The Headmaster's Wager (49 page)

There was no sign of the cream-coloured Mercedes. The horizon above Tan Son Nhut was marred by a steady column of grey smoke, a jagged charcoal stain on blue. Occasionally, a Southern army helicopter darted into the sky from the direction of Saigon's city centre and flew straight and fast for the ocean. Why had he not gone with Mak last night? Now, with a clear morning mind, Percival was furious at himself. He could not wait any longer. He must go now. Percival went to the school safe and stuffed his pockets until they bulged with piastres. Even if there were military roadblocks, surely the new
conquering soldiers would respond to money the same way the old army had. He hailed a cyclo and offered the driver a thousand piastres to take him to the airport, ten times the usual.

The driver waved refusal at the banknotes. “Those are worthless.”

“This is good money.”

“For starting fires. The Northerners have cancelled our currency. Do you have food to trade?”

“I will give you two tins of fish.”

“Two? Forget it. Five to the airport and back.”

Percival ran into the house, retrieved five tins of fish, and went out to clamber into the seat. Soon, they were rolling through streets that were well known to Percival but were already made strange by the occupying army. The new blue and red flag was tacked over the doors of post offices and banks. At some corners, Northern soldiers searched vehicles. At others, they stood with long scissors, singling out men for haircuts if they judged it necessary. Twice, Percival's cyclo was stopped, and soldiers asked in their Northern twang whether he had been a soldier, policeman, or a puppet of the Americans.

“No, I am a schoolteacher,” Percival replied in Vietnamese, and was waved on.

As they got close to Saigon, a boyish soldier directed the cyclo to detour away from the Hotel Duc. Percival objected at first, because it would add more time, but the cyclo driver simply began to pedal in the direction in which the soldier had pointed, smiling and bowing his head at the Northerner.

“Are you crazy?” the cyclo driver exclaimed, when they were out of earshot. “Don't get me killed.” From the direction of the hotel came the rattle of a machine gun, and then a few single shots.

“I won't pay extra for the detour,” said Percival.

“Never mind that. The American spies forgot to send helicopters for their Vietnamese agents billeted at the Hotel Duc, so they are fighting to their deaths, which will soon arrive.”

“Saigon's new masters are here,” said Percival.

“You mean Ho Chi Minh City, comrade!” the cyclo driver piped up with a wry wink. “Oh, yes, we are liberated.”

As they rolled along, Percival searched the faces of the Northerners in uniform, so young but hard from battle. The cyclo passed a tank parked on the road, where a slim Saigon girl joked with a pimple-faced tank gunner. She wore a long, respectable dress that did not diminish her attractiveness. The seduction of the newcomers had already begun. On Rue Truong Minh Giang, the cyclo steered around a dozen or so young men stretched out on the ground in South Vietnamese uniforms, hands bound behind their backs. People walked delicately around the pools of blood that seeped from their heads. Percival looked away, and the rest of the street appeared much as it always did.

As they neared the airport, Percival told the driver that he was looking for a Mercedes coupe, that some friends had come out here in such a car during the fighting. The cyclo driver muttered that Percival's friends must be crazy and Percival equally insane to think he would find the car. This district was littered with the debris of battle. Some buildings were burned down, others had been shelled into rubble. The bodies or only portions, lay in the sun—a shredded torso tangled into a shirt, a leg in trousers. An old woman called out names in a daze. Survivors picked through rubble. What could they be looking for? Percival wondered. What was left? Someone could ask him the same, he realized with a shock. They approached an armoured personnel carrier that was as black as a lump of coal.

“The Airborne was dug in here. It was the most vicious battle,” said the driver. “Whatever your friends came for, they probably turned away.”

“No, they came here.”

“Then they might not be here anymore. I'm an idiot. Huh. Five cans of fish.” The cyclo driver huffed with breathless resignation, eyes forward. Through the back hatch of the personnel carrier, Percival glimpsed a charred torso slumped against a useless machine gun. A helicopter had crashed into a house. Its tail section hung over the street and its rotors were folded like blades of grass broken in a storm. The air stung with acrid smoke.

