The Headmaster's Wager (40 page)

“Yes, sir.” With that, Mak picked up something from the table, a pair of gloves. He pulled them on, spread and flexed his fingers into the tight-fitting brown leather, and drew back a fist. For the second time that day, Percival thought that this could not be real, that he must be suffering within a nightmare which stubbornly refused to end. He thought this only for a moment, an instant of confused detachment, until Mak punched Percival deep in the pit of his stomach. Percival heard himself groan, head forward, tears flowing. It was no dream.

Cho came close to Percival. “Crying already. Weaker than I thought.”

Percival struggled to speak through his pain and nausea. “I remember you, Cho. The last time I saw you, you wore a green eyeshade. You looked like an idiot, and played like one. Such bad luck, too. I notice you've cut your fingernail.”

“Ha! That's it, show some spirit! How is your luck today? It's Mr. Cho, to you. What are you waiting for, Comrade Mak?”

Cho used the word
comrade
; he was afraid of being tricked by the Americans. So, he was not a simple prison torturer at the National Police Headquarters. Again, Percival saw Mak raise his fist, and then it came—another punch deep in the gut. Though the violence was administered as if it were rote, the force was real. Cho gestured for Mak to continue, and he did. As the beating went on, Percival could not keep himself from allowing a sob. He could have taken the blows quietly, but the tears came from it being Mak's fists. The ropes kept Percival from doubling over, but he hung his head down. Snakes coiled up within him, the sick feeling of betrayal. The force of these fists was consistent, hard, just as breathtaking each time. Percival thought of Mak's hands, always perfectly groomed. The gloves were
well worn, as snug as a second skin. Once again, Mak struck his friend, and Percival wondered if he saw sadness on Mak's face.

Cho leaned in close, shouting, “Chen Pie Sou? You think we are so easy to infiltrate?” Spittle and fragments of food showered Percival's face. “Peters asked you to do this, yes? He has become suspicious of your translators! It is Peters who has sent you? Confess! He is CIA, yes? They don't use a decorated soldier to build villages! Has he smelled the enemy in his midst? He is using you to get at us? Comrade Mak, why are you so gentle today?” Cho took a step back and picked at his food. Mak struck once more. In a glint of the gaslight, Percival saw Mak's eyes begin to tear. Percival tried to speak, but could only moan with pain. Cho shouted, “Don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about.” He kicked Percival in the shin, and through the blinding pain Percival saw him eat a little morsel from his bowl. Slumped down against the ropes, coughing, he saw the shine of Cho's heavy American combat boots before one swung back and then smashed a hard toe into Percival's other leg. “Mr. Peters has sent you to catch your friend Mak, yes? He is really a spy, isn't he?”

“I have no idea if he is a spy. You are spies? You think he is like you?”

“He is not like us. He is on the wrong side. Whose side are you on?”

“Only my own, my family's,” Percival managed. “You are Viet Cong agents, then?” Percival said tiredly. “And all the students … my school. You send my graduates to watch the Americans, to spy for you.”

“
Hou jeung
, I thought that you knew a long time ago,” Mak said. “I thought you were too discreet to mention it.”

“I didn't know. But
you
know I don't care! I'm Chinese, a businessman.”

“You see, sir?” said Mak, out of breath from his exertion. “It's just as I told you.”

“Or he acts the businessman, but has been betraying us all these years,” said Cho. He turned to Percival. “Or someone else has sent you? Maybe it's not Peters? Who? Why now? Your son has been in China for years. Why all of a sudden do you want Mak to get him out?”

“I didn't know … I didn't believe how bad things were for him. Until this letter …” Percival could almost hear Cecilia's voice and
her doubts about China's revolution, her suspicion of Mak. He knew all the clever responses to her criticisms, all the dismissive comebacks, and yet had not seen that she was right, both about China and Mak.

Cho said, “You are friends with all of the important Americans in Saigon. Which one sent you? Someone discovered the school's real mission, yes? They caught you, didn't they? You are the string they seek to pull, and they hope it will bring a whole net full of fish. Did they say you would be shot as a spy unless you helped to catch us, and the rest of our network? Is that it? Or did they offer something? Mak! Help him think! ”

Mak punched hard from the left, this time into Percival's face, snapping his head around. Tears flowed from Mak's eyes, and he breathed hard.

