The Headmaster's Wager (14 page)

“I will have it sent to you tomorrow,” said Percival.

“I'm so sorry to be a bother,” the doctor bowed, “ah … I have obligations that I must pay today. Might I impose upon you to settle up now? ”

Percival felt his face redden. His credit was no longer any good. In Cholon, it was impossible either to gain wealth or owe it without it being widely known. Perhaps his stature remained—the doctor was at least being polite. Percival went to his room, retrieved his last few American dollars, and brought them to pay the bill. As the doctor was leaving, Percival looked at the American medication. He wanted to call down the hallway,
And he will be as he was before?

As if he had heard Percival's thoughts, the doctor turned and bowed. “
Hou jeung
, time never reverses itself, but he will heal if you allow him to.” At the top of the stairs, the doctor was nearly knocked over by Cecilia rushing up. She stopped for a moment and put her arms around Percival, then, as if she did not want to be caught doing this, she let go of him and hurried into Dai Jai's room.

Percival stood alone in the hallway. From the doorway, he saw Cecilia leaning over their son, holding him silently, stroking his forehead. Dai Jai's tears flowed freely, and he clung to his mother, who reassured him with a steady, calm voice. She must have hurried over as soon as Percival had called to say that Dai Jai was home. Her hair was hastily tied back, and there were dark circles under her eyes, which she must have carefully hidden with powder for their recent meetings at the Cercle Sportif. She, too, had been losing sleep during their son's absence, Percival realized. He felt as sheepish and unsure of himself as when he had once admired Cecilia from afar at the Christmas dance on Queens Road. Without makeup, her naked face betrayed its creases and lines of worry, the years and troubles that had passed. They had been Dai Jai's age when they met, and not much older when they married.

Cecilia sat with Dai Jai until he fell asleep. When she came out into the hallway, where Percival had remained, she said, “Thank you for bringing him back.”

It was so strange to hear her thank him, that he had no words with which to reply.

She allowed herself to be folded into Percival's arms, and now her tears were released. “Why did they have to hurt him?”

“I don't know.”

“Wasn't the money enough?” Tears streamed down her cheeks, and Percival found himself stroking her hair. It was thinner than he remembered. What if they had grown up a little before they met, he wondered.

“We have him back, that's the main thing.”

“But look what they've done to our baby,” she sobbed.

“Best to forget …” said Percival. “He is back with us, whole. He will heal.”

She nodded, buried her face in his shoulder. Percival moved a little, thought of kissing her forehead. She pulled back. Of course, if they had been older, if Cecilia had been more free from her mother, she would never have even looked at him. She withdrew from his touch and said, “When will you repay me my four hundred and ten taels?”

“But that was … your share,” said Percival.

“I'm not sharing in your stupidity,” she said. She wiped away the tears, sniffed, he could see her making her face hard. “Your idiocy got him arrested. But I'm thankful that you rescued him. I'll give you a break on the interest.” She turned, and fled down the stairs.

UNDER PERCIVAL'S WATCHFUL EYE
, Foong Jie nursed Dai Jai, spooned lukewarm rice congee to his lips and cleaned his wounds with a washbowl and cloth. Cecilia visited frequently. She brought chocolate éclairs and lemon tarts from la Patisserie St. Honoré, but Dai Jai could only manage a few bites. One day, she brought a tremendous bouquet of gladiolas for his bedside, but their beauty seemed only to make Dai Jai look worse. Percival hovered around him constantly at first, but found that he didn't know what to say. He wished he had not opposed the directive to give Vietnamese language classes and
would have done anything to take that day back, but he could not apologize to his son for that. Not after what had happened when Dai Jai tried to impress his father with his own patriotism. Percival was amazed at Dai Jai's strength in having survived his imprisonment, but how could he say anything positive about such a horrible ordeal? How could he even mention it, when the main thing was to forget? Let it go, he decided. It would fade with time, like the bruises.

