The Headmaster's Wager

by Vincent Lam

  Cecilia sat with Dai Jai until he fell asleep. When she came out into the hallway, where Percival had remained, she said, “Thank you for bringing him back.”

  It was so strange to hear her thank him, that he had no words with which to reply.

  She allowed herself to be folded into Percival’s arms, and now her tears were released. “Why did they have to hurt him?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Wasn’t the money enough?” Tears streamed down her cheeks, and Percival found himself stroking her hair. It was thinner than he remembered. What if they had grown up a little before they met, he wondered.

  “We have him back, that’s the main thing.”

  “But look what they’ve done to our baby,” she sobbed.

  “Best to forget …” said Percival. “He is back with us, whole. He will heal.”

  She nodded, buried her face in his shoulder. Percival moved a little, thought of kissing her forehead. She pulled back. Of course, if they had been older, if Cecilia had been more free from her mother, she would never have even looked at him. She withdrew from his touch and said, “When will you repay me my four hundred and ten taels?”

  “But that was … your share,” said Percival.

  “I’m not sharing in your stupidity,” she said. She wiped away the tears, sniffed, he could see her making her face hard. “Your idiocy got him arrested. But I’m thankful that you rescued him. I’ll give you a break on the interest.” She turned, and fled down the stairs.

  UNDER PERCIVAL’S WATCHFUL EYE, Foong Jie nursed Dai Jai, spooned lukewarm rice congee to his lips and cleaned his wounds with a washbowl and cloth. Cecilia visited frequently. She brought chocolate éclairs and lemon tarts from la Patisserie St. Honoré, but Dai Jai could only manage a few bites. One day, she brought a tremendous bouquet of gladiolas for his bedside, but their beauty seemed only to make Dai Jai look worse. Percival hovered around him constantly at first, but found that he didn’t know what to say. He wished he had not opposed the directive to give Vietnamese language classes and would have done anything to take that day back, but he could not apologize to his son for that. Not after what had happened when Dai Jai tried to impress his father with his own patriotism. Percival was amazed at Dai Jai’s strength in having survived his imprisonment, but how could he say anything positive about such a horrible ordeal? How could he even mention it, when the main thing was to forget? Let it go, he decided. It would fade with time, like the bruises.

  More crucially, he told himself, after a few days of uncomfortable hovering over his son, he must find money to pay his debts. Foong Jie had the care of Dai Jai well in hand, and he would leave it to her. Time was chasing him, as he had borrowed at high rates. He added an evening class and another full daytime class to the Percival Chen English Academy’s schedule, both of which he discounted for students who could pay a full year’s tuition immediately. Though it had been years since he had actually taught on a regular basis, he took the new classes himself to avoid having to pay another teacher. This gave him enough money to pay back the Sikh lenders, whose debts bore the highest rates. He sent drips of money via Mak to the Teochow temple, keeping Chen Hap Sing out of the creditors’ hands. He did not want to go himself, lest they call him on the whole amount. After the evening class was over, Percival sat at Dai Jai’s bedside as he fell asleep. This was the best time, for in the dark it was not necessary to say anything. Dai Jai could pretend that he was asleep, and Percival could pretend that he believed this was so.

  Once Dai Jai was actually sleeping, Percival went out to work the casinos. He did not drink or take girls to bed. He counted his cards at blackjack and played poker only with weak players whom he knew he could read. He had promised Mak to stay away from the mah-jong tables with their large stakes and unpredictable emotions, and he did. Normally, Percival was propelled by the excitement of possibility, the belief that the next hand might contain a big win. Now, he felt a sobering motivation, a fear of losing. He disciplined himself to play for moderate amounts and pushed aside his usual taste for large risks and payoffs. When he was down, he worked his way back methodically. By the end of each night, he came out ahead.