At first, Percival didn't recognize the Mercedes, and the cyclo driver almost pedalled past it. Percival called, “Stop!” as he stumbled out of
the cyclo towards the car. The windows had been shot through, or had burst in the blaze that had consumed the car. The vehicle sat on its wheel rims, the rubber of the tires having burned away. He stared at the torn-open hood for a long time. It had been penetrated by a shell, or a rocket? From another world, barely audible to Percival, the cyclo driver called at him to get back into the cyclo, to stop wasting time if they were searching for a light-coloured car. In some places, curls of cream paint had been left by the flames. The car emitted a stench of burning rubber, gasoline, and burned flesh. Percival went around to the front to read the licence plate—his own.

He forced himself to look through the space where the windshield had been, and then to walk around the car. The driver's door was open, a blackened corpse sprawled half out of the car. Mak's glasses lay on the ground near the skull, lenses shattered into cobwebs. On the other side of the car, still in the passenger seat, was the charred husk of a man slumped over. A burned hand still held a pistol, the arm out the window, flesh seared onto the weapon. Percival drew closer and saw the metal stars of Cho's rank on the shoulders.

The third figure was in the backseat. Hands clawed at the window, frozen there by flame. Face burned beyond recognition, the earthly opposite of a ghost. Percival fell to his knees, silent. A faint smoke still wafted up from somewhere within the car, where something inside continued to smoulder.

“We are almost at the airport, mister,” called the driver. “Isn't that where you wanted to go?”

Percival pulled himself up and stared. The neck was bare. He laughed through his tears. He turned to the driver and yelled, “It's not him, he's not wearing the charm!” If only saying it could make it true. “It is not my son! This is not really my car!” He was unable to pull his eyes away from the figure. No, it could not be. Percival stumbled back into the seat of the cyclo. “Go back, back to Cholon,” he wept. “He does not have the lump of gold on his neck.” Percival beat the frame of the cyclo with his fists. “Go!”

The driver shrugged. “Even if we didn't get to the airport, you are paying me the same.” He stood on the pedals and pushed the
handlebars hard to one side to turn them back to where they had come from. As they began to move, Percival glimpsed his licence plate, but surely one could not be certain of the numbers after such a fire. He kept his eyes open, for whenever he closed them he saw the blackened remains of the car's third passenger, distorted by pain, struggling for escape. “The lump of gold was not on his neck,” he said to no one.

AS THE CYCLO ROLLED AND BUMPED
him back to Cholon, Percival searched the faces of the soldiers. Again and again, he thought that a profile resembled Dai Jai, believed at a distance that a soldier was his son, only to be disappointed when he saw the face clearly. At a checkpoint, the cyclo driver growled at him to sit back, to quit staring at the Northern soldiers lest they become angry.

“Don't make trouble, mister.” The cyclo driver pedalled along, eager to deliver his passenger. “Remember, we are nothing, the defeated.”

As they neared La Place de la Libération, Percival was determined to hope. Mak was too canny to be killed. Any three soldiers could be dead in that car. Mak and Dai Jai might be at Chen Hap Sing already, waiting for him. They passed an army truck whose loudspeakers droned,
“Collaborators with the Americans must write confessions and present them to officers of the people's army. Former police and security forces must register and surrender their weapons. Confess now, and you will be treated leniently. If you fail to confess, penalties will be severe.”

When he got back to Chen Hap Sing, Percival prowled from room to room, flung open the doors of the echoing classrooms, searched the long-vacant family quarters, called for Dai Jai, and for Mak. After combing the building twice over, Percival sat in the school office. Dai Jai could appear at any moment, he forced himself to think. Should he go out and look for pet fish? No. He must be here when his son returned. Percival had given the charm to Dai Jai. It had been passed
down from Chen Kai, from a line of ancestors, and it kept the wearer safe. The third dead figure, its image seared in his eyes, did not wear the lump of gold. It could not be Dai Jai. To displace this image, he tried to picture the vast empty sea at Cap St. Jacques, where he had once believed Dai Jai was lost to the water, only to see him walking down the beach, saved by the charm. It was hard to summon the feeling of the hot breeze, the wet smell of salt. He found himself desperate for the details of that day.

