The Lizard Cage (52 page)

T
wo warders follow the Chief Warden out of the kitchen at a safe distance. Unlike him, they take a quick turn behind the building, knowing the kid’s gone back there. In the falling light, they see a little human crouched down under the tree. The high-pitched cries catch in their ears, but they know it’s not the crows come back to roost on the prison walls. A minute later the crying changes rhythm. Comforting themselves with the thought that he must be calming down now, they return to their duties.

They are wrong. The boy isn’t calming down. He’s hyperventilating.
There are words in every tongue for
grief fear terror broken
but none so eloquent, so precise as this, the sound of a child who cannot breathe for weeping. And there is no cowardice so profound as the adult’s who cannot bear to hear it.

The boy knows he has to stop this breathless sobbing. He crab-walks to the edge of the stream and feels himself sinking slightly, his toes involuntarily clutching mud. He touches the water. His fingers stretch down into it and squeeze up a handful of gravel. He wills himself to take a breath, then another. And another. He doesn’t dare rinse his mouth out with the dirty stream water, but he washes the blood and semen from his hands and face.

He puts his skinny arms around himself and rocks back and forth. Then he turns from the stream and crawls up the bare mound of earth where the tree grows. When he looks at the small canopy of leaves still glowing in the last light of dusk, he wants to cry again. The tree could be cut down any day, by the same men who scythed the grass.

In its solitariness, the tree also seems to know this, and stands there astonished, astonishing, like an early memory of the human, limbs stretching toward the sky. There are no clouds now, only dark blue opening into mauve above the first brick wall and the second brick wall, those borders between two worlds that are the same world.

The crows are coming home to roost in the ramparts. Half a dozen of them turn, wheel against the sky like dark fan blades before they flap back to the outer wall.
Caw-caw caw-caw
come their raspy voices; they are as short-tempered as old prisoners, the fathers who lived here before and lost some shining thing in the prison. That’s why the crows always come back; they’re looking for whatever it is they lost. The boy watches them carefully, as he often did in the evenings, when he lived in his little shack. He hears the throaty warbles and clicks the birds make, talking to each other as they settle in for the night.

The floodlights crack on, changing all the colors to chalk, making him squint in the harsh light. He blows his nose like a cannon, finger to nostril. Then he looks up at the shadow of the tree immense against the brick wall, big enough to climb. He cannot remember ever climbing a tree, though he would like to. Not this one, of course. Even if the nat doesn’t protect him, he must live here still, invisible among the branches, admiring the colored
ribbons of cloth and the flowers. The nat must be waiting for the boy to leave. Then he will swing down and collect the offerings left for him.

The boy stands up, steps closer to the sand-colored bark. Wedged in the crook of the lower branches rests the upright box, the simple altar. Inside it are two strings of jasmine, a small plate of rice, and a glass of water. The boy swallows, coughs. He smells and tastes the cook in his throat.

And he hears boots. Not Handsome’s gait, and thinner than Soe Thein’s. It’s a measured walk, slowing down now. It has to be Chit Naing. The boy lets go of his held breath.

“Nyi Lay?”

“Yes?” He doesn’t turn around but keeps staring at the altar box, the glass of water.

“Are you all right?”

That’s a funny question. Nyi Lay blinks hard, several times—no more crying—then focuses his eyes on the glass. “Sir, I am very thirsty.”

The senior jailer, standing in the mud on the other side of the stream, doesn’t know how to respond. When he jumps across the water, the boy startles away from him. He takes two slow steps toward Nyi Lay, who still faces the little tree. Chit Naing would like to touch the child, lay a hand on his shoulder, comfort him, but something keeps him from making the gesture. He follows the boy’s thirsty gaze. “There’s water in that glass, isn’t there?”

“That water is for the nat of the tree.”

Nyi Lay, Chit Naing thinks, nats do not exist. He pulls an open hand down over his mouth and chin. Who knows how the boy has come by his nat worship? His mother probably believed in spirits. After all that’s happened, Chit Naing doesn’t want to take anything else from him, even a superstition. He says gently, “I think the nat would not mind, this once, if you drank his water. The nat of this tree is very generous.”

The boy gives him a peculiar look, as though appraising Chit Naing’s qualifications for making such claims. Then fear crosses his face. “Will I get in trouble?”

