The Headmaster's Wager Page 19

  From the balcony, Percival sometimes saw the Imperial Army cook from the cavalry mess come to the family’s door to demand eggs. The mother explained that the eggs did not belong to her but had been entrusted to her for hatching, but the cook was not deterred. Some of the Imperial officers had a taste for the delicacy of a boiled egg with the chick inside. At night, drunken soldiers lewdly taunted the woman and her daughters. This was the disadvantage of the otherwise cosy shelter. After a while, Percival saw that the family had been hired, or likely compelled, by the Japanese to feed their horses and sweep up the dung, so all day they would be turning eggs, minding horses, fetching eggs, and delivering chicks.

  Once, just as Percival came out onto the balcony and greeted his neighbour, Percival saw Mak stuffing a notebook into his pocket. Was he taking notes on the soldiers’ activities? If the notebook were a personal diary, there would be no reason to hide it. It was better not to ask.

  There was a bumper rice crop that year, which the Japanese soldiers put in guarded warehouses and shipped down the Saigon River to their armies throughout Asia. Soon, there was widespread hunger in Cholon and Saigon. Even some French looked thin. No one dared complain, though it made people bitter to see the Imperial Army horses so well fed while people starved. If they were lucky, people ate thin millet gruel. Children picked through the Imperial Army’s refuse heap. Cecilia lamented having married Percival to escape to a place of rich rice fields, only to be starved there by the Japanese just as they had been in Hong Kong. Ba Hai traded silk clothing, good furniture, and antique scrolls in return for expensive canned foods which only she and the foreman ate. Percival organized the household workers to smuggle tiny quantities of illicitly bought paddy into the smallest, most hidden threshing room at Chen Hap Sing, just enough for the household and a little bit with which to barter.

  One day, the egg-hatchery woman from the alleyway came to see Percival. She asked if he could spare some rice husks. Since Percival knew that she worked for the Japanese, he was suspicious. “We don’t have any rice husks,” he said. “Why would we? We have not been threshing rice for a long time.”

  “Don’t worry, Chen Sang,” she said, addressing him respectfully as Mr. Chen even though she was several years his senior, “I will not betray you. I just smell sometimes that your cook burns rice husks. I don’t know where you get them. If you ever have extra, I can use them in the beds where I hatch my eggs.”

  Percival told her to come back after dark. It was the least he could do, to give a few rice husks to a neighbour. Percival could even spare a little rice, but he was afraid to give that to her right away. If she were spying for the Japanese, the rice would be clear evidence that he had been threshing paddy in Chen Hap Sing. The husks could be explained, that they were scavenged as fuel.

  Perhaps one night he could secretly leave a few kilos of rice for her hungry family. That would be safer. First, however, he had to be sure that nothing bad came of giving her the husks. There was no such thing as being too cautious when the Imperial Japanese Army was camped just outside the door. He told the cook to give the bags of husks to the neighbour when she asked—but only at night, and only after checking to make sure there were no Kempeitai around. The woman began to come regularly for husks, and somehow, over several weeks, her daughters’ faces brightened. Colour returned to their cheeks, and they no longer had the anxious look of constant hunger. So, Percival did not take the risk of giving them rice. Somehow, they were being fed.

  Some months later, on a dry, bright day, a stone-faced Kempeitai knocked on the door of Chen Hap Sing. Percival was terrified that their tiny amount of black market trade had been discovered. Was it better to deny the truth or offer a bribe? People were executed for doing either.

  But this was not the reason that the Kempeitai had come. He ordered everyone in the house to attend a public trial, even Chen Kai. Percival and Cecilia walked slowly, blending in with the servants. There was no question of refusing. Percival was shocked to see that the family from the alley were on the top steps of the post office, the parents and their two daughters kneeling before an Imperial Army officer.

  The square was full of people forced to attend this gathering. The crowd was hushed, and the only sound was that of the charges being read. They were interpreted by the army translator, an educated Vietnamese who had taught classical Chinese and Japanese literature in Saigon before the occupation. Percival was terrified that he might hear rice husks mentioned. Was the family accused of black marketeering? He thought of taking Cecilia’s hand and trying to slip away, but the Kempeitai policed the crowd carefully.

