Decoded

by Mai Jia

  ‘Why haven’t you returned to see us?’

  ‘I can’t . . . ’

  ‘Only a criminal cannot return home!’

  ‘I am almost a criminal . . . ’

  He is his own criminal!

  18

  You gave him too much! With too much he simply won’t dare to recollect, thinking makes him uncomfortable, he feels remorseful, humbled, he would think that all he has was obtained by luck and that would be depressing, as though his pitiful lot in life had been achieved by preying on your benevolence.

  The ancients said, no more no less, no contentment no suffering. God said, all under heaven is unsatisfactory . . .

  19

  Some people who are loved become blessed; others become cursed. Because of such a blessing, he wanted to return.

  Because of being cursed, he wanted to leave.

  He did not leave because he discovered this, it was because he hda left that he learnt of it.

  20

  An ignorant person has no fear.

  Fear is like a cord wound around him, pulling him back; it seemed to be hung round him telling people he was unsuitable to be confided in.

  21

  Mummy, how are you?

  Mother, mother, my dear mother!

  22

  Before drifting off to sleep last night you purposely encouraged yourself to dream. But no trace remains of what you dreamt. You most likely dreamt about work because that was your objective, you wanted to free yourself of ‘the worry about not working’.

  23

  Pointing his index finger at me, Klaus Johannes told me that in this profession he is the greatest, I’m next after him.* But he also criticised me, saying I had committed two fatal errors: first, I had become part of the system; second, I had gone about deciphering these mid to low-level ciphers that other people could easily crack – the second mistake derived from the first.† The outcome of these two errors, Johannes told me, pushed me farther and farther away from him; it did not bring me closer. I said that now our adversary was no longer using any new high-level cipher, if I didn’t do this work then what would I do? Klaus Johannes said he had recently completed writing a book, a work that represented the apex of high-level cryptography. Since comprehending the highest or the lowest level of secrets was difficult, then whoever deciphered his book, whoever understood its contents, within thirty years that person could easily decipher all of the most sophisticated ciphers in the world. He suggested that I try to decipher his book and at the same time stuck his thumb up to me saying that if I should crack it, then his thumb would represent me.

  * Karl Johannes, of German origin, was a famous cryptographer during the Second World War. He died in 1948.

  † This much was certain, since after becoming section chief he participated in the deciphering of every cipher that they encountered.

  Contrary to what one might expect, this was actually good news. But where is this book?

  In my dream.

  No, it was in the dream within my dream, in the mind of my imaginary Klaus Johannes.

  24

  If this world truly had such a book, it could only have come from the hand of Klaus Johannes. No one else!

  In all honesty, his mind was just like this book.

  25

  During his lifetime, Klaus Johannes did write one book; it was called The Writing of the Gods.* Someone once said that they saw it in a bookshop. But this is highly unlikely since I had have already mobilized all the forces at my disposal to search for the book and yet we have not found it. There is nothing in this world that my people can’t locate, unless there was nothing there to begin with.

  26

  You are a rat.

  You are waiting inside a barn.

  But you cannot eat the millet.

  Each grain of millet has been daubed with a protective coating to prevent your teeth from gnawing into it.

  – That is cryptography.

  * The Writing of the Gods: Chunghwa Book Company, 1945; the translation was given the title The Riddle. Clearly Rong Jinzhen was angry that the secret services had searched for this book but could not find it.

  Ciphers on the one hand make the intelligence that you need disappear from under your eyes – you reach out and yet you cannot touch it. On the other hand they blind your eyes, so that you can see nothing.

  28

  When Douglas MacArthur stood on the Korean peninsula, he raised his hand into the sky and caught a handful, then he gestured to his cryptographers and said: this is the intelligence that I wanted, I want to know everything, things that are all around me, things that I cannot see because I am blind. It is up to you to restore my vision.

  Several years later, in his reminiscences he wrote: ‘My cryptographers never once let me open my eyes, not even once. I was very lucky to come back alive.’

  29

  Might as well repeat MacArthur’s action and extend a hand to grasp at the sky. But your purpose is not to grasp the air, but to catch a bird. There is always a bird in the sky, but the likelihood of you grabbing hold of it with your bare hands is terribly remote. This remoteness is not the same as saying it’s impossible, since some people can indeed miraculously grab hold of a bird in the sky.

  – That is decryption.

  However, the majority of people will only grab hold of a few bird feathers, even if they work on it their whole lives.

  30

  What kind of person can truly grab hold of a bird?

  Perhaps John Nash could.*

  But Liseiwicz can’t, although his genius is not necessarily inferior to that of John Nash.

  * John Nash, the American mathematician, played a key role in the development of game theory, for which he was one of the recipients of the 1994 Nobel Prize for Economics. His accomplishments in the field of pure mathematics were equally astounding: he was one of the founders of modern partial differential mathematics. Unfortunately, at the age of just thirty-four, he developed severe paranoid schizophrenia. This brought his remarkable genius to a premature conclusion.

  Although Nash would be able to catch a bird in flight, in my mind’s eye I couldn’t be sure of when he might do so. However, as long as Liseiwicz paid close attention to Nash’s line of sight, to the precise moment at which he began to move his hand; if he paid attention to his attitude, his nimbleness, his accuracy, his power to leap, etc.; if he were to raise his head again to scan the skies for the number of birds in it, the speed at which they were flying, their path, special characteristics and changes in their motion, etc.; then perhaps he could judge when Nash would reach out to clasp a bird in his hands.

