Decoded (13 page)

Someone like him came to N University every year in the summer, wanting to take people away. Whoever came in any particular year had certain distinguishing features, no matter what they looked like. They seemed to be able to call on considerable resources; they were very mysterious; and the minute they arrived, they would go straight to the office of the chancellor of the university. On this occasion the chancellor’s office was empty, so he left and went to the office next door, which belonged to the registrar. As it happened, that was where the chancellor was, discussing something with the registrar. The moment he entered, he announced that he was looking for the chancellor. The registrar asked who he was. He said with a laugh, ‘I am a coper, looking for horses.’

The registrar said, ‘Then you ought to go to the Student Centre: it’s on the first floor.’

‘I need to talk to the chancellor first,’ he said.

‘Why?’ asked the registrar.

‘I have something here that the chancellor needs to see.’

‘What is it? Give it to me.’

‘Are you the chancellor? It is for his eyes only,’ he said aggressively.

The registrar looked at the chancellor. The chancellor said, ‘Let me have a look at whatever it is.’

Once he was sure that the person he was speaking to was indeed the chancellor of the university, he opened his briefcase and took out a file. The file was perfectly ordinary, the kind made out of card – somewhat like the kind of things that schoolteachers use. He took a single-page document out of the file and handed it to the chancellor, asking him to read it.

Having taken the document, the chancellor stepped back a pace or two and read it. The registrar could only see the back. As far as he could see the paper was not particularly large, nor was it particularly thick, nor were there any special seals or stamps attached to it. It seemed like a perfectly ordinary letter of introduction. However, judging by the chancellor’s reaction, there was clearly more to it. He noticed particularly that the chancellor seemed to just run his eye over the paper – maybe he only looked at the letterhead at the top – before immediately becoming much more serious and concerned.

‘Are you Section Chief Zheng?’

‘I am.’

‘I do apologize for your reception, sir.’ The chancellor was all smiles as he invited the man into his own office.

Nobody had the first idea as to what kind of organization could produce a letter that would have quite that kind of result, making the chancellor so very obsequious. The registrar thought that he would be able to find out: according to the rules of the university, all letters of introduction from external work-units had to be filed with his office. Later on, when he realized that the chancellor had not handed over the document as he should have done, he went to the trouble of putting in a request for it. He was not expecting the chancellor to say that he had burned it. The chancellor went on to explain that the very first sentence in the letter was that it should be destroyed immediately after it was read. The registrar was startled into an exclamation: ‘Top secret!’ The chancellor told him sternly that he was to forget all that had happened and not to mention it to anyone.

In actual fact, when the chancellor was showing the man into his office, he already had a box of matches ready in his hand. When the chancellor had finished reading the letter, he struck a match and said, ‘Shall I burn it?’

‘Why not?’

So the letter was burnt.

The two men stood there in silence, neither saying a word, as the paper went up in flames.

Afterwards, the chancellor asked, ‘How many people do you want?’

He held up a finger: ‘One.’

Then the chancellor asked, ‘What field?’

He opened up the file again and took out another piece of paper. He said: ‘This is my list of the requirements that whoever it is must fulfil – it is probably not complete but there is enough to give you an idea.’

The paper that he held out was exactly the same size as the previous letter, sextodecimo. There was no letterhead printed on this sheet though, and the words on it were written by hand, rather than being typed. The chancellor ran his eye down the list and then asked,‘Is this another one where it has to be burnt as soon as I have read it?’

‘No,’ he laughed. ‘You think this is also top secret?’

‘I haven’t read it properly yet,’ the chancellor said, ‘so I don’t know whether it is top secret or not.’

‘It isn’t,’ he said. ‘You can show it to anyone you like, even to students. Anyone who thinks that they fit this set of requirements can come and find me. I will be staying in Room 302 in the guest house attached to your university – you are welcome to turn up whenever you like.’