  A Japanese colonel who had recently arrived to take charge of the stables was conducting the trial. He shouted in Japanese, and the translator shouted in Cantonese, seemingly trying to match the vigour of the colonel. “This man and his wife were found feeding horses rice husks, having stolen the rice that was meant for the animals. Two horses have recently died from stomach ailments. These people are on trial both for theft of rice and the murder of two Imperial Japanese Army horses.” The colonel shouted at them, “They weren’t just any horses. Those were my personal horses, from Spain! Do you know the value of the horses that died?”

  “Whatever it is, sir,” said the father, “we will repay it. We will work day and night and starve ourselves to repay it.” What would the panicked father say, Percival wondered, if asked where the husks had come from?

  Percival looked around. There were soldiers in every direction. Cecilia shook with fear. The colonel shouted at the poor refugees, “Did you steal my horses’ rice to sell on the black market?”

  “No,” the husband protested. “We only took a little for our daughters.”

  The colonel was pleased with his trick. He shouted, “Then you admit to having stolen the rice! ”

  The mother began to sob. She prostrated herself on the steps of the post office and crawled to the colonel’s feet. “Have mercy, I only wanted to feed my hungry children.”

  The girls also fell on the steps, shivering with fear. The father was frozen in silence. The colonel kicked the mother away, and the translator struggled to keep up with her wailed pleas and the colonel’s annoyed responses.

  Suddenly the father lifted his head and cried out, “Spare our children, I beg you! We will pay with our lives, but spare our daughters.”

  The Japanese colonel paced back and forth. The only sound was his boots on the stone steps. Finally, he said, “I cannot ignore my responsibility. But I do wish to be fair.”

  Cecilia closed her eyes and drew close to Percival, sheltered behind him. There was a murmur of general relief. Perhaps the family would only be flogged. To one side, Percival saw Mak watching the trial, seething with rage while all around him others only cringed in fear.

  Then, from somewhere in the crowd came a laugh. Or simply a gasp. It was very brief, so quickly suppressed that the soldiers could not tell who had made this offensive sound. It might have been a swallowed cry of distress, but the new cavalry colonel yelled at the crowd, “Whoever laughed, step forward!” The translator repeated the order. No one moved. A minute felt like hours. Finally, the colonel said through the translator, “If no one will admit to their disrespect, all you dirty Chinese can pay! Fix bayonets!” The soldiers hurried to fasten their blades on the end of their rifles, made ready to lunge upon the crowd.

  Cecilia pressed herself against Percival’s back. When the bayonet charge came, he would fall over her, protect her with his own body. She might survive. Then a young man stepped forward stammering, “It was me! It wasn’t a laugh, I just made some noise, I didn’t mean—” But before he could finish what he wanted to say, the colonel had drawn his pistol and shot him in the face. He crumpled where he stood.

  “Alright,” said the colonel, turning back to the family on the steps. “I won’t behead the girls.”

  “Arigato kojaimaste, arigato,” the mother cried, bowing at his feet.

  “Instead, they will be fed rice husks.” It was n
ot clear what he meant, but it sounded better than beheading. There would likely be no escape for the parents.

  At the colonel’s next orders, the translator was stunned into silence. The Kempeitai bound the girls’ hands and feet behind them, laid the children on the top steps, and cut open their shirts. It was commanded that no one in the crowd should look away. Both mother and father wept as their daughters’ bellies and the small beginnings of breasts were exposed to the neighbourhood. The colonel barked in Japanese, at which the Kempeitai drew their short swords and held them at attention.

  The colonel gave another order, now yelling directly at the translator. The translator’s voice cracked as he shouted, “The order has been given that the Kempeitai shall cut the girls’ bellies open and fill them with rice husks.” The colonel drew his own sword, held it aloft, and with a few curt words from the colonel one of the Kempeitai rushed forward and plunged his knife into the younger child, just below her navel. She screamed, eyes wide open, as the soldier drew the blade up towards her chest. She tried to curl herself away, even as the bluish coils of her intestines spilled out on the steps.

