The Headmaster's Wager (7 page)

Cecilia said, “A wretched hole.”

Percival replied, “There are fewer Japanese here.” Whether it was the collaboration of the French administration, or had something to do with the oppressive heat, the Japanese soldiers they saw seemed slower moving, more calm, than the ravenous troops in Hong Kong.

Upon arrival, despite having seen photos, Percival was surprised at the size of Chen Kai's house looming over him. Was this it? The red-painted sign announced, “Chen Hap Sing,” the Chen Trade Company. Surely his father must have collected enough gold to return to China if he had built a house like this? Percival knocked on the door and told the servant who he was. The servant vanished inside. Shortly after, it was Ba Hai who appeared in the doorway. In person, she looked even smaller. After Percival introduced himself and Cecilia, Ba Hai stared at them through a long silence in which it was impossible to say whether she was more shocked or angry at their arrival.

She said to Percival, “You must call me
ma
and treat me with the same respect as you would your mother.” Ba Hai spoke the Teochow dialect, but in a way he had never heard, with the accent of her native Annamese tongue. She turned to Cecilia. “You may be young and beautiful, but if you forget that I am the first woman of this house, I will scratch out those pretty eyes of yours.” With that, she told a houseboy to take Percival to see his father, turned, and disappeared.

The houseboy led Percival up the stairs to the building's family quarters. The servant opened a door, and Percival peered into the high-ceilinged room. It was well proportioned, the windows tall but shuttered against the daylight. There was a smoky, sweet-scented gloom. Percival recognized the source of the smoke. Some of the old men in his Hong Kong rooming house had been devotees. Why was the houseboy showing him this room? Where was Chen Kai? Then Percival saw that against the far wall, slumped on an ornate bed, was a skeletal figure who wore only a cloth around his middle and whose ribs heaved mightily as he sucked on a pipe of opium.

THE SOUNDS OF TENNIS HAD STOPPED
. Percival looked up from his lemonade to see Cecilia at his table, her opponent's hairy arm around her waist.

“The Viet Cong are keeping your knives bloody, Doctor?” Percival could not recall the surgeon's name. If he had remembered, he would have pretended not to.

“Nah. Disposable scalpels. Always clean—at the start of the case, anyhow. Pleiku is hot this week. Choppers bring them every morning. Kids, right? Fresh off the plane, all blown to bits, calling for momma.”

“Then you fix them?” said Percival.

“Humpty dumpty,” the doctor snorted. “The Cong bury these little jumpers. Charge pops up so-high and blows the kid's balls off. Cuts off his legs, too. See, I figure they intended it to rip out a soldier's chest, but the yellow soldier is so much shorter, they calibrated it wrong.” He laughed and looked to Cecilia, who smiled obligingly. How did she put up with the smell of white men's sweat, Percival wondered. It stank like river oxen.

Cecilia noticed the two glasses. She caught the eye of the waiter, gestured to bring another.

“Don't worry about me, honey. You've got a business deal to discuss, right? I've got to go.” He bent for a peck on the cheek from Cecilia, but she found his lips with hers, made a show of the kiss. Percival drank his lemonade.

“Wow,” the surgeon winked at Percival, “a country worth fighting for.”

“Bye, love,” she called sweetly as he left. Cecilia sat and drank a whole glass of lemonade. Her chest still heaved from the effort of the game.

“A new business partner?” Percival asked in Cantonese. “Or a friend?”

“Everything is business,” she said.

“It's like that with you, isn't it?”

She leaned forward. “Dai Jai must leave Vietnam immediately. The mood in Saigon is sour. I heard of one officer in the Rangers who turned in his brother to the quiet police.”

“A suspected communist?”

“Supposedly. Or a family feud. But there's no time to waste, Dai Jai is in danger.”

“How did you hear of his problem so quickly?”

“His problem?
Your
problem. I'm sure this is your fault, always blabbering on about China. For all the times you talked about returning there, if only once you had actually gone!”

“I tell Dai Jai to marry Chinese, but I should remember to advise him that his wife must also be Chinese inside, unlike his mother.”

She laughed. “Is that supposed to be some kind of insult? Pathetic.”

“It is from his mother,” said Percival evenly, “that Dai Jai learned to speak before thinking.”

