The Headmaster's Wager (46 page)

Percival said, “Then come home with me. I want to see how beautiful you can be.”

That evening, before setting out, he had asked Mak again about Dai Jai. He had been waiting almost two years. Now he asked only from time to time, as seldom as he could bear. It was humiliating to get the same meaningless reply. “Dai Jai is coming,” Mak had said, as he always did. No, he did not know exactly when. The boy was on his way. He could provide no details. Things were complicated in Hanoi, said Mak, as if Percival would be sympathetic. Percival must not worry, Mak said, he should try not to think of it.

There had been one letter since Mak had reported that Dai Jai had been brought out of China to North Vietnam. It had been a brief note, smuggled south. “I have arrived safely in Hanoi. I am eating well.—Thank you, father.” Was it true, that the boy was safe in Hanoi? Percival sometimes wondered. He did not allow himself to press that question upon Mak, for he did not want an answer that would cause him any further doubt. He must believe that his son was safe. At his lowest moments, Percival asked himself what did it matter whether he believed it or not? How did that change anything for Dai Jai? The impotence of this thought infuriated him, and inevitably led him to another dose of morphine. Percival now roamed the family quarters of Chen Hap Sing for hours, tolerated only Teochow cooking in the house, and left only to gamble and bring home a girl.

At some point, Percival realized Mak had fully taken over the American contacts on behalf of the school, and in any case he was in no state to represent the Percival Chen English Academy. For a while, Mak had been busy with new friends—the peacekeepers. Percival had seen Mak with books on his desk—
Basic Polish, Hungarian for Beginners, An Indonesian Phrasebook
. When President Thieu declared in January of 1974 that the war between South and North Vietnam had resumed, it was the American advisors who became important to Mak once more.

This was the second Tet that Percival had endured without Jacqueline, or his younger son. He could not stop thinking of Laing Jai that way. He would be seven today. Was he having an American birthday, with balloons and costumes? Or were costumes for a different occasion?

After winning another round, Percival put his hand on the girl's thigh, slid a finger under the edge of her dress. In the old days a girl
might have drawn away, out of real offence or at least the attractive pretense of shyness. There were no such girls at Le Grand Monde, perhaps not even in Saigon anymore. The girl in blue took Percival's hand from her skirt. She fondled his middle finger, lifted it, and then sucked it into her mouth from the tip down to the base. The other gamblers laughed, but no one beyond that table noticed the gesture amidst the rippling noise of celebration, the open swirl of words, flesh, money, and bluish smoke that was a sweetly mingled haze of marijuana and opium.

Later, in Dai Jai's old room, Percival asked the girl not to speak. He half-closed the shutters so that only the most faint, grey moonlight entered. He said, “Go on your hands and knees.” He asked her to turn her face to the side, to see her in profile. He lifted her dress, pulled off her underwear. He rubbed her gently, tenderly, until she was swollen wet and her scent rose. The smell was different—always it was different—from Jacqueline. If only he could find a girl with the same scent, he could close his eyes and the shutters and simply breathe while making love. This girl asked if he was only going to pleasure his hand, and then gave a drunken laugh.

“Shhh,” he said, and drew close, the skin of his thighs sticking with sweat on her buttocks. When he entered her warmth, there it was already—the disappointment. His own naked loneliness. Some distant voice mocked him, did he think he could fool himself? He willed himself to stay erect. The girl arched her back and began to squirm and writhe theatrically. He said, “Don't move so much.” She stopped. Now, she was too still. He fumbled, undid the buttons on the back of her dress, pushed it up over her shoulders. She lifted it off her head. His hands stroked her hips, explored her body. Her back was too muscular, her breasts too firm. He grabbed her pelvis on each side, and went deep inside, pulled her onto him. He swung her back and forth, her body swaying on her knees as she moaned.

Being high and horny was his excuse, his justification, but somewhere deep, no matter how furiously he copulated, he knew this was a mockery of what he longed for. He threw his weight into the girl, screwed her to push out his thoughts, fucked her to make himself disappear, slapped his body on hers and with each thrust, each blow, he
tried to know only what animals knew, and moaned with the rhythm, begged his excitement to eclipse his sadness. She reached back and grabbed his legs, dug her fingers into them. Where the old coat hanger wound had healed, he felt a stab of pain and gasped. She called his name, mistook his pain and frustration for passion.

