The Headmaster's Wager (48 page)

“Dai Jai is a soldier?” Percival bundled the tablecloth in his fist. “I sent him to China to avoid the South Vietnamese draft. Now you have him fighting on the other side?”

“He is on the right side of the war, just as you and your school have been part of the struggle. I have adjusted your past, and Dai Jai's.”

Percival released his grip. “And Mr. Cho agreed to this? So I am a Viet Cong spy, and Dai Jai is a Northern soldier. If we adjust our memories sufficiently … they will suit the present, yes?”

“The future, actually. I have convinced General Cho that it makes him look even smarter, for he had an agent who was well known in Saigon society, frequently seen at the Cercle Sportif, deeply connected with the Americans. I've made sure that he wrote you into his reports. You are Deep Cover Agent B. You have been with me from the time of the Japanese.” Mak handed a small plastic bag of painkillers to Percival. He said, “That's the last, Chen Pie Sou, I can't get more.”

“And when will I see Dai Jai?”

“Soon. Be patient. I've told you too much already, but I wanted you to have hope.” Mak stood, bowed, and slipped away.

Percival opened the bag and took another pill, felt a little relief. He was tempted to take one more but forced himself to close the bag, rallied himself, and went out to the market. He hoped to find cognac, but instead settled for a case of vermouth, for which he paid ten times the normal price. In Dai Jai's room, the room that had been Chen Kai's, Percival poured the pills, such perfect white pebbles, from the plastic bag into an empty cognac bottle. Percival filled it up to the neck with vermouth and watched the pills become a cloud of drug. It took a few hours for them to be fully dissolved, and the light was already failing when the solution was ready. Then, Percival poured himself a teacup full. The bitter elixir helped his craving, dulled its sharp edge. Percival closed the shutters of Dai Jai's room and sat on the bed. He did nothing except allow time to pass. When darkness came, he drank another cup, stripped to his underwear, and slept.

—

OVER THE NEXT FEW DAYS, WHENEVER
Percival felt the shakes and sweats coming on, he drank a teacup of the drug-infused vermouth and topped up the bottle with fresh liquor. The mixture was not enough to completely ward off withdrawal. As the solution became more dilute, he spent hours in bed trembling. His belly cramped and his leg throbbed until he was so exhausted that he drifted into fitful dreams. He saw blood and battle, flashes and screams of death. He saw Chen Kai dressed as a soldier. He tried to make out what kind of uniform, whether Chinese or the plain garments of the Viet Minh, or was it a Japanese uniform, a disguise? When Percival woke, gasping, the dream was gone, but his father's spirit was no less present. If anything, it was stronger, as Percival lay doubled over in the same bed that his father had lain in while withdrawing, fumbling for a sip of his remedy.

Percival thought of his father's cure from opium, wondered if fate had decreed that he must re-enact it. Perhaps Chen Kai's spirit had returned and entered Percival to replay that time. Details, particulars that he had forgotten, became vivid. Or was it just a trick of his mind that he could see Chen Kai's trembling lip, smell the diarrhea and vomit of his father's suffering? But then, no trick was necessary, for Percival himself shook, and ran again and again to the toilet.

By the time Chen Kai had got to the last of his infusion, there was hardly any opium in it, only a faint haze in the mixture. One evening, Chen Kai took the bottle from his son, uncorked it, and poured the dregs out the window into the street. It was done.

Chen Kai's appetite returned voraciously. He ate noodles, rice, and soft buns filled only with a spoon of crushed peanuts—nothing else was available. It was hard to supply enough food for his appetite, even simple fare, on account of the Japanese occupation. Chen Kai began to do daily tai chi—twenty-four forms, then thirty-six. From dawn until dark he exercised with the same fervour with which he had recently demanded his opium pipe. Over several months, strength and weight returned to his body. He ignored Ba Hai completely, despite her efforts to anger him by flaunting her lover. He must have built his rice business in the same determined, relentless way, Percival realized, oblivious to
everything outside a focused cone of attention. For the first time, he saw his father with adult's eyes—he admired his single-mindedness, and was wounded to understand that Chen Kai must have, at times, been capable of forgetting him and Muy Fa in Shantou.

“Father,” Percival had said, “rest a little. You have just recovered from your opium illness. Now you can regain strength gradually.”

