The Headmaster's Wager

by Vincent Lam

  Percival helped push the boat out. Cecilia was already inside, urging both him and the fisherman, weeping at the same time. Percival was about to jump in, but the fisherman told him that the small boat could not carry more than three people. Percival was about to say, “But we are three,” when the fisherman cut him off. “We must leave a space for the boy.”

  Yes, of course. The third space. The fisherman still had hope, and for this Percival forgave him his happiness at the money. Percival trudged back to the water’s edge and sat in the sand. His wet clothes clung heavily to his limbs. His mouth was dry, his lips swollen with the salt and sun. Now Percival felt the blood pulsing in his temples, and prayed to Chen Kai and all their relatives’ ghosts to save Dai Jai. He opened his eyes, and the sight of thin brown legs filled him with joy.

  “You want ice-cream-Coke-Heineken-young-girl? What you like? Suck-fuck-very-tight, I get for you quick-quick?” the beach boy asked in English.

  He swore at the boy, who gave a single-finger salute and ambled away. From a distance, muffled by water, he could hear Cecilia’s plaintive calls for Dai Jai from the small boat.

  At the opposite end of the beach from the jagged rocks, there was the tiny outline of a figure. A boy. Was the figure familiar, the profile like his own son? Probably another beach runt, hawking drinks and his sister. At first, Percival wanted to stand, to run down the beach. His legs wouldn’t move, did not want to carry him to disappointment. He was drawn by hope and paralyzed by fear. Percival closed his eyes and appealed to the ancestors’ spirits not to play any more tricks. If they returned his son to him, Percival promised, he would redouble his efforts to honour the ancestors. He would offer whole roast ducks. He would burn real American dollars at their altar. He would return to China. He would bring Dai Jai with him. A promise, a bargain. He opened his eyes and got to his feet.

  Did the figure wave? It shimmered in and out of the heat from the sand. After some long minutes, he thought he could just make out the face of his son, but how could he be sure of any features at this distance? Then a flash. A brilliant golden reflection winked from the boy’s neck. The figure grew close, and larger, waved with both hands, and ran. Dai Jai embraced his father, arms around his waist, then tears came to Percival’s eyes. He held his son to him, clasped the birdlike frame of his shoulders and arms. He could not remember ever having been so happy and grateful.

  “Ba, why are you crying?” said the boy.

  Percival calmed his heaving shoulders. He said, “I thought you were …” and then stopped himself. “I thought you were swimming very well,” he said instead. He still had his arms around the boy, did not want to let go, worried that Dai Jai might prove himself a ghost if he did. But when he summoned the courage to loosen his grip, Dai Jai was still there. Percival said in a near whisper, “Dai Jai, how did you come back?”

  The boy spoke matter-of-factly, as if he were talking about someone else. “I swam too far and got pulled out.”

  “Did you …” he wanted to ask if the boy had perceived the spirit of Chen Kai, if he had felt his grandfather’s hand pull him to shore. Had the boy known the danger he had been in? Percival couldn’t tell, but if Dai Jai had not realized it, why should he frighten the boy now? “You must be tired. Did you learn your lesson?” Percival drew back a little, his hands on the boy’s shoulders. He was not yet ready to let go of him.

  “The ocean was so strong. Even when I struggled against it, the land got farther and farther away, and I was tired, scared too. Finally I realized that the best thing was to rest. I lay on my back and stared at the sky. I’m good at floating on my back. I decided to rest and figure out what to do. After a long time, the waves began to break over me once again. The tide had turned. It began to push me back to shore, and I swam with it, until I was swept up on that beach over there—beyond the rocks.”

  “We must return to China, we should go back home,” said Percival. “If we had been in China …”

  Dai Jai screwed up his forehead, “You always say that.”

  Percival could see that Dai Jai didn’t understand him. Suddenly, he ached to be in his childhood home, to hear people speaking the Teochow dialect on the street, to lie on the old kang. He was being shown the dangers of being a wa kiu. He should take the boy home.

  “Where is Mother?”

  “She has gone to look for you, in a boat.”

  Soon, the fisherman landed the small craft. Percival let go of Dai Jai. Cecilia jumped out and ran to embrace her son.