“I don't know what you're talking about,” Percival managed to sputter.

“Perhaps some American says he can save your son? Is that it?”

“I have come here to bring Dai Jai back from China.”

“Please, don't play stupid. It's Peters, isn't it? Maybe he has promised exit papers for your sweet little
métisse
whore and the mongrel boy? We know that she has been asking. Is that your reward if you betray us? Is that the bargain? Departure from Vietnam? You Chinese have no loyalty, and your whore—”

“Don't call her that,” Percival groaned.

Cho yelled, “Why so lazy, Comrade Mak?”

Another hard blow, the right side of his head. Percival felt it arrive as if with a slight delay—like something was broken within him, slowing the sensation. He retched. After a moment, he managed, “You are paranoid.” Liquid trickled over his face into his mouth—he tasted the salt of his sweat and the metal tang of blood. “You spend too much time sitting in your little hut, imagining enemies.”

Cho was at the table, pouring the vinegar sauce over his meal. “Rest assured, Headmaster. I have had enemies.” He turned and gestured to Mak with the chopsticks to proceed. “Some of them will be with me here always, but they won't cause trouble now. Excuse the
smell. The last one could have dug his own grave a little deeper.” Mak had not moved. Cho waved at Mak again.

A hard punch in the side. Then Mak waited for his friend to draw a complete breath before landing another blow. As tears streamed down his face, Mak struck Percival over and over. The fists landed deep in the gut, hard on the chest, rained upon his shins and arms, smashed his face, the gloves now slick with blood. Mak, too, Percival realized, was being forced to pay. Cho observed, picked at his food, as Mak continued to beat the headmaster until his body was a steady, glaring agony and Percival was more aware of the sound of the blows landing than their individual force. Cho spat his questions, accused Percival of schemes and urged him to confess, but did not wait for answers. Every now and then, Percival saw that Mak waited for him to breathe.

Was a confession desired? If they wanted guilt, should he give them guilt? But Mak had said it was good that he didn't know anything. In that case, was it innocence that Cho wished to ensure?

Cho came behind Percival, seized a fistful of his hair, and pulled his head back. “Why are you here?”

Percival gasped, “Mak brought me … to rescue my son.”

“How can that be done? Is there a secret tunnel in this shack? A passage to China?”

The blood in his mouth slurred the words, “Mak can do it. He can always find a way.”

“Why can Mak do it?”

“He knows the right people.” Percival's whole face throbbed, the skin tense, already swelling. Mak always had the right contacts. Only once he said it did Percival realize—Cho was the contact who could get Dai Jai out. Why else would they be here?

“What do you mean by that?” said Cho.

“I don't know … truthfully, I don't know anymore.” Private friends could be public enemies, and the opposite was also true. During a rare night that they had been drunk together, about two years after the Japanese departure, Percival had asked Mak what he thought of Emperor Bao Dai. He asked for no special reason—he happened to see a newspaper with a caricature of the head of state
on Mak's table. The British and the Americans had given Indochina back to the French with Bao Dai as the puppet head. Mak said bitterly that half of his Viet Minh friends were pledged to destroy the new government and half had joined its army or civil service, but that some of these were each other's cousins, and still celebrated festivals together. Then Mak warily asked Percival what he thought of Bao Dai. Percival told him that he did not care about Vietnamese politics. He was Chinese. Mak nodded quietly and they drank to friendship, that their loyalty would always be that of blood brothers. The next day, it occurred to Percival through his hangover that Mak had not told him which half of his friends he was with, or what he actually thought of Bao Dai. Percival resolved not to ask again, concluded that it was best not to know or care.

Cho slapped Percival on his swollen face. “And that's what the American pig spies want, isn't it? The right people? Let us end this quickly. Save yourself the misery.”