“His mother thinks about surviving and advancing in this world. As for defying some trivial new rule from Saigon, from whom else but you could Dai Jai get such a nonsensical idea?” She signalled for another lemonade. “Anyhow, when you already teach Chinese students English, why should you oppose teaching them Vietnamese?”

“It's different. English is profitable,” said Percival. “We may not have to teach Vietnamese anyway. As you know better than anyone, the right contacts can change any Saigon policy. Mak is making inquiries.”

“Mak, always Mak. It's good Mak has replaced your brain, as your own was always so lacking.” She switched to English. “Listen to me. I don't give a shit about your school. Think about your son.” Then back to Cantonese. “We must send Dai Jai to Europe or America, before
he is taken from us. I will arrange it.” She drained her glass. Percival watched the beautiful line of her throat undulating as she swallowed. He had loved kissing her there.

“Did you rehearse that vulgar English expression just for me? You would send him to a place full of foreigners?” he said.

“You would say he is a foreigner here.”

“Of course he is. But why should he leave, when I am well connected in Vietnam? I'll protect him. Anyhow, if he goes anywhere, it should be to China.”

Cecilia laughed. “You are so predictable, both in what you say and what you fail to do. If you really wanted to go home to China, you would have gone by now.”

“I stayed for you.”

In 1945, after the Japanese surrender, people were moving in every direction. Cecilia had challenged Percival to do what he said he wanted, to return to China. She would not go. He was still in love with her then, hopeful that things would work out between them. He stayed. When he was eager to return in 1949, to cheer Mao's unification of the country, Cecilia became pregnant with Dai Jai and there was no question of travel. They had waited a long time for a child, had thought themselves barren. Then came the school, and with it the money and its enjoyable uses. By the time of their divorce in 1958, Percival, like many other Cholon businessmen, was regularly sending money home to help the Great Leap Forward but knew that to enjoy his own profits he must remain outside of China. Already, by then, it was important to keep such remittances secret, for China had made its full transition from being an ally in the defeat of Japan and fascism, to being a communist threat to America and the free world.

“Bullshit,” she replied. “Tell you what—you keep the Saigon dogs from getting near our son. I will speak to my friends about sending him abroad. These days, there are ways to send people to America—for studies, for technical exchanges.”

“I will make this little issue vanish. My contacts can easily do it.”

“Don't be so sure. Besides, you mean Mak's contacts, your money.”

Percival swirled the ice in his glass, rattled the hard, cold cubes.

“Good day,
hou jeung
.” She called him headmaster the same way she had once called him a country bumpkin, and walked away swinging her racquet.

LATE THAT AFTERNOON, HAN BAI DROVE
Percival into La Place de la Libération. From across the square, Percival saw a dark Galaxie parked in front of Chen Hap Sing. Two men leaned against the hood.

“Han Bai,” said Percival, “go the back way.” The driver swung the car around, like a great white whale in a sea of cyclo wheels, feet, and vendors' pushcarts. They turned off from the square and went around through the narrow lanes under the tamarind trees and the long, flapping flags of laundry to reach Chen Hap Sing. Percival told Han Bai to stay in the car in case they needed to slip away with Dai Jai in the trunk.

Percival crept in the kitchen entrance, surprised the cook and the cook's boy, who had begun to prepare dinner. He asked where Dai Jai was, and they shrugged. How could he have been so stupid to stay in Saigon all day without having someone watch Dai Jai? He had forbidden his son to leave the house, but he should have asked Foong Jie to keep an eye on the boy. The headmaster passed through the central hallway, and from the classrooms he could hear the voices of teachers and students. He went up the stairs to Dai Jai's second-floor bedroom, calling out to him. But the boy was not in his room. He peeked down through the slanted shutters to confirm his fears. It was the same two men who had visited Chen Hap Sing the previous morning. They leaned back against the hood looking bored, large sunglasses perched on small flat noses. Was his son in another room? Perhaps Dai Jai had noticed the car and hidden himself? Percival crept from room to room through the family quarters, aching for Dai Jai, checking behind furniture, whispering his name. He said a hurried prayer at the ancestral altar. At each window, he peeked out. They were still there. The dark car must have been parked there for some time, as several vendors had settled comfortably into their trade around it.

