The Lizard Cage (23 page)

“Yes, sir.” Stupid prick. He puts his hands on his knees and wears his humblest expression, his lips completely soft, his eyes downcast as he speaks. “Before I go, sir, may I just ask one question?”

The Chief Warden looks at him coldly.

Handsome meets this dead expression with the submissive hope of the inferior, the beggar. His entreaty shines in his eyes. “Will you permit me to make a search for the pen, sir?” Just getting the words out emboldens him. “I am sure it was in Teza’s cell. And I am sure the inmate also wrote a letter. Paper is easily destroyed, but the pens were all marked, and I would like to try to repair some of the damage I’ve done by finding the one Teza used.”

“A search for one pen in a prison of more than ten thousand inmates? We don’t have the manpower to send warders on impossible searches, Officer Nyunt Wai Oo.”

“Of course not, sir. But as I said, the pen is marked. It’s traceable. And I suspect it will end up back in one of the political sections, or in another solitary cell. That’s where I’ll start. I’ll work on it myself, overtime. You know what the politicals are like when it comes to writing. They’re always trying to get their hands on pens. I also want to question the warders who were on duty. Someone will know something.” He allows himself the slightest smile. “Someone always does.”

The Chief Warden pulls his hand down over his mouth and ends by rubbing his chin. Handsome knows from this gesture that he’s going to give his permission. How could he not? He too wants his monument, wants to be remembered for his work. “The letter-writers will be kept in the dog cells until they go to trial six weeks from now. You can have three weeks, no more. If there’s anything to find, you’ll find it, and I will be pleased to add Teza’s name to the case. But no false evidence. This is going to be a legal trial. Personally, I have my doubts that Teza ever had the contraband items to begin with. Someone made a serious mistake.” The Chief looks at Handsome’s face. “You know why the palm-reader is here. Perhaps his bad luck is following him.”

“Yes, sir, I have to acknowledge that as a possibility.” It’s a blessing that there’s someone else to take a portion of the blame. But Handsome
was the one who chose Sein Yun to do the work; he was the perfect, unscrupulous accomplice. “Will he still receive his sentence reduction, considering the work he did, successfully, with the inmates in Hall Three?”

“That depends on what you turn up. I’ll have to think about it. Normally gem smugglers who lose their boss’s gems also lose their balls, so all things considered, sentence reduction or not, he hasn’t had a bad deal.” The Chief gives him a bland look. “All right. Report back to me in a week’s time.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And Officer Nyunt Wai Oo?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Be discreet with the search. Control yourself. No skull-cracking, all right? No fuck-ups. We’ve had enough of that for a while.” The Chief nods. Handsome stands and lets himself out of the office.

Walking back down the hallway, the jailer imagines pissing in the umbrella stand by the door. Humiliation provokes in him a palpable desire to make things dirty.
We’ve had enough of that for a while
. That stupid fake harp; it would crack over his knee like kindling. The Chief is an asshole. Handsome’s always known it, but the man’s never been so blatantly insulting before. And he’s giving Teza back to Chit Naing. It’s unthinkable. They’re all assholes. Sein Yun is an asshole
and
an idiot. The world is crawling with people who are no better than vermin; the weakest and the strongest of them, they are everywhere, like cockroaches.
Obviously that didn’t prevent you from botching it
. Handsome opens the door, shuts it with restraint, and descends the stairs quickly, letting the wood take the full pounding weight of his body.

When he’s more than halfway down, the rain-slick tread lets him go. He slides and stumbles, then slips down the remaining steps, grabbing awkwardly at the handrail. A loud yelp escapes him before he gets to the bottom, his leg twisted, most of his weight bearing down on the unprotected joint of the knee. Naked-faced in pain, he glances around. Too late. A guard on watch at the end of the building lopes over. “You all right, sir?”

“The fucking wood is slippery.”

“Is that ankle sprained?”

“I’m fine. What are you gawking at? Go back to your post. You have a job to do, don’t you? Go do it!” As the man turns away, Handsome curses
under his breath, “Fuckers, all of them.” He takes a careful step. The ankle is tender, but some deep tendon or ligament wraps flame around his left knee, shoots fire up the back of his leg. He walks on, refusing to limp. Even with the floodlights, it’s dark, it’s impossible, but he doesn’t care, his eyes sweep across the brick chips, the mud, the puddles. Paper, pen, the words. Where have they gone?

