The Lizard Cage (6 page)

Aung Min spent a lot of time preparing for these meetings. He hunted down banned books for the group to read and drew up subjects for discussion, then actually managed to keep the group on topic. He made contact with members of the student protest movement from the 1970s and persuaded one of the men to give a talk. Almost fifteen years before, in a prison work camp in the north, this dissident had known their father.

T
eza can still see that man speaking in his deep voice to the ring of close faces, young people hanging on his every word—words that turned out to be prophetic. He remembers everything so clearly: the pile of ragged chemistry textbooks in a corner, a tin can cut down into an ashtray, the fact that he just wanted to get the hell out of that smoky little room, away from the ominous predictions and the stifling heat. They were all sweating, wiping their faces with handkerchiefs. He was sitting close to the door—acting as a guard, ostensibly, but secretly hoping to make a break for it as quickly as possible. Yes, he’d gone to the meeting to honor the man’s friendship with Hpay Hpay, his father, but after two and a half hours he’d had enough.

Yes, what about you, Teza? You wanted more than anything to leave and meet Thazin, hear her voice, touch her. If you stayed at the meeting too long, that delightful interlude would not take place, because her two roommates would return from the movies.

What were
you
doing, really, while your brother was anticipating revolution?

I was glancing at my watch. I was anticipating Thazin’s mouth, her breasts.

•   •   •

H
e is staring at the pitted teak door. The darkened grain reminds him not of blood and piss stains, but of Thazin’s hair. Her voice, murmuring into the phone, used to give him an instant hard-on. This was a hilariously embarrassing problem; his longyi stood up like a tent. How wonderful, how fine, that such problems exist in the world! He is sure that some young man in Rangoon right now suffers from the same affliction, and this makes him glad.

But he felt more than lust, the body’s lightning, for Thazin. He loved her, wildly, flesh and mind and heart, every gesture of her hands, the changing shape of her mouth as she spoke. This love haunts and blesses him now. Because in the end he became as caught up in the protests as Aung Min. What he believed was most personal to him, most beloved—Thazin—ceased to occupy the core of his life. She was there beside him much of the time, but the politics and the songs and that history they were all living took him over.

There was so much he did not understand. He did not know how far things would go, how bad the violence would get. Even when he was in an interrogation center being beaten black and blue, he wasn’t thinking of a long prison sentence. Then they told him. Twenty years in solitary confinement. For singing
songs
? It was too absurd, even in his absurd country. How could anyone, let alone a twenty-five-year-old university student, fathom what twenty years in solitary might mean?

During the height of the demonstrations he had worked on the
Twelve Songs of Protest
every day, raw-voiced and shaking, quietly possessed, thinking, These songs are like my name.

Teza’s songs became a manifestation of the country transforming around them, in Rangoon and its townships and dozens of cities and villages all over Burma, in the singer too, a new country was being born. The words swept through Teza’s mind and flew from the mouths of the protesters, men and women and children in the streets shouting
Doh ayey, doh ayey, doh ayey
. Our business, our cause. It was the old dream, the oldest music, written again in human blood, soiled by human excrement, with shoes bereft of feet scattered all around. The chorus was a single word:
freedom
.

L
ike a dirty joke, the word
freedom
usually makes Sein Yun, the palm-reader, laugh out loud and roll his eyes suggestively. “Freedom,” he likes to say, “is one more thing you can buy at market, if you have enough kyats.”

Teza hears the distant sound of shuffling feet. A smile begins and fills his entire face as the feet come closer.

Despite the double-thick door, the
shuffle-slap-slap, shuffle-slap-slap
of slippers is audible to his keen ears. The singer listens for Jailer Handsome’s footsteps behind the server’s. Usually he waits down the hall while Sein Yun opens the door, gives Teza his food tray, and takes away his shit pail. While chatting with the palm-reader, Teza often smells Handsome’s cheroot smoke.

But the familiar heavy thud of his boots doesn’t come today. Odd. Teza turns his ear to the door. Definitely no boots. Just Sein Yun. In slippers that are too big for him. The shuffle is longer, more awkward than usual. Have they sent a different criminal to serve him? Has something happened to Sein Yun?