  The school had been at capacity with five hundred or so students, and now it swelled with almost a hundred more. For the new Vietnamese classes, Mak took the job of instruction upon himself, careful to fulfil the Saigon directives to the letter. To help his friend generate some extra cash, Mak advertised tutorials for job-seekers, HOW TO WIN AMERICAN FRIENDS AND JOBS. These were so popular that one morning, as Percival returned from a long and reasonably profitable night at Le Grand Monde, Mak came to him with a proposition. “If your students could be exempted from the English proficiency exams that American employers require, I’m sure we could increase tuition. What if we got a special designation for the school, a certification?”

  Percival rubbed his eyes, exhausted. “Do it. Anything that will bring more money.”

  “It might take a while.”

  “Mak, I need cash now,” said Percival. He collapsed on the cot in his office, still in his shirt. Each morning, he closed his eyes until his classes started. Brief siestas sustained him between teaching, gambling, and sitting at his son’s bedside. He managed to get the Peugeot out of hock from the garage, but soon was forced to use it as collateral again, to keep the Clan Association at bay. He bought lotus leaves of mosquito larvae when he remembered. The tanks were filthy, but the fish lived.

  For several weeks, Dai Jai stayed in bed. He observed the square quietly from the window, but as his appetite and a little of his strength returned, he devoured the French cakes and snacks, as well as the expensive pâtés and rounds of La vache qui rit cheese that his mother brought. There was a growing stack of American comic books that she bought for him in Saigon. Normally, Percival would have criticized the cheeseburgers, French fries, and pizza that Cecilia brought from the U.S. Army PX, and banished the cans of Coca-Cola and the Marvel comics. He would have admonished her that the Chinese stomach could not tolerate very much of this Western food, and why should their son read about superheroes in ridiculous costumes when there were so many real Chinese heroes of history? In the face of Dai Jai’s enjoyment of these things, Percival held his tongue, and responded with a steady stream of pork buns, fresh papayas, custard apple, ginseng infusions, sweet Chinese bean soups, and kung fu novels.

  At the time of the divorce, Percival had given Cecilia a sum of money to buy a house and start her own business. In exchange, Dai Jai would live with him. Now, when he saw the natural tenderness between mother and son, Percival combatted his jealousy by telling himself that it was certainly best for Dai Jai to live at Chen Hap Sing with him. What kind of example did Cecilia provide, taking men to the house and answering the door with a gun?

  Once he had enough strength to walk a little, Dai Jai drifted through the house with a halting gait. He carried a small bowl in which to spit the blood that he coughed up. When Percival listened to the radio, Dai Jai often lingered nearby. The radio sheltered them from having to speak to one another. When Percival glanced at his son, he could see only his scabby wounds and the discoloured bruises smeared up and down his arms.

  Life would be better after the bruises healed. Then, he would be able to look at his son without imagining blows landing, without thinking of the methods of the National Police Headquarters, without replaying once more what he should have done differently to avoid this trouble. Dai Jai asked one morning if he might come and join his father for breakfast on the balcony. “But you should rest,” Percival said reflexively. “You must heal.”

  “It is too quiet in my room.”

  “I cannot let you climb the steep stairs to the third floor. You are not steady on your feet. What if you were to fall? No, you must rest until you are better.”

  “Yes, Father,” said Dai Jai in a near-whisper.

  Percival longed for the boy’s return to the chair across from him at the breakfast table, but he wanted everything to be exac
tly as it was before. He wanted to sit across from his healthy, though headstrong, son. Soon enough the boy would be healed and would join him at the table.

  Dai Jai had always been bold, given to boisterous statements and gestures. Now he was quiet. The only time he was loud was when he screamed in the middle of the night. Sometimes there were no discernible words, and sometimes he cried out, “Stop! No!” his eyes still closed, his arms raised to protect his head from phantom assailants. At the ancestral altar, the only place it was safe to express both gratitude and fear, Percival now thanked the spirits for saving Dai Jai both from the sea and from prison. He also begged that his son’s nightmares would stop. Often, when Percival heard screams escaping from Dai Jai’s bedroom door, he fled to the casinos. After all, he told himself, as he hailed a cyclo, he was going out into the night to help pay the debt.

