The Lizard Cage (11 page)

Sein Yun walks a little more quickly, his oversized slippers slapping hard. The gravel and sand have turned to mud, so he hikes his longyi up over his knees to keep it from getting dirty. Soon the rollers will come out—inmates who sweep the water off the compound, then push big metal hand rollers back and forth, back and forth, to restore the surface. In the rainy season they have to do it every day, sometimes two or three times a day when it really pours. An absolutely useless job with no possible benefits, only a sore back and blisters.

Frankly, it’s better to clean up someone’s shit if it’s going to get you out of the cage faster.

He walks along, past the gardens of Halls Four and Five, past the watchtower. Near the kitchen, a guard he dislikes asks where he’s going.

Keeping his head down, Sein Yun answers meekly, “To worship.”
Then, in a clearer voice, knowing the guard is a bit thick, “I’m going to the shrine.” The man waves him along. They might despise each other, but with the Buddha in mind they are civil.

In the circular cartography of the prison, the shrine is almost directly opposite the teak coffin.
See
? he thinks. There is a fateful symmetry in that. Passing the kitchen, Sein Yun waves at the cook, who sits just inside the door peeling potatoes with his fat hands. They exchange nods, each of them revealing a hint of a smile. It’s crucial to make friends with the cook, no matter where you are. Judging from his double chins, the cook eats half of the prison food himself, gives a quarter of it to his little lover boys, and sells another big chunk of it for profit. No wonder the politicals are so scrawny.

The shrine stands between the kitchen and the hospital, not far from the main prison office and the warders’ quarters. A very public place, it is a locus between the ordinary and the sublime. Fittingly, it’s also where prison officials and convicts do business. All with respect for the Buddha, of course.

Sein Yun looks around with a vaguely beatific expression on his face, mirroring the Enlightened One, who sits surrounded with real and plastic flowers, ash-topped sticks of incense, scraps of colored cloth, glasses of water, offerings of shriveled fruit. Some men who have not prayed since they were small boys come here now, transformed by the cage into desperate penitents asking favors and protection. Most often they are first-timers in for second-rate offenses—minor fraud and theft, assault, disturbing the peace during drunken binges. Their short prison terms feel intolerably long because of the filth, the bugs, the shitty food, and the horny men. These soft criminals, who live in a state of infinite longing for their wives and girlfriends, become remarkably religious inside the cage.

Sein Yun finds them hilarious, swaying like the holiest of monks, counting their prayer beads. He looks over their heads, past the flaking gold face of the Buddha, and scans the first brick wall, about twelve feet high, which encloses the prison. The second brick wall looms beyond it, higher, more imposing, impossible to climb over. One of the guards in the watchtower would shoot you in the back before you were halfway up one of the lookout post ladders. Only insects and lizards can crawl over those lousy walls.

The best way to escape is by walking through the two iron doors, smiling at the buggers as you go. Never to return!

The palm-reader’s whole body feels curiously itchy, as though the restlessness within him has somehow worked its way up to his skin. Despite giving his warder all kinds of vegetables for extra soap and extra bathing time, he still has infected sores from scratching at bug bites, and the pinworms drive him crazy. He wonders how many fights break out in the cage simply because hundreds of men have unbearably itchy asses.

Switching his weight from one foot to the other, he looks around, then spits. The restlessness makes him want to move. Just before money or goods pass hands, he’s always agitated. He used to feel this way on the outside too, when the small plastic bags full of rubies were splayed out on the table in a contained explosion of scarlet. This is the delicious anxiety of closing a deal.

He inhales incense and sighs out nostalgia. He loved working for the colonel. Sein Yun’s job was recruitment. He used to find young men to smuggle gems into Thailand. It was a real shame when one of those strapping fellows disappeared with a whole shipment. But it’s best to look on the bright side. At least the colonel didn’t slit his throat. In comparison, a bad beating and a prison sentence seemed like a wonderful punishment.

When the warder appears, Sein Yun approaches the Buddha and prostrates himself three times among the other mumbling inmates, then quickly rises and walks toward the hospital wall, where the man waits for him with a stony face. Sein Yun works up his most ingratiating expression—a slight, humble upturn of pursed lips, without showing his stained teeth. Oh, he knows this so well, how to make little men feel the wealth of their power. The two turn toward each other, their discretion making them obvious. The warder slips a cylindrical object into the yellow, taloned hand. Sein Yun swallows his smile.

