The Lizard Cage (56 page)

“Yes, I know.”

When Chit Naing is gone, Teza rises and walks over to his mat and blanket. He returns to the bars with the purple ledger in his hand. “I want you to have it,” he whispers. Then he reaches to the back of his longyi and pulls out the pen. “And this too. Take them with you. U Chit Naing will get in trouble if anyone finds them in here.”

The boy is staring at the water-stained ledger. “But Ko Teza, I … What can I do with the book?”

“You’ll read it.”

“But I don’t know how to …”

“You
will
read. Some of the words are about you. Some are for my
other little brother, the one on the border, but I don’t have his address, so I can’t send it to him, can I?” He smiles with his eyes. A pool of saliva forms in the corner of his mouth and begins to slide down his crooked chin. “Some of the writing is for my mother. And I wrote down some of our stories, yours and mine.” Teza taps the hard cover. “All these words are your words too, because you brought me the paper and the pen. Understand? You don’t know your letters yet, but you helped me to write this.”

The boy swallows. “What if they search me and find it? What if they find the pen? Then we’ll both be in a lot of trouble.”

“Jailer Chit Naing said no one’s going to search you.”

The boy sucks in a sharp breath. He’ll take the ledger with him because he wants it. He used to have so many books in his shack, until Handsome stole them. He would like to have Teza’s book in his hands, to sit somewhere quiet and turn the pages slowly and follow the lines with his eyes. He can’t read, but when the old paperbacks were in his possession, he
did
read, all the time; he held the text right side up and sent his eyes through page after page of lines made of letters, letters that made words, and inside those words—he knew this—were human voices.

If he gets caught with the ledger and the pen, he’ll have to stay in the cage. The Chief Warden will sentence and imprison him and he’ll go back and live with Tiger! The thought doesn’t disturb him in the least. On the contrary, it makes him feel calm and slyly hopeful. If he could live with Tiger in his cell, the tan-see would protect him and feed him, and he wouldn’t be alone. He stretches a thin arm toward the bars, and Teza meets him halfway with the ledger. The weight passing into his hand sends a shiver into his arm, over his shoulders.

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.

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.”

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 Gy
ee
, the long sound.”

“Really? Are you sure?”

Is he sure? The answer rises unbidden into his mouth. “My mother said Zaw Gy
ee
. 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.

U
pekkha. Upekkha.

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