The Lizard Cage (43 page)

Tint Lwin takes a small step forward, his arm extended, but the gesture is more than Handsome can bear. “Don’t you fucking touch me. Stay away! You useless shits, what are you looking at!”

Soe Thein is the first to move. Without a word to anyone, he walks past Handsome, past Chit Naing and the boy, and disappears around the corner of the records office, ready to begin his guard duty at the white house. The other warders disperse more slowly, some back into the quarters to fetch their things and to whisper to each other as they glance out the window. Three men, including Tint Lwin, go off toward the gates and home.

While they’re leaving, Handsome tries to turn around to face Chit Naing again, but he can’t place any weight on his bad knee. The torn joint is loose and burning. Once he’s steady on one leg, he bends down and grabs the shovel. Using it as a cane, he hops around to face Chit Naing and the boy.

“Where is it, kala-lay? Where’d you put the pen?”

The boy stares into Handsome’s eyes like a fox about to disappear into the forest. He has never spoken back. Until recently, he has rarely thought about retaliating against insults, slaps, cuffs on the head, stabs of laughter. His fear and obedience were absolute, and life-preserving. So he is surprised at the feel of the words in his mouth, like a taste of something new.
Fuck off
, he wants to say. But he just tells the truth. “I don’t have it.”

Handsome lifts the shovel and strikes the ground. Grit flies into the air as he strains to keep his footing.

Chit Naing steps forward. “Officer Nyunt Wai Oo, you should have that leg looked at.”

“Fuck you,” Handsome says. “This isn’t the end of it, I promise you that.”

Chit Naing smiles. “I know. Who can tell when we will come to the end of it, Officer Nyunt Wai Oo? It might take years.”

“You and I will be done sooner than that.” Handsome hobbles over to the warders’ quarters, where he yells to one of the warders for his jacket.

A
fter the junior jailer is gone, Chit Naing watches the boy search through the various bits of cloth on the ground. He’s looking for dry clothes. Eventually he finds them and changes into his green longyi and white T-shirt. He shakes out his muddy felt blanket and wraps it around his shoulders. Then he starts to pick methodically through his possessions. In what used to be the center of the shack there is a knee-deep hole, like the beginning of a grave. When Handsome saw the disturbed earth under the rag bed, he made the men dig deeper.

The boy sits cross-legged at the edge of the hole, examining various things, turning them over and over in his hands before throwing them into the little pit. The iron-beater strikes out nine o’clock. Chit Naing looks reflexively at his watch, thinking that it’s probably too late for a trip into the city. If he goes tonight, he’ll have to call his wife, give her some explanation. And he will have to leave soon. He looks at Nyi Lay, wondering what to do with him.

The boy is relieved to find his father’s tooth, but the thanakha tin he kept it in is crushed. He keeps the tooth but drops the tin into the hole. Boot treads have defaced the postcard of the Buddha from Pagan, but he’s
keeping it, along with the torn postcard of the Shwedagon Pagoda. And he finds his nail. The idiots trampled it under the brick chips. He carefully scrutinizes the torn matchbox, but there are no signs of beetle blood. And the lizard must have run away.

Gone, all the beloved paperbacks. The picture of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is gone too. The photo of her father, stuck on the corrugated metal with rice paste, tore in half when the walls fell down. There’s not enough left of the great Bogyoke to bury him. Dry-eyed and thoughtful, the boy carefully examines the wrecked beetle box. Only one side is torn. He will fold the cardboard out and use rice paste to glue it back together. It’s a good matchbox, extra-large. He doesn’t want to lose it.

Chit Naing crouches behind him. “What did you used to keep in there?”

“A beetle.”

“A live beetle?”

The boy sighs. “Yeah. I used to feed him and everything.”

“Maybe they took him away to interrogate him.”

Nyi Lay quickly twists his head around. “Saya, they could not interrogate a beetle.”

Chit Naing smiles. “I’m sure Handsome would like to try.”

Nyi Lay allows himself a faint, bitter grin. “Yeah, he’s such a fucking idiot.” Shocked by his own audacity, he glances up to see if Chit Naing will scold him. But the jailer only laughs, which encourages the boy, who goes on in a low voice, “I bet he could interrogate a rat.”

“He certainly speaks the language.”

Nyi Lay grins. Clearly he has permission. “Handsome could interrogate flies. And maggots. He speaks maggot-language.” He pauses to search for the end of the insult. “And he wants to interrogate the maggots about
shit.
” Chit Naing and the boy both start to laugh.