S
ir, why ask me?” Sein Yun puts his hand to his chest, fingers pointing inward like a classical dancer’s. “I did my job, just as I did my job with the politicals in Hall Three.” In the shadow under the eaves, he glances up, almost coquettishly, at Handsome. His betel-red mouth squeezes into the shape of a shriveled heart. Then it opens. “I wonder who made a mistake?”

The little joke does not have the desired effect. The jailer grabs the palm-reader’s sweater with both hands and uses it to swing him around, pushing the small, wiry body against the wall. Sein Yun’s head whacks the bricks. “Sir, I’ve already told you the truth. Teza had the papers, he had the pen. He said he wrote the letter.”

“He said he wrote the letter, did he?” Under the compound floodlights, the jailer’s fine white teeth shine mauve. He holds those teeth shut to keep from talking too loudly, and the result is a demonic hiss. “Did you see the letter?”

“I …” The palm-reader rushes back in memory, trying to separate the papers, the hands, the cells of the past week. “I … don’t … remember. I don’t think I did. But maybe I did. I’m not sure.”

“Remember, you little shitbag, remember! Either you saw it or you
didn’t. I’m not in the mood for this crap. I want to know what happened to the pen and the paper, and you’re going to help me find out. Did you see the letter or didn’t you?”

“No. But I’m sure he wrote it. I told you he seemed afraid to at first, but I coaxed him, talked about his friend Myo Myo Than and the others. I am sure that when I was there this morning, the letter was in his cell. He was scared when I wouldn’t take it away with me. I told you that, remember?” Handsome drops the palm-reader’s sweater and takes half a step backward. Sein Yun cautiously levers himself off the wall.

“Then where is it? We interrogated him. He said there was no contraband in the cell, he never had any paper or pen.”

“He was lying. Or someone took them away before you got there. Who visited him during the day?”

“No one. One of my men stood guard until we got there at quarter to five. We came as fast as we could, after we did the raids in Hall Three.”

“Maybe someone bribed your guard. Chit Naing …” The name floats in the air.

“No. Chit Naing isn’t one for bribes, and the guard would never double-cross me.” The jailer stares at Sein Yun’s face.

“Nor would I, Jailer Nyunt Wai Oo. You know that. We’ve done all sorts of work together, haven’t we, and I’ve never let you down.” He returns Handsome’s glare with a submissive expression. Careful not to provoke a new attack, he pulls the neck of his rumpled sweater away from his throat and coughs politely, his hand over his mouth. He has a burning desire to ask what this unfortunate disaster means for himself, but he knows it’s best to allow Handsome to continue his bellowing.

“I don’t even have access to the singer anymore,” he yells, then immediately lowers his voice. “He’s being transferred to another cell. I’m going to start a systematic search for the pen, but the Chief is right, how can you find one pen among ten thousand men? It has to be the white pen, the real one, not a fake or a plant. The trial will be legal. How about that? If there’s no evidence against the singer, he won’t go to court with the rest of them.” He messes up his slick hair with a nervous hand, then begins to rifle through his pockets for a cheroot.

“Here, take this.” Sein Yun hands him one, a good brand, still
wrapped. The palm-reader can’t help being amused by all this talk of the court case’s legality.

“You know what this means for you, don’t you, palm-reader?”

Sein Yun lifts his eyebrows slightly, trying to maintain a neutral expression.

“The Chief might not cut your sentence at all. Two more years in the cage instead of a tidy eight months.”

Sein Yun is momentarily at a loss for words. “Hmm” is the sound behind his betel-stained lips as his mind scurries forward.
Eight months
is a little shoulder bag, easily slung about, just the right size for a few interesting souvenirs.
Two years
, on the other hand, weighs him down with many heavy packs and boxes of bad luck. He’s taking pills for his yellow skin, but who knows what kind of pills they really are? The prison doctor is a quack or a thief or both. Six or eight months, yes, he can wait to get to a good doctor in Rangoon. Two years and he’ll turn into a yellow sack of bones.

