The Headmaster's Wager (11 page)

The heat caused time to stretch, and Cecilia closed her eyes. Percival half-watched Dai Jai for a while, expecting that he would soon turn back towards shore. The boy paused, waved, and continued to go out. Big for his eight years of age, he was becoming a good swimmer. After some time, Percival remarked, “He is swimming very fast, isn't he?”

Cecilia sat up and stared. They could see only Dai Jai's back bobbing up occasionally. Then Cecilia stood, shouted at their son, but already he was too far to hear. Between the peaks of the waves he disappeared. His arms were little punctuation marks in the ocean.

As they watched, Dai Jai shrank into the ocean. “He is being swept out!” she said. Although Percival's reflex was to disagree, it was true. The boy was going out faster than he could possibly be swimming. A large wave broke over him and he vanished in a long expanse of water. Cecilia yelled, “Go out after him! ”

Percival stood, and then stopped, frozen. “I can't swim.” Neither of them could.

“You are his father. Go! ”

There was no doubt. The boy was being swallowed by the ocean. Percival ran out into the water, and was surprised at the force that tugged and buffeted him. He waded ahead. “Son! Come back, you're being pulled out!” His voice was lost in the crashing surf. Percival swung his hands high above him like flags, struggled forward into water that surged up to his neck. “Turn around! Swim back!” He threw the words uselessly into the ocean. Soon he was unable to see more than a few feet around him. A wave smashed over his head. Salty brine filled his mouth, stung his eyes. Percival looked into the moving walls of water, trying to see through them where Dai Jai had gone. He was caught by another wave, a larger one, that pushed him off his feet. He lost all direction as the wave roiled over him and carried him towards shore. He staggered up onto shore, coughing, his throat prickling with salt. Again, he ran into the surf, called, waved, but was unable to see the boy. Behind him, Cecilia yelled, “Go get your son, you useless man!”

Vietnamese children learned to swim as soon as they learned to
walk, in the creeks, lagoons, and in the sea, but Percival had grown up in Shantou. During all these trips to Cap St. Jacques, he had never been into water deeper than his knees. He liked the look and smell of the ocean, but had never been interested in swimming. Now he flailed desperately into the water again, could not see Dai Jai. A crest lifted him up, his feet off the sand. He made the wild motions with his arms and legs that seemed to be what swimmers did, and felt his head submerged once more, a fist of water rammed down his throat. A swell gathered him, tumbled him over in white and blue, until he felt his knees scrape on the sand near the shore. On his hands and knees, sputtering, Percival vomited sea water.

Cecilia did not look at him. Her eyes were fixed on the horizon. “There he is! Look! ”

Percival staggered a little way up the beach, searched in the direction of her pointed finger. At first, he saw only breaking waves and the line of the horizon.

“Where?”

Then he saw the black dot of his son's head appear. He was treading water. He had been pulled beyond where the waves were breaking, far enough that if they had not seen him swim out, they would never have known he was there. The boy began to swim towards them. He must have just realized how far he had been taken by the sea.

“He's fine, he's coming back,” said Percival, his spirits surging like the water. They stood motionless in the sun. Percival stared at the horizon as the salt water dried to a fine itchy powder on his skin. Dai Jai swam towards the shore, but though his arms churned desperately in a small commotion, the boy continued to grow smaller.

Cecilia said, “He's being dragged farther out. The water is taking him away.”

“He has his good luck charm,” said Percival, a near whisper.

Cecilia stared at her husband, her fury beyond words.

Then Dai Jai vanished for a long few seconds. He appeared again, struggling now to stay afloat it seemed, his movements tired. Percival wished he had told the boy not to swim, that he had agreed with his wife that it was time for a siesta. He said, “I'll get a boat!” and clambered
up the sandy incline. He looked up and down the deserted beach. It was midday, and the boats had already been pulled up high. He tried to shift one, but it was too heavy for him to budge. He cursed his soft city muscles. The sand shimmered, indifferent. Percival ran from boat to boat, hoped to find a fisherman taking a siesta. Finally, he found a man mending nets in the shade of a palm.

