The Headmaster’s Wager,
Vincent Lam’s debut novel, is set in Cholon, a small market town outside Saigon
with a substantial ethnic Chinese population.
One of the most prominent members of this community is Percival Chen (or
Chen Pie Sou), the owner and headmaster of the Percival Chen English
Academy. Percival is convinced of the
superiority of the Chinese and fixated on the preservation of his heritage and
objects strongly when his son, Dai Jai is seen consorting with an Annamese
(Vietnamese) girl.
Unfortunately, for all concerned, Dai Jin decides to
demonstrate his Chinese patriotism to his father by staging an act of
disobedience that comes to the attention of the Vietnamese authorities. Chen, assisted by his mysterious assistant Mr
Mak, decides to get Dai Jai out of the country and back to China in order to
keep him alive. More unfortunately, this
results in Percival incurring massive debt (including to his ex-wife, Cecilia,
whose maternal instincts do not cloud her materialism). Most unfortunately, the year is 1966 and Chen
ends up sending his son into the maw of the Cultural Revolution, maybe not the
best place for the son of a successful businessman.
Lam’s story is epic in nature, telling a family saga that
stretches from early 20th Century China, from where Chen’s father,
like so many Chinese, emigrates to seek “the Golden Mountain”, to the fall of
Saigon in 1975. It tells Chen’s story by
mixing flashbacks to Chen’s early life with the central plotline, combining
elements of political thriller and romance.
Chen is, essentially, a survivor, prospering through the
Japanese occupation of Hong Kong where he has been sent to school, the French
occupation of Indo-China and the Vietnam War, first as a rice merchant and
latterly as headmaster. Cash is his king
and he believes that business and political neutrality will help him and his
family and employees survive whatever the ruling regime may be.
This belief, aided and abetted by his racism and almost
wilful blindness to what is going on around him eventually prove to be one of
the two causes of his downfall as the power of money is ultimately trumped by
the ideology of the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army and he is deprived of Mak,
his secretive long-time friend and protector.
His other major problem is his breathtaking hypocrisy. On the outside, Chen is a figure of
propriety, a prominent local businessman and member of the community, wielding
influence through a combination of contacts and liberal use of the red
envelopes of cash that he uses to grease the wheels of his life (with the help
of Mak). At night, however, he is a
compulsive (and impulsive) gambler and whore-monger who is a regular in the
fleshpots of Cholon. Even the wager of
the book’s title is an example of his hypocrisy as he wins the “affections” of
Jacqueline, a métisse
(or mixed-race) prostitute in a game of mah-jong. This turns into a long-term relationship that
challenges his racial superiority complex.
Themes of betrayal and duplicity abound throughout The Headmaster’s Wager with characters
turning out not to be who they claim to be (although Mak’s true identity is
pretty well telegraphed). I can’t help seeing
the central theme, however, as being the lengths that people will go to to survive
and protect their families and dependants in turbulent and violent times. Compromise and corruption are endemic and the
ending suggests that staying neutral in the face of warring forces is not
always a viable option.
Lam writes well and creates a compelling and believable portrait
of Vietnam; I could almost smell, feel and taste the atmosphere – the mah-jong
scene in which Chen wins Jacqueline, the Tet banquet and a particularly nasty
torture sequence stand out. His plotting
and structuring are also excellent and the panoramic sweep of his story makes
for a meaty, page-turning read. It’s a
very good book indeed.
The one thing that stops me from being even more gushing, though,
is Percival Chen himself. Although
blessed with love for his family and real generosity to his employees, Chen’s
self-satisfied sense of superiority and awful naiveté lead to a frustrating level
of passivity; he is constantly being prodded into action or told what to do by
Cecilia, Jacqueline and Mak in particular and only his impulses bring any
pro-activity out of him. Of course, this
of itself isn’t necessarily an issue but the lack of change and growth in Chen
makes him an increasingly unsympathetic individual and, although as I say, I
enjoyed The Headmaster’s Wager a lot,
I found myself almost completely indifferent to Percival’s own fate by the end
of the novel.
I would like to finish by thanking Crown Publishing, under
whose Hogarth imprint, The Headmaster’s
Wager, for sending me a review copy.
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