Was there no hope? “Mak, you tell him, I am no spy,” Percival begged desperately. “We are friends, almost brothers, save me now. Save Dai Jai.” Was this the same hut? Was this the hut inside the bamboo grove, the Chinese graveyard waiting outside? He thought of Dai Jai's bruises and how little he'd said when the boy returned home after the arrest. “I must see my son again.”

The shack was quiet except for the lamp's hiss. Percival did not hear the clacking of the bamboo outside. Was the air so still today? Cho said, “Now you know who Mak's real friends are.” He stood close enough that Percival could smell the vinegar on his breath. “Do you understand now?”

“All this time, I made American friends so they could hire your spies.” Percival thought of all the sweaty hands he had shaken, all the pompous white ghosts he had endured, tolerating their back-patting and arm-punching. The graduates that Mak sent all seemed particularly intelligent, and perceptive, whenever Percival had encountered them in Saigon, at work for some American. And, now that he thought of it, they were especially earnest; Mak had chosen young people who could be drawn to a cause. They must be good spies, thought Percival
with some satisfaction. He had thought he was doing it for the school. He was, of course, and for the money. He thought of Jacqueline, hoped that she had been hiding away some of the piastres he had given her.

Cho was at the burner again, cooking some more food. He laughed over his shoulder. “The certification was Mak's most brilliant move. The special students of the Percival Chen English Academy go straight to the best American jobs … and you really believed that Mak cared so much to place them in Saigon just to justify your high tuition? Anyhow, the money has been convenient. It has become a source of funding, for our activities in the Saigon area.”

“But there is peace now.”

“There is no peace until Vietnam is united.” Cho laughed out loud. “Now that the Americans are trying to get out with the least possible embarrassment, we have a chance—to liberate all of Vietnam—but it's not done yet. Until the foreign occupiers and their capitalist collaborators are humiliated and expelled, it isn't over. Your Chinese emperors had centuries here, but in the end you were also defeated.”

“Why should I care, Cho?” Percival shouted. “I'm not for or against anyone in this country. I wanted money. Now, I want my son back. Name your price and I will pay.”

“Listen to you, speaking as if you were talking to a Saigon official,” Cho said. “As if all that was needed was to find a price. I am naturally against bringing Dai Jai out, because he is in China receiving political education. I am a great believer in such instruction.” Cho finished the last dumpling and threw the vinegar in Percival's face. It burned. “Mak convinced me that we could not ignore the situation. He said that you are emotional about Dai Jai, that in trying to get him back you might do things which could endanger the school. I admit, you are the face of the school in Saigon. If you were asking around to find people with ties to China, communists, people like us, then what would the quiet police think? What would Peters think?”

Mak said quietly, “You see,
hou jeung
, there can be no disruption, for—”

“You are more stupid than Mak thought,” Cho interrupted. “He thought you must already know about the spies we were training in
your own school. But even without knowing, you could have endangered us, by looking for a way to rescue Dai Jai.” Cho punched Percival square in the face. Percival heard his nose crack and felt it begin to bleed. Cho walked out. A fragile light entered the shack from the open door. Percival could not tell whether the light was frail because they were in deep jungle or because it was dusk. His sense of time was gone. Mak took out a handkerchief and wiped Percival's face. He poured a cup of cool water from a flask on the table and held it to Percival's lips. The gloves smelled of old sweat, of dried blood, of vomit.

“I think the worst is over. I'm sorry,
hou jeung
,” he whispered. “I've been pulling my punches, as much as I dare. If Cho thought I was going easy on you, he would beat you worse than me. I haven't forgotten you, brother.”

“Why, old friend?” Percival sobbed.

Mak dabbed at his wounds. “Dai Jai is in Communist China. Our usual friends in Saigon cannot help. It must be through the other side, the same people who got him to China. I was hoping Cho would agree to bring him out, just as a favour to me. But once I mentioned it to him, he became suspicious. Helping Dai Jai could expose our contacts, he said. Undermine our activities at the school. Then he began to speculate that as we have used you to see inside the Americans, someone might wish to use you to trap us. He began to imagine that the letter from Dai Jai might be fake, a ploy.”