The Headmaster’s Wager. Vincent Lam
can get it faster, that would be—” The sum was staggering, about fifty thousand American dollars.
“You will bring me gold.”
“But that amount—”
The man sighed as if he were a rich jeweller with a stone so rare and beautiful that there was no need to discuss its provenance or price. “Is there a problem?”
“Of course not. Yes, a thousand taels.” There was no point in negotiating. He had already been deprived of anything with which to bargain. “Yes, I will pay.”
“Then get out of here.” With that, the man retreated into a corner of the hut. He was not that far away, but he was invisible. Percival hurried towards the open door, stumbled out of the hut and squinted into the light. He thrashed his way through the bamboo, swatted aside insects and vegetation that grasped at him. From the direction of the sea came a surprising cool gust. He opened the door of the Peugeot, sat down in its furnace heat, and placed the key in the ignition.
Safely in his car, Percival felt a surge of defiance. The man’s display was theatre, sheer dramatics. Dai Jai was fine. That thug had taken Percival for a fool, easy prey. Why would anyone harm the boy if he wished to obtain a ransom? Perhaps he should go back to bargain, to show he was not a sucker. The sum was more than twice the value of Chen Hap Sing. The shack was a short walk away, he could go back. Surely he could get the man down to seven hundred and fifty, or to fix a price in dollars. It would be easier to obtain the dollars. He should go back. The wind rustled the bamboo leaves. Percival did not get out of the car. Instead, he started the engine, put the Peugeot in gear, and allowed it to go forward. He told himself that Dai Jai was safe, that it was all about the price, nothing more.
PERCIVAL GUIDED THE CAR OUT THROUGH the bamboo, past the graveyard, his fingers seized on the wheel. He turned onto the road, a rope of ochre dirt that wound through the forest. As if driving itself now, the car gathered speed, followed the path. Percival saw before him a line of dry blood, the skin of a shaved head split open, water falling drip by drip. He rolled the window down, greedy for fresh air.
He forced himself to focus on the trees, a comforting green curtain of leaves. As the car crested a hill, he caught sight of a dark shadow above in the canopy. The Peugeot glided past an old French army watchtower high on stilts. When they had driven to Cap St. Jacques for family holidays, Dai Jai had often asked to stop so he could climb one for the view. One of his school friends bragged of having done so and had dared Dai Jai to do the same. Percival had always refused to stop, telling Dai Jai that there wasn’t enough time. He did not tell his son that it was often to the watchtowers that villagers had been taken for night-time abuses by the black-skinned soldiers whom the French marooned in these remote places. Screams travelled farther from a height. It would be bad luck to visit such a place. Following the withdrawal of the French army from Vietnam, the stations soon became obsolete. As the next war found its rhythm, the Americans fought differently, jumping from place to place like grasshoppers in their helicopters. Percival noticed his hands aching, willed them to loosen.
Around a bend, the road folded down once more out of wild jungle, into the marching rubber trees. In the very early years of the school, before the departure of the French, when Percival was scrabbling for a few students and a little money, they drove along this road in an old Deux Chevaux. The low hills had strained that car, so Percival drove with one eye on its temperature gauge. They stayed in a single-room beach cottage so small that, when lowered, the mosquito net covered not just the bed but the entire floor. In the evenings, once Dai Jai was asleep, Percival and Cecilia sat on the verandah, listened to the surf, allowed themselves to gradually disappear into dusk. They drank rice beer and, using a charcoal brazier, cooked skewers of fresh squid and prawns that Percival bought from the fishermen’s baskets for a nighttime snack.
Cecilia’s family fortune was gone soon after the war. Much of it had been sunk with the Imperial Japanese Fleet, the remainder lost in risky ventures that Sai Tai had pursued to regain the family’s position. The news had come that Sai Tai was reduced to living in the servants’ quarters of her house on Des Voeux Road and renting out the house itself. Percival was secretly glad. This turn of events had dampened Cecilia’s criticism of his own modest business advancements following the war.
Enjoying the simple pleasures of these beach holidays, having capitulated to exhaustion, they were better to each other. It was a relief, as if the patient noise of the water substituted for the racket of their usual fighting in Cholon. Even after they had divorced, Percival remained glad to have memories of Cap St. Jacques, though on the few occasions he had mentioned it, Cecilia pretended she had no recollection of the good times.
When crew-cut Americans in civilian clothes became more common in Saigon, the Percival Chen English Academy began to make decent profits. Once U.S. Army uniforms became a common sight, the school was soon making more money than Percival and Cecilia had ever imagined it could. They took a membership at the Cercle Sportif, an extravagance Cecilia had long coveted, now a minor expense. Percival bought a new Peugeot 403. The gears were changed by means of pushing square white buttons on the dash. Sometimes, when he reached to change the radio station, Percival would instead shift gears, causing the car to struggle and stall. Dai Jai thought this was very funny. But even with money, Percival and Cecilia fought just as much, perhaps more. Cecilia wished to holiday in Europe, and Percival had no interest. She would go alone, she said, and he told her not to bother coming back. When she discovered that he had sent thousands of piastres through the Teochow Clan to support China’s Great Leap Forward, she dismissed him as a fool. She had headaches at night, and Percival discovered the charms of Mrs. Ling’s introductions.
For their holidays, they began to rent a seaside villa from a Frenchman. The house’s cook prepared at least five courses every night. He could cook French, Vietnamese, and a little Chinese, in keeping with the languages he spoke. His specialty was sea emperor’s soup—a hot-and-sour broth heavy with pineapple, taro stems, prawns, and scallops. Dai Jai asked about this soup for weeks before going to Cap St. Jacques, and Percival would assure his son that the cook would make it. The villa was big enough that Cecilia and Percival could avoid one another, and they found it increasingly easy to do so.
Dai Jai was happiest during those beach holidays, for it was the only time he was able to attract his father’s attention. In town, Percival was always preoccupied with the school, mah-jong games, money-circle dinners, and lovers. Each morning at Cap St. Jacques, Dai Jai was anxious to rush to the beach, and each morning Percival checked that his son’s charm was securely fastened. Once, he said to his wife, “It will keep him safe.”
“He is a boy. He will lose the lump of gold. Then, because you are so superstitious, you will mistake it for a terrible sign rather than simply a waste of money.”
Through a gap in the trees, Percival saw a flash of sun, blue water in the distance, then took a breath of salt air. Percival realized he was driving towards the sea rather than towards the shanties that fringed Saigon. Not thinking, he had taken this direction. The car had brought him almost to the ocean. Percival eased on the brakes, let the car coast down a gentle slope and looked for an open spot to turn around. Then on a flat section, he took his foot off the brake pedal and put it back on the gas. It must be good luck to revisit these memories, for why else would the water be coming into view? Why else would his hands and his car have taken him here?
He tried not to think of Dai Jai, with the height of a man but the fragility of a boy, in an interrogation room furnished with a bucket, chairs, a bench, and an oil drum. Push it away. To dwell upon danger might itself bring bad luck. He made a quick entreaty to the ancestral spirits, forced himself to stare at the road. Beneath the wheels, the ground became a softer mix of earth and sand blown up from the sea. Through the open side window his eyes traced the line of searing white beach. With Cap St. Jacques just around the corner, he stopped short, parked beneath a tall palm. The fishermen’s boats were pulled up after their early morning work, long since dry. Percival removed his shoes and got out of the car, walked a few steps and worked his feet into the warm sand. The palm fronds whispered reassurance.
Hadn’t