The Lizard Cage Read online

  But she speaks to him again and again.

  He sees her rewrapping her scarlet tamin, doing up the cream-colored blouse, her small fingers deft with the gold buttons. He mourns those buttons, and the shadow of a bra beneath her blouse. Once, after they had made love all afternoon, she jumped up and rushed to get ready to go. The sight of her bare feet on the wooden floor made him hungry and hard again. When he reached for her, she laughed and hit his hand. “Absolutely not! You are insatiable and I always miss this class!” He fell back on the bed and let her leave. He regrets that now.

  Everything would be different if he could reach up one more time and pull the mother-of-pearl comb from that black waterfall of hair. Or watch her fine, strong feet walk toward him.

  He takes his hands from his eyes and lays them on his chest. He loved her.

  He knows she loved him also. That is why he remembers.

  His hands slide down over his ribs. The blades rise out of him, xylophone keys placed side by side. The sensitive place beneath his left nipple, the bruised feeling, is another beating. The cracked rib didn’t knit properly. Interrogation Center Fourteen.

  The jutting leap from his ribs to his lower belly would sicken her. He is glad she cannot see him now, with hipbones protruding like hooks.

  His hands slip under the unknotted longyi. He scratches. He picks one, two, three bedbugs from his pubic hair. This act brings enough pleasure to release a flood of lust and the memory of lust. His yearning will be satisfied in seconds.

  Certain moments rest in his body from the time before. The places she marked him are far below his skin, but he searches for them. Not scars, there were no scars with her, only the deep, worn groove where the shyness and fear of two virgins yielded to love in the body. His desire sings to hers, coaxing it forward, and her desire comes toward him. He unbuttons her blouse, pulls away the soft material of the bra; her nipples harden under his lips. Shy, she covers her breasts with her hair, hiding his face also. He floats above her, afraid to rest his weight on her, knowing he will have to use his weight, he will have to push. The nexus of tenderness and force confuses him. He did not expect to be so afraid of hurting her. Echoing his own thoughts, she whispers, “I’m afraid. You’ll hurt me.”

  Maung-go lo-ba-deh. Chit-pa-deh.

  Despite their fear, these are words of love.

  The spasm charging through his body makes no sound.

  Wasted pearl fills his hand, spills down his wrist.

  He rolls over on his side, jawbone chafing straw mat. The ants between the bricks have gone still, as though the wall itself has clenched tight and crushed them all.

  . 15 .

  The sky becomes ocean. Rain comes in waves, rises and falls; tide after tide of water beats the roofs and walls of the prison, drips into some cells, spares others, transforms the compound into an expanse of brick-chip mud and puddles. Teza sleeps through the pounding nightly lullaby, the iron-beater counting the hours of darkness.

  He sleeps while the drainage stream behind the big halls and latrine holes swells like a river. In the tangle of weeds and garbage there, a snail battalion continues its endless labor of eating green. Rain crashes down even as the night turns, by imperceptible degrees, toward dawn. Teza sleeps through the mighty chorus of frogs, through the shouts of warders in the compound, through the spider plucking his web.

  He dreams.

  A child again, he sits with his grandfather on the front stoop in Mandalay. The old man is tight-lipped, unsmiling, looking down at something in his hand. The boy pulls his grandfather’s arm low enough to see what’s there, cupped in the palm. Then he jerks back in horror.

  Bones. Tiny bones, white and fine as ivory toothpicks.

  The boy rises, guilty. He wants to run away, to escape, but the old man grabs his arm and asks in a stricken voice, “What have you done, Teza? Why did you kill it? Every lizard is a small naked man.”

  The old man is still his grandfather, but the child begins to cry when he looks down at the birdlike claw that grips his bare arm.

  Teza opens his eyes in wild fear of the dream. Yet there is no solace in what he sees. He wonders how many times a man can be broken by dreaming, then broken again by waking. Still lying on his mat, bone-chilled, the sound of rain all around, he searches the wall for the spider, but the spider is gone.

