The Lizard Cage (2 page)

The boy’s name as a Buddhist novice was too long and tricky for him to write, so he insisted on learning how to spell his birth name. When he wrote it from memory for the first time, such was his jubilation that the tutoring monk whispered to the Hsayadaw, “He acts like he’s discovered the formula for turning lead into gold.” To which the abbot only smiled.

When he was not learning to read or trying to write, he was quiet, sometimes sullen. He was a secretive, ever-hungry boy, uninterested in playing with the other children—though he often watched them as if they were animals he was afraid to approach. The abbot endeavored not to pick favorites, but he adored this peculiar child. If only all of them were so interested in reading, and so dedicated to their Buddhist studies. It was apparent to everyone, even the more recalcitrant monks, that the boy had embraced the rituals of worship with surprising devotion. He sometimes spent hours in the temple, just sitting and watching the image of the Buddha. There hadn’t been a child like that for more than a decade.

The monastery was full of boys—large boys, small boys, boys with harelips and boys with flippered limbs, boys from poor families or with no families to speak of. The Hsayadaw adopted them all. The old proverb says that ten thousand birds can perch on one good tree; the Hsayadaw was such a tree. His children found refuge in him, and he taught them to seek a greater refuge in the Buddha’s Dhamma of Theravada, the teachings of the Middle Way. He did not cane his children or send them off, even if they misbehaved, because the state orphanages and reform schools were dangerous places.

The boy came to love the abbot with the same anxious tenderness he’d felt for the Songbird. This love declared itself through the laughter they
shared during their lessons, through the tears the boy blinked away as he struggled with all the letters and their complex combinations. Once when he was wrestling with frustration, the Hsayadaw told him, “It’s all right to cry. It’s just a little water that needs to get out. We could put it in a cup if you’re worried about losing it.” The boy laughed, and his work became easier.

For just over three months he lived this way, making his path through hard terrain as quickly and gracefully as water. But one morning trouser-wearers appeared, two military intelligence agents who asked about him.

The Hsayadaw was calm with a lifetime of meditation, but he was afraid for his favorite son, so afraid that he broke the Fourth Precept: to abstain from telling lies. He knew it was wrong, but he lied to the military intelligence agents. He told the men that the boy was very wild, and had run away. “What did you expect, with the way the child has been raised?”

“Did he take his belongings with him?” one of the men asked.

“Belongings? He was the poorest among the poor—he had nothing but a bag of scraps and an old blanket. Of course he took them away.”

The morning meal was just beginning, and the military intelligence agents insisted upon walking slowly among all the children as they sat eating on the floor. But who was to know one particular novice among sixty-seven shaven-headed, hungry little monks? The boy they were searching for was also calm, calm with a short lifetime of surviving by his rat stick and his wits. He went on eating with the other children. All of them kept their heads angled to the floor. The agents called out his name, demanding that he speak up if he was in the room. The boy didn’t even blink; he would never answer to the voices of the cage again. The men came back that night and performed the same theater, but all they succeeded in doing was making a few boys burst into tears.

Two days later, petulant and angry, they returned at the hour of the morning meal. This time someone else accompanied them, a jailer who knew the boy’s face. The trouser-wearers demanded that each novice lift up his head and look at this man.

Some of the boys could not hold back their tears as the big man approached them. He limped from child to child, asking questions to frighten them, to make them talk. But they had nothing to tell him. His eyes scanned the room. He barked at the other trouser-wearers to make sure they found every flea-bitten brat in the monastery compound. Then, turning to the
Hsayadaw, he asked more questions. Were some children out collecting alms? Were others washing clothes or running errands at the market? The Hsayadaw replied with great patience and a serene expression. All the young novices were present, here, in this very room. Only older boys were sent to do errands. Every child under fourteen was having breakfast. Except for the boy who had run away, days ago, the one they were looking for.

The jailer lowered his voice. “If you are lying to me, old man, you will live to regret it.”

