The Headmaster's Wager

by Vincent Lam

  Percival told Laing Jai the stories of his boyhood in Shantou, the same ones he had once told Dai Jai and then Jacqueline. Somehow, in this telling, they had lost both the transparent moralizing with which he had told them to Dai Jai and some of the wistfulness with which he had recounted them to Jacqueline. Even as he shared them with Laing Jai, Percival thought they sounded very distant, like fairy tales. Laing Jai rambled them off to his mother in the same way that he told the stories from his illustrated Western books.

  When he was alone in Cholon, Percival was unsettled by the thickening cloud of rumour and counter-rumour about the war in Vietnam, in which he feigned disinterest. Many hoped that the South Vietnamese would continue to fight so badly against the Northerners that the Americans would be forced to stay. Others said it didn’t matter if the North Vietnamese won, so let them come. They would simply change the flags. Everything else would stay as it always was. Meanwhile, many people in Cholon chattered more about Chinese politics than those of Vietnam, but as doubts about the Americans’ commitment to Vietnam grew, supporters both of Taiwan and the Communist People’s Republic of China hedged their words, if not their views. Who could say how the war would end in Vietnam, and what allegiances, if known publicly, might later prove to be problematic?

  Percival wrote to his cousin in Shantou, asking him to look in on Dai Jai, and to the school where Dai Jai had initially been registered asking when classes would resume and whether his son was registered. Percival’s cousin replied with conviction that Dai Jai was serving the people and Chairman Mao. No reply came from the school. Percival spent hours staring at Dai Jai’s now rare correspondence, trying to glean any small truth of the boy’s situation that might seep between the bravado of Marxist slogans and the opaque descriptions of plain-sounding meals. The paper was tissue-thin, and the pencil was always dull.

  Although he never admitted to Cecilia that he shared her worries, Percival spoke with Mak about his concerns regarding Dai Jai’s situation in China. Was life hard in China? If so, would it get better? Mak seemed to appreciate Percival’s worries, but reassured him, saying that societies evolved, in order to improve.

  Mak managed the school, but routinely saved a few school issues and problems in order to seek Percival’s guidance. They both maintained this ritual, and Percival occasionally relieved one of the teachers to give a few lectures. The students expected an occasional star appearance from the headmaster.

  Once in a while, Percival took some money from the safe. It was filled with stacks of piastres, which he never bothered to count. If asked, Percival took a quantity of bills to a restaurant for a money circle, now he was a lender. To be sociable, he sometimes went along with old friends to a gambling hotel or casino, inattentively lost some money to those whose friendships the school needed, or won and found that, even if it was a good sum, he didn’t care.

  One morning, Percival went to look for Jacqueline at the club. From across the patio, he saw her sitting at a table, laughing with Peters. The American had his racquet on the table and he reclined in his tennis whites in the wicker chair, one hairy leg crossed over the other. Laing Jai drank a mango shake, sipped it through a straw with great concentration. To see him at a distance, a four-year-old engrossed in his treat, Percival felt the pang of his resemblance to Dai Jai. Laing Jai ran across the patio to embrace his father. Percival lifted his son and carried him as he walked.

  As Percival drew near to the table, Peters stood to greet him. Peters squeezed Percival’s hand, shook it up and down. Even after years of association with the Americans, Percival still disliked having their sweat, their smell, on his hands. He had to remind himself not to pull his hand back too quickly.

  “How is my friend the headmaster?” asked Peters.

  “Fine, and how is Mr. Peters, the high-ranking American official?” Percival put Laing Jai down in front of his drink.

  “Very funny,” said Peters. “I’m no big shot.”

  “You are my important friend,” said Percival. Anyone looking at Peters would think that he and Jacqueline were a handsome couple and Laing Jai was their beautiful mixed-blood child, thought Percival. He sat down and resisted the urge to wipe his hand on the tablecloth. He tried to look pleased at finding Jacqueline, Laing Jai, and Peters all together. There was no reason not to be pleasant, he told himself. In the art of forced smiles, the Chinese were every bit as skilful as the Americans.