“No, you won’t. It’s all right, Nyi Lay. You can drink the water.”

The boy extends his arm, puts his fingers around the glass, which is not glass at all, but clear plastic, cooler than his palm. He pulls it out of the box without disturbing the jasmine or the small plate of rice.

Sweet without sweetness, the clear liquid slides into him, its own element, and he swallows it down without choking, which seems a feat unto itself. He drinks slowly at first, then gulps, his head angling back until the glass is empty. He puts it back into the box. Then he turns around.

“Saya Chit Naing?”

“Yes?”

“What’s going to happen to me?” He is full of weariness, and acceptance, like an old man who’s made a hard journey to the wrong village. It is night. There is nowhere else to go.

Chit Naing takes a step closer, lowers his voice. “That’s what I want to talk to you about. I’ve already spoken to the Chief Warden. He came down to the kitchen when he heard what happened.” The boy’s shoulders curve inward as he pulls his sling bag close to him.

“No, Nyi Lay, it’s all right. Don’t be scared.” Chit Naing decides very quickly to lie again, in an effort to reassure the child. “The Chief’s not angry at you about … being in the kitchen. The cook’s in trouble, not you. You didn’t do anything wrong. Do you understand that?”

Later, much later, the boy will remember Chit Naing’s voice and his face, drawn and thin, the brow wrinkled against the top of his wire-rimmed glasses. The words will become a mantra, an acrid blessing:
You didn’t do anything wrong
. But right now he believes himself to be the sole author of various disasters. It’s his fault that he went into the kitchen, that he stole the pen and made Handsome angry.

It’s his own fault that he lived. The roaring truck struck his father, who died, and his mother died too. The shame of surviving sticks in his throat like a fishbone. He reaches out to steady himself and touches the smooth bark of the tree.

Chit Naing steps closer. He would like to pick the child up as he did the other night, but Nyi Lay moves away from him.

“The Chief Warden isn’t angry at you. He’s angry at the cook, who did a very bad thing. We talked about you, Nyi Lay. There’s something we want you to do.”

Always there is something, the boy thinks, some deal or tradeoff. “What?”

The jailer hears the challenge in the small word, the hardness. He doubts Nyi Lay will take up the offer. “There is a pongyi-kyaung in Rangoon.”

The boy quickly replies, “I know about that place. The singer told me.” They’re all in it together, the singer and the jailer, even the Chief Warden.

“The Hsayadaw takes in children, and teenagers too, boys who don’t have a family.”

“I don’t need anyone to take care of me.”

“I know that. We were thinking about something else. Something very important.”

“What?” The word snaps out and hits Chit Naing like an elastic band.

“If you went to live at the monastery, you would learn to read. And write. The Hsayadaw would be kind to you. He’s a good man.”

The boy’s fingers spread wide over the light brown skin of the tree. A slight breeze makes the leaves tap against each other, a thousand tiny doors. Still gazing hard at Chit Naing, the boy asks, “When do I leave?”

C
hit Naing accompanies the child back to Hall Four for the night, walking him all the way to Tan-see Tiger’s cell. The men, in the throes of gossiping about the events in the kitchen, quiet down when they see the senior jailer and the warder with his fistful of keys. The boy walks between them, staring at the ground. He knows that he’s become a topic of conversation. News travels fast in the cage, but Nyi Lay has never been at the center of it before. He wants to disappear. All five of the tan-see’s cellmates are here, smoking cheroots and picking their teeth after dinner. The old man who’s blind in one eye is working on a basket, weaving threads of stretched plastic. Tan-see Tiger is sitting on his bunk, a ragged book in his hands; he’s
reading
. When the warder opens up the grille, the other prisoners make way for the boy to pass. Tiger looks up at him, sadness plain on his face.

Scrawny Hla Myat runs his long-nailed fingers through his greasy hair and greets the boy, then pokes the convict beside him in the ribs. This man, a diminutive car and truck thief with a nose splayed wide beneath restless eyes, is called Kyaw Kyaw. A big joker, Kyaw Kyaw can’t help muttering something under his breath to the two other inmates of the cell, who burst out laughing. Tiger warned them not to make jokes, but they’re already
failing miserably. The temptation to pervert the usual greeting—Tamin sa bibi la? Have you eaten rice yet?—is simply too great.