That evening, the chancellor of the university took two final-year students with particularly high grades to Room 302. Afterwards a constant stream of visitors arrived. By the afternoon of the third day twenty-two students had gone to Room 302 to meet the mysterious man with a limp: some were brought by their professors; some came under their own steam. The vast majority were students in the mathematics department. There were nine undergraduates and seven graduate students from that one department; the people who came from other departments were all taking specials in mathematics. Mathematical ability was the first requirement that Zheng the Gimp had set down for the person that he wanted – in fact, it was virtually the only condition. The thing is that the people who had gone in to see him had a very different story to tell once they came out again – they said it was a totally bizarre experience. They were inclined to think that it was all a joke of some kind, or at the very least not as serious as they had been led to believe. As for Zheng the Gimp – if you had listened to them you would have thought he was a lunatic, a psycho with a gammy leg! Some of them said that when they went into the room, he paid no attention to them at all. They stood there or sat there for a bit, feeling like complete fools, and then Zheng the Gimp waved them away, telling them to leave. Some of the professors in the mathematics department were so upset at what their students were telling them that they rushed round to the university guest house to complain to the lame man in person, asking him what on earth he thought he was doing? Why was he sending people away without asking them any questions? The only answer that they got was that it was his way of doing things.

What Zheng the Gimp said was, ‘Every discipline has its own requirements, right? In physical education they pick athletes by feeling their bones. The person I am looking for has to have an independent mind-set. Some people were really uncomfortable about the fact that I didn’t pay any attention to them – they couldn’t even sit still, nor could they stand up straight and not fidget. They found the whole experience extremely unsettling. That is not the kind of personality I am looking for.’

That sounds very fine, but only Zheng the Gimp knew whether he was telling the truth or not.

On the afternoon of the third day of his stay, Zheng the Gimp invited the chancellor of the university to visit him at the guest house, to discuss his search. He wasn’t very happy, but he had got something out of it. He gave the chancellor five names from the list of the twenty-two people he had interviewed and requested permission to see their personal dossiers – he thought that the person he was looking for would most likely be one of these five. When the chancellor realized that the whole thing was in its final phase and that Zheng the Gimp was proposing to leave the following day, he stayed behind at the guest house to eat a simple dinner with him. While they were still at table Zheng the Gimp seemed to suddenly remember something. He asked the chancellor about what had happened to Young Lillie, and the chancellor explained. He said, ‘If you would like to see the retired chancellor, I will tell him to come.’

Zheng said with a smile, ‘How could I possibly ask him to come and see me? I should go and visit him!’

And just as he had said, that very evening, Zheng the Gimp went to see Young Lillie . . .

It was I who went and opened the door for him. I didn’t recognize him and I didn’t know that he was the mysterious man who had been the subject of so much gossip in the department over recent days. To begin with Daddy didn’t know anything about what was going on, but some of the people in the department had been dragging people off to meet the mystery man at a rate of knots, and I had happened to mention this to him. When Daddy realized that Zheng was one and the same as the mysterious man that everyone was talking about, he called me over and introduced me. I was very curious and asked what exactly it was that he wanted someone for. He didn’t answer my question directly; he just said it was important work. When I asked what kind of important we were talking about – for humanity or the development of the country or what – he said it was a matter of national security. I asked him how the selection process had gone, but he didn’t seem very satisfied – he muttered something about picking the tallest out of a group of dwarves.

He must have discussed the whole thing with Daddy at some point in the past, because Daddy seemed to know exactly what kind of person he was looking for. Seeing him so unhappy with the results of his search, Daddy said in a joking kind of voice, ‘The fact is that I know of someone very suitable.’

Daddy, still in a joking tone of voice, said, ‘Someone suitable might be the other side of the globe; on the other hand they might also be right here with you . . . ’

He thought that Daddy was talking about me and immediately started asking about my work. Daddy just pointed to a photo of Zhendi pushed into the frame of the mirror on the wall and said: ‘Him.’