  With Cecilia standing there, Percival felt he should be stern with Dai Jai. He said, “Did you thank the ancestors?” Cecilia looked at her husband as if he was speaking a foreign language. He turned to Cecilia, on the verge of shouting without knowing why. “Did he? I want to know—is he grateful to his ancestors for saving him?” Dai Jai looked from his mother to his father and back again.

  “Let’s go to the villa.” Cecilia turned away from her husband, her arm around their son. “The cook will make you anything you like.” For the rest of the holiday, she said nothing else about the incident, and Percival began to feel that Cecilia’s silence spoke more clearly than any criticism of him. After they returned to Cholon, she would often announce that she was going to Saigon for the day, and say nothing of what she had done when she returned. Percival pretended not to notice or care, and he often called Mrs. Ling. He thought on occasion of China, but the strong impulse to return there faded in the face of Cholon’s distractions. The school was busier than ever, and money came easily. He had a run of good luck at the mah-jong tables. It had been only in the dizzying emotional height of the moment, he told himself, that he had promised the ancestors he would return. It was not practical. He offered two ducks, and burned fifty dollars. That should be enough. Several months later, when a raft of new legislation in South Vietnam included legalized divorce, Cecilia enjoyed a front-page photo of her own smiling, immaculately made-up face in the Far East Daily, a Chinese-language daily newspaper. The accompanying article explained that she was the first woman in Cholon to divorce her husband.

  CHAPTER 7

  PERCIVAL DROVE UP THE COASTAL HILLS away from the beach. He took a different road than the one he had arrived on, avoiding the graveyard. Daylight failed, and he pressed on into darkness. When he reached the rubber plantations, which were known for night-time kidnappings, he cut his lights and drove as quickly as he dared by moonlight. Entering the city, he was stopped at a checkpoint and paid the soldier to ignore his curfew violation. He went straight to Cecilia’s villa and pounded on the door until a light appeared. A few seconds later Cecilia’s voice asked who it was.

  “Your first lover,” he said. The door cracked open.

  A bit of leg, her hand up against the door frame. “Oh, it’s you,” she said. Cecilia rubbed her eyes. She lowered her arm and uncocked the pistol that she usually kept in her purse. She stood blocking the doorway and pulled her silk kimono around herself. She had been ready to seduce or to threaten, but Percival required neither.

  He said, “Let’s go inside?” Now that he was here, he realized that he had not made his usual careful plan of what to say to Cecilia. He was just here, a blank impulse.

  She did not move. “You must have news of Dai Jai,” she said. “That had better be why you’re here.”

  “You’re not alone?” Percival peered into the darkness behind her. He longed for her now, not for sex, but for them to deal with this situation together.

  “Is that any of your business? Is there something about our son?”

  “He is being ransomed.”

  “Then he is safe?” She breathed relief.

  “They want a thousand taels of gold. How much do you have?”

  “But how is he? Has he been hurt?”

  In the hallway there was a movement, an American voice. “You’re up. Everything alright, honey?” She waved the man back to bed.

  “Yes, he’s fine, I’m sure of it,” said Percival, lying. “Is that your surgeon friend back the
re?”

  “Who are the kidnappers?”

  “I met one. He didn’t give a name.”

  “You expected him to? But you must have got some idea of who he was, some impression? Did he give you a letter from Dai Jai, a picture, some kind of proof that he is unharmed? ”

  “He did most of the talking. I met the man outside Saigon. I couldn’t change the price.”

  “I don’t care about the cost. I care about our son. Where did you meet this mysterious man?”

  “Near the rubber plantations.”

  “Is he Viet Cong? The Americans are afraid of fighting there—they say that area is a rat’s nest of tunnels.”

  “No. A simple gangster. Just a profiteer. He can get Dai Jai out, and we have to pay.” Was he Viet Cong? Percival didn’t care, but he felt embarrassed that he had not fished for more clues, for some idea of who the man was, and where there might be hazards. “Dai Jai is safe. They just want the money,” he said.

  “Then we will find it,” she said. “Meet me tomorrow evening at the Cercle.”

