The Headmaster's Wager

by Vincent Lam

  Percival spoke slowly. “And so, if the quiet police inquire, Jacqueline is not here.”

  “After their visit, she fled. It removes you completely from suspicion, hou jeung. There are many in the square who noticed a pretty country girl with a baby coming and going from Chen Hap Sing after Tet. Often buying newspapers, magazines. Suspicious, for a country girl, yes? They will agree that she has disappeared. Of course, as your mistress, she could have easily taken a key to your car and given it to her fellow Viet Cong on the night of the attack. You are clean.”

  “As are you.” Percival thought of Jacqueline, crying with Laing Jai in her arms when he left her in Saigon. The walls of the school office seemed unsteady. He said, “Mak, what have you done?”

  “The quiet police believe it! My friend is sending me their reports. They have put out a watch for a country girl in Cholon. If they need to, they may arrest some poor innocent waif, and you will deny she was your lover. Meanwhile, case closed.”

  Percival started to stand, unsure what he would do. Mak pushed his chair back a little. The room floated, and Percival sat again. Mak said, “As long as you say nothing different—your reputation with the Americans as a loyal supporter is stronger than ever. Jacqueline understood all of this, and agreed to return to Saigon.”

  “What choice did she have, once you did this?”

  “She and the boy are perfectly safe. She will not ever need to tell the story,” said Mak. “No one looks for Viet Cong by the pool at the Cercle. For her part, it is enough that she has returned to Saigon.”

  Percival closed his eyes and imagined the room closing in towards him, compressing his anger into a tight ball. It was done. What use was there in fighting it now? Mak would have calculated this, of course. Percival stood, forced himself to open his eyes. It could not be undone. The Viet Cong mistress had already vanished into the countryside. He put his hands on his desk. The wood was worn, slightly cool under the pads of his fingers. Jacqueline had agreed to this? Perhaps she saw the wisdom of it, or perhaps she did not feel as strongly for him as he did for her. Percival moved towards Mak, who continued to talk. “I did it for your good. Believe me, old friend, I think of your best interests. You go to Saigon for your fun. It is better for you.” They stood facing one another, Percival’s hands shaking, then clenched into fists. He could not be sure whether it was out of loyalty to Mak or weakness in his love for Jacqueline, but now that this path was laid, what could he do except follow it? Percival nodded, and asked Mak to leave him alone for a little while.

  CHAPTER 19

  JACQUELINE HAD CRIED ON THE FIRST day that Percival brought her back to Saigon. After that, whenever Percival went to visit her, she smiled. She wore just a hint of lipstick—he later noticed the traces on his body. The apartment was always tidy, as perfect as a stage. Percival bought a cream-coloured Mercedes 280 SE coupe from a friend who had decided, after what Percival had taken to calling the “Tet commotion,” to move to France. The coupe was suitable, for Percival drove the car. He preferred to move around alone rather than with someone who could gossip about his whereabouts.

  Two months after Tet, the work on Chen Hap Sing was completed. Delicately patterned ironwork had graced the windows since Chen Kai had built the house, to keep thieves out. Now, workers had welded solid bars and steel mesh on top of that, intended to keep grenades out. It would not hold against rockets, but one could only do so much. Percival went through the house minutely, checking the new reinforcements, pulling on the bars. With metal screens over all the windows, Chen Hap Sing had been blinded. The doors were reinforced with metal plates and bolts. Short concrete posts stood at regular intervals in front of the school. These were strong enough to slow a car if it were aimed at the school so that it wouldn’t breach the walls. Meanwhile, the construction of brick pillboxes by the South Vietnamese Army had turned their checkpoints in La Place de la Libération into permanent posts. The old post office was deemed beyond repair, and its damaged remains were bulldozed. That handsome reminder of the French was now a memory, an empty lot.

  At first, Percival wondered if he should speak to Jacqueline about Mak’s manipulations. Should he console her by saying that although it was not his idea to send her back to Saigon, that in fact he wished she was still in Cholon, it might be safer for her to be at the apartment? But if he wished she was in Cholon, would she conclude that her lover had deferred to Mak rather than doing what he himself wanted? She was in Saigon now—she was safe. Nothing could be done to return her to Cholon. If nothing could be done, there was no purpose in raising the issue, Percival eventually decided. Besides, it was a short drive to Saigon. After her initial distress, Jacqueline didn’t seem upset at being sent back to the apartment. Occasionally she would seem distant, preoccupied, and Percival wondered if anger was hidden, and if it would one day burst through. He was determined to do everything possible to keep her happy.