Daddy pointed to the photograph of my aunt, Rong Lillie, and said, ‘Don’t they look alike?’

He went over to the mirror and had a good look; then he said: ‘They do.’

‘That’s her grandson,’ Daddy said.

As far as I can remember, Daddy didn’t often introduce Zhendi to people like that – in fact it was practically the first time. I don’t know why he spoke to the man in that way; perhaps it was because he wasn’t local – he didn’t know more than the bare outlines of the story so it did not matter so much. On the other hand he was a graduate of our university, so he would know who my aunt was. After Daddy had said that, he started asking us excited questions about Zhendi. Daddy was perfectly happy to tell him all sorts of things about Zhendi, all about how clever he was. Nevertheless, right at the end of their conversation, Daddy still told him not to think about trying to take Zhendi away. When he asked why, Daddy said: ‘The research institute needs him.’

He smiled and said nothing. He didn’t return to the subject again, so we had the impression that he had put the matter of Zhendi aside.

The following morning, Zhendi came home for breakfast. He told us that someone had come to find him really late the previous night. Because the facilities at the research institute were so excellent, Zhendi often spent the entire night there, sleeping in his office, coming home only for meals. The moment he spoke up, Daddy knew exactly who had gone to find him. He burst out laughing and said. ‘Clearly he hasn’t given up yet.’

‘Who is he?’ Zhendi asked.

‘Don’t pay any attention to him,’ said Daddy.

‘I think he wants me to go and join his work unit,’ Zhendi said.

‘Do you want to go?’ asked Daddy.

‘That is up to you,’ said Zhendi.

‘Then ignore him,’ Daddy said.

Just as they were talking, there was a knock on the door and Zheng walked in. When Daddy caught sight of him, he began by asking very politely if he had had breakfast already – he said he had eaten at the guest house. Daddy asked him to go upstairs and wait, that he would be finished soon. When he had finished eating, Daddy told Zhendi to go away. He said exactly the same thing as he had said before: ‘Don’t pay any attention to him.’

After Zhendi left, Daddy and I walked upstairs together. Zheng was waiting in the sitting room, smoking a cigarette. Daddy might have looked very courteous and polite, but his meaning was quite plain. Daddy asked him if he was here to say goodbye or because he wanted someone. ‘If you are here because you want him, then I am afraid I can’t help you. As I told you last night, I don’t want you taking him away from me – there is no point.’

‘If you can’t help then you can’t help,’ he said. ‘I will just say goodbye.’

Daddy asked him to go into his study.

I had a class that afternoon, so after a few pleasantries, I went to my room to collect the things I needed. On my way out, a little bit later, I thought I should go and say goodbye. However, the door to Daddy’s study was closed, something that very rarely happened. I decided not to disturb them and went off. When I got back after my class, Mummy told me sadly that Zhendi would be leaving us. I asked where he was going and Mummy had to wipe away her tears before she could reply. ‘He is going with that man. Your father has agreed . . . ’

[To be continued]

Nobody knows what Zheng the Gimp said to Young Lillie in his study that day, behind closed doors. Master Rong told me that until the day he died, her father refused to answer questions on the subject – if anyone mentioned it, he would get angry. He was clearly determined to take this secret to the grave. One thing is perfectly clear and that is that Zheng the Gimp managed to change Young Lillie’s mind in the space of just over half an hour. Whatever it was that he said, when Young Lillie walked out of his study, he went straight to tell his wife that Jinzhen was leaving.

Jinzhen began to become mysterious that very afternoon – the afternoon that Zheng the Gimp and Young Lillie shut the door to his study to talk in private. It was that afternoon that Zheng the Gimp collected him in the jeep and took him away – he did not return home until the evening. He was brought back in an ordinary car. Once he got home, there was already a secretive look in his eyes. Faced with the questioning glances of his family, it was a long time before he opened his mouth. Everything he did now seemed to be touched with mystery. Having gone away with Zheng the Gimp for just a couple of hours, it seemed as though a wedge had already been driven between him and his family. After a very long time, and repeated questioning from Young Lillie, he sighed deeply and then said hesitantly, using the same respectful term of address as usual, ‘Professor, you have sent me somewhere that really doesn’t suit me.’ He spoke lightly but the words had underlying implications that horrified everyone present: Young Lillie, his wife, and Master Rong. They had no idea what to say next.

