Decoded (23 page)

This part of the story will make people feel both inspired and sorrowful. It is inspiring because Rong Jinzhen’s notebook will finally be found, sorrowful because Rong Jinzhen will disappear without a trace. Taken altogether, this outcome is what Rong Jinzhen spoke about: God gives us happiness and also suffering; God reveals everything to us.

Rong Jinzhen disappeared the very same evening of the torrential downpour. No one really knew exactly when he stepped out of his room, whether it was early or late in the night, during the rainstorm or after. But everyone knew that he wouldn’t return – like a bird that forever leaves its mother’s nest, or like a circling star forever torn from its orbit.

Rong Jinzhen’s disappearance caused the case to become more complicated and confused. One person suggested that perhaps his disappearance was the next stage in the case of the missing notebook, that the operation was a two-step procedure. The identity of the thief now became more mysterious and sinister. However, more people believed that Rong Jinzhen’s disappearance was due to his lack of hope, his inability to withstand the fear and pain of what had happened. Everyone knew that ciphers were Rong Jinzhen’s life, and that meant that his notebook was too. Now hope of finding his notebook was slowly but surely fading – even if it were located, it would most likely be nothing more than a water-soaked ink smudge. There was no way that he could take a lighter view of what had happened; suicide no longer seemed impossible.

What happened afterwards seemed to confirm everyone’s misgivings. One afternoon, along the eastern side of the river that made its way through B City, close to an oil refinery, a leather shoe was picked up. Vasili identified it immediately as belonging to Rong Jinzhen because of its stretched mouth, caused by all the recent rushing about in search of the notebook.

It was at this time that Vasili began to believe that their efforts to find Rong Jinzhen would in truth result in nothing. Dejected, he couldn’t help but feel that they would never find the notebook either. Perhaps all that they would find would be Rong Jinzhen’s corpse floating down a muddy torrent.

If things turned out this way, Vasili conjectured, then it would have been better had he taken Rong Jinzhen home at the beginning. The whole situation seemed to be hanging over his head like an evil sword of Damocles.

‘Fuck it all!’ Holding Rong Jinzhen’s dirtied shoe in his hand, he couldn’t help but violently fling it as far away as possible, as if he were attempting to do away with all of the bad luck that had hung over these past days.

This all transpired on the ninth day of the investigation. No information had come to light about the missing notebook, which couldn’t help but make people lose heart; the shadow of despair began to entrench itself in peoples’ minds, growing and expanding, consuming all hope. Because of this, Headquarters agreed with the investigators and decided to publicize what had happened instead of keeping it a secret.

The following day, in the morning edition of the
B City Daily
, a lost property notice was printed and widely circulated. The person in search of the missing item was identified as a scientist, the notebook that had been lost contained information on certain new technological innovations the nation had been working on.

We should say that carrying out this sort of action was exceptionally risky due to the fact that the thief could, upon learning of this public search, either hide the notebook away or destroy it, causing the investigators’ work to reach an impasse. However, contrary to expectations, that evening at precisely 22:03, the telephone hotline at the special investigative team’s office rang. Three hands immediately reached out to grab the phone, but Vasili, being exceptionally nimble, took hold of it first: ‘Hello, this is the Offices of the Special Investigative Division, please state your information.’

‘ . . . ’

‘Hello, hello, is anyone there? Please speak.’

‘Ah, ah, ah . . . ’

The telephone went dead.

Crestfallen, Vasili returned the receiver to its base, feeling as though he had been making a mountain out of a molehill. A minute later the telephone rang again.

Yet again Vasili grabbed the receiver first. When he said hello, he immediately heard a hurried and agitated voice issuing from the phone: ‘The note . . . notebook . . . is in a letterbox . . . ’ 

‘A letterbox? Where? Hello, what letterbox?’

‘Ah, ah, ah . . . ’

Again the phone went dead.