  Percival kept a tab at the Cercle Sportif so that whether he was with her or not, she could enjoy the restaurant. He still saw Cecilia there occasionally, and Jacqueline did not object to the two of them drinking tea together, discussing their son’s letters, and trading barbs. Mostly, Percival spent his time at the club cultivating his American contacts and enjoying his new family. A morning passed easily playing boules; an afternoon by the pool was a siesta in the shade followed by a swim. Jacqueline made the apartment in Saigon comfortable for him. His favourite cognac, rice beer, and pickled hams were always on hand. Jacqueline began to take a tiny white pill daily, and Percival worried that she was ill. She was fine, she assured him, explaining that this was a new Western innovation that helped with women’s monthly issues. He was glad she could afford this luxury, though embarrassed to know of it, and asked no more. Laing Jai was a happy child, who waved his arms and babbled with excitement whenever Percival arrived. When in Cholon, Percival soon missed the boy as much as he did Jacqueline. He looked forward to the warm pleasure of scooping him up, smelling his neck, squeezing his tiny arms and legs.

  When the boy napped, Jacqueline and Percival made love, speaking only through skin and touch. In her lips, he sometimes imagined there was a sadness. As months went by peacefully, Percival gradually forgot to worry about these things, and became so comfortable at the apartment in Saigon that he spent as much time there as in Cholon.

  The rainy season arrived. It was during an afternoon downpour while they were playing with Laing Jai inside the apartment, that Jacqueline said in a sideways voice, “And Mak is well?” She continued making play-faces at Laing Jai, who cooed happily, and who was almost able to stand.

  “He is fine,” said Percival, surprised.

  “He has not told you anything … unusual?”

  “No,” said Percival. “Why do you ask?”

  Laing Jai cried out. She helped him to his feet, and then said brightly, “I just wonder how Mak is doing. And Foong Jie. And whether everything is normal at Chen Hap Sing.”

  “Why wouldn’t it be?”

  “Of course it is, then,” she said with a quick glance.

  “Are you angry with me?” he said, before he could stop the words from spilling out. “I know returning to Saigon might have been difficult, but you understand the reasons. When the quiet police ask questions, answers must be found.”

  She caught Laing Jai as he teetered, forced a laugh and bounced her son mechanically. “I have a wonderful apartment. It is bright and airy. Each room has an electric ceiling fan. There is a refrigerator and a gas stove. You give me money.” She smiled. “I have my beautiful son. And of course I have you.”

  “Yes,” he agreed. “You have everything. Do I give you enough money?” Naturally, she wanted her sacrifice to be recognized. Why else would she have asked about Mak? She did not answer, did not give any recognition of having heard the question, and continued to play with the boy.

  Percival provided Jacqueline with a weekly allowance. Not a set sum, but always more than enough for a whole family to live very well. Each week,
he put a thick sheaf of notes in a kitchen drawer. The following week when he opened the drawer, it was empty. He encouraged her to spend and enjoy.

  PETERS, IT TURNED OUT, WAS FRIENDLY with Americans in every office in Saigon. Mak had chosen this contact well. Over a couple of whisky sodas, Peters was always happy to tell Percival of important Americans who had just arrived in Vietnam and might need a secretary or a translator. Percival understood the mutual benefit—it made Peters an insider, an old hand with gwan hai, in the eyes of his countrymen. Although Peters at first refused bribes, he did not decline the Omega watch or the gold cufflinks that Percival presented to him at a birthday banquet hosted by the school.

  The troop increases that had been discussed by the Americans after the Tet Offensive did not come. Over the following year, the Americans around Saigon began to use a new word. They talked about “Vietnamizing” the war, as if until now it had been taking place in some other country. The Vietnamese soldiers were to take over the main fighting and would be supported by American weapons and expertise. That’s how the thing should have been fought all along, said the glib intelligence men who wore khakis without insignia and flew out to the battlefields in the morning. They were usually back at the Cercle Sportif by cocktail hour.