Mrs Lillie said, ‘If you don’t want to go then don’t – it’s not as if you have to.’

‘I have to go,’ Jinzhen said.

‘What are you talking about? He – ’ she pointed to Young Lillie ‘ – is he and you are you: if he wants you to do something it does not automatically mean that you have to agree. Listen to me. Decide what you want to do for yourself. If you want to go then go; if you don’t want to go then don’t – I will talk to them for you.’

‘That won’t work,’ said Jinzhen.

‘What do you mean it won’t work?’

‘If they want me to go, I don’t have the right to refuse.’

‘What kind of work unit is that? Who has such powers?’

‘I am not allowed to tell you.’

‘You are not allowed to tell you own mother?’

‘I am not allowed to tell anyone. I had to swear . . . ’

Just then, Young Lillie clapped his hands and stood up. He said seriously, ‘Right, in that case you must not say another word. When are you leaving? Has it been decided yet? We need to pack your things.’

‘I am leaving before dawn tomorrow morning,’ Jinzhen said.

Nobody got any sleep that night, because everyone was busy packing Zhendi’s belongings. At around four o’clock in the morning, his stuff was pretty much packed – his books and his winter clothes had been corded into two cardboard boxes. After that it only remained to collect some daily necessities: even though Jinzhen and Young Lillie both said he could buy whatever he needed when he got there, the two women were both in packing mode and rushed up and down the stairs, racking their brains for anything that he could possibly need. First they put in a radio and some packets of cigarettes, then tea leaves and a first-aid kit – they managed to fill a leather suitcase with the fruit of their labours. At about five o’clock in the morning, everyone met downstairs. Mrs Lillie was almost hysterical – she could not possibly make breakfast for Jinzhen that morning, so she had to ask her daughter to do it for her. She went with her to the kitchen and sat there, explaining exactly what it was that she had to do. That was not because Master Rong couldn’t cook, but because this was to be a very special meal – they were saying goodbye to Jinzhen. Mrs Lillie was determined that this meal had to comprise four important elements.

1. The main dish was going to be a bowl of noodles, just like the kind that people eat on their birthdays to symbolize many happy returns of the day.

2. The noodles had to be made of buckwheat. Buckwheat noodles are softer than the ordinary kind. This would symbolize that people have to be more forgiving and flexible when they are among strangers.

3. The flavourings for this noodle soup should include vinegar, chilli peppers and walnuts. Walnuts are bitter. This would symbolize that of the four flavours, bitterness, sourness and spiciness would be left behind at home; once he left everything would be sweet.

4. Not too much soup was to be made, because when the time came, Jinzhen was supposed to drink every last drop, to symbolize completeness and success.

It was just a bowl of soup, but it represented all the old lady’s fondest hopes and wishes for him. When this meaningful bowl of soup was brought bubbling into the dining room, Mrs Lillie called Jinzhen to table. She took a jade pendant, in the shape of a crouching tiger, out of her pocket and put it in Jinzhen’s hands, telling him to eat up and then tie this to his belt, where it would bring him good luck. Just then, they heard the sound of a car pulling up outside. Shortly afterwards, Zheng the Gimp came in with his chauffeur. He said hello to everyone and told the chauffeur to put the boxes in the car.

Jinzhen sat there quietly eating his noodles. Once he started eating, he did not say anything, but it was the kind of silence that you get when someone has a great deal that they want to say but no idea where to start. Even when he had finished his noodles, he sat there without a word. He clearly had no intention of getting up.

