The Lizard Cage (51 page)

“You’re not going anywhere, my little friend. You’re going to play with me now. I’ve left you alone all this time, and now I hear you’ve gone to live as Tiger’s boy. Tricky little fucker! I want to get my share right now, before he loosens you up too much.” Eggplant bends down while pulling the boy’s head up. They look each other in the face, but the boy can’t keep his eyes still. He keeps glancing down, looking for the swollen cock still gripped in the cook’s hand.

Eggplant’s voice is low and guttural. “You do this for me and I’ll do you a favor. I’ll keep your thieving a secret. You tell anyone about our little meeting, I tell the Chief Warden about you stealing his food. You know what will happen to you then, kala-lay? They’ll lock you up forever, you stinking thief.” Concentrating, sucking in his big bottom lip, the cook maneuvers his hips to line up his cock with the boy’s mouth.

The boy knows something about the things men do, the things that can be done to men, but it’s happening to him so quickly, and he hates it. He can’t move his head. He can’t get away.

He opens his mouth, but there’s not a single word in there; no scream comes out. Eggplant whispers, “That’s right, open up wide. Get me good and wet and then I’ll turn you around and you can be my nice little girl.” He abruptly pushes the boy’s head back and thrusts his hips forward. There is no stream, no water, but the boy is drowning again. Eggplant’s penis fills his mouth, pushes against the back of his throat. His eyes slide rapidly back and forth, trying to see beyond, above, around the cook’s body, but flesh envelopes him, pushes into him, pushes in, pushes in. Even when the cook slides his cock out slightly to thrust again, it’s not enough to let the boy inhale. The man swallows the boy even as the boy gags on him, his eyes bulging out with violently suppressed choking, the reflex trapped, backfiring. He chokes without choking because no air enters him, only this man, plunging his cock into the passageway that cannot scream. Eggplant groans, grips the boy’s head harder. Hot skin and wiry hair bang against the small nose and forehead and chin.

Why is this happening? The boy does not think the question. His body becomes it, demanding an answer as his muscles twist and writhe a mute, fierce protest against the fat cook. He’s big as a battalion, a whole army bearing down on a small country. A moment later there is no question, no answer, only a rare child, dwarf-king of many names, whose flesh decides
this is the end
, not knowing what is ending, his life or this violation, he’s so old though still too young and terrified to know and he cannot scream but he can bite,
he can bite
, as he has seen a rat turn at the last possible instant and leap toward the stick, mouth open, teeth closing upon the wood that lifts him up like lightning and shakes him loose and strikes him until he’s dead.

•   •   •

T
ime stops. Only because Sammy the iron-beater, timekeeper, does not care about striking the next hour, six o’clock. If he could talk, he would tell the story later and it would become a prison myth. Unfortunately, his tongue has not grown back yet. His ears have grown keen, though, and his eyes. With his giant’s slow but fast amble, he’s already heading for the kitchen, wondering about the boy. Because Sammy’s a timekeeper, friendly with the right warders, he has compound privileges and is allowed to move at will in certain areas of the prison. When he’s more than halfway to the kitchen, a high-pitched scream careens like a flock of bats out the open doors. The giant Indian walks only slightly faster. Compound privileges or not, he would never run in the cage.

A bellow follows the scream. The timekeeper recognizes this as the unrestrained cry of great pain, extremely loud and unself-conscious. This cry joins the human to the animal world like no other sound but birdsong. In the briefest flash, Sammy recalls a scene from the village where he grew up: the buffalo that turned craftily against the knife, outwitting the slaughterer but then suffering much more as a result.