When the laughter peters out, the boy throws a mangled candle stub into the hole and returns, in his practical way, to the problem at hand. “Maybe I should go and stay with Tan-see Tiger. He’ll let me sleep there.”

“In his cell.” It’s not exactly the ideal solution.

In a stern voice, the boy reminds Chit Naing, “But I’m not a prisoner, Saya.”

“No, Nyi Lay. I know you are not a prisoner.” The senior jailer scratches the back of his neck. All right, then. He will call his wife with a
good excuse and travel tonight into the city. If he goes on a bus most of the way, then takes a cab, it can’t take more than an hour to get there.

The boy is staring into the hole. Suddenly he cocks his head to the side and leans back, frowning at the pile of boards and corrugated metal that used to be his shack. “Listen, Saya. Do you hear that?”

Chit Naing raises his eyebrows. “Hear what?”

“He’s scratching!”

The jailer stands at the edge of the hole. He can’t see anything but raw clay and the bits and pieces the boy has discarded.

“He’s scratching, Saya! That means he’s hungry!”

“Who’s hungry, Nyi Lay? What do you hear?”

The boy jumps up and starts throwing things in the air, like a dog searching for a bone long buried. “Not in the hole, Saya—he’s somewhere over here!” He tosses a board out of his way, and a tangle of rope from the corner posts. He pushes aside a long narrow scrap of corrugated metal. “He’s here, look! They didn’t steal him!” He whirls around to face Chit Naing. In his fingers, he delicately holds a carrion beetle by the carapace. Six sturdy black legs march purposefully through the air. The boy places the creature in his palm and lets it crawl from one hand to the other. He walks over to the eastern wall of the warders’ quarters and carefully sets the beetle down in a jungle of weeds. Noticing the boy’s reverent expression, the jailer stops himself from laughing. He turns in the opposite direction, toward the watchtower, but he can still hear Nyi Lay whispering to the beetle as it disappears into the green tangle.

T
hankfully, the bus is almost empty, and the tired people already on the line don’t raise their heads to look at him. Staring down at cheroot butts and betel stains and ticket stubs, he falls to examining his own tired feet, separated from the dirty floorboards by the thin soles of his flip-flops. Chit Naing’s feet are like the rest of his body, long and angular, a collection of finely sculpted bones. The second toes are longer than the first. His feet are much paler brown than his face and hands, because he’s worn boots six days a week for more than twenty years. When he leaves the cage in his street clothes, there is often this moment of unrecognition, sheer surprise, as he looks down and sees his toes clinging to their simple slippers, just like everybody else, like a regular man.

He gets out when the bus stops near Hledan Junction. Though he rarely takes cabs—they’re much too expensive—tonight he has no choice. He goes from one street corner to the next, asking one cabbie after another if he’s ever heard of Aung Ban Street in Kyee Myin Daing. He doesn’t want to mention the name of the monastery school. Taxi drivers are in an ideal position to work as paid informers, especially in this township, so close to the university and not so far from the prison. Their job combines a handy mobility with plenty of spare time for observation: who’s going into which
building, for how long, who stays the night—spending the night in a house not your own is illegal—and, naturally, who’s going where.

Chit Naing glances at his watch. It’s getting too late to go knocking on any doors, especially those of a monastery. He approaches the last cabbie in the row, a slick young fellow sitting on the hood of his car, showily engaged in pulling a cigarette out of a packet of Lucky Strikes. Upon hearing the name of the street, he asks, “What’s it close to?” Chit Naing replies that he doesn’t know. “Listen, Uncle, if you don’t have a landmark, how can I help you? There are many monasteries and pongyi-kyaung in Kyee Myin Daing, but I’ve never heard of Aung Ban Street.” He lights the cigarette and exhales a smoky suggestion. “If you go over there—see?—up that little road to the second noodle stand, there’s a short, chubby driver named Than Thaik. He just ordered his dinner. The guy’s a walking map—he’ll probably be able to help you. He’s finished for the night, though, so he might not want to take you there.” As Chit Naing begins to walk away, the young man adds, “But if he does, tell him he owes me one!”

The jailer heads up the noodle stand street, which is very dark save for battery-powered light bulbs hanging over the great sizzling pans of fried noodles. The heady smell of garlic snapping in oil makes his mouth water, but he won’t even think of dinner until he’s either fulfilled or failed at the task before him. He trips on a chunk of cement and swears under his breath. Either there’s a blackout in this particular part of the grid or the entire street has no proper lamps. He curls and uncurls his stubbed toe while scanning the dark tables. A dozen of them are occupied. He approaches the only corpulent body he sees. “Ko Than Thaik?”