Zheng the Gimp came in and clapped him on the back, as if he were in complete charge of the situation. He said, ‘It is time to say goodbye. I will be waiting for you in the car.’ He said goodbye to Young Lillie, his wife, and Master Rong, and then left.

The room fell silent. The people present looked quietly at one another; their gaze became concentrated, fixed. Jinzhen was still holding onto his jade. He was stroking it with one hand. That was the only movement in the room.

Jinzhen put the jade up to his lips and kissed it, after which he started to tie it onto his belt.

It was just at that moment that Young Lillie took the jade out of his hands and said: ‘Only a fool would expect something to bring him good luck. You are a genius and you are going to make your own luck.’ He took out the Waterman pen that he had used for nearly half a century and put it in Jinzhen’s hands, saying: ‘You will find this much more useful. You can use it to make a note of your ideas. If you don’t let them run away from you, you will find that no one can even come close to you.’

Jinzhen did exactly the same thing. He kissed the pen in silence and then put it in his breast-pocket. At that moment, they heard the brief blast of a car horn coming from outside – very short. Jinzhen didn’t seem to have noticed it; he sat there without moving.

Young Lillie said, ‘They are trying to hurry you up. Off you go.’

Jinzhen sat there, without moving.

Young Lillie said, ‘You are going to be working for the nation – you should be happy.’

Jinzhen continued to sit there without moving.

Young Lillie said, ‘This house is your home. When you leave this house, you are in your country. If you have no country you can have no home. Go on. They are waiting for you.’

Jinzhen sat there, unmoving. It was as if the sorrow of parting had nailed him to his chair. He couldn’t move!

There was another blast from the horn of the waiting car. This time it was much longer. Young Lillie realized that Jinzhen was still showing no signs of going, so he glanced at his wife, wanting her to say something.

Mrs Lillie stepped forward, resting her two hands lightly on Jinzhen’s shoulders. She said, ‘Off you go, Zhendi. You have to go. I will be waiting for your letters.’

It seemed as though the touch of the old lady’s hands had woken Jinzhen from his sleep. With a curious stumbling motion, he rose to his feet, moving as if in a trance. When he got to the door, Jinzhen suddenly turned round and fell to his knees with a thud. He kowtowed to the old couple with resounding knocks of the head. In a voice choked with tears, he said, ‘Mum, I am leaving now. But even if I go to the ends of the earth, I am still your son . . . ’

It was five o’clock in the morning, on 11 June 1956. Jinzhen, the star of the mathematics department for the last ten years, a man who had quietly become a fixture at N University, upped and left on a mysterious journey from which he never returned. Before he left, he requested permission from the old couple to change his name – in future he wanted to be called Rong Jinzhen. He said goodbye to his family and embarked upon a new life with a new name – an already tear-soaked parting was now rendered even more upsetting, as if both sides were aware that this was no ordinary separation. The fact is that when he left, no one knew where Rong Jinzhen went. He got into the jeep just as dawn was breaking and it took him away – he disappeared into another world. He simply vanished. It was as if his new name and his new identity fell like an axe, separating his past from his future, marking his departure from the mundane world. All that anyone knew was that he had gone somewhere else – the only contact address that they had was right there in the provincial capital: Box No. 36.

It seemed that he was really close by, right beside them.

But in fact no one knew where he had gone . . .

I asked a couple of my former students who had ended up working for the post office, what work unit had Box No. 36 and where was it? They all said that they did not know – it seemed to be an address for somewhere beyond human ken. To begin with we all thought it was a box associated with an address somewhere in the city, but when we got the first letter that Zhendi posted to us, the amount of time it had taken since posting told us that the local address was just a fake, designed to mislead people. He might well be a very long way away from us, maybe even further than we could imagine.