  “All is well with you?” Percival asked. He told the waiter to bring a pitcher of lemonade.

  “The talks are keeping us busy.”

  “What talks are those?”

  “A real joker! Listen to you.” Peters laughed, and mock-punched Percival on the shoulder—another American habit Percival had trained himself to ignore.

  Jacqueline leaned over. “The Paris peace talks, love.”

  “Oh, I might have heard of them.” It was a topic that Percival never said anything about despite it having lately been a main conversation on the patio of the Cercle Sportif. For the most part, the Americans talked about it, while the Vietnamese nodded quietly. It was fine to talk about such things if one was planning to leave in the event of peace.

  “It seems everyone in Saigon is snagged to support the negotiations,” said Peters. “They always want something else—village reports, economic analysis, intelligence summaries. It never ends. They’re sitting in Paris, eating and drinking on the Seine, and they want detailed political maps—to know which villages are government and which are Cong. Colour coded! That’s the most recent request.”

  “Surely you can send them maps.”

  “They don’t understand when I tell them that the same village is government by day, Cong at night.”

  “I thought you were fixing that problem. Isn’t that why you came back to Vietnam?”

  “The past few years feels like a lifetime, but I keep on waking up feeling like I haven’t moved an inch. Same old.” Peters held up his hands in an expression of casual resignation. “I must have been out of my mind when I came back, thinking I could fix anything in this place.” The waiter produced a tray with glasses and a sweating pitcher.

  Percival wiped his own sweat from his brow.

  “Mr. Peters is trying to get his colleagues in Paris to understand the situation,” said Jacqueline.

  “Oh,” said Percival. “I see. They have been conducting this war without understanding it?”

  “Actually, they’re trying to end it,” said Jacqueline.

  “Ah. Peace, even without understanding, should be easier to achieve?”

  Jacqueline glared at him, then turned to straighten Laing Jai’s outfit. Percival poured lemonade into their glasses and passed them out. He slowly drank half his own glass, in order to suppress various things that it occurred to him to say. Since the previous Tet, when Peters had hinted for, and then accepted, a fat envelope from the headmaster, Percival had felt more free to speak his mind. Even so, he scolded himself. There was never any benefit to being rude. When he put the lemonade down, he said, “Excuse my manners. I didn’t sleep well.”

  “No worries,” said Peters. “I look at it much the same as you do. Frank talk is hard to find around here, Percy. What do they say of the Paris peace talks over in Cholon?”

  “That’s a good question …” said Percival. He tried to think of what was best to tell the American from the range of discussions he had heard on the subject, and decided to trot out the usual, “We Chinese are most concerned with business. Politics is not our domain.”

  “Sure, sure, free enterprise. I’m all for it. Anyhow, peace is good for business, right?”

  “We Chinese love peace and prosperity,” recited Percival, though he thought that peace was unlikely to come soon, or easily. There was no reason to say to the American that peace would hurt his profits. “Chinese do not care what flag flies in Vietnam, so long as the government issues business licences.”

  Laing Jai said, “Baba! Mr. Peters promised to show us his home in America. In the winter
, it is so cold that water becomes tiny pieces of ice and they call it snow.” The boy tugged on Percival’s hand. “You can pick it up and make balls with it.”

  Jacqueline said to Laing Jai, “Baba and Mr. Peters are talking. Listen quietly.” She turned to Percival. “Mr. Peters was telling Laing Jai about his village back home.”

  But the boy could not contain himself. “We will go to America, where instead of Tet, they have a fat man dressed in red who brings presents,” he said triumphantly.

  “Bright kid. Good English. I hear you have him at the American School,” said Peters.

