulges from the mouth of the basket. He stuffs the blanket in deeper and turns to the singer. “But Saya Chit Naing took—”

  Teza waves his hand back and forth, brushing the words away. “No. He didn’t. If anyone asks you, he knows nothing about this. Do you understand?”

  The boy echoes, “Saya Chit Naing doesn’t know a thing.”

  “Well done.” Teza takes a deep breath. “Nyi Lay, before you go, I would like you to give me something.”

  “What? What can I give you?” He looks up, considering. “I know! My new thanakha! You can put it on your sores.” He nods at the singer’s shins and forearms, scratched red and raw. “Also some soap, I have some soap for you.”

  “Nyi Lay, thank you, but I don’t need those things. I want something else. It’s small, but very important. And it’s invisible. When you give it to me, I’ll be able to see it.”

  “And I have this thing?”

  “You do.”

  This is a riddle; he’s heard the men tell riddles before. “Ko Teza, I don’t know! What do I have that’s invisible?”

  Teza waves his hand toward his own chest. Come closer. The boy turns his head against the bars to let the singer deposit the secret of the riddle into his ear, which he does with a warm whisper, “Your name.”

  The boy rears back in surprise. “My name?”

  “Not Nyi Lay or kala-lay. None of the names I’ve heard the jailer or the warders call you. Not Sabado, Free El Salvador, those words on your shirt. Your own name.�
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  The boy’s mouth has opened into an O, the letter of sheer surprise. He puts his face close to the bars again and whispers back. “Zaw Gyi is my name.”

  “Zaw Gyi, my friend. Thank you.”

  “No, not Zaw Gyi. Zaw Gyee, the long sound.”

  “Really? Are you sure?”

  Is he sure? The answer rises unbidden into his mouth. “My mother said Zaw Gyee. Always. With the long sound. I remember her voice.”

  Teza speaks through laughter. “Do you know what your name means?”

  “It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just my name.”

  “But all names have a meaning. Zaw Gyee especially. He’s the alchemist. From the old stories. When you’re settled in at the monastery school, ask the Hsayadaw about him.”

  The boy shakes his head. “What is the alchemist?”

  “He’s a very wise man who lives in the forest. He knows all kinds of extraordinary secrets. The Hsayadaw will tell you. Our monks used to know a lot about alchemy. How lucky you are, Zaw Gyi. You have a very special name.”

  “I do?”

  “Yes. I’m glad you told me what it is. I won’t worry so much now, because I know you have a strong name to help you.”

  Chit Naing walks, rather noisily, around the outer wall. The singer slips his arms through the bars and takes the small, hard hands in his own. He whispers, “It’s time for you to go.”

  A small cry escapes the boy. He can’t leave Teza, he can’t leave Tiger. He turns his head and casts a grim look at the jailer, who arranged all this; Chit Naing is making him leave the cage. I will not go.

  But even as he silently makes this pronouncement, he grasps Teza’s hands tighter and presses his forehead against the bars. “Ako, I will miss you.”

  “I will miss you, too, Nyi Lay. Ma jow-ba-neh. Don’t be afraid.”

  Chit Naing politely coughs and glances at his watch. “We’ve got to go. The Hsayadaw has already arrived.”

  His eyes and Teza’s meet above the boy’s black head. Chit Naing sees that the singer doesn’t care that he took the pen. It really doesn’t belong to him anymore. Despite his ruined face, Teza seems to be smiling. But maybe it’s the angle of his head, which turns away now and drops closer to the boy. The two of them lean together. Chit Naing can’t tell if their foreheads touch through the bars, but their fingers are still intertwined. Teza whispers to the boy, who murmurs back, and the singer whispers again, and everything they say—Chit Naing can’t make out a single word—is sung in the faint music of shifting tones and breath. Teza pulls back first, to look at the boy. Then he takes his hands from Zaw Gyi and places them on his own knees, in the attitude of a meditator.

  The boy stands, puts his sling bag back over his shoulder, and picks up his basket. He wants to cry and scream. He wants to pass through the bars of Teza’s cell and stay with him in there, talking. But he just says, “Ako, now-muh dwee-may.” See you later, Older Brother.

  “Yes, I’ll see you later, Zaw Gyi.” The boy turns, and Chit Naing turns, and they walk. Turquoise longyi. Lime-green, ragged T-shirt FREE EL SALVADOR. Two mismatched flip-flops, slapping away.

  For a few seconds Teza does not breathe. He listens to the thwack of slippers on brick-chip gravel. The steady beats are already fading. He turns his head to catch the last of the footsteps. Then he can’t hear them at all. Exhaling, he presses his forehead against the bars, where moments ago he felt the child’s skin against his own.

  Upekkha. Upekkha.

  The fourth of the Four Divine Abidings. Equanimity. To let be what one must let be.

  Teza remains sitting cross-legged. When he reaches for his blanket and pulls it around his shoulders, his position shifts only slightly. Just as he doesn’t permit himself to think about food, he takes his mind away from the friend who has left him. The child. His own child.

  Upekkha. Upekkha.

  The sky between roof and wall is a deeper blue now. He’s had many evenings watching that small bridge where birds and clouds cross over. He once saw the moon passing there. Sometimes he found a faint trailing of stars. And always this: the gradation of light through hours, one blue like fresh-dyed silk, another like worn turquoise cotton. Now dusk-mauve darkens the sky, and just before the big lights crack on and erase everything, a flood of indigo ink writes up the night.