A
s soon as the vial of heroin is warming safely in the pocket sewn to the inside of his longyi, the palm-reader leaves the shrine. No time for lengthy prayers today; he’s a busy man. Rushing back toward the prison gardens in front of Hall Four, he starts thinking about Teza and his comrades.

He tries to be sympathetic, but frankly he dislikes the politicals’ lack of practicality. All that idealism goes against his entrepreneurial spirit.

And it’s not just Teza he has to worry about. He’s started to run errands for a whole bevy of them, despite his general aversion. Over a dozen of them in Hall Three are planning something, brave-hearted, stupid souls. Myo Myo Than is their leader, and they are following him like sheep. The palm-reader has a plan of his own, which is why he took on the job of errand boy to these earnest fellows. If he arranges everything properly, he will get rewards all around. They’re already giving him half the contents of their food parcels to pay for paper and pens.

He stops abruptly, kicks off his right slipper, and squats to pinch a brick chip out of the rubber sole. The singer comes to mind. He must squat just like this, and pick away not at a stone in the shoe but at his cheroots. Sein Yun sees the newsprint filters sometimes, when he dumps the singer’s bucket. Not to mention the bones. It’s hideous. Poor little Songbird, he doesn’t shit enough to hide a thing!

He stands up, spits his betel juice. It’s pathetic, really—all the politicals are obsessed with words. And food. Though he’s walking very quickly now, a smile slowly infects his mouth. Why shouldn’t he involve Teza in his little plan? Surely he would want to join his beloved comrades.

Arms swinging, Sein Yun nonchalantly brushes his hand against his hip. The vial is safe and sound in his secret pocket, ready for Tan-see Tiger, the big criminal in Hall Four. Sein Yun does a lot of this sort of thing, but carrying heroin is still nerve-racking. More inmates than ever before are junkies—thanks to the generals’ hard work in the poppy business—and a lot of them know Sein Yun works for Tiger. A few would happily knife a man to get their hands on the drug.

Sein Yun coughs. Without moving his head, he glances to the left, the right. He also helps in Handsome’s vegetable racket. Every week the junior jailer takes about a dozen boxes of food from each of the prison gardens and sells them to high-ranking prisoners. Before delivering Tan-see Tiger’s vial, Sein Yun has to pass by one of the gardens and check on the jailer’s portion of cauliflowers and tomatoes; a detail of men is harvesting today.

A
fter making the rounds of the gardens—two boxes of cauliflowers and a bag of tomatoes have been set aside for Handsome—the palm-reader lifts his head to survey the sky. The clouds have gathered
again. When the rain crashes down hard on the roof, it’s hard to hear a man talk to you from across your cell. Not that the men usually talk. Sein Yun feels himself surrounded by bellowers, small men with big mouths. He pauses in his walk, lets his shoulders drop. The crows are flying back, cawing and arguing, settling down to roost on the high outer ramparts.

Approaching Hall Four, the biggest of the five prisoner halls, the palm-reader walks more slowly, to prepare himself. Two thousand souls live in this one massive brick building. Some of the cells contain twelve to fifteen men. He is lucky; he shares with four others, though he has the dirtiest spot, close to the latrine pail. The head prisoner and his right-hand man have bench beds to sleep on, the jerks.

Every cell has an akhan-lu-gyi, a leader, just as each big hall has a powerful tan-see. These hierarchies within hierarchies are the way of the world, both in the cage and out of it, but they secretly disgust Sein Yun. Take Saw Maung, the leader of his cell. He’s a quiet, gray-haired man with a rough-hewn face as brutish and inexpressive as an unfinished carving. Is he taciturn because he’s a deep thinker or because he’s been punched in the head one too many times? Sein Yun has lived with the man for months, but he’s still not sure. Saw Maung’s nose is misshapen from violence. A proverbial criminal’s scar cuts a pale jag across his forehead (though he got it in a car accident, not a knife fight, Sein Yun was amused to learn). The small eyes are often half closed, which leads the palm-reader to wonder if the murderer needs glasses or if he is busy plotting how to kill someone else. And who might the lucky one be?