The phone on his desk rang. He jumped to answer.

“Hello!”

“Percival, you're alright?” Jacqueline's voice rang clear from so far away.

“Yes.”

“I'm worried for you,” she said. “They haven't come to arrest you?”

“I'll be fine. Mak has fixed it up.”

“Of course he has …” she said.

“Are you calling from America? How is Laing Jai?”

“He's doing fine. You're safe? What is happening there?” she asked.

“I'm waiting here … just waiting for someone,” he said.

“For whom? ”

Could he share with her the pain, the burned bodies? Talking to her made him feel naked, and it was harder to circumvent the truth. He longed for Jacqueline to help him carry this. But he was ashamed of the truth.

Percival said, “I'm waiting for Dai Jai.” It felt so good to say that.

“Oh.”

“He is in Saigon. Nearby.”

Her voice was kind, generous. “I'm happy for you, and for him.”

“I haven't seen him yet. Mak is bringing him.” Percival felt he could use a pill or a drink. Neither was at hand. “Any moment, I'm expecting him …” Whatever the truth was, why should he weigh Jacqueline down with sadness? Yes, he would permit them the indulgence of speaking and hearing these words. Unknown to him for years, she had also shared the weight of Dai Jai's departure for China. But now, she and their son were safely in America. She had loved Dai Jai too, let
her imagine his safe return. His voice cracking, Percival said, “He is a hero, one of the liberators, as Mak says. When we last saw him, he was barely past being a boy, and now he has grown into a man.” There was a long silence on the line until Percival said in a broken voice, “What should I do, Jacqueline? You see, I'm confused. I don't know what to do.” Tears flowed down his cheeks. “I love you.”

“You must welcome him,” she said. “I will not come between you …”

“I'm glad you loved him—”

“Nor between you and Laing Jai. Without me, Laing Jai could be Dai Jai's half-brother.”

“What do you mean?”

“Laing Jai would like it … if you took him to the zoo today. Be at the zoo entrance at three,” she said. “Let him be Dai Jai's half-brother. You love them both. It will work.”

“I don't understand.”

“I have to go now.” Now it was her voice crumbling. “I'm so sorry, everything has changed.”

“Has it?” he said. Why was Jacqueline calling? Where was she? “Wait.”

“I love you, and I have to go.”

“I'll do whatever you want. Don't go.”

“At three. It's the best thing, my love,” she said, and hung up.

He held the telephone, heard the hum of the dial tone, and put down the receiver. Silence stretched out. Percival was unable to stand or look around, aware only that he continued to breathe, waiting. He wanted what he had said to be true, that Dai Jai was coming, and he said it again aloud, just to hear the words. It was not the same without someone else listening, believing. There was no knock, no arrival, and still he sat, hours later. Had he really heard Jacqueline's voice? he wondered. Or was that also just something he wished for and had imagined? The office door was closed. The room was very hot. Percival realized that the ceiling fan had stopped. The air was suffocating. He was hungry—but the thought of eating nauseated him. He did crave his drugs, a lingering need, and hated the craving. He picked up the phone to call the Saigon apartment. Was she there? The line was dead now. Had she really called?

Yes, that had been real, he thought with a start. He checked his watch. It was past two. In the car, it would take half an hour to reach the zoo. But the car was gone. In a cyclo, it would be almost an hour. He took a few tins of fish to pay for the ride and rushed outside.

As the cyclo creaked its way towards central Saigon, Percival saw that since morning some pockets of the city had become strangely festive. North Vietnamese soldiers sat on their tanks and armoured vehicles, and vendors gave them free snacks, addressed young foot-soldiers as ‘big brother.' Here and there, piles of uniforms and flags burned, the insignia of the old power cast into flames. Many of the Northern soldiers now wore American boots, and Colt sidearms. The newcomers examined the streets of the city, as curious and lost as tourists. Percival was stopped at checkpoints and asked if he had been a member of the police, the army, or a collaborator. No, he mumbled, he was a simple teacher.