The Lizard Cage (42 page)

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.

H
e’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.

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.”

M
any 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.”