  The next morning, having hardly slept, Percival pounced on Mak as soon as he arrived at the door of the school. “Who is that contact of yours?”

  “Was there a problem?” Mak said, clearing his throat. He took off his glasses, which were clean, and wiped the lenses carefully with his handkerchief. “He can rescue your son.” He lifted the glasses by the metal arms, held them to the sun outside the doorway, and examined them minutely.

  “He was a little blunt.” Was it worth pressing? Mak always came through, and in this instance was doing Percival a large favour. He had his ways, and his contacts. It had taken him a while to get to this man, so whatever Mak knew of him he must be obliged to keep to himself. The most valuable friend was a discreet one. Percival said, “As long as he can do it. He wants a thousand taels of gold. I must find reliable dealers, not the kind who dilute the metal or shave the edges of the bars. They must deliver quickly!”

  Mak put on his glasses. “I will make inquiries. We’ll get this done.”

  That afternoon, Mak brought a Cantonese gold dealer to the school office, for whom Percival emptied the school safe of all its American dollars. Percival counted the seventy-five paper-wrapped tael leaves jealously, put them in a slim valise, and sealed them in the school safe. The safe held about seven hundred and fifty thousand piastres as well, perhaps another hundred taels’ worth, but the gold dealers did not accept piastres. They would have to be changed to dollars first.

  That evening, Percival and Cecilia met at the Cercle and agreed that Percival would scour Cholon while Cecilia raised money and bought gold in Saigon. Then, when she heard that Percival had paid fifty-two dollars per tael, she complained that his obvious panic had allowed him to be gouged. “Why did you let yourself be cheated? I can get an even fifty. If you buy too much like that, it will force up the market price.”

  “You said you didn’t care about price.”

  “That doesn’t mean I want to get rates that some dumb GI would get. Just bring me your dollars or piastres or whatever, and I’ll make them into gold.”

  “No, that’s alright, I’ll handle it myself.” Percival had brought the piastres with him to have Cecilia change them into dollars. Mak had promised to bring another gold dealer in the morning who wanted those dollars. Percival had also hoped it would be a reason to go to her house, in order for her to get dollars from the safe. They could speak quietly, though he wasn’t sure what he wanted to say. “I have to go now.” He stood, not mentioning the money that Han Bai was guarding in the car.

  He had a better use for the money, anyhow. He told Han Bai to take him to Le Grand Monde. When he arrived at the raucous, incandescent casino, Percival ignored the croupier’s call and the girls who sidled up to him. He accepted a highball glass of whisky from a hostess but only took a small sip. He found a seat at a quiet mah-jong table where he recognized the players and knew that a big-money game must be under way. He took fifty thousand on the first game. Luck would be with him. One good night and he could get enough for all the gold that was required.

  THE NEXT MORNING, PERCIVAL LAY IN bed holding his pounding head. A banging on the door.

  “Chen Pie Sou!”

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry to disturb you. Where are the dollars? The gold dealer is here.”

  “Send him away, Mak. Apologize. We’ll call him.” Percival rolled out of bed and vomited into the porcelain basin on the nightstand. After he had gone bust last night, there was nothing to do but drink. Now his stomach was empty, his mouth sour, and he drank a little water from the pitcher on his desk. He said, “I don’t have any dollars. I’ll come down in a bit.” The floorboards creaked as Mak went slowly away.

  Mak did not express anger at Percival. Even if he had, it could not have made Percival sink any lower into his deep pit of self-loathing. In the school office, Mak said quietly, “Hou jeung, you must not play mah-jong anymore. Not until we have dealt with this problem. We must conserve money.” Not lose it. He did not say that, a good friend always. “Alright, I will arrange a money-circle dinner. You still have enough to pay for a small banquet, don’t you?”

  “Of course I do.” He would have to run a tab at the restaurant.