The tan-see and the old weaver are the only men in the little group not involved in the muffled but increasingly raucous laughter. After the boy drops into his nest beside the tan-see’s bunk, Tiger growls at his men, “Would you guys shut the fuck up? Can’t you see the kid’s worn out?” Discreetly avoiding the pervertible question, Tiger asks, “Do you want something to eat, Nyi Lay? Can I get you something?”

What the boy really wants is a shower, with real soap and a lot of water, but that’s not an easy thing to arrange. At night the shower rooms are off-limits to the inmates, and he wouldn’t want to go to shower alone with a warder. He whispers, “Water. I’m thirsty.” When Tiger waves his hand, the basket-weaver puts his work on the floor and dips an aluminum cup into the clay water pot, then gives it to the boy. Nyi Lay drinks deeply, but his throat is sore and his stomach is churning. He sets the cup of unfinished water in front of him on the floor and nestles into his felt blanket, pulling a corner of it over his head like a shroud. He wants to wait a few minutes, gather his wits, then change into his other pair of clothes—the lime-green
FREE EL SALVADOR
T-shirt, the turquoise longyi—but he falls sound asleep.

H
ours later he wakes with a low moan, belly clenched in a painful cramp. Still shrouded, he doesn’t know where he is. He tears the cloth away from his head and sits bolt upright, a yelp escaping him.
Tiger’s cell
. The pounding in his chest is so loud that he’s sure the men would be able to hear it if they were awake. He pulls his sticky legs apart, sniffs.
Oh, shit
. He’s already lost some of it, shit and piss mixed together, on his longyi, soaking into his felt blanket. Ugh! His belly tightens and twists again. He looks around, taking in the four bunks of snoring convicts and Hla Myat and Kyaw Kyaw asleep on the floor. The events of the evening tumble in slow motion through the boy’s mind, gathering speed until the memory with its blood taste crashes down like a falling wall and he has to go, he can’t wait,
quickly, quickly, the latrine pail
.

He clutches his belly and hunches over, not wanting to shit in front of the men—he’s not used to it, he tries to do his business in private—but at least they’re sleeping. He stands up quickly, unsteadily, knocking over the
aluminum cup, which clanks and rolls toward Hla Myat, who turns over on his mat and groans.
Quiet! Don’t wake him, or he’ll never stop teasing you
. The boy steps gingerly around the sleeping bodies, his face sweating now, twisted by the spasms in his gut. He’s afraid he’s going to lose it while walking,
no no no
, the mess would be horrible,
hurry
. He bunches his longyi up around his waist—it’s wet with stink—and with great relief squats over the latrine pail.

A few minutes later, when he’s finished, he feels lucky to be in Tiger’s cell. There’s real toilet paper here, a whole roll of it rigged on the wall beside the pail. The boy unravels an extravagant handful and cleans himself, then pats his green longyi. The smell doesn’t go away. He’ll have to scrub it later, with soap and water.

He walks to the front of the cell. Two water pots are there, one for drinking, one for handwashing; the extra bucket, with soap, is further evidence of Tiger’s status. Trying hard to be quiet, he lathers up his hands and splashes them clean.

A ragged breath catches in someone’s throat, becomes a cough; the boy goes still. Drops of water
dap-dap-dap
fall from his fingers. He holds his breath until the cougher falls silent again. In the corridor, moths and lizards move in their old dance around the light. He hears the small flutter and thump of wings. And the syncopated snores of the men. He hears his own breathing. It makes him remember:
I will leave this place soon. Tomorrow
.

He reaches over to the clay water pot. Standing there, the cup in his hand already dipping down into the cool water, the boy truly wakes up. He senses the small weight of his own life, its particular shape. That shape is bounded only by time, the time he himself is filled with, like the water that fills the clay pot. His hand is still poised, the cup completely submerged, completely full. He raises it, dripping, out of the water, and takes a long, slow draft.

Back at his sleeping place, he changes into his clean turquoise longyi, then takes the dirty one off the floor and rolls it into a small, discreet ball. The problem is his felt blanket, wet and reeking and big, too bulky to be tidily folded. He bunches it up and puts it in the corner, where it sits accusingly, stinking at him. He takes off his T-shirt—it’s dirty anyway, streaked and blotted with brown roses of blood—and stretches the
stained cotton over the blanket. There, that’s better, now it’s just a pile of dirty clothes.