  The Kempeitai then rushed upon both girls. They stabbed, slashed, unable to wait their turn now that it had begun, as if each man was determined to prove that he, too, was capable of madness. The colonel yelled encouragement, and the girls’ bowels were pulled out by his soldiers. Their agonizing voices filled the square, penetrated the buildings.

  Percival began to retch. He tilted forward, felt his knees buckle. His hands found the solidity of earth, and he expelled the contents of his stomach into the dirt. He saw undigested rice from breakfast, felt guilty both for having possessed it and for having vomited it. He saw quick feet, Cecilia’s shoes kicking dirt over the incriminating grains. Then he heard a commotion and looked around to see yelling Japanese soldiers, their bayonets pointed, blood-thirst in their eyes. Cecilia’s body was warm, crouched over him, and Percival heard her strangely calm voice, felt hands on his shoulders, then felt himself yanked up. Cecilia helped him to his feet. She was repeating a few words in Japanese in an obsequious tone with her best smile. They might both soon die. Cecilia bowed submissively from the waist, reciting apologies in Japanese even as the wails of the girls stained the square forever. The butchery was ongoing, and no officer was available to give these common soldiers orders to kill Cecilia and Percival, so they shoved them to the ground and turned their attention back to the performance of the Kempeitai.

  The Kempeitai were triumphant in their violence. They tore organs, clumps of life, out of their victims, stabbing, slashing, outdoing one another in cruelty. Finally, the girls’ last weak moans stopped. Their blank eyes stared out of dead faces, pale and drained of blood. They were mercifully still. The colonel hoisted a bucket of rice husks and poured them into the girls’ empty bellies.

  Some of the common Japanese soldiers cheered, and others looked frightened into paralysis, clutched their rifles to their chests. The Kempeitai bowed to their commander, who bowed in return and sheathed his sword. One young soldier had turned away from the bloody mess to weep, and a Kempeitai came over to him, took his rifle away and clubbed him in the head with it so that he fell to the ground unconscious, then struck him a few more times. Blood trickled out of the young soldier’s ear.

  Several other Kempeitai volunteered to behead the parents, and the colonel granted the honour to two whose hands were already covered in the blood of the children. The parents knelt without protest, wailing but not for their own lives. The soldier who brought his sword down on the father’s neck must have been inexperienced, and the sword got caught in the vertebrae. The man collapsed forward, blood flowing from the wound. The soldier pulled out his sword, and with his foot on the father’s back hacked with several short strokes at the neck to sever the head. He apologized, embarrassed for his lack of elegance, to his superior. The other soldier raised his sword high before bringing it down in a fast whistling arc upon the kneeling mother, and it was a terrible relief to see her head severed in one clean stroke. The colonel turned to the crowd and said via the translator, “I am in charge of the stables. There will be respect for the Imperial Japanese Army, its horses, and its food.”

  Then he ordered the crowd to disperse, and that the refugee family’s home be cleared of their belongings, as the space would be given over to the Army. Their few possessions were burned, the eggs were boiled, and the place swept out.

  That evening, Percival could hear the colonel and several of his Kempeitai singing and raising toasts in the house of the murdered family. All the eggs, with the partially grown embryos, were a special treat for the colonel and his officers to enjoy with sake. After several hours, they fell quiet. There was no moon, and there were no stars. Percival heard the snoring of the men lying very drunk in what had been the refugees’ shack. From his window, he could see that a little light fell out the front of the house between the slats of the wooden crates. They must have left an oil lamp lit, a dangerous thing to do, thought Percival.

  From the balcony of the house next door, Percival heard a voice say, “Is that you, Percival?”

  “Yes.” He went out on the balcony, where they spoke in whispers.

  “It’s Mak here. I need a favour.”

  “What is it?”

  “I need some rice husks.”

  Percival’s heart thrust itself against his chest. How did Mak know about the rice husks? Was he trying to extort money from Percival, to make him complicit in the crime of the horse-killing? Was he going to betray him to the Japanese? “Meet me downstairs. I’ll give you anything you want.”