  It took the remainder of the school semester for Dai Jai to be physically well again and finally join his father for breakfast on the balcony. His bruises were gone, but he remained hesitant, easily startled. Percival offered to take him out to the places he liked—for an ice cream in Saigon, or perhaps a lime soda at the Cercle. With the onset of the mid-year heat, Percival suggested hopefully that they take a beach holiday. This sounded a little ridiculous even as he heard himself voice the idea. Dai Jai always replied that he still felt weak and wasn’t quite ready to go out. In the late afternoons, when it was sweltering upstairs, Dai Jai retreated to an empty ground-floor classroom of Chen Hap Sing to read. Once, from behind closed classroom doors, Percival thought he heard a girl’s gentle voice as well as Dai Jai’s. Percival asked Foong Jie about it, for she saw everything that happened. Foong Jie shrugged. It must be Dai Jai’s Annamese sweetheart, and Percival realized that he did not care. It was better to allow Dai Jai this comfort. Then, one day, Percival looked out from the balcony and thought he saw Dai Jai and a girl on the other side of the square, their backs to Chen Hap Sing, buying young coconuts with crushed ice. The boy turned, yes it was his son. Percival was overjoyed that Dai Jai had ventured out. In the evenings, Dai Jai resumed tending to his fish. Early one evening, Percival found him feeding them on his balcony, the tanks meticulously cleaned.

  “They’re beautiful,” said Percival.

  “They need attention.”

  “Sorry, I let the tanks go. While you were away.”

  “Thanks for feeding my fish.”

  A slight breeze had arrived with the evening, a hot wind but still a relief. “Do you want to go out for a good dinner in a restaurant? Let’s go for lobsters, Cantonese style, somewhere air-conditioned.”

  “I’m still recovering.”

  “Though I noticed that you went out today.”

  Dai Jai looked down into a tank.

  “Maybe I was too harsh about the girl before,” said Percival. “You are a young man, after all. You must still marry a Chinese, but for now … The Annamese are free spirited. If you don’t feel like lobster, what about oyster omelettes for dinner—Teochow style?”

  “I had better stay in. My appetite’s not great. Aren’t there a lot of police out at night?”

  “It’s fine to go out,” said Percival. It was safe, he assured himself. If anyone was still after Dai Jai, he should have heard about it by now. Mei had promised to warn him if anyone in the police even whispered about Dai Jai. How could he convince the boy? Percival said, “There are fresh scallops at the Golden Dragon. They are delicious.”

  “Yes …” said Dai Jai, but his face became closed, “but my stomach is still sensitive.”

  Percival used the school break to drum up business, to encourage early registration. He bought more desks and crammed them in, to increase the class sizes without hiring more teachers. He spread the rumour that his school would soon have a special certification with the Americans. Soon, Dai Jai could resume his studies at the academy and at the Teochow school. Seeing his old friends would improve his spirits.

  When Percival submitted the official registry for the new semester of the Percival Chen English Academy, he received a phone call from Mr. Tu. “Dai Jai has been placed on a ‘not eligible for school enrolment’ list. Routine—political lists,” Mr. Tu said. “But don’t visit me on this problem. Stay away for awhile, actually. I attracted attention with your last visit, coming so near to your son’s antics.”

  It was not a big problem, Percival decided. It was his own school. Dai Jai could attend classes without being registered, and later, when they fixed the papers, Percival would backdate the registration. A few days later, Percival saw the headmaster of the Teochow school at a money circle. He told Percival that he could not register Dai Jai at his school either. He began to explain.

  “I know,” said Percival, “he’s on a list. I haven’t had a chance to fix it yet.”

  “I’m not so sure it’s easily fixed, old friend. I’ve had a few ‘inspections’ by the quiet police.” Not about Dai Jai, he assured Percival, but the officers asked about their curriculum and seemed to be looking for anything outside the official guidelines. “They asked me why we teach Chinese history rather than Vietnamese history. They said they might have us replace the calligraphy classes with basic military training—I think they were joking, but I’m not sure. Anyway, please keep Dai Jai away from his old Teochow classmates and well away from the school grounds.” He added apologetically, “The Chinese schools are an easy target. We are only one step away from being closed.”