“Hmm.” Sein Yun makes the sound again. His eyes are brighter. He pulls the long black hair on his chin. Though it’s past lockup, he suddenly feels awake, the adrenaline mainlined right into his tongue. “Then we have to find out where the pen went, don’t we? Even if the letter was destroyed, the pen has to be around somewhere. It couldn’t just disappear. It’s too valuable. We’ll find it. I marked them all, you know that, three little cuts with a razor blade at the top, three cuts at the bottom. It can’t be that difficult.”

“It’s going to be like searching for a needle in a haystack.”

“Ah, you don’t know what a palm-reader’s hands can do. I’ve found many needles in many haystacks. You will see.”

“You’re full of shit. If you hadn’t fucked up in the first place, I wouldn’t be in this position. You bet your bony ass you’ll help me with this search. We’ll talk more later. I need to eat something and get the fuck out of here.” Handsome’s eyes stick to Sein Yun. “Go back to the hall on your own.”

The palm-reader bows slightly, whispers, “Yes, sir,” and steps out of the shadows.

Catching a glimpse of Sein Yun’s gold eyeteeth, the jailer turns his head sharply to see if the little bugger is mocking him. But the palm-reader is already hurrying away, holding his longyi over his knees as his slippers slap the muddy ground.

T
hey’re on a narrow path through the trees, walking at a brisk pace. He is young again, twelve, thirteen. The child is with him, holding his hand, sometimes running a few steps to keep up. When Teza looks down, he smiles, though it hurts him, and his whole body feels a surge of love for his brother, Aung Min. Then he hears a voice calling from behind them on the path, a sad, old voice. Who is it?

His grandfather. He looks over his shoulder without stopping, but he cannot see the old man.

Teza, Teza, where are you going
?

He doesn’t have to call out. He just answers in his head—Hpo Hpo will hear: We’re going home. The Old Man Lord of the Banyan Tree will help us find our way through the mountains.

But you said you were going home. Beyond the mountains there is only the border
.

Yes, into the forest.

But my dear boy, you come from the city. Why are you going away
?

We need to find the tree, Hpo Hpo, the banyan tree with the shrine. He turns to the little boy, who walks and half runs at his side, trying to keep up. Remember, Aung Min, we saw it that day when we went to Sule
Pagoda—remember? Glancing upward, the small boy smiles a solemn smile. The two of them walk more quickly, away from their grandfather’s voice.

But my dear boy, Sule is in the heart of Rangoon. Don’t you remember that, Teza? Teza? Can you hear me? Teza
?

He
can
hear; but his decision is made. His brother’s thin arm swings with his own, a small, warm hand in his hand. They will find the tree, and its nat, its keeper, the Lord of the Banyan Tree. And then they will go home.

C
hit Naing is squatting beside the singer. The aluminum cup in his hand has so far proved useless. Unconscious men, even dehydrated ones, do not drink water. “Ko Teza, can you hear me? Ko Teza!” He looks at the bloody mouth that cannot drink and the horrible new angle of Teza’s swollen jaw, the chin hanging loose.

A high-ranking warder has accompanied him to the cell, to help with the transfer. He stands silently beside the open door, staring down at the senior jailer and his prisoner. Sensing how carefully the man is watching him, Chit Naing tries to harden his face. The warder makes him nervous. After another fruitless attempt at reviving Teza, Chit Naing snaps, “I can’t wake him. I don’t know what’s wrong. Go get the medic and make sure he brings morphine.”

When the warder is gone, Chit Naing stands up and swears at the stench and the mess of the cell, the chunks of fish, the torn sleeping mat, longyis and shirts wet with shit and piss. He picks through the detritus until he finds a mostly clean undershirt and pours some water on it, then, squatting again, hesitates over Teza’s face. He glances at the open door. Not because he cares who might be there, but because he doesn’t want to look too closely at the bloody pulp near his hands.

He lowers the wet rag to Teza’s left cheek, swollen but not bleeding, and slowly wipes some of the dirt away. Teza’s left eye is blackened and shut, and his left ear and the cut above it are still bleeding. Chit Naing looks at the door again, anxiously this time. Where is the medic? He doesn’t know what to do. If the ear is damaged inside, will he do more harm by pressing it, to stanch the blood? He is also afraid of touching the lower part of Teza’s face. He places the rag against the cut above the ear,
gingerly at first, then with more pressure. Very quickly the blood marks an outline on the white cotton, right around his fingers, rose deepening to crimson, dark red blossoming out under his hand until the cotton is as heavy and warm as a filet of raw meat.