This vile thief; this pathetic and yet somehow adorable little thief. Because the thief was so terribly flustered, as you can imagine, he was unable to finish telling them exactly which letterbox the notebook was in. But no matter, this was enough, quite enough. B City only possessed a few hundred letterboxes, and what did this matter? Luck had finally arrived, for in the first letterbox Vasili opened he discovered –

Under the starlight, the notebook exuded a blue serene glow, a deep quiet that made you a little afraid. But that quiet was perfect, inspiring, like a frozen ocean beginning to thaw, like an ever-sovaluable sapphire.

The notebook was completely unscathed, save for a few pages torn out of the back. An official at Headquarters couldn’t help but humorously remark over the phone: ‘Perhaps that thief used them to wipe his dirty arse.’

Later, another senior official at Headquarters, upon hearing this, furthered the image: ‘If you ever find that little prick, give him some toilet paper, you have that at Unit 701, no?’

But no one was ever assigned the task of finding the thief.

Because, after all, he wasn’t a traitor.

And because Rong Jinzhen had not yet been found.

The next day, in the
B City Daily
’s main edition, a missing person’s report was printed. It was for Rong Jinzhen:

Rong Jinzhen, male, thirty-seven years of age, 1.65 metres tall, thin stature, pale skin. He was last seen wearing a pair of brown nearsighted spectacles, a blue-green Sun Yat-sen jacket and light grey trousers. His breast pocket held a fountain pen (imported). Around his wrist was a Zhongshan watch. He speaks Mandarin Chinese and English, loves to play chess, his movements are always slow and exact, and it is possible that he is missing one shoe.

On the first day after the missing person’s report, there was no news; the same for the second day.

On the third day, the
G Provincial Daily
also printed the missing person’s report; there was still no news on that day.

According to Vasili, no news was quite as expected: after all, expecting news from a dead person was rather optimistic. But Vasili had already sensed deep down that he would eventually bring a living Rong Jinzhen back to Unit 701 – this was his duty – it was also an already exceptionally exigent affair.

Two days later, in the afternoon, the Special Investigative Office informed him that a man from M county had just telephoned to say that they had seen a man matching Rong Jinzhen’s description hanging about and that they should hurry over and see as quickly as possible.

A man matching Rong Jinzhen’s description? Vasili thought that his premonition had come true. Before heading out, the normally staunch and ferocious Vasili broke down like a coward and cried.

The main town in M county was about 100 kilometres to the north of B City. How Rong Jinzhen had managed to make his way over such a distance to look for his notebook left people feeling especially strange. Whilst on the road, Vasili took stock of all that had happened; his heart was filled with listlessness, a mournfulness that made it hard for him to know what to think.

Arriving at M county, he did not make his way directly to the man who had made the call; rather, upon passing by a paper mill, Vasili spied a man in the factory’s pile of waste paper who caught his interest. The man was unusually conspicuous, and upon closer inspection you could see that he had problems, that he wasn’t
normal
. His body was covered in filth. His feet were bare and they had a bluish-black tinge to them. Both his hands were bloodied, but the man kept sifting through the rubbish just the same, turning over mound after mound of refuse. Each torn and frayed book he discovered went though meticulous and exacting scrutiny. His eyes blurred, he mumbled continuously, he had the look of misfortune about him, and extreme piety – like a Taoist abbot who has suffered through calamity and is now standing in the midst of the ruins of his temple solemnly and tragically searching for his holy scriptures.

This all happened in the afternoon, under a winter sun, with the rays of sunshine beating over this pitiable man –

Beating over his bloodied hands.

Beating over his bent knees.

Beating over his crooked waist.

Beating over his deformed cheeks.

His mouth.

His nose.

His spectacles.

His eyes.

Gazing upon this man, on his black, trembling hands, Vasili’s eyes began to dilate, to expand; at the same time his feet carried him forward. He had recognized that this most pitiable man was Rong Jinzhen.

Rong Jinzhen – !

Vasili found him on the sixteenth day after the briefcase had gone missing, on 3 January 1970, at four in the afternoon.