Finally, Percival went up to his own third-floor bedroom and looked out into the street again. He tried to convince himself that
there were any number of reasons, having nothing to do with his son, why these men might have returned to Cholon. Besides, if they had come to make an arrest, why did they sit outside? Unless, he thought with a chill, they had already checked for Dai Jai, knew he was not in the building, and were waiting for him to return.

This was all Cecilia's fault. Had she not made him both angry and lustful, Percival would not have called Mrs. Ling from the lobby phone at the Cercle Sportif. Had he not called, he would not have discovered that, yes, Mrs. Ling did know a lovely girl, a dark Malay beauty newly arrived from Singapore, who was free that afternoon and could use a few extra piastres. Without this temptation, Percival would have returned directly to Cholon instead of going to one of Mrs. Ling's discreet apartments. Were it not for Cecilia, he would have been home earlier, perhaps would have seen the dark car pull up, and could have made sure Dai Jai escaped or was safely hidden away. If he had been here, thought Percival, Dai Jai would not have dared disobey his father's strict orders not to leave the house.

The older man stood up from the black car and had a long stretch. He paced. The younger man lit a cigarette for each of them. They were willing to wait. Below him, on the ground floor, Percival heard the school bell ring. There was the commotion of the students beginning to leave. Ah, thought Percival with relief, the quiet police were waiting for school to let out to make their arrest. It could be any one of his students they were after. Even if they wanted Dai Jai, he would not be coming out with the bell. Perhaps they would grow impatient and leave. The older one yawned. Percival gripped the window ledge, peered out from his shutters, willing them to go.

As the first students appeared below him, Percival surveyed the square. At some distance, a boy and a girl walked towards Chen Hap Sing. He glimpsed them through a row of flame trees, which were in full, extravagant bloom. Through their branches, he couldn't be sure. He stared. Did his eyes trick him? The boy's gait was Dai Jai's. Were the men from Saigon looking in that direction? Perhaps they were drawn to the slim silhouette of the girl.

Percival ran out of his room, down the stairs two at a time. He pushed his way through the jostling, high-spirited students, shoved himself towards the door. Perhaps the quiet police would not recognize Dai Jai, and his son would slip back into Chen Hap Sing unnoticed. When the students saw it was Headmaster Chen, they hurried aside. Down the hall, now almost at the front door. He would distract the two men from Saigon. He did not know how. On their previous visit, they had not wanted money. He must somehow get their attention, perhaps anger them, even if that meant getting himself arrested. He hoped he was mistaken, and it was not Dai Jai whom he had seen from his window.

Percival burst out the front door. It was his son, standing alone. The girl had fled. Dai Jai was within shouting distance, but what should he call out? The men from Saigon were no longer by the car. Percival panted, out of breath. Students streamed around him, out into their afternoon, their freedom. Dai Jai stared at the quiet police, frozen in place, as they walked briskly towards him. The boy held a lotus-leaf cone suspended by a string. He had gone out to buy food for his fish, and to see his girlfriend. The men cut a direct line through the chaotic foot traffic. Percival's instinct was to yell at his son to run, but no words came. Dai Jai did not run. He was probably correct not to, Percival realized. Now that they had spotted him, it would not help.

Percival fought for calm, for confidence, which was always the best place to start, but he had difficulty finding it. He waited by the Galaxie, chest pounding, as the two men returned to the car with Dai Jai. Each of them gripped one arm. Percival struggled to summon an air of authority as he said in Vietnamese, “What's the problem? I'm Headmaster Percival Chen. This is my student.”

“Don't worry,
ba
,” said Dai Jai in Teochow, shaking his arms as if it would cause the men to release him.

“Speak so we can understand you,” said the older one, using his free hand to slap Dai Jai in the back of the head.

Percival found words in Vietnamese. “Brothers, you must be so tired. It is late in the day. Thank you for bringing him back. He should
have been in class.” He put a firm hand on Dai Jai's shoulder, relieved to touch him. “Dai Jai, go inside.” The younger man from Saigon wrenched Dai Jai away towards the car. As if it were a daily occurrence for students to be arrested in front of the school, Percival said, “Big brothers, thank you for returning him. I will take charge of this disobedient student.”