He grabbed her hands and roughly crossed the wrists behind her back as if she were his enemy, his prisoner, pushed her down into the bed and forced himself onto her, ground his pelvis on her ass, felt her sex contract. Her face was sideways against the mattress, but now, even in the dim light, he could not pretend. Angry, he pushed himself over and over into her wet centre, his leg hurt him but he did not slow, for now it had begun and might as well be finished.

He heard her moan, felt her spasm grip him, and his sex discharged the angry fluid of his body. His animal rush was its own death; it did not set free a moment of abandoned pleasure, as it once had with Mrs. Ling's introductions. Instead, the sorrow of absence entered and occupied him whole.

There was no fooling himself, no erasing the shame of having taken his son's lover for his own, and no way to push out his longing for Jacqueline. The ancestors' spirits would curse him, crouched over a whore in his son's bed, in his father's bed, a bed where he had loved Jacqueline. He pushed away the girl. Guilty disgust. He rolled onto his back. He thought of the morphine in the desk drawer. Perhaps he should have taken some. The sex might have been better. Or at least he would have felt it less. He heard himself mumbling sheepishly, apologizing. She wouldn't know why.

She breathed hard for a few minutes and then slowed. She turned, sat, looked at him inquisitively but without words, and then crouched over him. She began to kiss him, slowly, down his chest and belly, took him into her mouth. He let her continue, for a while. He stroked her head gently and lifted her mouth from his shamed organ. He said, “It's too hot,” and turned away.

Percival went over to the desk and fumbled in the drawer. He found a capsule and bit it, let the bitter powder dissolve on his tongue before swallowing. He sat on the edge of the bed. He should take all
the morphine, one last time. But then what? If Dai Jai was truly on his way, should he find his father dead? He must wait.

Outside there were small rapid explosions. It was fireworks for Tet. He lay down, very still for a long time. Now that the screwing was done, even peering through the gathering cloud of his drug, he lamented the pointless theatre. It was a condemnation of himself to bring a girl here like this, as it was every time he did it.

Should he pay her now? Show her the door? But that would be unkind. He had done enough wrong. He listened to the firecrackers, to the girl's breathing, until he heard her relax into sleep. Then he got out of bed and opened a shutter, allowed the moon in. Outside, the square was empty except for some soldiers drinking on the steps of the church. From their accents, they sounded like Hmong from the mountains—it was said that they were the bravest fighters, usually thrown into the worst battles, but now the South Vietnamese government had withdrawn several of those units to Saigon. Whenever he looked out the window, he imagined Dai Jai's familiar frame appearing across the square. Would he come by day or night? There was no choice but to believe that he would come. Here he was, Mak's prisoner of silence. Percival reached into the desk drawer for the bottle of pills.

SINCE LEAVING THE HOSPITAL, PERCIVAL HAD
not gone to the Cercle Sportif. At first, he did not wish to run into Peters or Jacqueline, and even after enough time had passed that they would have departed for America, Percival did not want to see any of his American contacts. Mak must have also decided that this was best and had convinced Cho of it. Percival returned to the casinos and gambling houses at night, where he took particular pleasure in winning money from
gwei lo
, and in the afternoons he played mah-jong at the Sun Wah Hotel with a group of old faces. It was a little group that gradually grew smaller and smaller, as one person's French papers finally came through, as another's daughter was able to sponsor him to Canada. Chang, who had become an importer of Swiss watches, stopped coming to play. Everyone suspected that he had boarded a boat one night and would
re-appear in Hong Kong. Later, they learned that he had been kidnapped and then killed because the family was too slow in raising the ransom. Mei went to America for a police training course and did not return. He bought a liquor store in Florida, it was said, paid with cash.

