The Headmaster's Wager (42 page)

“Thank you, General Cho,” said Mak.

Cho went to the table. He turned back to them with something in his hand. He held it out to Mak. “Do your duty, Comrade Mak.”

“What?”

“Your duty.”

“But sir, I thought you said that—”

“As I said, I have come to a decision.” Cho thrust the gun at Mak.

Percival saw Mak's pleading mouth, his desperation, but could not hear the words. Instead he heard a sound, he had once heard it in a different place. Mak was shouting, distressed. Percival had never seen Mak so upset, and yet a
hushing
grew to drown out the room. The sea? He would die here, in the Gold Mountain country. Would the same end find Jacqueline and the boy, when the communists took Vietnam? They would do so, he was now convinced. Were they all like Cho? Mak tried to turn away, but Cho seized him and spun him around by the shoulder, pressed the gun into his hand, took the safety off for him.

Mak would tell Jacqueline his fate, and take care of her. His old friend would honour this wish, and maybe she could still somehow find a departure, an escape. Mak's right arm hung limp with the weight of the pistol. He continued to talk. “But I have been faithful to the revolution. Since you've known me.” Arm trembling, saying to Cho, “You see big brother, Comrade Cho, General Cho … I am also loyal to my friend …” and shaking his head.

Percival thought of Jacqueline with Laing Jai. As a newborn Laing Jai had looked so much like Dai Jai. Percival invited the noise to drown this thought, instead picturing only mother with child. Cho slapped Mak, yelled at him, screamed that his only loyalty was to the cause. Mak walked over to Percival with stiff legs. He stood close by, close enough to embrace. He raised his arm unsteadily. The sound was the ocean at Vung Tau, the waves on the beach, a welcome. Percival
could smell the oiled weapon, the gunpowder. Things needed to be carefully tended to, otherwise everything rusted, disintegrated, in this country of decay.

“Since this is my fate, I'm glad it's your hand,” said Percival.

The gun's muzzle pressed cold on his temple, he could feel Mak shaking through it. “
Hou jeung
, I'm sorry.” And now the sharp, definite, and solid thing came.

A strike of metal on metal.

It was as if he could see his blood flowing down from his shattered head into the earth, mingling with the human waste that already soaked that place, with the stench. It was as if he could watch the skull fragments blown apart, fallen like cracked seashells. As if he could look into his own eyes, their last flicker. But he was able to think, to fear it.

There had been only the hard metal hammer falling in the gun's empty chamber.

Cho seized the chair and knocked it to the ground. Percival thudded on his side and felt his raw scalp split open, the blood flowing from his head. It was like Cho had once described, a relief.

Mak fell to the ground next to Percival and struggled to lift up his chair, to raise him back into a sitting position. Mak sobbed, thanked Cho for sparing Percival, begging forgiveness from the headmaster. In the dark, Cho laughed as if he had played a small practical joke. He held the flashlight in one hand and extended the other. “Here, Mak, give me my gun back. I had to be sure.” He turned to Percival. “We will bring Dai Jai back—that is my favour to Mak. Everything will continue as before—that is the price of your life, all of your lives. We will send our eyes and ears to Saigon as long as the foreign scum is here. If a word is betrayed, if you attract any kind of attention, Laing Jai first, Dai Jai, and then Jacqueline. In a room like this one, you will watch them die, slowly, painfully, before you join them.”

Cho came close, and Percival could smell the rotten teeth in his mouth beneath the sour stench of beer. “Comrade Mak will take you back to Saigon. If anyone asks about your injuries, you will say that
you were kidnapped by some Chinese gangsters for ransom. Your American friends won't care about a kidnapping amongst Chinese.” As he stood up, he said, “Remember, I am letting him live in order that everything remains the same! Do you both understand? One wrong step, you Chinese dog, and I know Mak will do as required. As for you, Mak, I'm glad you pulled the trigger, otherwise I would have had to bury you both.”

“Yes, sir,” said Mak.

“I'm going my own way,” said Cho. He left the hut, and then after a moment his footsteps faded away.

“Let's get back to Saigon,” said Mak. “It's almost night.”