More crucially, he told himself, after a few days of uncomfortable hovering over his son, he must find money to pay his debts. Foong Jie had the care of Dai Jai well in hand, and he would leave it to her. Time was chasing him, as he had borrowed at high rates. He added an evening class and another full daytime class to the Percival Chen English Academy's schedule, both of which he discounted for students who could pay a full year's tuition immediately. Though it had been years since he had actually taught on a regular basis, he took the new classes himself to avoid having to pay another teacher. This gave him enough money to pay back the Sikh lenders, whose debts bore the highest rates. He sent drips of money via Mak to the Teochow temple, keeping Chen Hap Sing out of the creditors' hands. He did not want to go himself, lest they call him on the whole amount. After the evening class was over, Percival sat at Dai Jai's bedside as he fell asleep. This was the best time, for in the dark it was not necessary to say anything. Dai Jai could pretend that he was asleep, and Percival could pretend that he believed this was so.

Once Dai Jai was actually sleeping, Percival went out to work the casinos. He did not drink or take girls to bed. He counted his cards at blackjack and played poker only with weak players whom he knew he could read. He had promised Mak to stay away from the mah-jong tables with their large stakes and unpredictable emotions, and he did. Normally, Percival was propelled by the excitement of possibility, the belief that the next hand might contain a big win. Now, he felt a sobering motivation, a fear of losing. He disciplined himself to play for moderate amounts and pushed aside his usual taste for large risks and payoffs. When he was down, he worked his way back methodically. By the end of each night, he came out ahead.

The school had been at capacity with five hundred or so students, and now it swelled with almost a hundred more. For the new Vietnamese classes, Mak took the job of instruction upon himself, careful to fulfil the Saigon directives to the letter. To help his friend generate some extra cash, Mak advertised tutorials for job-seekers,
HOW TO WIN
AMERICAN FRIENDS AND JOBS
. These were so popular that one morning, as Percival returned from a long and reasonably profitable night at Le Grand Monde, Mak came to him with a proposition. “If your students could be exempted from the English proficiency exams that American employers require, I'm sure we could increase tuition. What if we got a special designation for the school, a certification?”

Percival rubbed his eyes, exhausted. “Do it. Anything that will bring more money.”

“It might take a while.”

“Mak, I need cash now,” said Percival. He collapsed on the cot in his office, still in his shirt. Each morning, he closed his eyes until his classes started. Brief siestas sustained him between teaching, gambling, and sitting at his son's bedside. He managed to get the Peugeot out of hock from the garage, but soon was forced to use it as collateral again, to keep the Clan Association at bay. He bought lotus leaves of mosquito larvae when he remembered. The tanks were filthy, but the fish lived.

For several weeks, Dai Jai stayed in bed. He observed the square quietly from the window, but as his appetite and a little of his strength returned, he devoured the French cakes and snacks, as well as the expensive pâtés and rounds of
La vache qui rit
cheese that his mother brought. There was a growing stack of American comic books that she bought for him in Saigon. Normally, Percival would have criticized the cheeseburgers, French fries, and pizza that Cecilia brought from the U.S. Army PX, and banished the cans of Coca-Cola and the Marvel comics. He would have admonished her that the Chinese stomach could not tolerate very much of this Western food, and why should their son read about superheroes in ridiculous costumes when there were so many real Chinese heroes of history? In the face of Dai Jai's enjoyment of these things, Percival held his tongue, and responded
with a steady stream of pork buns, fresh papayas, custard apple, ginseng infusions, sweet Chinese bean soups, and kung fu novels.

At the time of the divorce, Percival had given Cecilia a sum of money to buy a house and start her own business. In exchange, Dai Jai would live with him. Now, when he saw the natural tenderness between mother and son, Percival combatted his jealousy by telling himself that it was certainly best for Dai Jai to live at Chen Hap Sing with him. What kind of example did Cecilia provide, taking men to the house and answering the door with a gun?

Once he had enough strength to walk a little, Dai Jai drifted through the house with a halting gait. He carried a small bowl in which to spit the blood that he coughed up. When Percival listened to the radio, Dai Jai often lingered nearby. The radio sheltered them from having to speak to one another. When Percival glanced at his son, he could see only his scabby wounds and the discoloured bruises smeared up and down his arms.