  Teza closes his eyes. He follows his breath through his body, down night-black lanes into streets of light and bone. It’s hard to sit in the evening, he’s so worn out by the day.

  He finds himself leaning, falling over in slow motion, which strikes him as comical, and sad, because he doesn’t have the strength to halt the slow toppling. He ends up sitting sideways on the floor, stuck. Awkwardly, patiently, he scissors his legs apart and slowly stretches them out. He thinks, Ya-ba-deh, I will meditate this way, lying down.

  After the necessary shifting, he finds his breath again, he comes back to his meditation word. Upekkha. But it’s not long before the word escapes him, and he sleeps.

  Already the dream has come to him several times, and here it is again. Companionable now, it no longer confuses or pains him. Whether he wakes or sleeps on, the vision is the same. In old Pagan, Tattadesa, the great temple falls, with the Buddha and the boy and the man inside. The lizard, caught beneath the bricks, becomes a bird and flies. He dreams himself, flying, the earth spread out below him like a living body, his own and all that he loves.

  . 63 .

  The moment Senior Jailer Chit Naing steps into the releases room, he puts a prophylactic smile on his face and thinks, What a bloody nightmare.

  Then, as he ushers the boy into the room, he thinks again, If only this were a nightmare, I might have the great relief of waking up and drinking a glass of water.

  His mouth has gone bone-dry. Reflexively, he tries to lick his lips, but his tongue sticks between them like fine-grade sandpaper. At the same time—oh, such irony!—he feels the sweat begin under his arms. Within a minute, slick, narrow streams will be running down his sides. Turned away from the long table where possession searches take place, he quickly draws his hand across his upper lip. Smiling, murmuring to the boy, he pivots back, almost sick with the movement, because he can feel the pen shift in his pocket, sliding upward. He tries not to press his shirt against his body with his arms. He doesn’t want the Chief Warden to see the coming deluge of perspiration.

  Because there he is, the Chief, leaning on the edge of the table, his arms crossed over his big chest, his bald head like wet bronze under the light. His pack of Marlboros is on the search table; his gold lighter glimmers beside it. The bastard. He is not supposed to be here.

  Yesterday afternoon he told Chit Naing that he had no interest in seeing the boy before his departure. He actually said, “The sooner the kid goes, the better, with as little noise as possible.” Stupidly, inadvertently, in some small gesture or flicker of eye, Chit Naing must have been visibly relieved, and that unconscious signal made the Chief suspicious. It’s Chit Naing’s own fault. He has conjured the man like a demon, and the Chief wears a demon’s grin to mock the senior jailer’s terse smile.

  But it’s worse. Young Tint Lwin stands on the far side of the table, his hands obviously clenched together behind his back. The stricken expression on his handsome face whispers, I’m frightened. What is immediately clear is that Tint Lwin is frightened for him, for Chit Naing. Can he see the pen? It’s everything Chit Naing can do not to look down at his own hip, and he doesn’t want to put his hand in his pocket either. He gives Tint Lwin a sharp glance, wishing the young warder would pull himself together. There’s no telling how quickly the Chief might turn around and see that desperate look.

  Soe Thein is here too, standing a few steps away from the door. How predictable. These two men—one low-ranking, one senior—both have reputations as decent, nonviolent warders. Soe Thein is careful not to be overtly sympathetic to political prisoners, but a few people know how much he respects Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and her party. Through his network of eavesdropper
s and whisperers, the Chief Warden must also know. As for Tint Lwin, he’s just green, a good boy who isn’t cut out for the prison. Yet here he is, working in the cage, his wages feeding who knows how many people. Such men are always viewed by their superiors with suspicion. Just a sympathizer waiting to happen.

  Chit Naing believed their duties here were a gratuitous blessing, a good and lucky chance. What a fool! He realizes that both of them are here to receive a warning. And if there is a more serious lesson to learn, they will learn it right now.

  Being older and smarter than the young warder, Soe Thein doesn’t allow his deeply lined face to show any emotion. But when Chit Naing meets his eye, he hears the warder’s crusty voice quite clearly: I hope the kid’s not carrying anything out or you’re both fucked.

  Trying to calm his breathing, Chit Naing stands one step behind the child, whose head is bowed in deference. The Chief pushes himself lightly from the edge of the table and stands up to his full height. His voice is very loud, and reverberates in the bare room. “So today’s your big day, eh, kala-lay?”

  “Yes, sir,” the boy replies in a respectful voice. Chit Naing swallows. No saliva goes down.

  “Your life sentence is finished! Congratulations!” The Chief Warden chuckles at his own joke. “You must be very happy.”

  The boy whispers, “No, sir.”

  “What? What’s that?”

  “No, sir. I am not happy. I want to stay here.”

  A stillness descends upon the four men. Taken aback, they stare down at the boy, who keeps his eyes on the cement floor.

  Chit Naing knows he has to speak first. He clears his throat. “But Nyi Lay, the Hsayadaw is waiting for you. He’s come to take you to the monastery school.”

  “Yes, Saya Chit Naing, I know.”

  “And you’re all ready to go. You’ve said good-bye to everyone here, you’ve packed all your things.”