The Headmaster’s Wager. Vincent Lam
1933, on his first visit back to China after three years away, Chen Kai brought enough silver coins with him to buy two li of stream-fed rice paddy. He rented it out so that Muy Fa would have an income even without his remittances. He hosted a dinner for the village and roasted two fat pigs and three geese to celebrate becoming a landlord. He poured liquor freely for the village men, and gave everyone red-dyed eggs as if he were celebrating a birth.
During that visit, Chen Kai lavished his son with Annamese treats and hard English candies. They went for walks in Zhong Shan Park, where they watched the fat goldfish in ponds and snacked on candied peanuts. Chen Kai gave Chen Pie Sou painted French lead soldiers and took him to play with them on their newly bought land. They played “Manchuria,” making the red-and-blue figurines the Chinese and using lumps of mud for the Imperial Japanese Army. Chen Pie Sou liked to be General Ma Zhanshan, and he always defeated the Japanese at the 1931 battle at Nenjiang Bridge, stomping gleefully on the lumps of mud. They played this so often that Chen Pie Sou came to believe this was what had actually happened. At night, Chen Kai made a point of filling the kang with heaps of coal, making it so hot that it was difficult for Chen Pie Sou to sleep.
Chen Kai doted upon his son during the day, but was distracted in the evenings. Every night he greeted visitors as if he were holding court—men who sought advice about travelling to the Gold Mountain, men who hoped to borrow money, and men who wished to taste French brandy. His success abroad had transformed Chen Kai from pauper to landlord, a celebrity in his own village. Chen Pie Sou longed for his father to sit at his side while he fell asleep. He lay on the kang each night listening to the words of his father and the other men become slurred with drink, excited with ever wilder and grander stories of sublime foreign pleasures, and fortunes of property and gold. Chen Pie Sou toyed with the lump at his neck. How could such a small, rough piece of metal be so valuable?
Before departing, Chen Kai paid his son’s school fees for the next year. He had noticed that his son liked eggs, and promised to leave enough money that the boy could eat an egg every day.
“Must you leave again, Father?” Chen Pie Sou asked.
“I must go back to earn money. For your eggs.”
“But I don’t need so many eggs. And you have bought two li already. We are wealthy landlords now.”
“You think so because you’ve never seen wealth, real wealth.” He tousled Chen Pie Sou’s hair. “Son, amongst the Annamese it is so easy to make money. We Chinese are smarter than they are and can get rich from them. It would be foolish for me to stay in Shantou.”
“But when you have enough, you will come back.”
“Yes, yes, I will, but … I don’t have enough just yet.”
“How much is enough?”
In his father, Chen Pie Sou now sensed a hunger for something that he could not understand. Perhaps his father could not express it. When he had first left Shantou in 1930, Chen Kai had been desperate to find a way to feed his family. He had been agitated by a need that Chen Pie Sou knew in the gnawing feeling in his belly each morning, in the careful rice portions and small pieces of bony meat that they sometimes ate. Now there was enough money to eat eggs every day, but his father wanted something more. Chen Kai had an empty space that needed to be filled, but Chen Pie Sou could not understand what must be obtained to satisfy that void and bring his father home.
“I’ll know when I have it. Then I will return to China for good.”
Now, staring at the ceiling beams of Chen Hap Sing, Percival remembered Dai Jai as a small boy. Percival had often sat at his son’s side at bedtime. Even after Dai Jai no longer needed someone to be at his bedside, Percival would sometimes sit listening for Dai Jai’s breathing to slow. After the breaths became deep and measured, the boy’s limbs would shift. Arms and legs relaxed into sleep, the alertness of day drained out of them. On some nights, particularly if he and Cecilia were not talking, Percival would then go out to fill his eyes with light, his hands with money, his lap with a girl. He consumed all of these voraciously, because they promised to fill a void. But then after these fleeting ecstasies, he emerged more empty.
It occurred to him that he could get out of bed, go find a game and a girl. This thought came like a sign on a road, to a place that he had no wish to visit just now. All of those distractions which had been so enticing in their moment felt like nothing, not even their promise of satisfaction could be summoned. If only he could sit at Dai Jai’s bedside, watching him fall asleep.
PERCIVAL OBTAINED ADVANCES ON TUITION FOR the next semester. He went to money-lending circles, took as many shares as he could, and then used this cash to buy gold. His monthly repayments would be huge, but he would worry about that later. The Peugeot went to a garage as guarantee on a loan. Percival visited the Teochow Clan Association treasurer and was able to borrow two hundred and fifty taels, though only by signing a promissory note on Chen Hap Sing. This was a worry, for the head of the association had always admired the old trade house. Even with Percival and Cecilia’s combined efforts, it was not easy to find so much gold on short notice. His nightmares—of Dai Jai’s splitting skull, or of falling towards the Gold Mountain—woke him nightly in a panic. Daytime was the painful daze of sleep deprivation, as he desperately traded everything, anything, for more gold.
Three weeks after the meeting in the shack, and over a month following the arrest, Percival obtained the last few taels one evening by pawning his Tissot wristwatch. He called Mak. He had accumulated five hundred and ninety taels. He phoned Cecilia, who he knew had raised four hundred and ten, and went to her house. She had her portion wrapped in two cloth bundles. She handed them to Percival. “I’m counting on you to get our son back.”
“I’ve sent word to Mak, to arrange a meeting.”
Cecilia embraced Percival, but when he put his arms around her, she pushed him away, tears in her eyes. “Go.”
The next morning, Percival ate his breakfast on the balcony. Below, on the pink stone steps of St. Francis Xavier, the Catholic priests and Buddhist monks chatted amiably. Percival wondered if he should donate to the church. He had already given especially generous alms to the local temple and lit one of the gigantic incense coils in prayer for Dai Jai. Percival had never been interested in the white man’s faith, but perhaps he should give the church something, just in case it might help. He ate without tasting. Foong Jie was putting a sliced boiled egg in his noodles every morning. She must have noticed how little he was eating. He picked at the egg. He stared at Dai Jai’s vacant chair. Foong Jie had tried to put it away when Dai Jai was arrested, but Percival stopped her from tempting such bad luck. Each morning, he willed himself to sit across from the empty chair. Mak arrived early, well before the start of classes. The fortune in gold sat on the table, two briefcases, two cloth bundles. Percival did not dare let them out of his sight. Mak glanced at the hoard, sat down, and said, “The meeting is today. In the same place.”
“In the countryside? How will I get there?”
“I’ve borrowed a car for you—Chief Mei’s. It has a police plate, so they won’t search it at checkpoints. Safer for the ransom. I told Mei it was the least he could do for you.”
“You think of everything, friend.”
“Get that gold off your hands,” said Mak. “All of Cholon knows what you have here.”
Percival pulled the small pistol out of his pocket and checked the two rounds.
Mak said, “Hou jeung, leave it with me.”
“I have to be sure to get Dai Jai.”
“You will. That won’t help you.” When Percival did not reply, Mak said, “Just do as he says. He could easily turn the gun on you, old friend. Have you ever shot one?”
“No,” said Percival, searching Mak’s face. He wanted to ask, Who is he? Why do you trust him?
Mak realized the question in Percival’s eyes. He said, “A friend of a friend.”
Percival opened one of the cases. He looked at the gold, the smaller