During an afternoon downpour in the middle of March, Huong sat opposite Percival on the covered patio at the Sun Wah Hotel, and shuffled cards for a game of gin. With only two players on this day, they were forced to take up cards. Huong said, “
Hou jeung
, I have a contact who can arrange departures. I'm going to leave. Why don't you buy a departure too? The price is a little high, but this guy has good connections, it will be a smooth deal.”

Percival swirled the ice cubes in his whisky. “Some of the old-time Chinese traders say it doesn't matter if the North Vietnamese conquer all of Vietnam. It is just a new army, they say.” He looked past Huong to a skinny boy standing in the rain, staring at them from just beyond the edge of the patio. Percival sipped his drink. He said, “They have seen new uniforms many times. We have, too, but they have seen even more. There will always be
sang yee
, business. So what reason is there to leave?”

“The North Vietnamese have overrun Hue.”

“You are confused. President Thieu ordered Hue to be abandoned.”

“True. Last week's order was retreat. Then he changed his mind and ordered it to be held at any cost. It fell two days ago. An American helicopter pilot told me that many Southern soldiers had civilian clothes under their uniforms. As soon as they were out of sight of their officers, they became civilians and disappeared. Flying above he saw them doing it.”

“Are you still hanging out with those white ghosts? Is that one of those CIA pilots? Those guys are paid a lot, and they are reckless gamblers. You are still selling them hashish, I suppose. Nice fellows, that bunch, I win money from them.”

“Former CIA. They call themselves Air America.”

“Of course, as they are out of the war.”

“Anyhow, this pilot warned me to get out. He says the communist troops will be in Da Nang by the end of the week, and the president is
keeping a plane for himself on standby, loaded with gold. Thieu will flee to Taiwan and let Vietnam hang.”

“
Sang yee
, old friend, there will always be business. Maybe I can open a Chinese school, since the North Vietnamese are so friendly with Mao. We Chinese will always find something to make a nice profit.” Percival took a long swallow of his drink.

“Those who say that are so old, they don't care if they are killed,” said Huong. “Besides, you think the Vietnamese communists will love us Chinese in Cholon? Even in China, you and I would be shot as capitalists, old friend. Don't you remember 1968? The Northerners buried their prisoners alive, didn't even bother to shoot them first. That is the reason to leave.”

Having caught Percival's eye, the boy smiled brightly. He was soaked by the rain without seeming to care. After the fall of Phuoc Long province to the North Vietnamese Army in January, a flood of refugees had arrived to live on the streets of Saigon and Cholon. Across the street, a banner hung from a deserted government office, declaring, “Phuoc Long Will Be Retaken!” though there had been no counter-offensive, and already the Northerners had pushed far deeper into the South. The rain plastered the boy's shirt over his collar bones and shoulders. His eyes were dark and intense, his two hands outstretched. Percival waved the boy over. He gave him a hundred piastres. The boy bowed deeply, and scurried off.

“But that was 1968,” said Percival, sipping again.

“And you think that the communists have grown more kind since then? Five thousand American dollars each gets us to Manila.”

“What? Ten thousand dollars? We could buy an airplane. And who is this snakehead?”

“It's my friend, the Air America pilot. It's easy—he'll sign papers that we have been employees of theirs, logistics or administration, something like that, and we fly from Tan Son Nhut in two days. They have started getting their non-essential staff out.”

“Ah, Huong, you see?
Sang yee!
Even your CIA pilot sees an opportunity! These Americans have learned how things are done in Vietnam. Saigon is so good at spreading her legs and selling herself that
the Northerners will soon be paying up just as the French did, as the Americans did. Even now, as they wait to be conquered, Saigonese are trying to decide whether the best profits are in hoarding food or fuel. Food might spoil, but fuel could explode during the fighting.”

“I know, I know what people say. Some think Saigon will be left alone by the communists, a gateway to the outside, like Hong Kong and Berlin, but why take the chance? Let's get out now, you can always come back.”

Percival took a big slug of whisky. “I say food and fuel. Let's invest together in both. Let's fill Chen Hap Sing with sacks of rice and drums of gasoline.”

Huong leaned forward. “
Hou jeung
, it is different this time. This is the time to leave. You can afford it. You have lots of money.”