Life would be better after the bruises healed. Then, he would be able to look at his son without imagining blows landing, without thinking of the methods of the National Police Headquarters, without replaying once more what he should have done differently to avoid this trouble. Dai Jai asked one morning if he might come and join his father for breakfast on the balcony. “But you should rest,” Percival said reflexively. “You must heal.”

“It is too quiet in my room.”

“I cannot let you climb the steep stairs to the third floor. You are not steady on your feet. What if you were to fall? No, you must rest until you are better.”

“Yes, Father,” said Dai Jai in a near-whisper.

Percival longed for the boy's return to the chair across from him at the breakfast table, but he wanted everything to be exactly as it was before. He wanted to sit across from his healthy, though headstrong, son. Soon enough the boy would be healed and would join him at the table.

Dai Jai had always been bold, given to boisterous statements and gestures. Now he was quiet. The only time he was loud was when
he screamed in the middle of the night. Sometimes there were no discernible words, and sometimes he cried out, “Stop! No!” his eyes still closed, his arms raised to protect his head from phantom assailants. At the ancestral altar, the only place it was safe to express both gratitude and fear, Percival now thanked the spirits for saving Dai Jai both from the sea and from prison. He also begged that his son's nightmares would stop. Often, when Percival heard screams escaping from Dai Jai's bedroom door, he fled to the casinos. After all, he told himself, as he hailed a cyclo, he was going out into the night to help pay the debt.

It took the remainder of the school semester for Dai Jai to be physically well again and finally join his father for breakfast on the balcony. His bruises were gone, but he remained hesitant, easily startled. Percival offered to take him out to the places he liked—for an ice cream in Saigon, or perhaps a lime soda at the Cercle. With the onset of the mid-year heat, Percival suggested hopefully that they take a beach holiday. This sounded a little ridiculous even as he heard himself voice the idea. Dai Jai always replied that he still felt weak and wasn't quite ready to go out. In the late afternoons, when it was sweltering upstairs, Dai Jai retreated to an empty ground-floor classroom of Chen Hap Sing to read. Once, from behind closed classroom doors, Percival thought he heard a girl's gentle voice as well as Dai Jai's. Percival asked Foong Jie about it, for she saw everything that happened. Foong Jie shrugged. It must be Dai Jai's Annamese sweetheart, and Percival realized that he did not care. It was better to allow Dai Jai this comfort. Then, one day, Percival looked out from the balcony and thought he saw Dai Jai and a girl on the other side of the square, their backs to Chen Hap Sing, buying young coconuts with crushed ice. The boy turned, yes it was his son. Percival was overjoyed that Dai Jai had ventured out. In the evenings, Dai Jai resumed tending to his fish. Early one evening, Percival found him feeding them on his balcony, the tanks meticulously cleaned.

“They're beautiful,” said Percival.

“They need attention.”

“Sorry, I let the tanks go. While you were away.”

“Thanks for feeding my fish.”

A slight breeze had arrived with the evening, a hot wind but still a relief. “Do you want to go out for a good dinner in a restaurant? Let's go for lobsters, Cantonese style, somewhere air-conditioned.”

“I'm still recovering.”

“Though I noticed that you went out today.”

Dai Jai looked down into a tank.

“Maybe I was too harsh about the girl before,” said Percival. “You are a young man, after all. You must still marry a Chinese, but for now … The Annamese are free spirited. If you don't feel like lobster, what about oyster omelettes for dinner—Teochow style?”

“I had better stay in. My appetite's not great. Aren't there a lot of police out at night?”

“It's fine to go out,” said Percival. It was safe, he assured himself. If anyone was still after Dai Jai, he should have heard about it by now. Mei had promised to warn him if anyone in the police even whispered about Dai Jai. How could he convince the boy? Percival said, “There are fresh scallops at the Golden Dragon. They are delicious.”

“Yes …” said Dai Jai, but his face became closed, “but my stomach is still sensitive.”

Percival used the school break to drum up business, to encourage early registration. He bought more desks and crammed them in, to increase the class sizes without hiring more teachers. He spread the rumour that his school would soon have a special certification with the Americans. Soon, Dai Jai could resume his studies at the academy and at the Teochow school. Seeing his old friends would improve his spirits.