  Exhausted, he rouses his limbs with great effort. To stand up is work. Conjuring is work, remembering, remaking himself as he was in the world before the cage, the disappeared world: a person among people.

  Teza turns his head toward the teak door. He holds his breath to listen to the footsteps. It cannot be eleven, tray time. Surely he has not slept so long as that. He tries to hear through the crash of rain. It’s not Sein Yun, not the drag of flip-flops. Boots are coming down the corridor, solid, steady. Purposeful.

  When the door opens, Teza is waiting with his head down.

  “Come on, then. Shower day has come at last, because you stink so bad I can smell you down the hall. Get your stuff—hurry up.”

  Teza silently pulls his shirt over his lowered head, steps out of his longyi. He picks up his slice of soap, his tin cup, clean clothes. He removes his slippers and stands there in threadbare shorts. Handsome moves away from the door, shouts, “Forward!” and spits down the hallway. Teza begins to walk. When he reaches the phlegm on the floor, he swerves around it. Handsome grunts, then punches Teza between the shoulder blades. The warder barks, “Back up. I said back up!”

  The singer moves his feet back, step by step, through the spit on the floor.

  “Now walk in a straight line.”

  He advances through it again.

  • • •

  The walk to the shower room at the end of the corridor comprises the entire geography of Teza’s world. The room is a large brick-walled cell without a door or window. On the back wall and in the center of the room are two concrete troughs. A dripping faucet sticks out over the back trough, which is full of water. Since the building houses only Teza, the other trough sits empty. At the threshold of the room, Handsome barks, “Go ahead,” meaning Go scare the rats down the drain.

  When Teza steps into the cool, dark room, he claps his hands. There is no general scurry. Cage rats are like cage cockroaches, fearless and perfectly accustomed to competing with humans for space and food. He steps deeper into the room, the cement floor cold on his feet. There is only one light, in the corner by the entrance, and it takes a moment for his eyes to adjust. Under the empty trough, a few feet away from the drain, he spots a shifting huddle of gray.

  As he walks toward the gray shape, it melts into three, four, five separate darknesses, like a ghost disintegrating and seeping out over the floor. “Out, out! Get out.”

  Handsome’s voice suddenly booms, “Make sure you get rid of all of them, Songbird, or you won’t get your shower.”

  The rats seem to float toward the drain, leisurely, taking their time. Teza stamps with his feet and hisses. “Yes, sir. They’re gone now, sir. The rats are gone.”

  Handsome enters the room and scans the floor, looking left and right. “Okay. Begin.”

  Teza is already standing almost naked at the edge of the trough, tin cup in hand. The jailer stands behind him and off to the side to avoid being splashed. The jailer’s silence, his refusal to enter into even the most mundane exchange of language, makes Teza afraid of him.

  “Throw!”

  Teza dips the cup into the trough, then quickly tosses the water under his arm. He has to move as fast as possible, lathering up the slice of soap, scrubbing—

  “Throw!”

  He rinses off with the next toss of water, combs the soap out of his hair with his fingers—

  “Throw!”

  Angular elbows and knees pump up and down, both to keep warm and to make sure he cleans as much of his body as he can with the small amount of water available to him. He counts the throws, keeping track of how much more water he can afford to use on any particular part of his body. It
has become a refined athletic skill to step speedily out of his underwear between the commands and wash his genitals in three or four scoops of water. A bath is fifteen scoops; sixteen or seventeen if the jailer loses count.

  “Last throw!”

  Teza’s naked toes grip the wet cement. Eleven. He’s only counted to eleven. He still has to wash his legs, where the sores are the worst. He needs to wash his legs. Eleven cups of water is not enough. Handsome lost count.

  Teza takes a deep breath, breathing a word with the exhalation. “Sir?”

  “What is it?”

  “Sir, I believe I have four more scoops of water.”

  “I don’t care what you believe, your bathing time is over. Dress.”

  Teza’s tongue moves back and forth behind his teeth. He should just be quiet. Putting his hand out for his clean longyi, he thinks, Teza, just be quiet.

