The Headmaster's Wager Read online

  “So you see,” Percival said to Jacqueline, “I weaned my father from opium, but perhaps, if I had been more protective after he recovered, he would still be alive. I failed. I should have protected him better. He could have returned to China after the war. He would be enjoying his old age in comfort.”

  The more he told her of his secrets, and as she accepted them along with the familiarity of their bed, the less Percival could deny that he hoped for Jacqueline each day. He must be careful that Cecilia didn’t find out. He wouldn’t put it past her to write to Dai Jai that his father was with a métisse. The boy might misunderstand. After all, he was too young to know that being lovers was not the same as love.

  HE SAID ONE AFTERNOON, “IT’S STRANGE for me, to be with you.”

  “Why? Am I strange, or are we strange?”

  He thought for a moment, and embraced her, teasing, “You taste like milk. Yes, that’s it. A yellow woman tastes only of woman.”

  Jacqueline laughed and said, “Of course you think so. Your tongue is Chinese. Perhaps that is the difference, rather than anything to do with me. Besides, if what you say is true, I should taste half of milk and half of woman.”

  “That’s it, then.” He stroked her arm. “You are half-foreigner. It confuses my mouth. How should it know what to taste?”

  She stiffened. “I’m a foreigner? What a strange thing for me to hear from you, when I was born here and you were not.” She twisted her hair in her fingers.

  “I didn’t mean anything …”

  She shook her hair out, smoothed it back, and laughed. “The yellow think I am more white. The white see the yellow. People always see the portion of other more clearly than that of self.” She pulled the sheet up over her bare chest.

  “You’ve never told me about your parents.”

  “Have you asked?”

  “Would you tell me something about them? ”

  “My mother was a Vietnamese peasant who played at being European. My father was a French engineer who was bored of French women. My mother dreamed of Paris, but never saw it. So there is my story. I am here.” She looked out the window.

  “Lucky for me, then.”

  “That I am here?” She placed her hand on his arm. “I am with you, a Chinese, so why do you care what my parents are? You enjoy me, regardless.”

  “If your father knew you were here, he would be angry.”

  “He doesn’t know.”

  “Of course, you come here, to keep this secret. They are in Saigon then, your parents?”

  “A long time ago my father broke his promise to send for us.”

  She explained to Percival that her father had to go ahead, he said, when he left for France in 1955. It was easier to get the documents in Paris, supposedly, and would take no more than two months. He had left enough for them to live on for three months, to pay the rent, the dues at the Cercle Sportif, to eat in restaurants, to buy goodbye gifts for friends and greeting gifts for his family while he arranged their passage to France. He had left money for them to have travel clothes made. The money would have been a decade’s expenses for an Annamese peasant, but it was just a few months of their costs in Saigon at the time. After three months, the French embassy still knew nothing of the visas and immigration documents that he was supposed to arrange. His former employer claimed to have no French address for him. Another month passed. The rent was a month overdue, and they ate only steamed rice and vegetables. The day before the next rent was due, Jacqueline and her mother slipped out of the bright, spacious apartment in Saigon, each with as much clothing stuffed into suitcases as they could carry away, to move back with her mother’s family in the village of Thanh Ha.

  “Before we left Saigon, we used to go to films at night. They screened them on the patio at the Cercle. I intended to become a famous French actress and learned all the lines. The pure-white girls made fun of me for it, but I knew they were wrong. I would wear pancake makeup, which I had read all the great stars used liberally, and no one would see my mixed blood. Then, when my father abandoned us, I realized they had been right all along. I had been the fool.”

  In their home village, Jacqueline’s aunties snickered that her mother was no better than them in the end. In any case, how could she have let her Frenchman go ahead to France? Open legs and empty hands, they laughed. The fool. Jacqueline’s cousins used to snatch the rice from her bowl and say, “We can’t let you eat such rough native food. Wait until we find you some biscuits and milk.” Soon, Jacqueline and her mother returned to the city, to the squalid Sum Guy district, in the mud flats across from Cholon.