On the other side of the door, the aluminum food tray clatters down on the cement floor. The key chain rattles. Unseen fingers select the key,
which slides in and turns the lock. Now the hand must throw open the outer bolt.

But the hand doesn’t touch it.

Teza stares quizzically at his closed door, waiting.

No sound. The outer bolt stays clamped.

His stomach suddenly tightens. Sein Yun would have opened the door by now.

Who is there?

He controls the speed of his breathing as an old stitch of pain in his ribs pulls tight. Sweat begins to gather under his eyes, on the edge of his cheekbones.

Still the door does not open.

The man on the other side is playing a game.

The singer refuses to be undignified. He won’t ask who is there. Why would they send anyone to hurt him?
He
hasn’t done anything. They’re the ones who aren’t feeding him, who are stealing his fish. And he requested a haircut and a shave two weeks ago, but they’ve denied that too.

Twice he opens his mouth to speak but remains silent.

Just as he opens it for the third time, impatient to finish with this bad joke, the man on the other side of the door sings out, “Yooo-hooo! Is anybody in there?”

Teza jumps at the voice—Sein Yun’s—then growls, “Of course I’m in here! Where the fuck else would I be? Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I’m saying something now.”

“Open up the bloody door, then, and bring in my breakfast. Where have you been? Why have you been standing there in silence for five minutes?”

“Had you worried, huh? Did you think I was a ghost?”

“No, I did not think you were a ghost, but now I’m sure you’re an asshole.”

A peal of laughter is interrupted by the clunk and whisk of metal over wood. The outer bolt slides back and Sein Yun pulls open the heavy door. Shifting the bulge in his cheek, he says, “Ko Teza, no need to get so excited. I was just wrapping my betel. It’s a delicate task, you know.” Scooping up the tray, he half leaps into the cell, which makes a clump of rice fall to the floor. Teza sighs in exasperation.

Six weeks into his association with the palm-reader, he is still taken aback when he sees the man. Sein Yun is like a creature from another star. Most of his teeth are the dark red of a betel-chewer. His lips are burgundy slashes and the lines around them leak red-black stains. Only his eyeteeth are clean. Capped in gold, they gleam like yellow fangs. A skein of grizzled hair covers his head, the shriveled scalp showing through like a rusty lemon. The little man’s skin is all yellow: face, hands, neck. Even the whites of his eyes are yellow. He is a walking, talking, cursing Petri dish of hepatitis.

The wild gray hairs of his eyebrows make up for the lack of hair on his skull. But the king of hair on Sein Yun’s face is one long, imposing, curly strand of black that grows out of the mole on his chin. The palm-reader often twists the wiry black curlicue thoughtfully between his fingers, just as he is doing now—stroke, stroke, and a sudden pull as he turns his head to shoot a torpedo of betel juice out the open cell door. He crouches down and drops the food tray on the floor with a clatter.

Teza begins, “Where have you been with my—”

Sein Yun’s syncopated “Heh-heh-heh” interrupts him. “I have a very good excuse, trust me.” He waves his hand in a downward motion, wanting Teza to crouch beside him. The singer glares.

“Ko Teza, don’t be stubborn, it doesn’t suit you. Come, come here. I have some news.”

Teza scratches his head. Lice.

With an avid grin, the palm-reader whispers, “It’s about Daw Suu Kyi.”

Teza immediately drops down.

“Heh-heh. You monkey. I knew that would get your attention.”

“What is it?”

“It’s the reason you missed your meals yesterday.” The stained lips stretch gloatingly over his teeth. “Daw Suu Kyi is free. Released from house arrest. A thousand journalists are on University Avenue right now, they’ve come from all over the world. It’s a better tourist attraction than the Shwedagon Pagoda!” Sein Yun places his hands around an invisible box in front of his face and pumps his index finger up and down. “Click-click-click! The Nikons are out, the flashes are on. The beautiful lady is free, she’s free!”

“How do you know?”

“The whole cage knows—a warder must have brought it in. Leaky warders! I accused Jailer Chit Naing, but as usual he admits nothing. The cage has gone crazy. It happened one or two days ago, I don’t know exactly when. An auspicious day for Burma, a lucky day for us. Our savior is more famous now than when she won the Nobel Prize. They can finally take her picture! And she is so lovely.” Gold eyeteeth flash. “But too skinny, they say. She has to start eating more bananas.” The palm-reader leers, lifting his eyebrows.