“Yes, sir?”

The
sir
throws him for a moment, but perhaps the man is very polite, or impolitely ironic. Chit Naing steps nearer the table and quietly explains himself, naming the township and the street.

“I do know where it is, yes, indeed I do. There’s a little fabric and odds-and-ends market at one end and a football field at the other. A couple of apartment blocks with shops under ’em. That’s about all there is, sir. It’s a short street. You know what house you’re looking for?”

Chit Naing smiles tightly. “I do, thank you.”

“Well, I’d really like to help you, but unfortunately I’m finished working for the day. Been up since four in the morning with some very nice English
people. We went to Inle Lake to see the jumping cats. Very interesting what those monks can get a cat to do. Amazing, really. Those cats kind of reminded me of a lot of people I know, jumping on command. Have you seen ’em?”

“Ah, no. No, I haven’t.” Chit Naing frowns. “I … I would be willing to make it worth your while. I need to get there tonight.”

“To Inle Lake to check out the jumping cats?” The chubby driver guffaws at his own joke.

It’s the laugh that makes Chit Naing remember. Everything else about Than Thaik, including his name, has changed. “No, Ko Than Thaik. I need to get to Aung Ban Street. And you will help me, won’t you? In the name of an old friendship?”

Than Thaik shifts away from the rickety little table, slaps his hands together, and laughs again, deeply, from the belly. “Took you a while to recognize me, didn’t it? No fucking wonder—I’ve gained thirty-five pounds since those vile days. Thirty-five! Just let me finish eating, okay, Jailer Chit Naing? I’m bloody hungry. I’m always bloody hungry. Since the cage, I’ve never worried about being fat, only about starving. Have you eaten yet?” Before Chit Naing can reply, Than Thaik shouts, “Another plate of khauk-swe, Daw Thida, we’re still hungry!” And to Chit Naing, “You didn’t know me at first, eh, but I pegged
you
right away, as soon as you turned up the street. You’re still thin as a rail and you got the same professor glasses. I recognized you even without your outfit.”

Chit Naing is caught between feeling great relief at finding the right cabdriver and great consternation at finding the wrong one, a man who knows him well. But he sits down at the table. Two minutes later a plate of fragrant fried noodles is placed before him. Despite his worries, the scent of the steaming food overcomes him and he quickly begins to eat.

D
uring the drive into Kyee Myin Daing, Than Thaik talks nonstop. Normally this would irritate the tired jailer, but tonight it calms him. He’s relieved that the man isn’t nosy.

“A couple years after I got out, I stayed on the straight and narrow and my brother got me this job, which isn’t bad. There are perks, you know, especially with the tourists. And I’m married now, to a good woman, and we have two little ones. I thought I was going to be a bachelor forever, but that
woman just knocked me off my feet and that was that. I’m a family man, and if I get in trouble now, I’ll have to answer to my wife, which is a frightening thought.” He grins broadly and glances at Chit Naing. “I’m a very lucky man and I know it.

“After that big fight on the grounds, the Chief Warden wanted to turn the whole lot of us over to the military. We would’ve been sent up as weapons porters to the front line. And everybody knows what happens to those poor fuckers. By now I’d just be a skeleton in the jungle if you hadn’t stepped up for me and talked to him.”

“I believed you were innocent. Besides, if I remember correctly, you couldn’t have been involved in that fight because you had a bad case of dysentery.”

“That’s true. I had nothing to do with that business. I really didn’t. But in the cage it doesn’t matter whether you’re innocent or guilty. All that matters is who you know.” He vigorously shakes his head, as if tossing away unhappy memories.

They’ve pulled onto a quieter street. “We’ll be making a turn at the bottom of this long boulevard,” he says, then points out a few perfectly mundane sights, a habit he’s picked up from driving foreigners around. “And now we just go down here.” Bald tires screech as he brakes for a sharp turn. They cross a larger thoroughfare of shops and restaurants as well as houses and apartment buildings. A few corner tea shops and noodle stands are still serving, but it’s past ten o’clock now and very quiet. He turns onto another little road. It’s a residential district, poor and very old, with banyans and palms and neems shading the roadways. Than Thaik goes left, then right—Chit Naing is trying to keep track—down streets of confused architecture, one-story concrete bungalows mixed in with two- and three-story apartment buildings with shops underneath. Ten minutes away from the main road, Chit Naing has no idea where he is.