The Headmaster's Wager

by Vincent Lam

  Mak said, “If you are able to certify our school, our graduates will speed your work.” Percival had never seen Mak smile so much, as if his face was frozen that way.

  Mak handed Peters a folder and went through the school’s curriculum plans, marking schemes, and letters of praise from several Americans in Saigon who employed graduates of the school. He spoke about the academy’s modern ways—the standardization of curriculum, the rigorous marking of examinations, and the uniform English fluency of graduates. As he always did when discussing school matters, Mak attributed the school’s achievements directly to Headmaster Percival Chen.

  “It will be a great help,” said Peters, after they had perused the folder. “I like what I see here.”

  Mak and Percival accompanied Peters out, waved him off as if he were a close relative going on a long voyage, and returned to the headmaster’s office.

  With Peters gone, Mak’s smile fell. He closed the door behind them and said, “Headmaster, the girl has not attended school for several days. I suppose you have dealt with this issue?”

  “You mean Jacqueline?” said Percival. He looked distractedly at the papers on his desk.

  “Yes.”

  “I have found a solution,” said Percival. “She is withdrawing from the school so that there is no conflict.” He was nervous, he realized, as if he were one of Mak’s students rather than the headmaster. “Is there something else we need to discuss, Teacher Mak?”

  “Don’t tell me she is still your … sweetheart?”

  Percival replied only with silence.

  Mak said, not unkindly, “Old friend, this situation will cause you problems.”

  “You have always been wise and correct, but I have fixed it. I withdrew her from the school.”

  “What about Ba Hai?” said Mak sternly. “You have always said that your father’s greatest mistake was to take a local woman for his second wife. If only he had taken a proper Chinese girl—here I’m repeating your words—who would have shown proper respect for your mother and been faithful to your father, perhaps he would be alive. Chen Pie Sou. For years, you’ve drummed it into Dai Jai’s head that he must marry a Chinese. I think that’s half the reason you sent him to China.”

  “She is going to have a baby.”

  Mak stood stunned for a moment, and then struck the table with both hands. “Then pay her to go away,” he said. “Pay her more, to take care of the child. A girl like her won’t cost too much.”

  “What are you talking about?” said Percival.

  “I’m sorry, hou jeung,” said Mak, sitting down, leaning forward and speaking now with concern. “I’m just very worried about this certification. A scandal won’t help.”

  Percival felt his own voice rise. “I know it would have been a problem if Mr. Peters had come to the school and seen her here. But he did not. If he comes again, he won’t. What is it, Mak?” He could not imagine that Mak loved the girl. Mak strictly adhered to this school rule, and probably many others that Percival had forgotten. What did Mak know? Percival thought of the death of Jacqueline’s mother in Thanh Ha. The village was only geographically in the South, for everyone knew it was controlled by the Viet Cong. Mak heard things, rumours searched him out. Perhaps her death was not as innocent as Jacqueline thought. Could her mother have been a Viet Cong spy in Sum Guy? Or perhaps someone she knew in Thanh Ha was Viet Cong and she had betrayed them to the quiet police. If in addition to her body she had been selling her eyes and ears to support Jacqueline, of course she would not have told her daughter. But it was like the stolen Japanese medicines, Percival decided. Some things were better left unasked, and if Mak did not tell Percival whatever else he knew, then what could he expect Percival to do about it? So what if the death of Jacqueline’s mother had not been so accidental? It changed nothing. He said, “Mak, thank you for your concern.”

  A few days after Peters’ visit, Percival found a copy of the new hiring policy at the State Department and USAID sitting on his desk. Graduates of the Percival Chen English Academy were “certified” and exempted from the English proficiency examinations. When Percival stopped Mak in a hallway full of students to thank him, Mak said, “I’m doing my best to help you, but …”

  In a loud voice, Percival said, “This is a happy day! We can raise our tuitions!” The words were of celebration, but the voice was one of anger. Percival put fifty thousand piastres in a red lai see packet and left it in Mak’s desk drawer. The following day, Percival found that the red envelope, unopened, had been returned to his own desk. He went out that night and lost the money playing baccarat and drinking champagne at Le Grand Monde.