  “That’s what Jacqueline wanted,” said Percival. He stared at Jacqueline, who now avoided his eyes. She fussed at wiping Laing Jai’s face. The boy was good with languages. He could list in four languages—Cantonese, Vietnamese, English, and French—the names of many fruits. Dai Jai had been the same way at that age, eager for knowledge. Peters seemed to be looking over Percival’s shoulder. Then he raised his hand, waved across the patio at someone, and stood to go over. Good. The man would leave them alone.

  “Percy,” said Peters. “Come meet someone.”

  “I need to sit in the shade. It’s so hot this morning.” In fact, it was the dry season, and the air was lighter than usual.

  “What are you talking about? It’s hot every day in this frigging place. It’s someone who needs staff. Come on. We’ll find work for a few of your students.” Percival found it embarrassing that lately Peters spoke so openly about their arrangement, and so without further protest he stood with Peters and looked over to the beet-faced American whom Peters had greeted.

  They reached a shaded awning on the other side, and Peters made the introductions, talking in his radio-announcer way. Percival smiled amiably through the inevitable round of hand-shaking, and nodded at the newcomer with the right mix of reserve and welcome. He didn’t catch whether this overweight man was a newly arrived journalist, an intelligence officer, or a staffer at the State Department. Peters undoubtedly explained this aspect, but Percival was not listening. Mak would be annoyed, for he counted upon Percival to note such particulars. Right now, his eyes were on Jacqueline and Laing Jai.

  “Get this: Tet Offensive in ’68, I was pinned down in a Chinatown firefight. At Percy’s place,” began Peters, as he often did with a new arrival in town. Perhaps, thought Percival, he should bring Laing Jai to the Grands Magasins Charner at the time of the American festival of Christmas. He had heard that they dressed up a man in a red suit. Why should the boy go to America to see that? Was it not enough that the boy had the same toys and schooling as any American child? What else could Jacqueline want for their son?

  Peters described the impenetrable darkness of that Tet night, the foreboding, electric feeling in the air, the first mortars landing so close that the glasses on the table shook, the bloody South Vietnamese counter-assault on the post office. Percival nodded distractedly. All he could visualize from that night was Han Bai cut down, Mak saving his life, Laing Jai born. Whatever else had occurred was so removed that it might as well have happened to someone else. He played along with the details Peters added to the telling, which became more vivid each time—the shells’ explosions louder, the screams of the Viet Cong attackers more maniacal. What could this white man offer Jacqueline? he wondered. What could Jacqueline offer him in return?

  The punchline of the story was that both Peters and Percival had been on assassination lists. “Percy,” said Peters, “escaped because he was about to have a baby.” He always waited for the look of confusion before adding, “Rather, I should say that his radiant—ahem—companion was with child.” He looked across the patio and tilted his head at Jacqueline.

  The newcomer, wilting in the heat, asked, “What about you? How did you dodge your bullet?”

  “Ah, I was on another assassination list. They had my street address in Saigon. Apartment number and everything. No way the Cong could have guessed I’d be in Chinatown at a school dinner. So basically, I owe my life to Percy’s New Year’s banquet. And what a meal! Let me tell you about the food that night …”

  On it went. Peters prompted Percival to chime in about the terror and heroism of the episode, which he did, as usual, nodding gravely, smiling at the right moments. Percival thought it incredible that Peters could stand here talking, practically naked in his tennis shorts and shirt. Was Jacqueline looking over? Was she admiring the American’s figure? Some women, it was said, found the hair on Americans’ bodies attractive, said that it was like being in bed with an animal.

  At last the fat American agreed, “Yes, I do need someone who speaks good English.”

  “None of this me-take-you-cyclo-one-dollar shit,” emphasized Peters.

  “No, I suppose not.” The newcomer wiped his brow.

  “You are in the right company,” said Peters, turning to Percival.

  “Perhaps if you have a card,” said Percival, “I might be able to help you.”

  “No use putting an ad in the paper, I suppose?” said the man, fishing in his pockets for a card.