  The grey-haired divisional commanders, who rarely ventured out of Saigon, and who reminisced about Korea with their gin and tonics by the pool, discussed the pace at which the American troops were being withdrawn—too fast and battles would be lost, too slow and the Vietnamese would not “grab it by the balls.” Percival was familiar with them all, having been introduced by Peters. He had difficulty keeping their names straight, for all these white men resembled one another, but he nodded seriously and agreed with all their opinions, while hovering around the question that interested him most, which was whether anyone needed staff. If so, he would connect them to Mak for a referral. Sometimes, with some new American initiative, five or ten graduates were hired overnight.

  Over two subsequent semesters, Percival cautiously left the price of tuition unchanged. He was relieved to see that there were still waiting lists, though now many of his graduates tried to get visas to study abroad rather than interview for jobs with the Americans in Vietnam.

  After a year of living between Cholon and Saigon, Percival disciplined himself to spend part of each week in Chen Hap Sing. If he stayed with Jacqueline all the time, he scolded himself, they might as well be married. Percival forced himself to make weekly visits to the Teochow temple. When he was at Chen Hap Sing, he instructed the cook to prepare only Chinese dishes, and would only respond to the servants when they spoke a Chinese dialect. When he took his breakfast alone on the balcony, where he had long since instructed Foong Jie to remove the second chair, it was a Teochow breakfast of salted fish and rice porridge—never pho. The presence of St. Francis Xavier annoyed him, so he faced the other direction. He gave generously, almost lavishly, to the Buddhists, and had heard that the one-eyed monk chanted a daily prayer on his behalf. The words drifting up from the square below were Cantonese, Teochow, Hakka, Percival noted with satisfaction. He sat alone, but he was amongst Chinese.

  Nights at Chen Hap Sing were quiet. Percival would often hear noises from Dai Jai’s old room. Each time, as he came near to Dai Jai’s doorway, he wondered if he would see an apparition, Jacqueline and Laing Jai asleep in the bed, the dark figure hovering over them. He crept close to the wall, took a deep breath before opening the door, and peered in. There was never anyone there.

  After retreating to his room, Percival would pour himself a water glass of cognac and look through the letters from Dai Jai. Mail delivery had ceased for some time after Tet. Clearly, the censors had held on to everything, examined it for clues. Finally, three of Dai Jai’s letters had come together—lengthy criticisms, Percival’s failings towards the people. They had been opened, of course, and seemed to have passed through many hands. Now the letters had settled into one monthly page. Cecilia received the same correspondence, often identical as if copied. They were not in Dai Jai’s nature, she said. Percival skimmed these brief paragraphs without allowing his eyes to focus. He would linger on his son’s one-sentence description of the weather, or a list of what foods he had recently eaten in the communal kitchens—perhaps two sticks of fried dough at breakfast, four onion dumplings at midday, one cup of rice with boiled vegetables for dinner. He seemed unnaturally interested in food, Cecilia pointed out. Did it mean he was not eating enough? Percival had dismissed Cecilia’s worry, saying that it meant their son had a good appetite. Alone, he was pained to think that Cecilia could be right, that Dai Jai might be hungry. In one letter, Dai Jai made a recitation of his sins against the people—that he had snatched an extra piece of turnip at lunch, had allowed his comrade to shoulder more weight than himself as they pushed a hand plough in the fields. Percival was embarrassed by these confessions, and equally so by Dai Jai’s celebrations of his comrades’ triumphs—their ability to work until they collapsed from exhaustion, and their capacity to sing in a patriotic Maoist spirit until their voices failed. He tried to picture his son, but could not summon an image that he could trust.

  The letters no longer gave any descriptions of Shanghai, and instead detailed farm work. Dai Jai never said where he was, or why he had left school. This bothered Cecilia a great deal, and Percival suggested to her that Dai Jai had probably gone out to work on a farm for a school holiday, that it was healthy for a young man to be out in the fresh air, getting exercise. Percival wished he could decipher the relentless good cheer of the Communist Party’s shortwave announcers, and the confusing letters that came from Dai Jai, but even in the Teochow temple no one seemed to have reliable sources of information about what was happening in China. There were rumours of whole classes of high school and university students being sent to work in the countryside and counter-rumours that these tales were fabrications of the CIA. More and more, people in Cholon strongly supported either Taiwan or China.