Percival's Vietnamese was worse when he was under pressure, and now he mingled vanishing words with panicked gestures. After he had managed to make himself understood, the fisherman looked at the horizon, squinted at the waves, “Swimming? Now, with the undertow? No one swims at this hour.” He shook his head. “You Chinese city people.” He rose slowly and chucked the nets into his boat.

The small outboard soon buzzed them out to where the water was quiet but heaved with deep, forceful swells. The fisherman cut the engine, and they sat on the wet thwart, bobbed up and down, peering into the shifting strokes of light on water. There was only the empty slap on the hull, and the boat itself creaking mournfully.

“He was out here,” said Percival. “I saw him here last.”

“The current is strong,” said the fisherman uncomfortably. “Sometimes it sweeps north. He could have been taken up that way.” He pulled the starter cord, and the engine coughed to life. They headed north until they came to a long, rocky arm that extended from the land into the ocean. The fisherman said he dared not go close. Percival watched the waves smash against the rocks and did not ask whether swimmers were sometimes pulled into them. They turned south and searched back and forth several times. After an eternity, the fisherman said that they must turn back. He was almost out of fuel. They returned, and pulled the boat up the beach. Silently, Percival pleaded with the ancestors' spirits. Surely they did not want Dai Jai to die in this foreign land.

The fisherman looked away. He commented upon the price of petrol. Dazed, Percival gave him a hundred-piastre note, far too much, and regretted doing so once he saw that the money seemed to make the fisherman so happy. The smile gave Percival a pain in his chest. The man ambled up the beach with his jerry can.

Cecilia ran up, touched Percival's arm. “Where is he? Where is our son?”

“I don't know,” said Percival, close to tears. He imagined his son limp and motionless, drifting beneath the surface of the sea, eyes fixed open. “He disappeared in the water, but don't worry,” said Percival, forcing out the words, as if by saying them it would make the image of Dai Jai's drowned body vanish. “He will be fine. The ancestral spirits will save him.”

“Why didn't you find him?” Tears welled up in her eyes.

“They will protect him. And the sea goddess …”

Cecilia struck Percival with both fists, and then buried her face in them. She wept until the fisherman came back and began to fill the fuel tank. She turned to the fisherman. “Take me out into the water.” The fisherman hesitated. She pleaded, “I will pay you a thousand piastres.” He hurried to launch the craft.

Percival helped push the boat out. Cecilia was already inside, urging both him and the fisherman, weeping at the same time. Percival was about to jump in, but the fisherman told him that the small boat could not carry more than three people. Percival was about to say, “But we are three,” when the fisherman cut him off. “We must leave a space for the boy.”

Yes, of course. The third space. The fisherman still had hope, and for this Percival forgave him his happiness at the money. Percival trudged back to the water's edge and sat in the sand. His wet clothes clung heavily to his limbs. His mouth was dry, his lips swollen with the salt and sun. Now Percival felt the blood pulsing in his temples, and prayed to Chen Kai and all their relatives' ghosts to save Dai Jai. He opened his eyes, and the sight of thin brown legs filled him with joy.

“You want ice-cream-Coke-Heineken-young-girl? What you like? Suck-fuck-very-tight, I get for you quick-quick?” the beach boy asked in English.

He swore at the boy, who gave a single-finger salute and ambled away. From a distance, muffled by water, he could hear Cecilia's plaintive calls for Dai Jai from the small boat.

At the opposite end of the beach from the jagged rocks, there was the tiny outline of a figure. A boy. Was the figure familiar, the profile like his own son? Probably another beach runt, hawking drinks and his sister. At first, Percival wanted to stand, to run down the beach. His legs wouldn't move, did not want to carry him to disappointment. He was drawn by hope and paralyzed by fear. Percival closed his eyes and appealed to the ancestors' spirits not to play any more tricks. If they returned his son to him, Percival promised, he would redouble his efforts to honour the ancestors. He would offer whole roast ducks. He would burn real American dollars at their altar. He would return to China. He would bring Dai Jai with him. A promise, a bargain. He opened his eyes and got to his feet.