Teza’s mouth twists with doubt. Sein Yun might be making up the whole story.

Sensing disbelief, the palm-reader snaps, “Oh, you’ll know the truth soon enough, Songbird. Your esteemed friend Chit Naing will drop by one evening when things calm down, I’m sure.”

This comment sends a jolt of fear through the singer. How does the palm-reader know about Chit Naing’s nocturnal visits? If he knows, he knows. It’s better to say nothing. Instead he asks, “Where’s Handsome? Why hasn’t he come with you?”

“Ah, how sweet! You miss him, do you? Should I call him over? He’s down at the far end of the hall having a smoke. You know he hates this solitary block—it puts him in a bad mood. Bad luck in here, that’s what he says. All those rats down the hall. The guy is terrified of them.” Sein Yun laughs and slaps Teza on the shoulder. “Isn’t that funny?”

“Hilarious. What about my shower? Are you going to escort me to the shower room?”

“Please, Songbird, I don’t know what you’re suggesting, but whatever it is, I’m not interested.”

“You are sick. Would you just tell Handsome that I want my shower?”

“Aie! Ko Teza, I’m beginning to understand why they put you in the coffin. You’re a royal pain in the ass, and you don’t know a good thing when it’s poking you in the eye. The guy doesn’t even want to come down the hallway, and if he did, he would just abuse you, because as we all know that’s his karma, to be a nasty shithead. But can you leave well enough alone and just let him sit there, smoking? No, you cannot. You want to provoke him. Mr. Political, give it a rest!”

This earnest outburst is so out of character for the palm-reader that Teza has to cover his mouth with his hand to keep from laughing.

“See? See? You think it’s funny! Well, you won’t think it’s funny when he beats the shit out of you, I promise you that. Idiot!”

“Ko Sein Yun, you’re allowed to shower every day. Twice a day? I bet you have a nice wash twice a day, right? Your arms aren’t covered with scabies, are they? Look at this.” The singer thrusts his arms out. “You know why they bleed like that? Because I scratch them in my sleep. You know what scabies are, don’t you? Tiny little bugs burrowing tunnels under my skin. Tunnels, Ko Sein Yun, tunnels! If I manage to keep away from the sores during the day, I scratch all through the night. And you get to eat, don’t you? A lot, too. You have a racket in the gardens, you’ve told me that, fresh vegetables. I am pleased for you. But it’s not like that for me. The cage is really a cage. So don’t lecture me about being a good boy. If I don’t complain and make demands and get in trouble, they will treat me worse than they already do.”

Sein Yun fixes him with a yellow eye. “Are you done?” He spits some more betel juice. “Good. Listen again, I’ll say it more slowly this time: Handsome does not want to go into the shower room because of the rats. I can’t say I blame him. You’re just going to have to wait, Songbird. I’ll fill your water pot right to the top. You can give yourself a wash. And maybe a warder will come back later and take you.”

Teza grimaces and opens his mouth to speak, but Sein Yun cuts him off. “Songbird, I’m not going to make things complicated for myself. He’s a friend, okay?” Sein Yun leans over, eyes wide, and whispers, “You see, I’ve read his palm, and now he’s mine. These guys! The toughest among them are as superstitious as old women! Even Senior Jailer Chit Naing had me read his palm! If only everyone outside were like them, all the palm-readers set up around the base of Sule Pagoda would be richer than generals. And don’t be such a whiner—I’ve brought you something to smoke.” The palm-reader stands and fishes two cheroots out of the pocket hidden inside his longyi. He proffers the cigars in his outstretched hand.

Staring at the little man’s long, curved fingernails, which are caked with dirt from the kitchen gardens, Teza checks an unexpected urge to turn away. He doesn’t reach for the cheroots.

“What’s with you? Don’t tell me you’ve decided to start smoking cigarettes—they’re too expensive. Besides, what would you read? Do you want these cheroots or not?” This time he offers them to Teza in the formal way,
with his left hand cradling the elbow of his right arm, the thick, leaf-wrapped cigars lying flat on his open palm. The singer rises and gingerly picks them up without touching the palm-reader’s hand.