The Lizard Cage (34 page)

I
am eating an egg. He revises it.

I am eating my whole life.

Rain begins to fall, all at once in steady rhythm, a wet broom sweeping out the sky. Fresh air billows into the cell. The rain has a mantra: egg, egg, egg, egg.

With a fleck of yellow yolk stuck on his lower lip, Teza makes up a stupid joke.

What comes first, the chicken or the egg?

The political prisoner, of course.

He swallows as slowly as it’s possible to swallow without choking. He revises it.

What comes first, the chicken or the egg?

The boy. Free El Salvador, who brought the political prisoner an egg from a bowl of mohinga.

B
efore Sammy beats out five o’clock, Teza places another dried fish outside his cell, laid carefully on a piece of cloth from the parcel, surrounded by four small pouches of peanuts, tea leaves, and sesame seeds.

When the boy arrives, his eyes fall immediately to the offering on the ground. Obviously surprised, he glances at Teza, who manages to say, “Thank you. For the egg this morning.”

Shyness comes to Free El Salvador again. He approaches the cell. “Was it good?”

“Very good,” Teza replies, a smile in his voice. “I haven’t eaten an egg for a long time. It made me think of my father.”

At the word
father
, the boy lifts his head. His mouth is not quite closed, not quite open. The dark lips are full, as innocent as they are sensuous. Beautiful, really. The old anger whipcracks through Teza, asking one question:
Why is this child living in a prison
?

The singer takes a deep breath. The boy’s still looking at him, newly direct, almost complicitous. And wanting. Wanting what? To be loved,
of course, like any child. Teza points to the food outside the cell. “It’s for you.”

“De gé la?” Really?

He breathes out a laugh. “Really, Nyi Lay. Who else?”

The boy scratches his cheek. It wrings Teza’s heart, to watch him struggle against his own longing. “Be quick. The warder might come.” The child drops to a squat and deftly wraps the fish in the little white cloth, secrets the pouches of la-phet away in his sling bag. He thanks the singer almost formally. “Ako.” He pauses. “Tzey zu amiagee tin-ba-deh.” Teza nods, touched by simple words. The boy is still too shy to say Teza’s name, but
ako
is a beginning. Older Brother.

A
few mornings later Nyi Lay brings the singer a fried fish. After deboning it, Teza makes a paste of the soft white flesh to mix in with his boiled rice. The boy watches him drink the soupy mixture, occasionally whispering, “Sa, sa,” like the parent of a fussy child. In turn Teza leaves him more food—another fish and some deep-fried beans—from the parcel. The next day the boy brings him a very ripe banana.

Two days later he leaves Teza a small twig of diamond-shaped leaves and the singer gives him another dried fish and one of the little bricks of thanakha.

The next day, squatting in front of the cell, Nyi Lay sticks his skinny arm through the bars and opens his hand. Lying in his dirty palm is a pale green stone. He whispers, “It might be jade,” and looks up at Teza. Like a diver, the boy takes a big, audible breath before plunging in. “Maybe it’s a jade
amulet
. Tan-see Tiger has a jade Buddha that he wears around his neck. On a gold chain. He pays the warders so they don’t take it away from him. And he says that the Buddha image
protects
him.” He flushes, embarrassed to be talking so much, but he can’t stop. “And he has some other amulets too, all for protection. One’s a
bullet
that was taken out of his chest. For protection against other bullets! And you can still see his scar!” Out of air, Nyi Lay falls silent.

Teza raises a questioning eyebrow. “If the stone is for protection, don’t you want to keep it?”

There is a long pause. The two of them gaze down at the glinting little rock.

If it
is
an amulet, then he should keep it for himself. The Songbird’s right. Because of Handsome and the pen, he needs all the help he can get. Yet he doesn’t close his fingers and pull his arm back through the iron grille. The green, gray-fissured stone lies on his open palm. He
wants
to give it away.

With long, thin fingers, Teza picks up the stone and turns it this way and that, into the light of the corridor. “If you need this talisman back, just ask. I’ll hold on to it for you.” The boy stands. Teza says, “Wait, don’t go yet. There is one more dried fish from my parcel. Do you want to take it today or tomorrow?”

As the boy watches Teza wrapping it up, an explanation opens in his mind easily, lightly, like a door made of thatch. If the Songbird keeps the amulet, the boy can keep the pen. The trade keeps both of them safe.

F
rom the white house, he walks along with Teza’s empty tray, the pleasant weight of more good dinners stowed in his sling bag, bumping against his thigh. He pauses to check the fish and reknot his longyi.