  THE APARTMENT THAT PERCIVAL FOUND FOR Jacqueline was just off Tu Do Street in Saigon, on the eighth floor, a lucky number. It was an exclusive modern building with elevators, and housed both Americans and wealthy Vietnamese. The apartment had hot and cold water, a refrigerator, a gleaming white bathtub, and green-painted shutters. When Percival went there, he told Han Bai he did not have to wait, that he would either call him later or take a cyclo home.

  Jacqueline had at first seemed sad when Percival said that he would support her on the condition that she quit the school, but the sadness passed quickly. She liked the apartment’s view, the morning shade and the afternoon light. As her pregnancy progressed she mentioned how much she appreciated the elevator, and in the middle of the afternoon she enjoyed sucking the ice cubes which the freezer provided. Percival filled it with ice creams, and was relieved that Jacqueline was pleased with her new surroundings. She told him, when asked, that she had been very careful that none of her fellow classmates knew about her relationship with the headmaster. His solution should satisfy Mak, Percival assured himself.

  As Jacqueline’s belly grew, so did her sexual interest. The moment he arrived, the seduction began, with soft fingertips, moistened lips. This, like the pleasure he experienced once he had accepted the idea of her pregnancy, was a surprise to Percival. When Cecilia had been pregnant with Dai Jai, she had avoided Percival as if he had cursed her with a baby. She and Percival fought constantly. During that time, he gambled and drank even more than usual. Now, waiting to become father to a child with Jacqueline was something new.

  After their lovemaking, Percival began to stay at Jacqueline’s apartment through the afternoon, into the evenings. He would ask Jacqueline, shyly, if he could bathe her. He put his hands on her belly. She expressed delight with the bathtub, and wistfully recalled the apartment of her childhood. She thanked Percival for giving her this place which was so similar. In Sum Guy, she said, they had washed by means of a section of the tin roof, which could be pulled open to admit rain. Often, night arrived, and there was no reason for Percival to go home. In the morning, he rushed to get back to Chen Hap Sing before class.

  He soon realized he was more comfortable with Jacqueline in Saigon, six kilometres and a world away from Cholon. In Saigon, they went for walks along the river where the American battleships were anchored. They ate quietly in French restaurants, and saw only each other. He never would have walked outside with her in Cholon. It was normal there that one would be talked about. To eat in a Cholon restaurant was to eat with ten friends. Hoping to make up for the debacle at the club, Percival paid for Jacqueline to become a member at the Cercle Sportif. At first she hesitated, but soon thanked him for it. She would sometimes translate a comment between a French and an American woman, and everyone laughed that a yellow person translated between two whites. She was accepted into the little clusters of women who laughed conspiratorially in the wicker chairs on the patio, where she was not the only mistress of a wealthy man. Cecilia said to Percival one day, nodding at Jacqueline across the patio, “I see your lover is pregnant. She looks like a gourd.”

  “The most beautiful gourd in Saigon,” said Percival.

  “I’m surprised you can support your mistress when you owe me so much money,” Cecilia said, loud enough that anyone nearby could hear. “You must be confident you are the father. A girl li
ke that has many friendships, doesn’t she?”

  Percival dismissed any doubts about that. After all, Jacqueline was not like Mrs. Ling’s other girls. She was a student of his school, forced to sell herself when her mother was killed.

  IT WAS TWO MONTHS BEFORE TET when the new semester’s tuition was due. Mak wanted to increase the amount by half. Peters had been right about the new American presence. Lately, there were more American civilians looking lost and requiring directions in Saigon than ever before. Even in Cholon, the sunburned giants were no longer enough of a curiosity to be followed by gaggles of children as they sought out brothels and Buddhist temples.

  “Double it,” said Percival.

  “Double? It’s too much. People will go elsewhere.”

  “Make sure everyone in this graduating class gets a job interview with an American agency or company. If people see this, we can charge twice as much.”