On 14 January 1970, late in the afternoon, in the care of Vasili, Rong Jinzhen, this now broken and tormented man, was brought back to the high-walled compound of Unit 701, thus bringing to a close this part of the story.

Endings are also beginnings.

For this fifth section – a following-up report as it were – I want to provide some supplementary details about Rong Jinzhen’s life. I feel this current section functions much like a pair of hands behind the scenes, one touching upon the past of the story, the other stretching out towards the future. Both hands have been extremely industrious; they have stretched out very far and very wide. They have been fortunate, they have touched upon something very real, very exciting – something akin to finally catching hold of a long sought-after answer to a rather troublesome riddle. In fact, all the various mysteries and secrets included in the previous four sections, even though they might have lacked a certain splendour, will have their true brilliance revealed in what follows.

What is more, this division purposefully disregards plot and narrative conventions; it disregards literary mood. I make no attempt to present a unified coherent story. My intention has been rather skewed and varied. It may seem that this chapter endeavours to challenge traditional literary norms, but in truth I am only surrendering to the vicissitudes of Rong Jinzhen’s story. What’s strange, however, is that after I decided to surrender to his tale, to set myself at its mercy, I felt profoundly at ease, terribly satisfied, as though I had won some victory in battle.

But surrender is not the same as giving up! Upon reading this entire section, I hope you will come to realize that the revelations presented herein were provided by the creator of BLACK. Ah, but perhaps I’ve said too much. Still, to be honest, this is how it is: the pages that follow pulled me this way and that – and they will do the same to you. It’s as though by witnessing Rong Jinzhen fall into madness, I too have gone mad.

Back to business . . .

In fact, there have been some people who have raised suspicions about the veracity of this story. Their suspicions provoked me to write this final part.

I used to think that lulling the reader into believing that a story was actually real wasn’t the most essential aim in writing fiction; it was something you could do without. But this story . . . this particular tale, well, it requires this belief, it hungers to be trusted. That’s because, in the end, it is unquestionably a real story. In order to preserve this original essence, I’ve had to take many risks, most notably with the plot. Oh, I could have relied on my imagination and spun an elaborate tale to tie up all the loose ends, or even employed some convenient narrative sleight of hand to finish things up. But an intense desire – a passion – to protect the spirit of the story prevented me from taking this route. Therefore I can say that, if the story seems to suffer from some chronic malaise, the roots of this disease do not emanate from this lowly narrator, but rather from the characters and the lives they lived. This of course is not wholly beyond the realm of imagination. After all, logically speaking – or, let’s say, to speak from experience – the possibility that one will encounter some altogether unforeseeable chronic illness is a very real one. There is really nothing one can do.

I must stress, therefore, that this story is historical; it is not some imaginary tale. What I have written has been gleaned from the taped transcripts I have obtained; the factual core remains intact. You can understand – and I hope forgive me – for adding some narrative framing and fictional elements such as personal names and places, and of course the descriptions of the skies, the landscapes. There may be some errors regarding the exact times when events took place; of course, certain parts of the story that are still classified have been omitted; at times I may have overdone things with respect to the inner thoughts of the characters. But I had no choice in this matter. After all, Rong Jinzhen was a man thoroughly absorbed in a fantasy world:

he did nothing but crack various ciphers, and because this work was top-secret, the general public couldn’t know about it. That’s how it is. Additionally, I must admit that it wasn’t Vasili who ultimately discovered Rong Jinzhen at the paper mill, or printing works, or wherever it was in M county. Rather it was the Director of Unit 701 who personally saw to the matter: he brought Rong Jinzhen home. Vasili, over the course of those few days and because of the strain of what had happened, had actually fallen dreadfully ill and could do very little. The Director, however, died ten years ago. Furthermore, even before he passed away, he would, by all accounts, refrain from raising the issue of what had happened then, almost as if he felt sorry for Rong Jinzhen. Some people said it was because he felt guilty about how he had treated Rong Jinzhen’s madness, and as death drew near, he blamed himself very much. I’m not sure if he was right to feel guilty or not, all I know is that his self-recrimination made me feel even more regret for how things turned out for Rong Jinzhen. Getting back to our story, there was one other person who had accompanied the Director on that fateful day: his chauffeur. People said that he was a very accomplished driver but functionally illiterate.