  Each day, Mak had new contacts. He helped Percival find money circles and loan sharks to lend him piastres and dollars, and other people to sell him gold. Percival conducted the deals hastily, agreed to six percent monthly interest, fifty-three dollars per tael. He met with Chinese and Vietnamese businessmen and mafia, with French jewellers who spoke Vietnamese, and with Sikh gold merchants who spoke Cantonese. Percival preferred to do business with Chinese, but now the only colour he saw was gold. At Chen Hap Sing, he slept only in fragments. He dreamt of Dai Jai and woke just as his son’s head split open, screaming out of his nightmare, again and again.

  Cecilia had her gold jewellery melted into bars, the gems pried out and traded for more gold. Her American business contacts were more helpful in finding gold than they had been in finding Dai Jai, and she was able to squeeze better deals from her transactions than Percival. They met every couple of days at the Cercle to make an anxious tally. In ten days, they had over five hundred taels between them. Cecilia complained that a thousand taels was enough to buy herself a better ex-husband, and cursed him for the boy’s arrest. “People are starting to whisper about how much gold is at Chen Hap Sing,” she said. Under the table, she slipped Percival a snub-nosed, double-barrelled, two-shot Remington pistol. It had the weight of a palm-sized stone, and it fit in his pocket. “You see? Now you are in the money business like me,” she said. “It’s only good up close. You have one shot to scare someone. If you need the second one, aim for the belly. That way you’ll hit something.”

  From then on, Percival took the hoard of metal out of the safe at night and slept with it under his mattress. This required two trips up the stairs, lugging one valise each time. He kept the pistol under his pillow. Two weeks after the meeting in the hut, the night before an ancestor worship day, Percival dreamt of his father. It was an old dream from his childhood, one of flying. They soared high over a cold, jagged peak. It was the Gold Mountain for which Chen Kai had abandoned his home, a mass of sharp glittering angles and dagger crags of lustrous wealth. Percival congratulated his father on his success, but bragged that he himself would become yet more wealthy. Even as Chen Kai nodded with approval, saying that a son must surpass the father, Percival began to fall from the sky. His power of flight was gone. He hurtled towards the ground, calling out in terror to his father, but falling alone to be impaled by gold shards. Gasping, Percival woke already clutching the pistol, jumped out of bed and pulled out one valise. He fumbled open the clasps, caressed the gold. He turned on the light beside his bed and counted it, his fingers dropping the pieces. Then the other case. All there. He put it under the mattress and lay on his back. He stared at the fine teak beams in the ceiling, in the house that Chen Kai had used his fortune to build.


  In 1933, on his first visit back to China after three years away, Chen Kai brought enough silver coins with him to buy two li of stream-fed rice paddy. He rented it out so that Muy Fa would have an income even without his remittances. He hosted a dinner for the village and roasted two fat pigs and three geese to celebrate becoming a landlord. He poured liquor freely for the village men, and gave everyone red-dyed eggs as if he were celebrating a birth.

  During that visit, Chen Kai lavished his son with Annamese treats and hard English candies. They went for walks in Zhong Shan Park, where they watched the fat goldfish in ponds and snacked on candied peanuts. Chen Kai gave Chen Pie Sou painted French lead soldiers and took him to play with them on their newly bought land. They played “Manchuria,” making the red-and-blue figurines the Chinese and using lumps of mud for the Imperial Japanese Army. Chen Pie Sou liked to be General Ma Zhanshan, and he always defeated the Japanese at the 1931 battle at Nenjiang Bridge, stomping gleefully on the lumps of mud. They played this so often that Chen Pie Sou came to believe this was what had actually happened. At night, Chen Kai made a point of filling the kang with heaps of coal, making it so hot that it was difficult for Chen Pie Sou to sleep.

  Chen Kai doted upon his son during the day, but was distracted in the evenings. Every night he greeted visitors as if he were holding court—men who sought advice about travelling to the Gold Mountain, men who hoped to borrow money, and men who wished to taste French brandy. His success abroad had transformed Chen Kai from pauper to landlord, a celebrity in his own village. Chen Pie Sou longed for his father to sit at his side while he fell asleep. He lay on the kang each night listening to the words of his father and the other men become slurred with drink, excited with ever wilder and grander stories of sublime foreign pleasures, and fortunes of property and gold. Chen Pie Sou toyed with the lump at his neck. How could such a small, rough piece of metal be so valuable?