Insects rushed in through the open door, buzzed and attacked them. Mak struggled in the dark to untie Percival. He ran his hands all over his friend's arms and legs, grasped for the knots, the ends of rope, and pulled them loose. He struggled with the cords and yanked them in frustration. Cho had taken the flashlight.

Percival felt the ropes on his legs loosen, and he moved his feet as if trying them for the first time. Then the arms, and soon he was free. Percival felt Mak lift him and take his hand. Mak stood, and Percival was a limp sack against his friend. Together, they staggered forward, towards the faint outline of a doorway. Outside, the bamboo stalks rubbed each other in whispers. The moon cast a pale glow, the narrow footpath disappeared in shadows. Mak tripped and stumbled with Percival towards the sound of flowing water. He lowered him into a stream, and bathed him.

“Is it true, about Jacqueline?”

“Yes,
hou jeung
.”

“All these years, you knew?” said Percival, his own words shattering the quiet.

“I'm sorry,
hou jeung
, I tried to send her away. I didn't know about it until I saw you with her at the club. By then, you were already in love. I tried to stop you. You would not be discouraged, so it seemed kindest to hide the truth about Dai Jai. And then the baby … I thought if I could get her further away, back to Saigon, you would lose interest. You usually do. You didn't. I saw how much you loved
her, and finally I just let you go on, for while she was in Saigon it didn't seem like anything about it could threaten the school. At least you were taking care of your grandson.”

“I wondered about her mother's death in Thanh Ha, if somehow you were mixed up in that.”

“I don't know a thing about that. I just wanted to help you, friend.”

“And now?” asked Percival.

“When this issue of Dai Jai came up, I had to tell General Cho everything. I had to. We needed to think of risks, of all the dangers that might upset our school. Its work is so precious for us. But we had agreed not to tell you tonight; I told him we could use it as one final point of …”

“Leverage. You wanted to keep it as leverage over me, if you needed it.”

“And I also thought that before Dai Jai got home, maybe I could help you send Jacqueline and Laing Jai away to America. I thought I could save you the pain of that truth, I thought I could work it all out for you … but you see, General Cho likes to inflict pain. I should have known he would tell you.”

The water was mercifully cool, and Mak's hands scooped it over Percival.

“Will Cho bring Dai Jai?”

“I think so. Yes. Yes, he will.”

“Thank you, old friend.”

Mak took off his own shirt, ripped it into strips, and washed the strips in the stream. He bound Percival's head, and then the wounds on his arms. The insects swarmed furiously. Mak struggled and half-dragged Percival along the footpath to the car, and then helped him in. Each step was pain, every part of his body scratched, or cut, or bruised. Mak eased Percival into the passenger seat and closed the door. He went around to the driver's side. Percival sat in the car, dripping, and stared ahead.

“I understand something now,” said Percival. “It is something important.”

“What is that,
hou jeung
?”

A breeze caressed the leaves. There was that sound again, was it waves? Did they carry all this distance from Cap St. Jacques? Perhaps they did in certain winds. This must have been the sound he had heard, the sound of the sea. The bamboo clacked. Percival said, “That you knew about the gun … that the gun Mr. Cho gave you was not loaded.”

Mak's hands were on the wheel. He stared straight ahead. The car was a dark refuge. “Yes. Of course, you are right. Thank you,
hou jeung
, for observing that. I knew.” Mak put the key in the ignition and turned it. The car came to life, and they drove away.

THEY DROVE INTO SAIGON IN A
roundabout way. Mak deftly guided the car through districts that were unfamiliar to Percival, sometimes doubling back, threading through narrow alleys, pausing for a moment before turning down a boulevard or through a quiet market lane.

“You are trying to avoid checkpoints?”

“Your condition would provoke questions,” said Mak, checking the rearview mirror.

Percival said, “If you are trying to be invisible, why don't you turn out the headlights?”

“That would make us stand out.”

“Of course. You hide in plain sight.” The car hit a bump, and Percival groaned.

“You understand.”

“More and more. What should I say if we do come to a checkpoint?”