“No, I must be strong to travel,” he said. “I yearn for home. I will return to Shantou, to your mother's grave.”

Percival stared at his father, happy that he remembered his first wife, shocked at this suggestion. “It's impossible. The Japanese control the ocean from the Philippines to Manchuria.”

“I will go by land,” Chen Kai said.

Did his ears deceive him? Had his father recovered from opium only to lose his mind? They would almost certainly die trying to make such a journey. Cecilia might refuse to go—and she would be right. Percival said, “We are lucky in Saigon, because the French kowtow to the Japanese, so they are less vicious here. But there is a war under way, Father.”

“There is no choice.”

“The countryside is a battleground. My new wife is making me crazy, but I do have to think of her safety.”

“Oh, no.” Chen Kai got to his feet. “You cannot come. You must stay and be a good husband. Protect Chen Hap Sing. If we are both gone, Ba Hai will steal everything. I must return to China and worship at the grave of your mother or my soul will never rest. It is my duty.”

Percival was unsure what bothered him more—that his father wished to travel through a war, or that he had no intention of taking Percival with him. He did not know which to protest. He said, “Very well, Father. As you wish,” thinking already of how he might sabotage the trip before it started. An old man travelling north by land was ridiculous. The talk in Cholon was of heavy fighting between the Japanese and the Chinese armies in the north. Refugees from the countryside said that in the villages, Japanese Kempeitai kept control by mutilation and public execution, while at night the Viet Minh assassinated those suspected of collaborating with the Imperial Army.

Months passed, and though Chen Kai continued his daily Tai Chi, he said nothing further about travel. Percival assumed that the idea had evaporated, a brief fancy. One night, having returned to his bedroom with Cecilia, Percival heard a door creak and footsteps hurry down the stairs. It took a moment for him to realize what he had heard, to rise, and then to run through Chen Hap Sing's dark hallway to Chen Kai's room. His father's bed was empty. He rushed down the stairs. He stood at the door of Chen Hap Sing, stared into the night. The square was empty. Drifting wisps of cloud danced with a wavering moon. He called for Chen Kai. Only crickets replied. He felt the same loss as when his father had first left Shantou.

Over a week, Percival's withdrawal diminished to the point where it nagged rather than tortured. He drank a glass of water with each teacup of vermouth. He found he could venture briefly onto the balcony in the day, for his eyes were no longer pained by the light. If he stayed too long, he got a headache. One night, Percival watched as flares arced high and then floated down in burning, phosphorus speckles. They were close. From the direction of Saigon, explosions flashed up against an overcast sky. There was a helicopter, its red darts of tracer fire. Percival sat and watched as if they were festival fireworks. He was transfixed by the display, but too exhausted for emotion. The air stung with sulphur. In the light of one flare, Percival saw a pillar of grey smoke that rose from the direction of the airport. From that quarter of the horizon, artillery roared like storm clouds. After several hours of this, there was a noise closer by, on the stairs of Chen Hap Sing. The liberation had come. Percival wondered placidly if he would be arrested or shot. Boots clattered through his bedroom and the balcony door burst open. It was Mak.

“Oh, you have come to see the fireworks,” said Percival.

Mak said, “Big brother, I have great news.”

“Shouldn't you call me comrade?”

“Dai Jai is here.”

“Where is he?” He listened for another set of feet. Tears began to stream down his cheeks. “Thank you, friend. Is he downstairs resting in his room? ”

“No, I am going to fetch him.”

Mak wore a green jacket of the Northern army that did not fit him well. “As a special favour to me, General Cho has agreed to use his rank to remove Dai Jai from his unit, which is fighting near the airport. There is a battle for Tan Son Nhut.”

“Then he is in danger.”

“It is almost over, but the 11th Airborne are holding out.” Then he added, “Soon, we will cheer the victory of the people. Give me your car so that I can collect General Cho, and we can pull Dai Jai out before the final assault.”

“Where is Trinh?”

“He has a new assignment.”

Percival hurried downstairs with Mak behind him, found the car key, ran to open the clanking exterior doors. He got in the driver's seat and started the engine. The headlamps shone into the square. He was glad he had conserved the gas.

Mak reached into the car quickly, shut off the car's lights. “No, you stay here,
hou jeung
.”