  Percival wrote back to Dai Jai late at night. His letters had become rote. He told his son that he was safe and that the fighting was far away, although Dai Jai had not asked. He wrote a line about whatever Chinese festival was approaching or had just passed. He wrote nothing about Jacqueline or Laing Jai. What would he say, that he was now spending his days, and often his nights, in Saigon with a métisse girl? And what would he say of Laing Jai? To think of the words made him ashamed. Instead, Percival wrote to Dai Jai about the great ongoing successes of the school, which he did not refer to as an English school, and of the pet fish being healthy and vigorous.

  As Laing Jai grew from a toddler into a small boy, Jacqueline bought all the things for him that she imagined a modern boy required—expensive items from the Grands Magasins Charner; a small child’s bed painted like a rowboat, blue striped shirts, tiny corduroy pants, and a stuffed Mickey Mouse. Percival hated this creature—why did the Americans idolize a rodent? The boy’s room was the one part of the apartment that Percival disliked, with its set of wooden trains, and books that featured blond children and their dogs. Percival would never have allowed Dai Jai to be paraded like a tiny imitation of a French boy, but with Laing Jai he overlooked these indulgences. It made the boy happy. It made his mother happy. Who was he to disagree, thought Percival, when he could not even marry the woman he loved? Laing Jai’s feet beat a quick rhythm towards the door whenever Percival arrived, and he shrieked with delight, “Baba!”

  For herself, Jacqueline also bought imported clothing, though nothing showy, all modest cuts of good cloth. She must be buying gold and putting it away, thought Percival, for he couldn’t see all of the allowance in her purchases. The more guilty and lonely he felt in Cholon, the more money he gave her. Imagining her buying gold, stockpiling something for herself, kept both his guilt and regret beneath the happy surface of their lives.

  PART THREE

  CHAPTER 20

  1972, SAIGON, VIETNAM

  When Laing Jai was four years old, he was enrolled in
the American School. Jacqueline insisted upon it and pointed out the obvious to Percival—how could he expect the child to go to the Teochow school, given his round eyes and chestnut hair? His classmates were foreigners and the children of wealthy Saigonese who pretended to be foreigners, Percival grumbled. It was where Jacqueline’s friends sent their children, Percival consoled himself. Jacqueline spent most days at the Cercle Sportif, and if Percival was a little jealous for her attention he could not blame her for socializing. He had sent her to live on her own. The club was also good for Laing Jai. Some of his classmates were there, even a few mixed children, whose mothers took them to swim and play by the pool.

  At least once a month, Percival took Laing Jai to Cholon. He led him through the markets, taught him the names of things in Cantonese and Teochow, and indulged him with chui jia bao, sweet dumplings filled with yam or bean paste, and fresh coconuts chopped open at the stalls. He took him to the Teochow temple for every festival.

  Even at the annual festival of the dead, Jacqueline never took the boy to Thanh Ha to pay respects at her family’s graves, and she did not want a shrine in her apartment. She seemed to have cut off her relations completely, which was strange, but Percival decided not to ask. Percival was quietly pleased about that, for it allowed him to show the boy these traditions as part of his Chinese rather than his Vietnamese heritage. He showed Laing Jai how to make the offerings of food and joss sticks, how to delicately arrange cut oranges before the family altar at Chen Hap Sing. On these occasions, Percival made sure that the cooks prepared special Chinese dishes that Laing Jai liked—his favourite was or lua, oyster omelettes, and Percival was gratified that the boy relished such a characteristic Teochow dish. He also looked forward to hung gue dumplings filled with garlic chives, rice, minced pork, and dried shrimp, platters of Peking duck, crab balls, and tofu stuffed with shrimp. For a snack, a big bowl of mee pok noodles with minced pork and braised mushrooms. The cooks made far too much, because the kitchen and house staff liked to eat the leftovers, and Percival allowed this. He indulged himself in Laing Jai’s excitement at seeing the displays of food.