Soon after being transferred to his cell, Sein Yun discovered that Saw Maung had won his position by killing the previous akhan-lu-gyi. After prying a brick away from the base of one of the latrines, he pounded the man to death as he slept. For this show of ruthlessness—apparently he had nothing against the man he killed—he not only won the highest position of power in the cell but gained a certain amount of notoriety in the hall. That’s how it works in the cage: pound a sleeping man to death and everyone’s impressed.

Sein Yun plays his part, bowing and scraping and doing Saw Maung extravagant favors. Though it was his idea to set up a betting racket on Aung San Suu Kyi, he let Saw Maung take it over. And he brings him free vegetables too. Murderers always get too much respect; that’s why they
rise to the top. But what does it take to kill a man? A lousy brick and a few minutes of savagery, nothing more. Then the other prisoners take you seriously or fear you. Fear is better, of course. If you make a man afraid, you’ve got a useful piece of him.

Far enough away not to insult the warder on guard duty, who has already met his eye, Sein Yun spits his betel juice. Yes, he needs his betel. But at least it isn’t opium oil, or heroin. The junkies pass the needles around like cigarettes, the fools. Once again Sein Yun brushes his hand against his secret pocket. The little vial is still there. In a few minutes he’ll hand it over to Tan-see Tiger and be done with it.

Nodding once, the warder pulls open the heavy iron door of Hall Four. The only time Sein Yun fears the cage is during these first moments of return, when his tasks for the day are done and he must go back to the hall, rows of cells on either side and around each corner, cages behind and in front, cages of dark eyes and hands and tattooed arms infected with sores. Rather than walking to the fourth row, where he lives, he takes a quick left into Tan-see Tiger’s row, through the immense din.

Voices rise up around him, invading his ears, pushing against his face. The noise takes on a physical quality, a hundred times worse than any crowded market or busy street or night festival. Tiny points of sweat appear on his forehead. Supper is late again, so everyone’s in a foul mood, shouting and arguing about nothing in particular.

Some men greet him as he passes, or give him a look of rivalrous disgust. Approaching Tan-see Tiger’s cell, he cranes his neck, looking for the man’s broad, dark face. The tan-see got his name from the big-cat tattoos that adorn his entire body—back, chest, legs, and arms—but there is something of the tiger about him too, with those languid, droopy eyes, that big head covered in a thick bristle of fur. He is a smooth-moving man, graceful and strong, given to performing elaborate exercises in the yard. He’s certainly healthy and agile like a jungle cat; he can’t be a junkie himself. Sein Yun has watched the muscles in his chest and back rippling, so that the cats lounging on his skin seem to stretch awake. As tan-see, Tiger is the highest-ranking prisoner in the hall as well as the head of his own cell, surrounded by a group of men who are fiercely loyal.

Sein Yun can’t see him, though. He clenches his teeth. Could Tiger be out? He wills the tan-see to come right up to the bars and take away the
heroin with a polite handshake. Sein Yun has instructions: he cannot give the vial to anyone but Tiger. If for some unexpected reason the tan-see isn’t in his cell, Sein Yun will have to safeguard the vial all night, until he has another chance, in the morning, to visit the first row. This prospect dismays him. It’s possible that Saw Maung would be more than happy to bash his head with a brick—or even the fucking latrine pail—and steal the heroin.

A thousand voices hammer their way into the very bones of his head. It’s hard to think straight. His nostrils flare as he breathes the humid, human-filled air. A few more steps take him to the front grille of Tan-see Tiger’s cell. The palm-reader’s eyes flicker around the room, over several men’s arms, white undershirts. Only the old basket-maker looks up at Sein Yun, his blind eye a swirl of bluish white.

There he is! Sein Yun is so relieved that a genuine smile opens on his sallow face. Tiger is lying on his belly on a mat, getting a massage. The little masseur—also the cage’s resident rat-killer—is walking up and down the man’s purple cat-filled back. The kid casts the palm-reader a suspicious glance as he leans down and taps Tiger on the shoulder, whispers something under his breath. The palm-reader bares his teeth at the masseur. Jealous brat. The tan-see turns his head, slowly, slowly, groaning with pleasure as the masseur walks up and down once more, then lightly steps off his back. Tiger rolls over on his side and smiles. He sighs. “Rough life, here in the cage.”