Hence we can’t be sure if it was a ‘printing works’ or a ‘paper mill’ where they found Rong Jinzhen. From the exterior, they both look very much the same, and for an illiterate person who had only seen things in passing, failing to distinguish between the two is quite to be expected. In my discussions with him, I was initially at great pains to help him understand that there are distinct differences between a paper mill and a printing works. For instance, the former would have several towering smokestacks whereas the latter would not. With respect to smells, a printing works would have the distinct odour of printing ink hanging in the air, whereas a paper mill would simply have turbid water spewing forth; there would be a decided lack of any pungent odour. Despite this explanation, however, the driver still could not provide me with precise details. Instead, his speech remained consistently evasive and unclear. Sometimes I thought that his equivocation was probably due to the difference between those who are educated and those who are not. For those less educated, judging what is real and what is not, what is right and what is wrong, must be fraught with difficulties and obstacles. And for this doddering, senile old man, whose love of tobacco and drink had eaten away at his memory – a decrepitude that would terrify the stoutest individual – speaking about something that had happened decades back was extremely difficult. But he was adamant that the incident took place in 1967 and not in 1969. Needless to say, this mistake made me doubt him all the more. As a result, for the ending, I decided I might as well take some liberties and have Vasili be the one who made his way to M county to find Rong Jinzhen and bring him home. I have given you these details as I felt the episode needed clarification.

I have to accept that the ending is the most unreal part of the entire story.

I sometimes feel regret for having fabricated it so.

The second reason for me to write this final section was that some people have shown great interest in finding out about what happened to Rong Jinzhen after he returned to Unit 701. This has served as encouragement for me.

This concern also implies that you, my reader, would like me to tell you how I understand Rong Jinzhen’s story. How I appreciate his tale.

I couldn’t be happier to tell you.

To tell you the truth, I came to learn of this story because of my father’s medical condition. In the spring of 1990, my then 75-year-old father suffered a paralysing stroke and had to be admitted to hospital.

Because treatment proved ineffective, he was transferred to a nursing home in Lingshan County in Guangxi. You could say that this wasn’t really a nursing home, but rather a hospice where the only concern was for the patients to quietly and peacefully wait for death. That winter, I paid a visit to my poor father and discovered that the pain and torment of his condition over the last year had mellowed him enormously. He was much kinder and more loving towards me, and much given to entertaining conversation. It was plain to see that he was hoping that repetition would convince me of his fatherly affection. In all honesty, it wasn’t necessary for him to act in this manner. Both of us already knew that the time for him to show this sort of affection had passed. When I had needed him, he wasn’t there – perhaps he never thought that this day would come, or perhaps there was some other reason: whatever the case may be, I have to admit that he never really loved me as a father should. It did not matter though. I wouldn’t hold it against him now and try to exact some form of revenge. I wouldn’t let it influence my sense of duty concerning how I should love and respect him in his final days. To be honest, I was greatly opposed to having him transferred to this particular nursing home in the first place, but my father had insisted on it most vociferously. I simply couldn’t change his mind. I understood, too, why he was adamant about coming here. He was worried that my wife and I would soon grow to hate having to take care of him day in and day out had he remained closer to home. It was a humiliation that he could do without. Of course, the possibility of this happening was not altogether remote – long-term sickness can weaken the resolve of even the most filial son. Nevertheless, I thought that there could be other possibilities; seeing him bedridden, perhaps we would have sympathized more, become even more filial.