The Hsayadaw smiled his generous, open smile, all large white teeth except for the missing ones; his eyes nearly disappeared into many wrinkles. He replied, “Sir, how many men have told you the truth and lived to regret it?” He lowered his voice, so the novices wouldn’t hear him. “Leave this place now, you who hunt a child like an animal. This is a monastery school. It is not your prison.”

Then the Hsayadaw turned away, walked barefoot over the creaky floor, and sat down among his children. That day the abbot was so happy he had to restrain himself from dancing. He had outwitted the authorities. The day after the military men had visited the first time, the Hsayadaw had sent his favorite son to a safer place.

W
rapped in his novice robes, the boy left his first sanctuary in Rangoon and went to a small monastery in Pegu, then to a much larger one near Inle Lake and a different place after that, farther and farther north, eluding a force he equated with the men in the cage who had hurt him. Sometimes ordained monks took him in hand. Sometimes trusted novices became his guides, though they were barely older than he was, perhaps fifteen or sixteen. It was a slow, mindful, meandering escape, for it was unclear where the boy should go. He and his caretakers often walked or caught rides in the backs of open trucks.

The young monks aroused no suspicion. Even government army officers and soldiers came out to give them alms at dawn. The boy was like any other poor novice, brother to the little nuns they sometimes passed on their journey, orphan girls dressed in the dark brown or pale pink robes of their abbeys. When they arrived at a beautiful, bird-filled monastery in the hills
near Mandalay, the boy thought perhaps this place was his new home, because it was very peaceful, and very far away from Rangoon.

But it wasn’t far enough. The Hsayadaw sent word that the authorities were still looking for the child. They left again, traveled down into the mad bustle of the market streets of Taungyi, then Loikaw, then from village to village, through the mountains and valleys of Shan State, where the people spoke a language that recalled the sinuous chatter of birds. In a village whose name he never knew, the novice was given into the care of other, older monks, Shan men.

After leaving his dear Hsayadaw, the boy became more silent and withdrawn, but he followed the strangers with an uncharacteristic submissiveness, born of fear and the weariness of constant movement. He did not know where he was or what would become of him if he lost them too, these older brothers. The monks were kind to him, feeding him, trying to draw him out with jokes and questions in heavily accented Burmese. Among themselves they spoke Shan, known on the border as Tai Yai, one of the many tongues in that unnamed country between nations.

From the Burmese Shan hills, along the edges of Kayah State, they journeyed into Shan and Karenni territory of Thailand, down into a valley of tall thin trees and pale morning fog near the town called Mae Hong Son. Though the boy wore Buddhist robes, he arrived like so many other refugees from Burma, a dark face drawn tight around feverish black eyes. Alternately shivering and burning with malaria, he clung to his bundle of relics from the other side. They were wrapped up in his simple sling bag, which he carried on his back or in his arms wherever he went, as an older sibling carries the infant of the family.

He recuperated in the monastery at the foot of a mountain near Mae Hong Son. Once he entered monastic life again, he felt better, though the abbot of his new monastery did not smile and laugh like the Hsayadaw.

One day, a few weeks after his arrival, two Shan monks explained to the boy that he would be leaving the monastery very soon; a Burmese man wanted to adopt him. Contrary to their expectations, this news caused the boy great distress. He protested to the Thai abbot, stating his case in a heartrending mixture of Burmese, Shan, even a few words of Thai. He did not want to leave the monastery; he did not want anyone to adopt him. He
wanted to be a monk. The abbot promised the boy that he could return to the monastery if he wanted, but it was his duty to meet the person who was offering him a different life. The abbot told him that while he stayed with the Burmese man, he didn’t have to live as a Buddhist novice: he could give up his robes, he could eat after noon. But the boy said no. He would wear his robes, he would continue to observe a monk’s diet, and he would return as soon as possible to the monastery.

The next day the Shan monks delivered him to a house built on the outskirts of the town. A net hammock was stretched between two trees in the weedy, dusty garden. A grown man was sleeping there, his mouth hanging open like a child’s. The monks and the boy stared at this man, but he did not wake. They left their slippers in the dust, walked up a few wooden steps, and stood silently at the open door. When the boy coughed, Burmese men inside the house turned from their desks and greeted them.

