Vincent Lam - The Headmaster’s Wager

THE SOUNDS OF TENNIS HAD STOPPED. Percival looked up from his lemonade to see Cecilia at his table, her opponent’s hairy arm around her waist.

“The Viet Cong are keeping your knives bloody, Doctor?” Percival could not recall the surgeon’s name. If he had remembered, he would have pretended not to.

“Nah. Disposable scalpels. Always clean—at the start of the case, anyhow. Pleiku is hot this week. Choppers bring them every morning. Kids, right? Fresh off the plane, all blown to bits, calling for momma.”

“Then you fix them?” said Percival.

“Humpty dumpty,” the doctor snorted. “The Cong bury these little jumpers. Charge pops up so high and blows the kid’s balls off. Cuts off his legs, too. See, I figure they intended it to rip out a soldier’s chest, but the yellow soldier is so much shorter, they calibrated it wrong.” He laughed and looked to Cecilia, who smiled obligingly. How did she put up with the smell of white men’s sweat, Percival wondered. It stank like river oxen.

Cecilia noticed the two glasses. She caught the eye of the waiter, gestured to bring another.

“Don’t worry about me, honey. You’ve got a business deal to discuss, right? I’ve got to go.” He bent for a peck on the cheek from Cecilia, but she found his lips with hers, made a show of the kiss. Percival drank his lemonade.

“Wow,” the surgeon winked at Percival, “a country worth fighting for.”

“Bye, love,” she called sweetly as he left. Cecilia sat and drank a whole glass of lemonade. Her chest still heaved from the effort of the game.

“A new business partner?” Percival asked in Cantonese. “Or a friend?”

“Everything is business,” she said.

“It’s like that with you, isn’t it?”

She leaned forward. “Dai Jai must leave Vietnam immediately. The mood in Saigon is sour. I heard of one officer in the Rangers who turned in his brother to the quiet police.”

“A suspected communist?”

“Supposedly. Or a family feud. But there’s no time to waste, Dai Jai is in danger.”

“How did you hear of his problem so quickly?”

“His problem? Your problem. I’m sure this is your fault, always blabbering on about China. For all the times you talked about returning there, if only once you had actually gone!”

“I tell Dai Jai to marry Chinese, but I should remember to advise him that his wife must also be Chinese inside, unlike his mother.”

She laughed. “Is that supposed to be some kind of insult? Pathetic.”

“It is from his mother,” said Percival evenly, “that Dai Jai learned to speak before thinking.”

“His mother thinks about surviving and advancing in this world. As for defying some trivial new rule from Saigon, from whom else but you could Dai Jai get such a nonsensical idea?” She signalled for another lemonade. “Anyhow, when you already teach Chinese students English, why should you oppose teaching them Vietnamese?”

“It’s different. English is profitable,” said Percival. “We may not have to teach Vietnamese anyway. As you know better than anyone, the right contacts can change any Saigon policy. Mak is making inquiries.”

“Mak, always Mak. It’s good Mak has replaced your brain, as your own was always so lacking.” She switched to English. “Listen to me. I don’t give a shit about your school. Think about your son.” Then back to Cantonese. “We must send Dai Jai to Europe or America, before he is taken from us. I will arrange it.” She drained her glass. Percival watched the beautiful line of her throat undulating as she swallowed. He had loved kissing her there.

“Did you rehearse that vulgar English expression just for me? You would send him to a place full of foreigners?” he said.

“You would say he is a foreigner here.”

“Of course he is. But why should he leave, when I am well connected in Vietnam? I’ll protect him. Anyhow, if he goes anywhere, it should be to China.”

Cecilia laughed. “You are so predictable, both in what you say and what you fail to do. If you really wanted to go home to China, you would have gone by now.”

“I stayed for you.”

In 1945, after the Japanese surrender, people were moving in every direction. Cecilia had challenged Percival to do what he said he wanted, to return to China. She would not go. He was still in love with her then, hopeful that things would work out between them. He stayed. When he was eager to return in 1949, to cheer Mao’s unification of the country, Cecilia became pregnant with Dai Jai and there was no question of travel. They had waited a long time for a child, had thought themselves barren. Then came the school, and with it the money and its enjoyable uses. By the time of their divorce in 1958, Percival, like many other Cholon businessmen, was regularly sending money home to help the Great Leap Forward but knew that to enjoy his own profits he must remain outside of China. Already, by then, it was important to keep such remittances secret, for China had made its full transition from being an ally in the defeat of Japan and fascism, to being a communist threat to America and the free world.

“Bullshit,” she replied. “Tell you what—you keep the Saigon dogs from getting near our son. I will speak to my friends about sending him abroad. These days, there are ways to send people to America—for studies, for technical exchanges.”

“I will make this little issue vanish. My contacts can easily do it.”

“Don’t be so sure. Besides, you mean Mak’s contacts, your money.”

Percival swirled the ice in his glass, rattled the hard, cold cubes.

“Good day, hou jeung .” She called him headmaster the same way she had once called him a country bumpkin, and walked away swinging her racquet.

LATE THAT AFTERNOON, HAN BAI DROVE Percival into La Place de la Libération. From across the square, Percival saw a dark Galaxie parked in front of Chen Hap Sing. Two men leaned against the hood.

“Han Bai,” said Percival, “go the back way.” The driver swung the car around, like a great white whale in a sea of cyclo wheels, feet, and vendors’ pushcarts. They turned off from the square and went around through the narrow lanes under the tamarind trees and the long, flapping flags of laundry to reach Chen Hap Sing. Percival told Han Bai to stay in the car in case they needed to slip away with Dai Jai in the trunk.

Percival crept in the kitchen entrance, surprised the cook and the cook’s boy, who had begun to prepare dinner. He asked where Dai Jai was, and they shrugged. How could he have been so stupid to stay in Saigon all day without having someone watch Dai Jai? He had forbidden his son to leave the house, but he should have asked Foong Jie to keep an eye on the boy. The headmaster passed through the central hallway, and from the classrooms he could hear the voices of teachers and students. He went up the stairs to Dai Jai’s second-floor bedroom, calling out to him. But the boy was not in his room. He peeked down through the slanted shutters to confirm his fears. It was the same two men who had visited Chen Hap Sing the previous morning. They leaned back against the hood looking bored, large sunglasses perched on small flat noses. Was his son in another room? Perhaps Dai Jai had noticed the car and hidden himself? Percival crept from room to room through the family quarters, aching for Dai Jai, checking behind furniture, whispering his name. He said a hurried prayer at the ancestral altar. At each window, he peeked out. They were still there. The dark car must have been parked there for some time, as several vendors had settled comfortably into their trade around it.