  But the scabies on his legs are itching. In the absence of medicine, only bathing helps them and prevents the open sores from becoming infected. Why shouldn’t he ask for his share of water?

  “Sir, if I could just wash my legs quickly, I would be very grateful.”

  “You skinny little motherfucker.” Handsome steps forward and cracks Teza on the back of the head with his knuckles, “if you don’t get dressed right now, you’ll go back to your cell naked with my boot up your ass, so shut the fuck up and put on your longyi!”

  It infuriates Teza that tears rise into his eyes involuntarily when he experiences pain. Tears should be saved for more important things than physical pain. Ears ringing from the crack on the head, he blinks the tears back into his eyes.

  Water drips from the faucet into the trough.

  He stares at the tin cup in his hand. He is very cold now. The jailer stares at the back of his prisoner’s head, at his shoulders, which have begun to tremble visibly.

  Quick as a market thief, Teza scoops water and tosses it onto his legs, then lifts the right one and begins to lather the soap over his shin. He doesn’t dare to bend down with the jailer right there behind him. He is sure his disobedience will incite violence against his naked privates, so he is doubly shocked when Handsome grabs him by the back of the head, his big hand closing on both hair and thin muscle.

  Teza hadn’t thought about the water at all. Suddenly his head is going down and the water shoots up into his nostrils, displacing the cry in his mouth. Handsome’s bellowing is muffled and the singer is already coughing upside down, sucking in steely cold liquid.

  When the jailer yanks Teza’s head up into the air, he feels the entanglement deep in his throat, water flooding all the passages even as it pours from his mouth, his nose.

  “Want to bathe, do you? Let me help you get clean, you dirty fuck!”

  His head is cocked back for an instant in the air, then he is choking harder, more water surging into his throat and nostrils. His limbs kick of their own accord as his head bucks against Handsome’s grip. His shoulders go under while his arms flail upward, his hands grasping the jailer’s hands, but it’s like trying to pull apart pieces of iron. I will drown in a bathing trough. He tries to control the muscles of his throat, to keep from choking more, but he can’t.

  Teza begins purposely to splash as much water as he can out of the trough, hoping to get the jailer very wet before he dies.

  Handsome yanks him out. Water pours from his mouth. His face and neck are flushed; his whole head is pounding, pulsing with blood. Just as he feels a tiny sliver of air open his throat, Handsome pushes him under again. Now he tries his best not to move, but it’s hard to do this, to let life sink away. The grip tightens in his hair, around the muscles in his neck. How long is the jailer going to hold him down? Against every instinct—he wants only to rise fighting into the air—Teza gives up.

  Handsome lets the singer drop to the floor, then grabs the edge of the water trough for purchase and begins to kick, expressing his fury in articulate jabs. Teza curls into himself, protecting his genitals with his knees, his face with his hands. He is still choking. Behind his hands, his mouth opens and closes, opens and closes, a fish in the wrong world. Water drenches him, the cement floor, the jailer’s trousers. The boots that kick him are wet now, propelling his body one way, snapping him back the other.

  It is astonishing, to have throat and mouth and tongue but no way to cry out.

  He doesn’t know how long it takes to get back to his cell. Handsome swears at him each time he falls down, kicks him again. Seven minutes, half an hour? Pain has no respect for time; it makes up its own beginnings and endings.

  “There! You stupid prick, happy now? You’ve had enough water, haven’t you?” Handsome blocks the open door of the cell. Teza stands before him, head down, drenched, praying only to be allowed to go back inside, to be locked away, safe from the jailer. “Answer! Have you had enough?” Handsome knuckle-hits him on the top of the head.

  It’s hard to get the words out. “Yes, sir.”

  The jailer steps aside and pushes him through the door. “If you want more, just let me know, you stupid fuck. If you’re lucky, maybe Sein Yun will fetch your clothes later on. Until then, enjoy the cool weather.”