Bloody warders, lazy bastards, he’s beat them to it, though he sees Soe Thein jogging over from Hall Five; he’ll be here in less than a minute. Sammy walks into the kitchen just as the keening begins, repeated howls in a low register. That’s shock, he knows, sinking into the body by way of the throat. Safe inside the building, the tall man moves faster, one wide step, two, three. He’s half loping alongside the chopping counters when the boy, eyes huge with fear, mouth and chin slathered in blood, bursts out from behind a pile of rice sacks and crashes right into his long legs. Sammy grunts his sound for
Stop
and reaches out to grab him, but the boy screams and twists away from his hand, slipping on the wet floor with a slap of bone. A split second later he’s up again, scrambling into a full-out sprint. Sammy grunts as articulately as he can, knowing exactly what he’s saying:
Nyi Lay, don’t run! The warders are coming. Don’t run!
But the boy does not stop. The big man makes a wolfish sound for the word
Fuck
and stands there, long, muscular arms spread in hesitation—should he go after him or not? He stays put, watching the boy’s dirty bare feet wink back at him. The kid’s so fast, already clearing the doors now, turning to the right, at least—away from the open compound. The iron-beater snorts toward the
sound of wailing behind the rice sacks.
Shut up already!
He looks back toward the open double doors, hoping the warders won’t do anything stupid when they see the poor kid making a dash for it. You can never tell with those assholes.

A few steps closer to the keening, he finds the fat cook fallen against the rice sacks, clutching the length of his cock in one bloody hand and what must be the bitten head of it in the other. The red gush is unstoppable, dripping rapidly into a pool between his massive legs. His legs are spread, knees up, oddly like those of a woman in labor. The timekeeper stares at the small crimson handprint splayed on one of the white sacks. He knows this is where the boy, choking on semen or blood or both, wiped his mouth before pushing himself back and up, vaulting away.

When Eggplant sees Sammy looming over him, he cries out, “Help me, help me!”

The timekeeper shakes his head in disgust. He glances over the cook’s head to the famous little shelf high above the gas burners. The glint of the well-guarded cleaver catches his eye. If the boy had been tall enough to see that shining blade, he would have known the cook was around, because Eggplant never leaves it out unless he’s nearby. Soe Thein, entering the kitchen, shouts, “What’s going on in here?” as if Sammy might call back an intelligible answer. He looks down at Eggplant again and spits on him, then glances back at the cleaver. There is still plenty of time to kill him. That would be the best way to shut down the whining siren of his voice. It would be nothing, absolutely nothing, to cut his throat. If the cleaver were really sharp, Sammy could lop off his head with a few solid hacks. He knows how to do this, from his time on the boats.

But then he would never get out of this shithole, and the warders might think he had something to do with the mess of Eggplant’s dick too. Now there’s a
really
stomach-turning thought. Besides, if they don’t hurry and sew him up, the cook just might bless the world and die from blood loss. Sammy grits the teeth in his spacious mouth and puts his hands on his hips. It’s a feat of discipline to keep his hands off that cleaver. Never mind cutting the cook—the blade would be worth a great deal of money.

But time is short, and there’s something he wants even more than the cleaver. He steps forward, bending slightly at the waist, as if to take a concerned look at the carnage of the cook’s dick. Soe Thein is walking toward
them now, and another warder is close behind. Leaning in quickly, Sammy slaps the cook’s face, open-handed but very hard. Then he straightens up, following the motion through with thigh, bent leg, raised heel, which delivers a deep jab to Eggplant’s stomach. The keening abruptly becomes wheezing as the cook doubles over with new pain.

Sammy takes two steps into the aisle that leads to the back door, one hand pointing at the mess. Soe Thein strides past him, turns in at the rice-sack wall, and swears when he sees the blood pouring through the cook’s fingers.

Eggplant cries as he gasps for breath. He looks up at Soe Thein and whispers, “Help me. The little fucker bit me.”

The warder leans down, just as Sammy did, and asks, “The kid bit you, did he?”

The cook nods his head tearfully.

“It’s about time somebody did.” Soe Thein turns to the timekeeper with the order, “Go find the doctor.” Sammy gives him a look of friendly insolence, eyelids drooping, mouth a mixture of pout and smile. “What the fuck are you looking at me like that for? You heard me! Get the doctor. Hurry up!” Sammy shrugs his shoulders. For a man with such long, strong legs, he walks away very slowly.

T
hey’ve cut down the monsoon grass that grew on the banks of the stream. His feet notice immediately. It’s like walking on the bristles of a shorn head.

No matter how many times he works his tongue around his mouth and spits, and spits again, the taste remains, soaked through like oil in a rag. He smells it all over his face, a stink with a rhythm to it, the same pulse as his inhalations. Semenblood, semen-blood. Breathing through his mouth doesn’t help; it’s up his nose. Dried around his lips, on his chin, the blood smell’s stronger, but that juice of metal and stone from the male body sticks at the back of his throat.