“Don't say anything. I will explain that I am with the quiet police and that I have been questioning you. It will be a hassle, but I have friends who will back that up.”

“Of course, you play both sides.”

“Yes.” Mak's eyes were on the checkpoint up ahead. “It may not seem honourable, but it is a necessity in my case.” Mak maintained a steady speed, neither slowing nor accelerating as they passed a darkened Jeep parked at the checkpoint. As they went by, they saw that
the soldiers inside were asleep. Mak breathed a sigh of relief. “It is still best to be unnoticed, not to have questions to answer.”

“I don't even know what to ask you anymore. You have a whole other existence.”

Mak said nothing. As they came towards the centre of Saigon, Percival caught sight of some American soldiers outside a bar and instinctively shrank into his seat. Mak seemed to take no notice. Closer up, Percival saw it was just a cluster of bar girls and soldiers, teasing, grabbing, a night-time courtship of price and desire. As the car went past, Percival saw that the soldiers were not Americans. Of course not, they were peacekeepers, Hungarians? They had the same big frames as GIs, and spent dollars in the same loud way. They were almost at Jacqueline's apartment. Percival realized that he wished to be home with Jacqueline, in spite of the truth about her and Dai Jai. As Mak drove past the apartment, Percival felt panicked and said, “Where are we going, Mak?”

“To the hospital.”

Percival looked down at his blood-crusted wounds, felt the throbbing of his arm, his screaming leg. They drove past the National Police Headquarters. Percival asked, “Were you involved in Dai Jai's arrest?”

“No. I was as surprised as you were.”

So Dai Jai had indeed brought that upon himself, he thought. Or Percival had done it. “But once he was arrested, it was a chance to profit. You were involved in the ransom.”

“Cho insisted we use the opportunity. In Saigon, he directs an interrogator at the National Police Headquarters, a low-ranked civil servant in Saigon, a comrade of ours.”

“I see, a government jailer, in reality Viet Cong, to extract confessions from the innocent, free the guilty.”

“But who is innocent and who is guilty? No one can say …” said Mak. His words trailed off, as if he were very tired. Then he perked up, as if shown his script once more. “North and South should be united. This is one country. Anyhow, you are right—Dai Jai's ransom was just a way to get gold, which we needed very badly for our operations. Nothing more.”

“Except that Cho took some for his own enjoyment.”

Mak looked uncomfortable. “I shouldn't have told you that. Don't repeat it.”

“Then why did they beat Dai Jai, if that sum of gold was just a … profitable opportunity?” The words stuck in Percival's throat.

“Dai Jai could not simply have been released without being touched—someone would have been suspicious. Our man was very easy on him, you know. He marked him up, but I impressed upon him that Dai Jai must not be seriously hurt.”

“They did not cripple his body. But his spirit … they told him he would be killed.” Percival thought about his first visit to the hut with Cho, about Dai Jai's nights of screaming back at Chen Hap Sing. The torture had continued, even after the boy was released.

“A way to make him disappear without the other jailers suspecting anything. They beat people daily in the political section. That is the routine. They kill people from time to time, when ordered. It is also Cho's way of rescuing our own spies if they happen to be arrested. A good show of torture is followed by a jungle execution.”

Percival thought of the fresh bruises, the scars, on his son that had taken so long to heal. He wished he had found the thousand taels faster. Did it matter that he had prayed to the ancestral spirits to save the boy, when Dai Jai was already a pawn in a larger game? Percival tried to recall if he had consulted the ghosts before sending Dai Jai back to the motherland. He felt his anger towards Mak leaching out of him, replaced by his disgust with himself. “And now this is happening in China. The prisons, the interrogation. People have whispered about it in Cholon for a few years now. I didn't want to believe it, until this letter came from Dai Jai.” Words from Dai Jai's true letter came to him,
“forced to crawl like a dog over broken glass.”

“I—I'm surprised,” said Mak. “The new society is supposed to be for everyone's good. I suppose there are … class enemies. Enemies of the people, after all, must be re-educated …”

“Like Dai Jai?”

“I don't know what to say,
hou jeung
. I sent him to China because …”

“As a favour to me.”