Did the figure wave? It shimmered in and out of the heat from the sand. After some long minutes, he thought he could just make out the face of his son, but how could he be sure of any features at this distance? Then a flash. A brilliant golden reflection winked from the boy's neck. The figure grew close, and larger, waved with both hands, and ran. Dai Jai embraced his father, arms around his waist, then tears came to Percival's eyes. He held his son to him, clasped the birdlike frame of his shoulders and arms. He could not remember ever having been so happy and grateful.

“
Ba
, why are you crying?” said the boy.

Percival calmed his heaving shoulders. He said, “I thought you were …” and then stopped himself. “I thought you were swimming very well,” he said instead. He still had his arms around the boy, did not want to let go, worried that Dai Jai might prove himself a ghost if he did. But when he summoned the courage to loosen his grip, Dai Jai was still there. Percival said in a near whisper, “Dai Jai, how did you come back?”

The boy spoke matter-of-factly, as if he were talking about someone else. “I swam too far and got pulled out.”

“Did you …” he wanted to ask if the boy had perceived the spirit of Chen Kai, if he had felt his grandfather's hand pull him to shore. Had the boy known the danger he had been in? Percival couldn't tell, but if Dai Jai had not realized it, why should he frighten the boy now?
“You must be tired. Did you learn your lesson?” Percival drew back a little, his hands on the boy's shoulders. He was not yet ready to let go of him.

“The ocean was so strong. Even when I struggled against it, the land got farther and farther away, and I was tired, scared too. Finally I realized that the best thing was to rest. I lay on my back and stared at the sky. I'm good at floating on my back. I decided to rest and figure out what to do. After a long time, the waves began to break over me once again. The tide had turned. It began to push me back to shore, and I swam with it, until I was swept up on that beach over there—beyond the rocks.”

“We must return to China, we should go back home,” said Percival. “If we had been in China …”

Dai Jai screwed up his forehead, “You always say that.”

Percival could see that Dai Jai didn't understand him. Suddenly, he ached to be in his childhood home, to hear people speaking the Teochow dialect on the street, to lie on the old
kang
. He was being shown the dangers of being a
wa kiu
. He should take the boy home.

“Where is Mother?”

“She has gone to look for you, in a boat.”

Soon, the fisherman landed the small craft. Percival let go of Dai Jai. Cecilia jumped out and ran to embrace her son.

With Cecilia standing there, Percival felt he should be stern with Dai Jai. He said, “Did you thank the ancestors?” Cecilia looked at her husband as if he was speaking a foreign language. He turned to Cecilia, on the verge of shouting without knowing why. “Did he? I want to know—is he grateful to his ancestors for saving him?” Dai Jai looked from his mother to his father and back again.

“Let's go to the villa.” Cecilia turned away from her husband, her arm around their son. “The cook will make you anything you like.” For the rest of the holiday, she said nothing else about the incident, and Percival began to feel that Cecilia's silence spoke more clearly than any criticism of him. After they returned to Cholon, she would often announce that she was going to Saigon for the day, and say nothing of what she had done when she returned. Percival pretended not
to notice or care, and he often called Mrs. Ling. He thought on occasion of China, but the strong impulse to return there faded in the face of Cholon's distractions. The school was busier than ever, and money came easily. He had a run of good luck at the mah-jong tables. It had been only in the dizzying emotional height of the moment, he told himself, that he had promised the ancestors he would return. It was not practical. He offered two ducks, and burned fifty dollars. That should be enough. Several months later, when a raft of new legislation in South Vietnam included legalized divorce, Cecilia enjoyed a front-page photo of her own smiling, immaculately made-up face in the
Far East Daily
, a Chinese-language daily newspaper. The accompanying article explained that she was the first woman in Cholon to divorce her husband.

PERCIVAL DROVE UP THE COASTAL HILLS
away from the beach. He took a different road than the one he had arrived on, avoiding the graveyard. Daylight failed, and he pressed on into darkness. When he reached the rubber plantations, which were known for night-time kidnappings, he cut his lights and drove as quickly as he dared by moonlight. Entering the city, he was stopped at a checkpoint and paid the soldier to ignore his curfew violation. He went straight to Cecilia's villa and pounded on the door until a light appeared. A few seconds later Cecilia's voice asked who it was.