  In the kitchen, Percival opened a bottle of cooking wine. He took several long swallows of the fiery liquid, and it gave him some courage. He heard a gentle rapping at the door and went to unlock it. Without being invited in, Mak slipped into Chen Hap Sing and shut the door.

  “Don’t light any lamps. Where are the rice husks?” he asked. “And do you have a bucket? ”

  In the kitchen, Percival found a bag of rice husks and the tin bucket into which ashes were emptied from the stove. He gave them to Mak, expecting him to leave.

  “Good, you are thinking. Give me that bottle,” said Mak. Percival handed it to him, and Mak tucked it under his arm. “Up to your balcony, quickly.”

  As Percival followed Mak up, Cecilia whispered from their darkened doorway, “What are you doing?”

  “A favour,” he said, and rushed past her. It occurred to him, as he hurried to catch up to Mak, that he did not know what he was doing, or why.

  From above, they looked down on the little thatch-roofed dwelling, heard the snoring, and saw the light from the oil lamp still spilling out. Mak poured the rice husks into the bucket and then poured the cooking wine over it. He paused to survey the square, empty. He took a match from his pocket, lit it, and tossed it into the bucket. There was a satisfying burst of blue flame. Then Mak tipped the burning husks over the side of Chen Hap Sing. The two men peered down on the little dwelling, whose thatch roof was now punctuated by the burning pinpricks. Already they could smell the first whiffs of smoke. Chen Hap Sing and the adjacent houses were built of thick mud-brick walls, but the refugees’ house was all wood and straw.

  “We had better go downstairs,” said Mak. “We don’t want to be seen in the light of the fire.” Percival showed Mak out the kitchen door and then ran from room to room to be sure there were no lights in Chen Hap Sing.

  “What have you done?” asked Cecilia, when he got to their bedroom.

  “Justice,” he said. “Quick. Get into bed. If anyone asks, we have been in bed for hours.”

  “My god, you must be crazy. You want us to be cut open next? I don’t know what you’ve done, but go to your father’s room. I don’t want to be arrested with you. I’ll deny we’re married, if I have to.”

  Percival got up and went to Chen Kai’s room, where he lay on the floor across from his father. Not long after, there were screams and shouts in Japanese. There was the soft
roar of a fire, like a wind blowing.

  In the morning, a scent of roasted meat lingered. Throughout Cholon, it was whispered that the ghosts of the dead family had taken their revenge. The surviving Kempeitai investigated, conducted several days of interrogations and beatings, withheld the meagre millet rations in order to extract a confession, but in the end declared the death accidental. Even if they didn’t believe this, thought Percival. It saved face, and there seemed to be an unspoken relief, even amongst some of the Japanese soldiers, that this colonel and several of the most violent Kempeitai who had passed out drunk in the hut were gone.

  CHAPTER 14

  ABOUT A WEEK AFTER THE ARSON, Mak came over again. He said nothing about the incident and instead asked if Percival would like to earn some money helping in the struggle against the Japanese. He said, “One of my duties is to monitor this regiment and to count their troops and horses. You have noticed, I suspect. I have been given another assignment as well, which will help the patriots in the countryside.”

  “An assignment, as part of your duties … for patriots?”

  “Yes, friend,” said Mak, looking at Percival. He added, “It may even help our Chinese allies in the north.”

  Percival could feel Mak trying to read him. He must be careful to keep some distance. Mak continued, explained that a French pharmacist at the Gral Hospital was willing to divert medications from Japanese supplies to the resistance.

  “But how can I trust you?” said Percival.

  “From time to time, I might ask you a small favour, not often. If you will be sure to help me at these times, I will always be loyal to you, as if we had been brothers by birth.” As he had already participated in the murder of a Japanese colonel, and he needed to earn money, Percival could think of no reason to refuse. He agreed, and then realized that Mak must have made the same calculation of Percival’s situation. He wondered if Mak was lonely in whatever work he did, and although he wished to know as little as possible about that work, he, too, was lonely in this foreign country. He was glad to have this pledge of loyalty from Mak.