  Shivering in his wet shorts, Teza stands before the door until it slams shut. Then he limps to his mat and lies down, testing each vertebra, shifting his left hip, not putting any weight on his right elbow. He carefully pulls the gray blanket over himself. Prone on the floor, he begins to touch his head with his hands, as though he were a doctor and the head belonged to a misshapen newborn. Tears start in his eyes as he feels the delicacy of his own skull, how he can’t protect it. He cannot protect his own body. His fingers spider over his head, through his wet hair, trying to locate the source of the pounding. It feels as though an artery has burst somewhere at the front of his brain, just above his left eye, though surely if that were the case, he would be dead by now.

  He is surprised to discover that nothing but his nose is bleeding. He’s cold, because he is soaked, but shivering is good, because it will keep him awake. He pinches the top of his nose to stop the flow of blood.

  Above all, it’s important to put the beating out of his mind, to return to the relative safety and familiarity of the cell, the four walls, the benign water pot, the lines of ants traveling the walls. Now the teak coffin is his protecter, his only home. The worst thing of all is to be beaten in one’s own cell, because then it too becomes a vicious place full of weapons. He stares with curious gratitude at the latrine pail.

  There is nothing to be done with the memory of the violence, as there was nothing to be done with the violence itself, except to endure it without becoming it, which is his most important work in the cage, his way in, his way out. It is strange that sometimes, when the beating is very bad, his anger is not so intense. He feels none of the fury he felt the other day when Handsome kicked his tray, for example. A different feeling surfaces in him now, which he does not fully understand. He feels tenderness toward his own vulnerable, hungry body. Poor thing! It’s as though he’s found a wounded animal on the roadside and wants to take care of it. The feeling of metta—compassion—is so great that there is no room to feel anger at the one who hurt the animal. He would not do to Handsome what Handsome has done to him. He knows this. And that knowledge is also a kind of tenderness.

  He cradles his skull in his hands and closes his eyes. When he opens them, he sees more lizards than usual on the ceiling, stalking insects around the light. He whispers to the creatures above him, “Ha, you’ve all come back to the cell for a visit, have you? You must know that Hpo Hpo told me to stop eating you.” What did his grandfather say? Every lizard is a small naked man. How easy escape would be if every small naked man were a lizard! Teza would just walk away through the air vent, bidding farewell to the spider on his way out.

  He’s pleased to see that the spider is back and busy spinning a new web some distance away from the air vent, in the corner where the walls join the ceiling.

  Comrade Spider, little eight-legged friend
, show me how you live.

  By making strong nets out of almost nothing.

  I aspire to such a vocation myself. But it’s not as easy, comrade, as you make it look.

  . 16 .

  He is grateful to find that the punishment ended with the beating. Handsome hasn’t cut off his meals or his drinking water, because Sein Yun shows up as usual with his breakfast tray. What a blessing!

  The palm-reader curses the junior jailer for being such a bully. On his way back with the latrine pail, he shuffles down to the shower room, rinses Teza’s clothes, and brings them back to the teak coffin. “You have to admit, Little Brother, I warned you, didn’t I? And, as you can imagine, he’s now in a pissy mood.” He lowers his voice and takes a small step into the cell. “But here’s some good news.” A high, anxious note pulls taut like a wire in his whisper. “I think you might have a bit of food coming tomorrow.”

  Teza tries to rise from his mat, but his ribs are so sore he winces and drops to the floor again. Sein Yun waves his hand. “Ya-ba-deh! Never mind, I don’t have anything else to tell you and I’ve got to go. That bastard’s getting impatient at the end of the hall, I can just feel it.”

  Teza passes the entire day trying to decipher Sein Yun’s words. Is the palm-reader himself arranging some extra food for him? Or is another political sending Teza something? Could Sein Yun have meant the htaung win za? Is the food parcel finally here?

  When the palm-reader comes with dinner, Teza is standing at the teak door, anxious to get more information. He’s frightened by Handsome’s sudden bark; the jailer stands, hidden, to one side of the door. “Hurry up in there, palm-reader, I haven’t got all fucking night!” Teza is puzzled. Why didn’t he hear Handsome’s boots coming down the corridor?