The Lizard Cage by Karen Connelly Read Free Book Online Page B

the streets shouting
Doh ayey, doh ayey, doh ayey
. Our business, our cause. It was the old dream, the oldest music, written again in human blood, soiled by human excrement, with shoes bereft of feet scattered all around. The chorus was a single word:
freedom
.

. 4 .
    L ike a dirty joke, the word
freedom
usually makes Sein Yun, the palm-reader, laugh out loud and roll his eyes suggestively. “Freedom,” he likes to say, “is one more thing you can buy at market, if you have enough kyats.”
    Teza hears the distant sound of shuffling feet. A smile begins and fills his entire face as the feet come closer.
    Despite the double-thick door, the
shuffle-slap-slap, shuffle-slap-slap
of slippers is audible to his keen ears. The singer listens for Jailer Handsome’s footsteps behind the server’s. Usually he waits down the hall while Sein Yun opens the door, gives Teza his food tray, and takes away his shit pail. While chatting with the palm-reader, Teza often smells Handsome’s cheroot smoke.
    But the familiar heavy thud of his boots doesn’t come today. Odd. Teza turns his ear to the door. Definitely no boots. Just Sein Yun. In slippers that are too big for him. The shuffle is longer, more awkward than usual. Have they sent a different criminal to serve him? Has something happened to Sein Yun?
    On the other side of the door, the aluminum food tray clatters down on the cement floor. The key chain rattles. Unseen fingers select the key,which slides in and turns the lock. Now the hand must throw open the outer bolt.
    But the hand doesn’t touch it.
    Teza stares quizzically at his closed door, waiting.
    No sound. The outer bolt stays clamped.
    His stomach suddenly tightens. Sein Yun would have opened the door by now.
    Who is there?
    He controls the speed of his breathing as an old stitch of pain in his ribs pulls tight. Sweat begins to gather under his eyes, on the edge of his cheekbones.
    Still the door does not open.
    The man on the other side is playing a game.
    The singer refuses to be undignified. He won’t ask who is there. Why would they send anyone to hurt him?
He
hasn’t done anything. They’re the ones who aren’t feeding him, who are stealing his fish. And he requested a haircut and a shave two weeks ago, but they’ve denied that too.
    Twice he opens his mouth to speak but remains silent.
    Just as he opens it for the third time, impatient to finish with this bad joke, the man on the other side of the door sings out, “Yooo-hooo! Is anybody in there?”
    Teza jumps at the voice—Sein Yun’s—then growls, “Of course I’m in here! Where the fuck else would I be? Why didn’t you say anything?”
    “I’m saying something now.”
    “Open up the bloody door, then, and bring in my breakfast. Where have you been? Why have you been standing there in silence for five minutes?”
    “Had you worried, huh? Did you think I was a ghost?”
    “No, I did not think you were a ghost, but now I’m sure you’re an asshole.”
    A peal of laughter is interrupted by the clunk and whisk of metal over wood. The outer bolt slides back and Sein Yun pulls open the heavy door. Shifting the bulge in his cheek, he says, “Ko Teza, no need to get so excited. I was just wrapping my betel. It’s a delicate task, you know.” Scooping up the tray, he half leaps into the cell, which makes a clump of rice fall to the floor. Teza sighs in exasperation.
    Six weeks into his association with the palm-reader, he is still taken aback when he sees the man. Sein Yun is like a creature from another star. Most of his teeth are the dark red of a betel-chewer. His lips are burgundy slashes and the lines around them leak red-black stains. Only his eyeteeth are clean. Capped in gold, they gleam like yellow fangs. A skein of grizzled hair covers his head, the shriveled scalp showing through like a rusty lemon. The little man’s skin is all yellow: face, hands, neck. Even the whites of his eyes are yellow. He is a walking, talking, cursing Petri dish