  “Many French were leaving in ’55,” said Percival, as if this excused the abandonment. “Or perhaps something happened to him.”

  “When she realized he was not coming, my mother cried over all the money we had thrown away. I felt so bad about all the ice creams, films, lime sodas, and frites that I had enjoyed. I had loved those things, but suddenly I hated them, hated myself for missing them. I hated everything French for a while, but I could not stay that way forever—as you say, I taste of milk. My mother believed he must have died. She made me pray to him at the ancestral altar. A year later, we heard that he married again in France. A French girl with bad teeth, from a good family that owned a factory. His mother had a bride waiting, they said.”

  Percival said quietly, “I’m sorry for your mother. For you.”

  She laughed. “I have become serene about my situation. One looks forward. It’s the only way to survive.”

  “What did your mother do?”

  “After my father, no Vietnamese would ever marry her. Because of me, there was no hiding her involvement with a Frenchman. She was tainted. Men thought her pretty enough, but she could never be a wife. My mother decided that if men were going to leave her alone in the bed after having what they wanted, they should leave some piastres.”

  “Was it your mother, then, who brought you to Mrs. Ling?” Was that all he was? A customer in an inherited profession?

  “Oh, no. She wanted me to study, to be educated. She would be ashamed, if she knew what I was doing.” She blushed. “Although this is not how I expected it to turn out.”

  Percival wished, as he often did nowadays, that he had not met her in Room 28 of the Sun Wah Hotel. “Well, you have chosen me,” he said. “I was wrong if I ever thought it was the other way around.” He would have paid her ten times more, and he wished that he wasn’t paying her at all.

  She nodded. “Yes, and I come and go as I please.”

  “I’ll keep it secret,” he said hastily, afraid already of losing her. “Will your mother stop us … if she learns of it?”

  Jacqueline looked to the window. She said, “My mother has been gone a few months now.”

  “Where?”

  “She went to visit our relatives in the village. In Thanh Ha. It was at the end of the dry season. There was a gun battle that night, between the Viet Cong and the government soldiers.” Jacqueline’s eyes fell to the crumpled sheets between them. She turned away slightly.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, feeling the uselessness of the words. Thanh Ha was often in the news, with repeated announcements that it had been “pacified.” He put his arm around her. “She was political?”

  “Not at all. A stray bullet. I wasn’t even with her when she died. I was in Sum Guy studying for exams. I had to borrow for her funeral.”

  “And now you are here.”

  “With you.” She began to dress.

  “My father … He ran away from this house across the square into a moonless night, into a war,” Percival told her. “That was the last time I saw him. He was trying to get to China. I often wonder if my father might have been mistaken for someone’s enemy—a bystander victim like your mother. Along the border, the Japanese and the Chinese were fighting viciously at that time.”

  “Shooting someone can be a simple mistake.” She stopped dressing, allowed herself to cry. He stroked her hair. His cheek became wet with her tears. And
then his own, he realized. He had only sought a girl for a night.

  He did not possess the words he needed. Finally, their arms released one another. The only thing he could think to say was, “Do I give you enough money?” More tears came from her eyes, but she said nothing. He fumbled for money, seized a handful from his wallet without counting, some more, put it down before her, could not bear to look at it. She dressed quickly, tucked the piastres into her pocket. She touched her lips to his cheek, and vanished out the door.

  Percival watched her from the balcony, as he did each time she left Chen Hap Sing. The afternoon light was beginning to soften. She wore a simple conical hat, and as it drifted down the street he saw how she wore it low to keep her handsome face out of view. Soon, she disappeared in the crowd, like a cat moving unseen, away from danger. What had wedged between his desire and its fulfilment? Where did regret creep in between the two? Regret at having found love in this way, with this métisse. That’s what it was, he might as well admit it to himself. Meanwhile regret at having gone too quickly. At having paid for something priceless? Usually money made things clean. Now it filled him with a sadness for everything else that he wanted from this girl. He should rest, lie down to calm his wild emotions, which were bleeding into his thoughts—a dangerous thing.