Amulet for pen for protection
. What can he do to make sure the exchange works?

He will make an offering. That’s why the men pray, and leave flowers and food for the nat of the last tree in the cage. They believe the nat will help them.

Between the hospital and the kitchen stands the Buddhist shrine. Though he needs to return the singer’s tray for wash-up, he finds himself stopping at that special in-between place. If he makes an offering to the nat, then maybe now is the time to make one to the Buddha, who sits calmly above the fresh and wilted flowers, the fresh and dried branches of green. Incense smoke curls up and disappears above his knees of peeling gold. A warder has placed a glass of water and a plate of oranges beside him. It must have been a warder, or an officer, because the convicts gobble up fresh fruit right away, peels included. Untempted, the Buddha sits placidly beside this plate of juicy oranges, tapered fingers grasping nothing.
The long gold arms slope smoothly into his draped lap, like those of a dancer who has decided to sit down forever.

The boy stands behind the half-dozen worshippers, prisoners sitting cross-legged with eyes closed, lips forming inaudible words. Two of them count prayer beads; the boy hears the tiny
click-click-click
as the beads pass under fingertips. He won’t get down on his knees and bow three times. Not yet, not with so many prisoners around. He knows it’s three times because he’s watched the men so often, and the Songbird too. He just stands there, staring at the golden face.

Then he sees it.

A thousand times he has watched the gold mouth, wondering if it ever speaks. But he has never seen the holy man smiling as he is now. The Buddha has changed. Almost imperceptibly, the full lips curve upward, as though he knows the boy’s secret—
amulet for pen for protection
—and promises, with his closed, smiling mouth, that he will tell no one.

The boy meets the Buddha’s gaze and makes the same face back. Putting the tray under his arm, he raises his hands in prayer position, makes three little nods with his head—as close to bowing as he dares—and closes his eyes.

“Why don’t you kneel down like the rest of us?”

This unexpected voice, close and hot against his ear, makes him jump. The aluminum tray falls noisily to the ground. A worshipper turns, scowling. Sein Yun smiles an apology and raises a diplomatic yellow hand. The boy has already retrieved the tray and taken several steps backward.

Sein Yun gets down on his knees. Now he is like a midget. Instead of genuflecting before the Buddha, he casts a wry sideways glance at the boy, who knows he should leave. Maybe it’s the Buddha himself whispering,
Go, don’t stay here
. But the boy doesn’t move. He’s never been so close to Sein Yun’s face. He examines the yellow skin, the curly-haired mole on his chin, the betel mouth with wrinkles radiating from lips stained red and brown. When the palm-reader waves to the boy, Nyi Lay stares at his fingernails, exceptionally long and rounded like hooks.

Sein Yun’s smile reveals his dark teeth. “Don’t just stare, Nyi Lay.”

“Sorry, Uncle.” His apology is without meaning.

“Oh, I don’t mean at
me
—stare at me as much as you want. I mean at the shrine. La-ba. Come and join me. We will worship together.”

The invitation takes the boy by surprise. He has always wanted exactly this, one of the men to teach him, to help him, but no one has ever offered, until now. Why does it have to be the nasty palm-reader?

Sein Yun’s smile is nothing like the Buddha’s. His wrinkled face squeezes up like an old mango. His lips rise; the two gold eyeteeth glint. Sein Yun jerks his chin downward, meaning
Kneel beside me
.

The boy has a good excuse. “My father never went to the temple.”

The palm-reader stops smiling. His face becomes less squeezed and more sad, but the boy doesn’t believe that moony look. “Your father has been dead many years.”

Nyi Lay glances down at the cement between his feet. What does the palm-reader know about it?

As though reading his mind, Sein Yun says, “I knew him.”

The boy’s throat squeezes like a vise around two words. “My father?”

“Yes. He played cards with us. He was a good card player when it wasn’t for money. When it was for money, the poor fellow always lost. But he used to win cheroots by the dozen. Remember when we played at the little tea shop in your village? You’ll remember if you try—you kept asking to go home. You were very, very small then. Maybe you’ve forgotten. Or do you remember?”

The boy drops his head. He forgets-remembers many things about his father, whose image has blurred in the midst of so many men. Cage faces—even the warders’—share a certain tightness, as though the bones are too large for the skin that contains them. It’s like a mask the prison gives to every man who passes through the gates. The boy sees it on Sein Yun’s face too.