But in all honesty, it was hard to endure listening to my father prattle on about his past embarrassments and regrets. Only when the conversation shifted to the bizarre and odd stories he had heard the other patients tell did I became attentive and eager to hear more. I was especially enthralled by the story of Rong Jinzhen. By the time I visited him, my father was quite familiar with the tale. After all, they shared the same ward – they were practically neighbours. My father told me that Rong Jinzhen had already been a resident of the Lingshan County nursing home for several decades. Without exception, everyone knew him and understood who he was. Upon arrival, every new patient received a special welcoming gift: Rong Jinzhen’s story. Discussing his great talents, the highs and lows of his life, had become the order of the day. Everyone enjoyed talking about him out of reverence and because he was so truly exceptional.

I soon realized that all the patients in the nursing home had the highest regard for Rong Jinzhen. In each and every place he appeared, it didn’t matter where, the people who saw him would immediately stop what they were doing, their gaze fixed upon him. If necessary, they would give way, smiling at him ever so slightly. But in spite of all of this, it is quite likely that Rong Jinzhen was completely oblivious to what happened round him. When the doctors and nurses were with him, the other patients couldn’t help but notice how they would treat him as though he were a member of their own family, or perhaps some senior official. And so it was in this reverential manner that Rong Jinzhen, this clearly mentally handicapped man, lived out his days. In all my life I have never seen anything like it. Only once on television did I see something similar, and that was the care given to Einstein’s British heir, Stephen Hawking.

I spent three days at the nursing home. While I was there, I discovered that during the day the patients were all given some free time to do as they pleased. Some would congregate together and play chess or cards. Some would stroll about, or just sit and chat. The doctors and nurses would eventually appear to perform check-ups or administer medicine. They would, as a rule, blow sharply on their whistles to urge the patients to return to their rooms. Only Rong Jinzhen would always remain in his room, speechless and uncommunicative.

Even for meals and for exercise someone had to go and call on him, otherwise he wouldn’t venture beyond his door. He behaved just as he had in those early days working in Unit 701, holed up in the cryptography room. For this reason, the day-shift nurses were given an additional responsibility: they had to be sure to go and collect Rong Jinzhen for his three daily meals and accompany him for thirty-minute walks after each repast. My father told me that in the beginning, when Rong Jinzhen first arrived at the nursing home, no one knew about his past and so some of the nurses resented giving him this special treatment. As a result, they wouldn’t always perform their duties, and Rong Jinzhen would often go hungry. Later, a very senior official paid a visit to the nursing home and happened to discover the poor treatment he was receiving. He summarily called all the doctors and nurses together and warned them: ‘If you have elderly parents at home, then how you would treat them is how you should treat him; if you have only children at home, then how you would treat your own children is how you should treat him; if you have no family, then treat him exactly as you would treat me.’

Afterwards, the glories and misfortunes of Rong Jinzhen’s life slowly came out, and at the same time the manner in which he was cared for changed. He was now treated as someone to be treasured; no one dared to slight him – they all handled him with the utmost care and respect. My father said that he was sure that if it were not for the nature of the work that he had done, he would have already become a household name, a hero. His miraculous achievements would be eulogized for generation after generation.

I replied, ‘But why should someone’s former profession dictate how he is to be treated at hospital? He should receive that kind of treatment anyway, shouldn’t he?’

‘There is that,’ my father said. ‘But as his outstanding service to the nation was slowly but surely revealed, everyone began to show him greater respect. They all began to dedicate a place in their hearts for him: the man they first saw had disappeared; he was now something so much more.’

In spite of this – in spite of everyone doing as much as possible to look after him – I felt that his life was intolerably difficult, and intolerably sad. At times I would see him through the window, squatting down on a sofa, his face completely blank, his eyes without a glimmer of light – completely unmoving, like a statue. Except for his hands: they never stopped trembling, as if they were being worked upon by some unknown force. In the evenings, through the pale white tranquil walls of the home, I would often hear his old man’s wheeze. It felt as though something or someone was pounding on him unremittingly. Then there were the nights when the stillness of people sleeping would occasionally be interrupted by what sounded like a Chinese oboe weeping ever so mournfully, the sound drifting through the walls. My father told me that Jinzhen made that heartwrenching wailing noise when he dreamed.