  Percival tried to lie down but could not stay still. He got up, went down to the sitting room and paced until it was dark. When the night had cleared the air, he stood up, went to the radio, and tuned in to the shortwave broadcast from home. There was a news report on the triumphant progress of the revolution of culture, a clip of an address by Mao. It sounded just like many others. He listened attentively, trying to guess what might be happening to Dai Jai beyond the bland words of his letters and the radio news, which seemed to be more predictable, more formulaic each month. He had turned the radio on for something reassuring, something solidly Chinese, but the Mandarin-speaking announcer reminded him that he ought to feel embarrassed about Jacqueline, that he should be ashamed to be in love with a foreigner. She was mixed, yes, and neither part was Chinese.

  CHAPTER 12

  ON AN AFTERNOON OF THICK BREEZES and grey clouds, Jacqueline appeared in Percival’s room just as he was choosing a tie to wear with his white tussore silk suit.

  “You look very handsome.”

  He was startled. “I’m sorry. I have an important meeting today.” He was genuinely sorry, and wondered if they had time for a brief tryst—but Mak had warned him that Peters was very punctual.

  “Wear a red one, for luck,” she said.

  He held one up, too gaudy. “I should appear respectable.” He selected a thin black one.

  “Who is it with?” she asked, kissing him tenderly on the corner of the mouth.

  He stepped back and began to do the tie. It choked him. “An American. About a school matter.” Who else but an American would wish to meet at the hottest hour of the day? Mak had said that it was almost a fait accompli. Peters had been carefully led by Mak to come up with the idea himself of certifying schools. At first, he had been put off by the prospect of having to assess all the English schools in the area. Perhaps it would be easier to embark on a trial with one school, Mak had suggested, offering up the Percival Chen English Academy.

  Even better, Mak had explained to Percival with obvious relish, Peters was involved in new State Department projects that might require hiring many graduates of the school. American jobs were what gave their diplomas value. It was essential, Mak had told Percival, that Peters felt confident in Percival. Today was their first formal meeting. Percival also knew that he still owed half of the original debt, still a large sum. He had repaid a fortune already, but the interest payments ran away ahead of him.

  “It’s at the Cercle Sportif, and I must be there in half an hour.” He looked at his watch. “There’s just enough time to get to Saigon.”

  “May I come along?” Jacqueline said. “I haven’t been to the Cercle since I was a child.” Had he ever seen her there? Her mother would have given up their membership around the time that he and Cecilia had taken one.

  Percival hesitated. He would like to take her, but no Chinese would bring a woman to a business meeting. Then again, Americans sometimes appeared at lunch with their wives or their secretaries. Jacqueline was wearing a simple, presentable skirt and blouse. A beautiful girl could improve the mood of any discussion. “Of course you can,” he said, and they went down to the waiting car.

  Han Bai seemed surprised to see Jacqueline, but said nothing. He held the door open for her. She was happy during the drive to Saigon and told Percival some more of her memories from the club. At the Cercle, with Jacqueline on his arm, Percival squinted out from beneath the awning across the patio of the inner courtyard. Even under the overcast sky, Mak’s pressed shirt glowed brilliant white. Mak had chosen the most discreet table, at the quiet end of the patio, nestled near a little clutch of oleanders. He sat with his guest, laughing with uncharacteristic enthusiasm. The tall American must have made a joke. Percival saw the gwei lo lean forward with a further remark, and Mak dutifully roared with laughter. Mak looked up, saw Percival, and nodded. The American looked up and smiled that wide-open smile so many of them wore for all occasions. Percival stepped out from the shade of the awning, and after two steps he saw Mak’s face fall into confusion. Halfway across the patio, as he tried to decipher Mak’s expression, he realized that he was walking alone. Jacqueline’s hand had slipped from his arm, and he looked back to see her standing, frozen. Percival retraced his steps. He took her hand and whispered, “Don’t worry, just smile. I’m going to say you are my secretary.”