The warders will kill him now. First they will make him stay in one of the dog cells because he ate the Chief Warden’s food. They won’t give him back to Eggplant—the warders hate the cook, because he’s fat and rich—but maybe the Chief Warden will give him to Handsome and Handsome will take him to a trough in one of the shower rooms and drown him. The junior jailer won’t do it in the stream—it’s too shallow today.

The boy leaps over the water to the side where the tree grows, and he spits again, in a manly way, just like Tan-see Tiger, making a big noise. Then he bursts into tears. If the men leave flowers and ribbons and water
and food, where is the good nat of the tree? Believing in that spirit, he brought morning glories and whispers like prayers. But his faith and his gifts were no protection, not from Handsome or the cook or Sein Yun. That jaundiced face with its slashed red grin flashes into the boy’s mind. In their different ways, all three of them want to drown him.

And so they will. That’s how it is with big people. They can do whatever they want. He will die, like his father and his mother and Nyi Lay his lizard. He hits his sling bag, the heavy pouch hanging at his thigh; he pounds it once as hard as he can, feels the blow against his leg. The possessions hidden in there are useless. No one would call them treasure but him. During the past two days, the crimes against him have wrought another crime: they’ve made him old enough to recognize his poverty.

Who among the men of the cage hears the sound that rises now, that old ever-new cadence from a child’s throat, the crying that comes before language and carries beyond it? Warders stationed around the hospital hear it. Men doing guard duty at the watchtower hear it and come across the compound, curious about all the commotion. As they get closer to the kitchen, the boy’s cries are drowned out by Eggplant, who moans and begs for his penis to be saved. The medic adds his droning voice to the cacophony. Judging from his glazed eyes, he’s probably stoned; he is definitely unfazed by the growing red lake, one shore soaking the bottom rice sacks, the other shore coagulating on and into the concrete. Tossing the black mop of hair out of his eyes, he explains to the Chief Warden that the doctor left over an hour ago and there are no empty beds in the hospital. If Eggplant is to receive care, one of the inmates who has paid for a bed will have to be dragged out of it, but the medic certainly can’t do that on his own. A high-ranking warder or the senior jailer will have to be sent. Someone goes to find Chit Naing, and ten minutes later, four men and a stretcher carry the bloody cook to the hospital. Chit Naing watches the men carry the moaning cook away and then takes stock of the mess behind the rice sacks. Standing still, looking at the blood on the floor, the jailer hears it too, the rising wails that break and stutter as they fall. He knows the boy is crying, but he can’t leave the kitchen until he receives orders from the Chief, who approaches him now.

Rather than looking down at the mess, the chief very pointedly looks up at the shelf above the burners. “Make sure to take that cleaver out of
here tonight, would you?” More quietly, he asks, “What about the monastery? Will the Hsayadaw take the boy or not?”

Lying with admirable self-possession, Chit Naing assures him, “Yes, there’s a place for him. The abbot would be happy to take another child.” In fact the jailer still hasn’t met the Hsayadaw, who returned to Rangoon only this afternoon. Chit Naing has an appointment tonight, to meet him for the first time.

“I’m glad the monastery will take him. It’s either that or a state-run house for delinquents. Get him out of here as soon as you can. This is ridiculous.” The bald man waves his hand over the rice sacks, still not looking down. “We can’t have him running around here if he’s getting violent. Who knows what he’ll do next? I’m just glad that the cook didn’t say anything about pressing assault charges.”

Chit Naing opens his mouth and closes it. Then opens it again. “Sir, you don’t mean to say that … The boy was … He was protecting himself, sir. Against the cook. We all know—”

The Chief cuts in. “We all know that what the cook does is his business. You can’t tell me that the boy doesn’t have his own business too, if you know what I mean. Usually he’s a good boy, I grant you that, but he’s hardly an innocent child. What the hell was he doing in here so late, on his own? This looks like a very ugly, and very messy, lover-boys’ quarrel. Disgusting pigs, all of them.” With the sneer still twisting his face, the Chief turns to go, then abruptly stops. “Oh, I forgot to tell you. I expect the junior jailer to report for work quite soon. In the next couple days. Perhaps even tomorrow. You won’t have to work so hard anymore. His knee seems to be much better.”