One of the monks whispered to the boy, “You must not cry.”

The other monk added, “And don’t be naughty.” Following a brief chat with one of the men, they left the boy standing there barefoot. He could not bear to watch his brother monks disappear down the road, so he closed his eyes.

“Have you eaten rice yet?” one of the men asked, meaning
Are you hungry
? The boy did not open his eyes. He responded coldly, “I am keeping the Precepts. I don’t eat after noon.”

The man smiled and said, “That’s a shame, because the abbot said you were free to join us for dinner. And we’re going to have an excellent dinner tonight. Aung Min has gone to the market just for you.”

This made the boy open his eyes very wide. His forehead crumpled, and though his mouth opened, no sound came out.

The man thought he should explain. “Aung Min is the man who wants to adopt you. He’ll be back within the hour, then we’ll eat together.”

The boy felt the room sway around him. He sat down cross-legged where he’d been standing. Suddenly everything made sense. Now he understood where the journey had been leading him.
Aung Min
. Instead of making him happy, the revelation made him burst into tears. The men did their best to cheer him up, but he was inconsolable. His crying quickly turned to sobbing, wet gasps and heaves occasionally punctuated with choking.

The boy’s sobs were so loud they woke the sleeping revolutionary. He
had children of his own, whom he had left behind in Burma. He woke thinking, I have dreamed of my son. Then he realized he was awake and a child was still crying. He swung his legs out of the hammock and took the stairs two at a time. Crouching next to the boy, he murmured in a low voice for a long time. Eventually he put his arm around him and whispered unbelievable things one after the other. “You are safe with us. We won’t hurt you. Aung Min is a good man, he’ll take care of you. We’re happy you’ve come to find us. Hey—do you want a tissue to wipe your nose?”

“No. That’s okay.”

The boy blinked up at the man, sniffed, and slid out from under his arm. Standing, he rearranged his robes and guessed which was the bathroom door; he entered and came out with a washed face. Then he surprised them all by asking if he could have a candle, please. For his prayers, he said. They were gathered in the main room of the house; there was a little altar high on one of the walls, above a photograph of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. Separated from the monastery for a few hours, he already missed the comforting rhythms and habits of the monks.

Kneeling before the makeshift shrine with its gold-coated plaster Buddha, holding a yellow candle in his hand, the boy uttered another humble request, for incense. The revolutionaries glanced at each other. What a strange little bird this kid was! Someone disappeared into a bedroom and returned with a dusty package of joss sticks. The boy opened it, drew out several sticks of incense, and asked for a lighter. He knelt and lit the candle and the incense and genuflected three times, forehead touching the wooden floor. The men went to the outdoor kitchen behind the house and talked in low tones about the child who was praying inside.

Aung Min arrived soon after, pulling up on a noisy motorcycle. Carrying bags from the market, he came in the back way. Yes, his men said, the boy was in the house, he was fine. Yes, he had brought his little sling bag; he rarely put it down. Aung Min peered in at the child through the half-open door but didn’t want to disturb him.

The men talked over the work of the day, and cooked, and smoked cheroots. Slowly they fell silent, one by one, and began to listen as a small voice grew luminous and full in the twilight. The words of the chanted prayers came flooding back like those of an old song. Several of the men had made the same prayers, en masse, during the street protests of 1988,
when they were university students. They forgot about the cheroots between their fingers. One by one the red coals went out. They stood in the darkness until the boy finished praying.

When someone turned on a light, everyone noticed the aroma of cooked rice. They stepped quietly into the house. The man who had held him earlier bent down to the boy and whispered, “We hope you will eat with us.” And the boy said, “Yes, thank you, I will.” The strange company, silent boy and serious men, sat down on the floor together; in the middle of their circle, various plates and bowls sat steaming, set down on old newspapers. Aung Min and the boy were introduced hesitantly, because it had been Aung Min’s name that triggered the crying fit. But when the boy came face to face with the famous student leader turned revolutionary, he was polite and grave.