  “Why is Teacher Mak here?”

  “He arranged the meeting, of course,” said Percival.

  Jacqueline said, “I must leave now.”

  He stared at Jacqueline, his beautiful lover who spoke native Vietnamese, a little French, and very good English. “How do you know he is a teacher?”

  “I will find my own way out,” she said softly. “I just wanted to see the Cercle again. I didn’t think …”

  She was a student at the school. She slipped into his room when the morning classes let out. It was the one rule he held to, that he did not bed the students. But how could Percival have imagined that a student of his school would be at the Sun Wah Hotel? Percival tried to think through his panic, to think of what was best, what needed to be done. It would not look right for the headmaster to appear with a girl and for her to suddenly flee. The American must have a good impression of this meeting, must feel confident in the Percival Chen English Academy.

  “I didn’t know Teacher Mak would be here.” Then she pleaded, “You go to your meeting, it will be successful. Go.”

  “You can’t leave now,” he declared. “What kind of secretary would leave her boss before an important meeting?” He put her hand firmly on his arm, and proceeded across the patio.

  Mak’s face was stone. He said, “Headmaster, we are here to do business,” looking straight at Jacqueline.

  “Which is why my secretary has joined us, in case I need her to take notes,” said Percival. “A pleasure, Mr. Peters.” The waiter approached.

  Percival managed to remember one of Mak’s pointers, that many American officials did not drink alcohol in the daytime. A pitcher of cold lime water sat on the table, and Percival flagged the waiter for two more glasses. Peters was clean-shaven, and his blond hair was clipped in the neat, too-short fashion of American military officers and junior government officials. He wore his shirt open, and Percival regretted wearing a tie. He felt as if he were being strangled.

  “Rat vui mung duoc quen biet ban, ong giao su,” said Peters. He was pleased to see the esteemed teacher again. He bowed slightly, his eyes on Jacqueline, who sat between him and Percival.

  “Please, call me Percival,” said Percival in English, “and your Vietnamese is very good.” Mak sat opposite.

  “Toi noi duoc chut it,” said Peters, making an obvious but reasonably successful effor
t with the language.

  “You speak it very well,” said Percival, “It is also a foreign language to me.” Mak shot him a look. Perhaps he shouldn’t have said that, or maybe it was the girl that earned this reproach. There were so many students, he told himself. How could Mak expect him to know them all? He hadn’t taught regularly for years. It’s not as if he went down to the classroom to seduce a student.

  “This is Mr. Peters’ second visit to this country,” said Mak. “Decorated for bravery. Nineteen sixty-four, am I right, Mr. Peters?”

  “Yes, I was in uniform last time I was here,” said Peters. “Went back stateside, went to college, got a nice quiet government job with the State Department. Guess where it landed me?”

  “At least you are in Saigon instead of some firebase,” said Percival. He avoided Mak’s eye. Percival absolved himself. He did not look at students in that way, had learned not to, so of course he had not recognized her at Mrs. Ling’s side. It was not his fault. “This is a civilized place.”

  “Some say it is,” said the American. “Except for the odd grenade, and the politics.”

  The waiter brought the two glasses and poured from the sweating pitcher of water.

  Mak handed Peters a glass. The American couldn’t keep from eyeing Jacqueline.

  “How is your work going?” said Percival. “You told me a little about it when we met at the bar. I’ve been wanting to hear more.”

  Peters said, “When I was in uniform, up near Pleiku, we had two enemies—the Cong, and the guys issuing crazy orders from desks in Saigon. Now, I’m a desk. There are advantages, of course. Saigon contains much beauty.” This, he addressed to Jacqueline, Percival was convinced. Why had he agreed to let Jacqueline accompany him? He could have brought her to the Cercle anytime she wished. There had been no need to bring her now. Percival was tempted to ask the American whether the feminine beauty of the country had also drawn him back to Vietnam, but this was certainly not what Mak wished him to say.