The Headmaster’s Wager. Vincent Lam

“You are sure that he will give me Dai Jai?”

      “Have I ever led you wrong?”

      Percival closed the case, clasped it shut. To pay for its contents, he would have to return more than he had borrowed. That was the nature of debt. These were sums that his own father could only have dreamed about when he left China. It did not matter, as long as Dai Jai was safe.

      “Mak, will you take a few thousand piastres to the church for me? I’ll pay you back.”

      “But you’re not religious. Don’t worry, you’ll be safe at the meeting.”

      “It’s not my safety I’m thinking about.” He handed his friend the gun.

      After breakfast, with the gold in the spare tire well of Mei’s Citroën DS with police plates, Percival set off and drove northeast out of the city. He nodded to the soldiers, only slowing at the checkpoints, which is what a district police chief would have done. They saluted. When he arrived at the bamboo grove, he turned from the main road, drove past the graveyard, walked through the bamboo to the concrete shack, and found that the door was already open.

      He called out, “Dai Jai?”

      A voice, not his son’s. “Come into the centre of the room.” It was the same man as before.

      He went in. He hesitated, his eyes slow to adapt to the dark.

      “Please walk forward, Headmaster Chen. Where is the gold?”

      “Where is my son?”

      “This is not your school. I ask. You answer. The gold?”

      “In the car.”

      “The keys.”

      “I want to see my son.”

      “Do you suppose, Chinaman, that you are in a position to make demands? Walk forward three paces,” said the man.

      His orders had military precision, thought Percival. He still could not make out a face. It figured that the ransomer was a soldier, for how else could he get to Dai Jai? All of the South Vietnamese Army could be bought, thought Percival scornfully, gratefully. Percival walked into the middle of the room, his feet nervous on the uneven ground. Emerging from darkness, the bench, the oil drums, the stocky figure. Where was his son? There was only one silhouette.

      “Put down the car keys.”

      “I want my son first.” Percival heard his voice rise.

      Quick footsteps, and then from behind an arm curled like a snake around his neck. Cold metal pressed into Percival’s ear, a metallic click. The arm tightened, choked.

      “Let’s not complicate this,” said the man, squeezing. “Where in the car is the gold?”

      “Under the spare tire.” Lightheaded, almost fainting, Percival felt the keys snatched from his hand.

      “You Chinese always find money. Just like rats find garbage. Sit down on the ground.”

      He half-fell down. “Where is Dai Jai?”

      “Put your hands on your head.” The man backed away from him towards the door.

      “I have brought you the gold.” Percival could not keep himself from pleading. “Where is my son?”

      “Go home.” He stood at the door, blotting out the light. “My advice is that the best thing for you is to go home.”

      There was a clang of metal. The door slammed shut, and then darkness. Percival was alone. He heard the man doing something to the door, and then a rustle in the grass going away from the shack. He rushed to the door. He pushed on it, but it did not open. It was blocked from the outside. Booby trapped? He pounded it with his fists. But even if it was wired with a grenade, why should he care, if he did not recover Dai Jai? Percival took a few steps back and ran into the door with all his weight. It shifted a little. He felt a cold sweat, furious with himself. He had been cheated of a fortune and did not have his son.

      He cursed in the Teochow dialect, then in Cantonese. He struck the corrugated metal with his shoulder, and heard a slight crack, felt a little give. From farther back, he ran at the door again. There was the sound of wood splintering, and the door opened enough to allow a crack of light. He backed away, ran at it once more and struck it with his other shoulder. Again and again, each time rewarded by the sound of wood splitting, until something snapped and the door sighed open. It had been blocked from the outside by a rod of green bamboo hung on hooks.

      Through the leaves of the grove, the Citroën shone white hot. He stumbled towards it, batting away the heavy growth. The trunk was open, the spare on the ground. Only now, his limbs ached with the effort of his escape. Percival felt empty. His hands bled. Then, as he saw the car better through the shafts of bamboo, he noticed that the passenger-side rear door was ajar. He heard a plaintive sound, a muffled voice, and ran towards the car, ignoring the sharp leaves which drew quick lines of blood on his forearms. He shouted, “I’m coming!” Dai Jai was on the floor, blindfolded and bound. “You are here!” Percival rushed to pull his son up and helped him sit on the back seat. Dai Jai was dirty, and he stank. Percival fumbled to pull off the blindfold. Dai Jai’s right eye was swollen shut, a shining dark egg of bruised eyelid. His head was shaved, but not split open. He wore the same school clothes in which he had been arrested, now stained with blood and torn into rags. There were bruises on his arms and body, some older and some fresh. As he had years ago on the beach, Percival embraced his son with relief and happiness at having him back. He seized him in his arms, pressed his face to the boy’s stubbled scalp. The hard lump of gold was at his neck. Percival whispered his thanks to the ancestors’ spirits, to Chen Kai’s ghost.

      “I’m so happy, son. I thought you were …” He must not say it. He thanked the ancestors’ spirits again, for he had feared that he would next see his son in their world. The strength of his fear now transformed itself into joy. “I didn’t know when I would see you again. You are safe now, I will keep you safe.”

      “Oh, no,” said Dai Jai. “They arrested you, too, ba?”

      “No, I have ransomed you.”

      “I don’t understand.” Dai Jai looked around wildly.

      “I’ve bought your freedom.”

      “Then I am not going to be shot? Where are we?”

      Percival clawed at the cords on Dai Jai’s hands. They were loosely tied, easy to unwind, not meant to hold him for long. “We are near the rubber plantations, outside of Bien Hoa.”

      “Where is the guard?”

      “We are alone. We are halfway to Cap St. Jacques,” said Percival, smiling through his own wet eyes. He said hopefully, “Should we go there? Should we go and have your favourite, sea emperor’s soup?”

      Dai Jai stared at his father with his left eye as if he were a stranger. Then he began to shake. “They said they would kill me today. They took me from the cell, yelling, hitting, and said it was my turn to die.” Dai Jai cried, tears flowing freely from his left eye and welling out from between the swollen lids of his right.

      Percival embraced the boy again, held his shoulders. “It was just to scare the other prisoners.” If only they were with their own people, in China, none of this would have happened. Here in Vietnam, they were vulnerable, made to suffer and then to pay for relief from it. “It was an act for the other prisoners. To make it look like you were being killed, not freed. You are safe. Your father is here. I paid a huge ransom.” He would have paid any sum.

      Dai Jai looked around, crazed. “We are in a graveyard, Father. We are two ghosts in our graveyard. They said I would die today.”

      “No, don’t say that, it’s bad luck,” he whispered, shushing the boy as if someone might hear. For an instant, his own joy swung back to terror. Then he calmed himself and said to the boy, “I think you are hungry, yes, so hungry that you can’t think clearly. No one is dead. There are no ghosts here.