He forgets-remembers so much. Now a clear memory from the other world rises up and takes hold of him. He is a small child again, walking past a late-night noodle shop, his fingers tucked into his father’s longyi as they rush through the rectangle of bare electric light that falls from the small building. The boy hears voices first, then turns and sees the happy ruckus, men at the tables, the laughter and shouts that mean toddy rum and cards. The father feels his child turn, sees the hungry look, the longing. The child wishes, inarticulately, deeply, that his father could be there, among those laughing men in the unshaded light. He has almost never heard his father laugh. But the man misunderstands. Yanking the boy forward,
he growls, “If you ever start that nonsense, I swear I’ll lock you up. Never play cards. There’s enough gambling in this life as it is.” The child has no idea what gambling is and only the merest comprehension of
cards
, but he doesn’t try to explain. He only replies, “Yes, sir,” like a tiny soldier. The two of them keep going, walking quickly along the dark road.

The boy looks into Sein Yun’s face. Liar, he thinks. Stupid liar. My father never played cards. He smiles at the palm-reader. “What was my father’s name?”

Sein Yun’s mouth gapes open. Then closes into a dark red
O
surrounded by deep betel wrinkles. “I …” He taps his head. “You know, I’ve forgotten! I must be getting old.”

Nyi Lay would like to spit, but he does not—he is at the shrine. So he just removes his eyes from the palm-reader, like an adult looking away from something unpleasant, rotting food or a dead animal. He shifts his gaze back to the Buddha, hoping that the secret smile is still there. It is.

The palm-reader is like a man trying another key in the lock. “Nyi Lay, you can worship here, even if you don’t know the words. The Buddha will not mind. He is very generous. Besides, your mother was a Buddhist.”

Anyone who knows cage business would know his mother was a Buddhist.

The palm-reader smiles, more ingratiating now. “Come, why don’t you kneel down and pray with me?”

“I have to deliver the tray. Then I have other jobs.”

“Ah, yes, you’re doing the singer now. I was his server before you, you know. It’s important work. Well done.”

The boy doesn’t want the man to compare them, to make them the same just because he has taken over Sein Yun’s job. The skin on his back contracts, shivers, the way it does before he throws up. He is surprised at himself, confused by this tumult within him that suddenly wants to get out. Before he knows what’s happening, the words begin to escape, though they are not rushed or fearful. They do not act like escapees. “His mouth is all broken. I take him his food, but he cannot eat. Because of you.”

“My dear boy, what do you mean? What are you talking about?” Sein Yun’s smile disappears as he becomes wide-eyed with incomprehension.

The boy’s voice sounds clear in his own ears. “You know. You were the singer’s server before me.” It’s a voice barely used, like a new bell but
sharper, different in function, closer to a very small silver blade. He stares into Sein Yun’s eyes. “You ratted on him, remember? And the politicals in the dog cells. They are there because of you.”

Caught off-guard, the palm-reader is at a loss for words. In that silent gap, the boy turns and walks away, his orange flip-flop and his burgundy velvet flip-flop slapping against his heels.

S
ein Yun doesn’t stay at the shrine for long. He never does, unless he has business to conduct with someone. The little rat-killer was not business, he was just a thought, a probing. Little sack of bones. Shit with eyes. And a tongue.

It’s not so strange that the kid knows something about Sein Yun’s part in last month’s raid. It’s no longer a secret, because the pen search didn’t exactly go as planned. Where did the damn thing go? During the past month he’s read palms for free and chatted up the guys left, right, and center, feeling through metaphorical pockets like a whore. There’s nothing to find.

The warders did the main convict halls, they did the sentencing hall. They tore up the gardens and combed the compound three times. They even stirred up the latrine holes—what a stink that must have been. The palm-reader’s done his part too. He got the cook to harangue his work details and helped him search the kitchen. He sucked up to the medics and prisoner-helpers in the infirmary and the hospital, but there’s nothing to find, anywhere. Or a lot of things all over the place—pens, pencils, razor blades, notes, love letters, newspapers, an American five-dollar bill (a sheer miracle, kept for good luck, and pocketed immediately by Handsome), a
working transistor radio, batteries new and old, magazines, makeup and pantyhose and sexy nighties (the faggots have nicer clothes than his wife), even a broken telescope, but no white pen, razor-nicked at the bottom, razor-nicked at the top. Scuffles broke out among the convicts in Halls One and Four. Some jerk in Hall Five, angry about the raid, attacked one of the warders and the whole place went crazy, had to be locked down for two days. Four cons were sent to the hole for a week, with nothing to eat for forty-eight hours.