  Enrolment was soon fully subscribed, with an even longer waiting list than usual. The fat lump of money was a great relief to Percival. Interest on the debts had been growing steadily, loans to pay loans lining up like dominoes. There was also the expense of supporting Jacqueline. Now, he was able to discharge debts one after another. He wished he could send some money to Dai Jai, but recently foreign remittances were being confiscated in China. It was part of the revolution of culture, explained the shortwave broadcasts from the People’s Republic. The Chinese people must not be subservient to tainted foreign money. Loyal overseas Chinese who wished to remit should send their funds directly to the treasury of the People’s Republic for the good of all Chinese people, suggested the youthful female broadcaster. That was well and good, thought Percival, but he wanted Dai Jai to have something in his pocket. Even in the new society, didn’t parents wish to ensure the well-being of their children?

  After the rest of the debts had been dealt with, Percival and Cecilia arranged to meet one morning at the Cercle. He brought a nondescript bag containing a large sum of dollars and gold. The debt he had left to the last was Cecilia’s. She had given him that small courtesy, and had made it interest-free. She had lost none of her attractiveness, he thought, as he approached the table. He was glad that she did not come with her usual accessory, an American lover. He was surprised when she said, “I’ve met your new girl around the club. She seems intelligent, and carries herself well.”

  Percival was speechless for a moment. Then he slid the bag under the table. “You were introduced?”

  “I introduced myself. I wanted to see how your taste had evolved. She seemed a bit shy, but I told her that there’s no reason she and I can’t be friendly. It’s just you and I who are in a habit of fighting. She laughed. I like her.”

  “You have never asked if I liked your men.”

  “As if I care. I am confused, though. All these years you have been so bitter about Ba Hai. As if whatever happened to your crazy father was her fault. Now, you and a métisse. And you insisted Dai Jai must marry a Chinese. She is very pretty, I grant you. Even in her condition, she has the eye of half the men in the club.” Cecilia clucked her tongue.

  “Who said anything about my marrying Jacqueline?” Percival shifted uncomfortably. “You wouldn’t write about this to Dai Jai, would you?”

  “Of course not,” Cecilia laughed, a high tinkle. “I’m not going to take it that seriously. She is only your sweetheart whom you put up in an apartment. Whatever. Your love affairs don’t interest me.”

  “Obviously not. And I see you have come alone, so there must be something you want to discuss. Do you think I can’t read you as well as you can read me?”

  “I received a letter from Dai Jai.”

  Percival signalled the waiter and asked for two gin and tonics. He folded one hand over the other and said, “His letters have been a little odd lately.”

  Dai Jai’s letters had become more sporadic. At first, Percival had waited anxiously for them, and now he did not expect to see a note more than once a month, which when they arrived were on thin, dirty-looking paper.

  Percival wrote to him inquiring whether he was eating enough, and whether he was able to buy coal. Better to stock up before the change in weather, he wrote. Shanghai would soon be cold. Dai Jai did not answer these questions. Instead, in a letter that arrived seven months after his departure, Dai Jai wrote that his new Red Guard teachers were teaching excellent lessons, much better than the previous bourgeois lackeys of the foreign devils who had been employed in the colleges. The writing was stiff, formal. Percival was shocked—how could they have replaced the teachers? Who had replaced them, were these guards qualified educators? The letter read as if Dai Jai had copied it, or it had been dictated. Previously, even when he wrote about mundane matters, such as the changing weather or his daily problems, there was nuance and description in his phrases. Now, the words were stark rhetoric.

  “A little odd? In the latest, he wrote to me that Saigon is the whore of America, that the imperialists are subjugating the masses, that the people must rise up and crush their oppressors in order to be free.”

  “Yes, same wording in mine. Headstrong youth. In that letter, my son writes that I teach the language of capitalist dogs.”

  The waiter brought the drinks, and Percival took a long swallow. Cecilia raised her glass. “Congratulations, by the way, on your new American certification. Everyone says you have been given a licence to print money.”