  So, they were putting extra pressure on the Chinese schools. Mak had advised Percival well in 1950, when he suggested that Percival open an English school. They might close the Chinese schools, but not an English one, he had said even then. Not as long as the Americans were in Vietnam. That year, French bureaucrats had taken the rice and transport licences from the Chinese and given them to Vietnamese. It was to prevent those vital industries from being infiltrated by Chinese communists, they said. In giving the licences to the locals, the Chinese grumbled, the French hoped to buy their allegiance after nearly a century of abusing them. This was how Percival became an educator, exaggerating the extent of his British education in Hong Kong and relying upon Mak to cultivate friendships for the school in Saigon. Cecilia always said that it was best for Chinese to be in the money-exchange business precisely because it was the black market. It had no regulations. A school was different—even English schools needed licences to issue diplomas.

  Percival did not immediately ask Mak to fix this problem, because he was tight for cash. He had the Peugeot back and was making progress on the Clan Association debt, but the weekly interest payments dogged him. They had extended his loan at eight percent monthly. Dai Jai still hesitated to leave the house, so there was no rush to get him to school. For a routine political list, there should be a similarly routine solution but it would still have a price. Once he had worked off a little more of the debt, Percival would ask Mak to find a contact to remove Dai Jai from the list.

  With the new semester, Dai Jai began attending classes at the Percival Chen English Academy even though he was not registered. He began to venture out of the house regularly. Since the boys from the Teochow school had been told to stay clear of him, Dai Jai played soccer and basketball with the Vietnamese houseboys, and Percival excused them from their work. Occasionally, Percival saw Dai Jai retreat into an empty classroom after school. A few times, as he marked papers in his office, Percival heard a girl’s small laugh, quickly muffled. He did not even get up to investigate.

  “Is she kind?” he asked Foong Jie. The head servant pretended not to hear.

  Then, one day after Percival had missed an ancestor worship day because he had passed it at the Continental Hotel with a lovely young thing from a nearby village, a letter arrived for Dai Jai. Foong Jie brought it to Percival in the school office. Mak was with him when it came, going over the monthly receipts and the debt repayment list. It was a South Vietnamese Army envelope. Percival tore it open, read it twice.

  “What is it?” said Mak.

  Perc
ival handed it to him.

  “This must be a mistake,” said Mak. “Students are not eligible for the draft.”

  “I meant to have you inquire. About Dai Jai being on a list of students not to be registered for school.”

  “He is to report for basic training in three weeks’ time. Near Cu Chi, a dangerous place,” said Mak, rubbing his forehead. “That is a problem. It would have been easier to deal with this before he was drafted. Now it’s an army matter …” Percival picked up the phone. He asked Cecilia to meet him at the Cercle Sportif in an hour, to discuss a small complication. This was how he put it, and then said he could not elaborate on the phone.

  This time, she did not stage her theatre of a tennis match. She sat waiting for Percival in the pavilion near the tennis courts, drumming her nails on the table. After she read the draft notice, she said, “He must go to France or America. A Chinese boy cannot be in the South Vietnamese Army.”

  “Of course not. You think I’m so naive?” He thought of several former neighbourhood boys. When their bodies were returned home, the bullet wounds were often in their backs. “Our son must return to China,” said Percival. “It is the only safe place for a Chinese person.”

  “Don’t you know what is happening in China?” she said.

  “What do you mean? They are moving forward. They are making steel now. Tons of it. Sometimes, I don’t even think you are Chinese.”

  “Sometimes, I don’t think you are even awake.” Cecilia had taken little interest in the victory of Mao in 1949, but after the land reforms she criticized everything about the People’s Republic with as much fervour as she found fault with her husband. For years afterwards, Cecilia continued to complain bitterly about her family’s estates of several hundred li having been seized and given to the tenants. Percival had declared that he was proud that his family’s land would serve the people of China. Cecilia had ridiculed those two li as the size of her family’s vestibule, and cheered the Americans in Korea. “Do you still send money to China? I’m sure whatever you send ends up in a vault in Geneva. You think the communists don’t steal?”