  “This is the kind of place where introductions matter,” said Peters. “Right, Percival?”

  “Indeed. Even more important is who introduces you,” said Percival, with a slight bow to Peters. Then, to the newcomer, “I can send someone around if it will help you out.” The man found a card, and Percival slipped it into his pocket. Percival would go to Cholon and have dim sum with Mak, who would ask Percival everything he knew of the newcomer to Saigon—name, rank, address, hometown, friends, favourite drinks, drugs, any eye for women? The occasional one preferred young men. Mak would send an exceptional graduate of their school. Perhaps Mak got his own profits from satisfying the Americans’ desires, whether for girls, boys, hash, or heroin. In any case, in a few days, this fat man would approach Percival at the Cercle and thank him for the excellent help. The graduates Mak sent were the best translators in Saigon, a credit to the Percival Chen English Academy. The American would be happy. The school could continue to charge whatever tuition it liked.

  When the hand-shaking and card-trading was done, Percival looked over to Jacqueline and saw her gathering up Laing Jai’s toys. When Percival reached her, she stopped briefly, pecked him on the lips, said that she had to rush Laing Jai to school or else he would be late, and that if Percival went to the apartment she would be there soon.

  Laing Jai asked, “Baba, will you be at home to play after school?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  He went to the apartment and waited, fuming. Why did it take her so long to return? When she appeared, she said nothing. She closed the door, brought her lips to his, her hands already at his belt. He had planned to first ask what she had been discussing with Peters. Now, he felt his annoyance fade. She was here with him, after all, and so why should he be jealous of her sitting innocently on a patio with an American man? Her hands were already within his clothes as he undid her blouse buttons. She led him to the bedroom, where they sweated into the afternoon.

  Afterwards, they lay naked. Jacqueline slept. Percival lay awake on his side, watching the rhythmic movement of her chest. His body had been satisfied, but this did not completely erase his worry. The shutters were closed against the bright sun, and the gaps between the slats admitted bright knives of light into the apartment. His mouth was dry, his throat swollen. Since meeting Jacqueline, Percival had not been with other women. When he went out to gamble, even if a welcoming smile beckoned, he left alone and returned to his lover’s bed. It had never before occurred to him to doubt her faithfulness.

  Percival eased himself up and went into the kitchen. He opened the freezer, its hum becoming louder. He took the tin ice tray, which clung to his sweat and stung his hands. He thought of snow, something he had never seen. He twisted the tray angrily, loosened the clear, cold cubes into a glass, filled it with water, and drank it empty. He poured more water into the same glass. Behind him, the sound of her feet, the cool of her hands on his back, and he turned. He put the g
lass on the counter, his hands on the crest of her hips, then closed them around her back. “I used to believe that a man and a woman were destined to be unfaithful.”

  She put her hands around his neck to draw him into a kiss. “You don’t believe that anymore?”

  “I don’t know what to believe.”

  “Believe in us,” she said. “That’s all there is.” She drained the glass and looked at the kitchen clock. Every afternoon, Jacqueline listened to the Voice of America. She went to the radio in the living room now, turned it on. The crackling voice said that after a delay of several days, a thorny issue of the delegates’ seating arrangements in Paris had been resolved. A suitable round table had been found to accommodate the mission heads of the American, South Vietnamese, North Vietnamese, French, Chinese, and Russian participants. Negotiations would resume. The first issue they would consider was a possible ceasefire, although presently the bombing of North Vietnam continued.

  Percival asked, “Was it last year or the year before that there were rumours of secret peace negotiations between the Americans and the North Vietnamese?”

  “Both. Some say there is hope this time,” said Jacqueline, though she looked more worried than optimistic.

  The report went on for a while. There was no news, only speculation—the concessions that would be sought by each side, the leverage to be applied, the political leaders and their temperaments, words spoken again and again until they circled back upon themselves. Percival reached over and turned off the radio. The silence echoed.

  “What are you doing?” Jacqueline asked.