  In the same cramped page, Dai Jai had written that he was thankful for the revolution of Chinese workers, that previously he was imprisoned by lazy bourgeois colonialists. “It is disrespectful, but what can I do?” said Percival. “It’s shameful that my son writes to me in this way.”

  “I don’t care if he insults you. I do it myself, haven’t you noticed?”

  “He writes that I am a profiteer who drinks the lifeblood of the working people. I am the comprador of the warmongering Americans. But you know, it must be the Red Guards telling them to write such things. The boy writes about politics, but it doesn’t even read like his own words. I am afraid of the Saigon censors seeing his letters, though.”

  “Never mind the censors. What is happening to him? This is our son. The boy loves American comic books. Something is wrong.”

  “Young boys can be easily influenced.”

  “I want you to bring him home,” she said. “Haven’t you heard that things are turning in China? ”

  “How can you trust the news? Everything is fake.”

  It seemed that it was well under way, before the radio broadcasts had given it a name, the Cultural Revolution. It was hotly though quietly debated everywhere in Cholon, whether it was good or bad for China, whether it would throw off the influence of the foreigners for good or whether it was merely pandering to Russia. Some said Marx would free China, and others declared this impossible of a foreign devil, even a dead one. Percival had asked Mak what he thought, and Mak had spoken cryptically about the evolution of society. Some in Cholon were sending money to support this new revolution, and others had applied for Taiwanese citizenships.

  “I don’t follow the news,” said Percival to Cecilia.

  “Bring him home,” said Cecilia again. She spoke in a vulnerable tone, rare for her. “My connections are American. They can’t help.”

  “And they couldn’t, before.”

  “Mak got him to China. Ask Mak to bring him back. Please. He’s my son, and there’s something wrong.”

  “What, bring him back here to be drafted by the South Vietnamese Army and shot? The way things are going with the war, he might even be shot by the enemy rather than his own comrades. They say the fighting has become more deadly than ever.”

  Cecilia gripped the table. “Then have a snakehead smuggle him out to Hong Kong. I will pay half the cost.”

  Percival stood. “With the gold I’ve just returned? And I suppose you would make me repay that to you afterwards? I saved him from prison. I saved him from the South Vietnamese Army. Now, you are bothered because he writes st
range letters.”

  That afternoon, after his siesta, Percival smelled something foul. He followed his nose, and found that it came from Dai Jai’s room. Could the ghost of Chen Kai have returned to his old room? Did ghosts carry an odour? He summoned the courage to open the door, but the room was undisturbed. The odour was strong—something like nuoc nam. Had someone played a trick on him by spilling Vietnamese fish sauce, knowing that he hated it? Percival followed it to the doors to his son’s balcony, where he saw the dry tanks, fouled by rotting fish. The glass was coated with algae. He had forgotten them as soon as Dai Jai had left. Had they lived until recently? It looked like it, that they had survived on the downpours of the rainy season, but over the last few weeks it had been dry. They could be replaced, should Dai Jai ever return home. No, he was at home, Percival corrected himself. Dai Jai had returned to China. Percival checked his watch and realized that if he left now, he could get to Jacqueline’s place before dinner. He told the servants to clean the tanks, and found Han Bai to drive him to Saigon.

  CHAPTER 16

  ON THE EVE OF TET IN 1968, Percival sat on the edge of the bathtub. With his cupped hands, he scooped water over Jacqueline’s shoulders, and watched as the rivulets traced her body. From the street below, the staccato explosions of firecrackers chased away bad ghosts of the old year and prepared the way for the Year of the Monkey. He lifted the heavy sheet of her hair with one hand, rinsed away the soap. There was singing from the streets, the revelry of soldiers who had come home to Saigon for the Tet ceasefire.

  She said, “Some rich women have a maid to help them bathe. I have you, which is much better.”

  A year earlier, Percival could not have imagined that he would now be in this quiet apartment in Saigon, bathing this brown-haired beauty—pregnant with his child.

  “You are not angry about the Tet banquet?” Percival asked.

  “No, of course not. I understand, about discretion.”