The first letter that he wrote to us was written three days after he left, but we received it twelve days later. There was no indication on the envelope of a sender’s address – where that would normally have been written there was one of Chairman Mao’s slogans: ‘Who Dares to Make the Sun and Moon Shine in New Skies?’ It was printed in Chairman Mao’s calligraphy, in red ink. The strangest thing was that there was no frank from the post office from which the letter was sent, just a frank from the receiving sorting office. All the letters we received afterwards were the same: the same kind of envelope, the same lack of a post office frank, and roughly the same amount of time spent en route – around eight or nine days. At the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, the quotation from Chairman Mao was exchanged for a line from a really popular song of the era: ‘Sailing Across the Ocean, We Rely on the Helmsman’. Everything else stayed the same.

What does it mean, working for National Security? I got to know at least a little bit about it from the letters that Zhendi sent home.

In the winter of the year that Zhendi left us, in December, there was a terrible storm one evening and the temperature simply plummeted. After supper, Daddy told us that he had a bit of a headache – probably because of the change in the weather – and so after taking a couple of aspirin, he went upstairs to go to bed even though it was still early. A couple of hours later, when Mummy went to bed, she found that he had stopped breathing, though his body was still warm. The way that Daddy died . . . it seemed as though the couple of aspirins he took before bedtime might as well have been arsenic; now that Zhendi was gone he knew that his research institute working on artificial intelligence was going to collapse, so he took this way out.

Of course, that is not what happened at all – the fact is that Daddy died of a brain haemorrhage.

We debated whether or not we should ask Zhendi to come back – after all he had not been gone for long and he was now attached to a very mysterious and powerful work unit – not to mention the fact that he was so far away – we had already discovered by that time that Zhendi was not at the provincial capital. In the end Mummy decided to call him back. She said, ‘Since his surname is Rong, since he calls me “Mother”, he is our son – his father is dead so of course we ought to call him back.’ So we sent Zhendi a telegram asking him to come back for the funeral.

The person who came was a complete stranger. He brought an enormous wreath of flowers with him, which he laid on behalf of Rong Jinzhen. It was the largest of any of the wreaths at the funeral, not that that was much consolation. The whole thing upset us very much. You see, given what we knew of Zhendi, if it was at all possible he would have wanted to be there in person. He was a very highly principled person: if it was something that he thought was right he would find a way to do it – he was not the sort of person to be put off by inconvenience or difficulty. We thought a lot about why it was that he had not been able to come for the funeral. I don’t know why – maybe it was because the man who came spoke so very evasively – I got the impression that it was most unlikely that Zhendi would ever come back, no matter what happened to the rest of us. He said something about how he was a very close friend of Zhendi’s and was here on his behalf. On the other hand there was also a lot about how he couldn’t answer that question, or that this subject was something he couldn’t discuss, and so on and so forth. The whole thing was very odd; I sometimes even found myself wondering if something had happened to Zhendi – maybe he was dead. Particularly given that afterwards the letters that he sent were so much shorter and came at much longer intervals. It went on year after year – letters came but we never got to see him. I was becoming more and more certain that Zhendi was dead. Working in a secret organization dedicated to preserving the security of the nation is a great honour, a great glory, but it would be perfectly possible for them to give the family of a dead person the impression that he was still alive – that would be one way of showing how powerful they are, how special the work that they do. Anyway, given that Zhendi didn’t come home from one year to the next, given that we never got to see him, never got to hear his voice – I became more and more certain that he was never coming back. The letters did nothing to convince me otherwise.

In 1966, the Cultural Revolution broke out. At the same time, the landmine that fate had planted under my feet some decades earlier exploded. There was a big-character poster put up to criticize me, saying that I was still in love with him (this referred to Master Rong’s ex-boyfriend), and after that there were a number of absolutely outrageous suggestions made. It was said that the reason I never married was because I was waiting for him, that loving him meant that I loved the KMT, that I was a KMT whore, that I was a KMT spy. They said all sorts of horrible things about me, and they were all presented in a very bald way, as incontrovertible facts.