“I'm coming with you.”

“You can't come.”

“How can I not go? He's my son.”

“There is a battle. I can only move around there in uniform.”

Percival got out of the car, its engine thrumming, the lights off. Mak got in, released the parking brake. Standing beside the car, Percival wondered when he had become so compliant, so dependent upon Mak. Or had it always been that way? Mak put the car in gear and very slowly eased ahead. Percival yelled, “Please, bring him home quickly.”

“I will keep my promise to you, brother,” said Mak, smiling confidently—pleased with himself. A rare display.

Percival brought the last dregs of his foul vermouth mixture up to the balcony and had a miserable sip. The night felt stuck in time, a darkness disturbed only by explosions that spattered up from the direction of the airport. Percival prayed to the spirit of Chen Kai that he help Mak and General Cho to find Dai Jai quickly. The noise of
fighting continued, and Percival told himself that at this distance it was impossible to know if the explosions were actually from the airport. Perhaps it was fighting in a nearby neighbourhood, and Tan Son Nhut had already been taken. It might be farther back in the jungle, and Dai Jai might be safely out of harm's way. How long would it take them to return? Each time a car approached, his hopes rose, but it was always a darkened army Jeep creeping through the streets rather than his Mercedes coupe—in the night it was impossible to see if it was a Northern or Southern vehicle.

Percival meant to stay awake, but after several hours put his head down on the table, intending only to rest for a moment. Now he was a boy standing before his father. In this dream, Chen Kai sat on a carved rosewood bench, drew on a black opium pipe, inhaled the drug and kept it in for a long time before exhaling the sweet smoke from his nostrils. He mumbled around the pipe that the boy must pay his respects, must honour tradition. Percival tried to approach the bench in order to kowtow, but his leg was swollen and grotesque. Chen Kai saw his son's pain and held out the pipe. Chen Kai called him by name—Dai Jai. He called him Dai Jai. Percival looked up and saw Chen Pie Sou, the
hou jeung
, sitting on the rosewood bench, weeping, straining to pass the pipe but somehow unable to rise from where he sat. He was Dai Jai, throbbing in pain, and just managed to seize the opium pipe in his hand, but as he put it to his lips it burst into flames. Still, he wished to smoke it, raised it burning to his mouth. Percival woke drenched in sweat, fumbling for the teacup, the bottle of his bitter elixir, took a mouthful, but now the taste made him nauseous. He spat it out, eased his head onto the table, was rewarded with dreamless sleep.

Percival woke clear headed. He felt no desire for morphine. His tongue was thick, dry. He drank water. A bright morning shone. The horizon was dotted with exclamation marks of sooty smoke rising from fires scattered throughout the city, but there were no explosions. There were no rockets, no mortars. From one side of the square, Percival saw an army truck lumber along without urgency. It was not a type of truck that he had seen before—it was tall and
angular. From the cab flew an unfamiliar red and blue flag. In the back of the truck, instead of troops or guns, was a loudspeaker. One soldier stood next to the loudspeaker, reading into a microphone from a piece of paper.

“There has been an uprising, a joyous people's revolution. Crowds are welcoming the liberation. The forces of the National Liberation Front are now masters of the city. Henceforth, Saigon is renamed Ho Chi Minh City. Do not be afraid. Respect order and discipline …”

Just an inch of liquid was left in Percival's cognac bottle. He ignored it, poured a glass of water instead and drank it. Then another. His craving had been expelled. A column of unfamiliar vehicles rolled into the square. The Northern army's tanks and troop carriers entered the city in clanking lines. The soldiers atop were sinewy and tough, some barefoot. The vehicles were layered with branches and vines, as if they had risen from the jungle and now dragged it with them into Cholon.

Percival went from room to room in Chen Hap Sing, called out, searching for Mak and Dai Jai. He wandered each classroom, confronted by silence. He returned to the balcony. Would Dai Jai be here soon? The empty fish tanks glared at Percival in recrimination. Would his son be disappointed that the fish were gone? He waited for the door to sound, for footsteps, and imagined the voice of Dai Jai. Instead, he was harassed now and then by the chatter of the loudspeakers on the Northern army trucks. “
Women must dress decently, all must wear modest peasant clothing—black or brown. Clear the streets for the National Liberation Front Army.…
”