  Possessing the same level of ability, Liseiwicz’s genius was more rigorous, cautious, and more beautiful, like that of an angel, like a god. Nash’s genius, however, was something unfamiliar, an unfamiliarity that made it seem freakish and uncivilized, as though he was possessed by an evil spirit. Ciphers are the work of the devil; they stand as testament to the craftiness and evilness of people, to our treacherous nature, our sinister intent, our devilish aptitude, there are no steps to be added, thus Nash, a man indistinguishable from the devil, was able to draw ever so close to them.

  32

  Sleep and death have the same given name, but not the same surname. Sleep prepares one for death; dreams are a kind of hell. People say that your spirit passes through your carcass to become small, your mind passes through your corpse to become tiny, this is the fundamental characteristic of demons and hobgoblins.

  People also say that since you have had dealings with the dream world since you were a child, you’ve been polluted by the wickedness and evil encountered there; that is why you are able to catch hold of a bird in mid-flight.

  33

  All the secrets of this world are held in dreams.

  34

  You only need to prove yourself.

  When you do so, your opponent will assist you.

  When you cannot, your opponent will prove himself. You long for some ot
her person of talent to step forth and permit you to keep your mouth shut. But to make this happen, you need to continue to speak.*

  36

  They’ve changed my personal security guard yet again; the reason for this one’s dismissal was her failure to come and collect my notebook. She’s not the first to be dismissed and she won’t be the last.

  37

  My new personal security guard will most definitely be a woman . . . †

  Who is she?

  * I can speculate that since English is used here, this is some quotation or other, but I cannot find the source.

  † During the mid 1970s, marriage for members of Unit 701 had to follow strict regulations. For instance, female comrades were prohibited from having romantic relationships with people outside the unit. If a man wished to begin a relationship with someone from the outside (although equality between the sexes was officially promoted, in reality men were privileged over women), they needed to report this to the relevant authorities. Once the report was made, the organization would dispatch agents to investigate the woman’s background. If consent was given, the relationship was allowed to proceed to the next level. Later, if this person did not wish to do a particular thing, or if there was some ‘problem’ that was difficult to resolve, then they could request that the Party step in and resolve it for them. The issue of Rong Jinzhen’s marriage had created quite a thorny problem for the authorities to deal with because he was getting older and older and yet had done nothing about getting married. He was not taking any initiative nor was he asking the authorities for help. Once he passed thirty years of age, the Party took it upon themselves to secretly and shrewdly arrange a marriage for him. First they selected an appropriate person and then arranged for that person to serve as Rong Jinzhen’s personal security guard. Not only would this woman have to have the complete trust of the Party, she also had to be determined to be by his side and hope to marry him. If she could not do that, she would have to leave in order to provide someone else with the opportunity – perhaps the next person would have better luck. It was due to this intricate plan that Rong Jinzhen’s personal security guard continued to change over and over again: the current guard was already his fourth.

  Do you know her?

  Do you hope it is someone you know, or not?

  Did she volunteer, or was she talked into doing this kind of job? Will she come to see me in the hospital tomorrow?

  Christ! This really gives one a headache!

  39

  The devil continues to bear and raise children because it wants to eat them all.

  40

  The doctor told me that my stomach is still bleeding a bit. He felt it odd that he had administered such excellent medicine and yet still had not seen the hoped-for results. I told him the reason for that: since I was in my teens I have been taking stomach medicines as if they were meals: I’ve simply consumed too much medicine; I’ve become numb to its effect. He decided to administer something new. I told him that it didn’t matter as there were no new medicines that I hadn’t already tried; the crux of the matter was the dosage needed to be increased. He told me that that was too risky, he didn’t dare do it. From my point of view, I had better prepare myself to remain here a little while longer.

  41

  That loathsome pet!

  42

  She’s come.

  They always rush forward bravely, ready to suffer at your side.

  43

  When she is here, the hospital room feels practically thronged with people.

  When she leaves, looking at her back, you almost forget that she is a woman.

  She needed seven cakes in order to relieve her hunger.*

  * This most likely comes from the Bible, but I cannot be sure of where.

  She’s not very good at concealing things – what a terrible cipher she would make! You couldn’t help but feel that whilst in front of people she was not unlike you and in need of greater composure. As this is the case, why does she put herself through this? You have to realize, this is just the beginning. This has determined that every day you have to spend your time feeling bewildered and helpless; anyway, I knew that he wouldn’t sympathize with someone who had taken the wrong path.

  45

  Trying to help me with my train of thought is a type of sickness, only bed rest can help me to fully recover.

  46

  Thinking too much is also a disease.

  47

  Blue sky, white clouds, treetops, a breeze, something swaying, a window, a bird swooping past, like a dream . . . a new day, wind just like time, water just like life . . . some memories, some sighs, some confusion, some unforgettable events, some contingencies, something laughable . . . you see two points: the first is space, the second is time, or perhaps you could say, the first is the day, the second is night . . .

  48

  The doctor has told me that dreaming ruins your health, it is a sickness.

  49

  She brought me a carton of Daqianmen cigarettes, Guoguang brand blue ink, Junshan Yellow tea, a metronome, soothing balm, a radio, a feather fan, and a copy of Romance of the Three Kingdoms. It seems as though she were studying me . . . but she is wrong, I wouldn’t listen to a radio. My soul is my radio, every day it whispers to me non-stop, just like my metronome, the vibration caused by footsteps can cause it to swing back and forth for ever so long.

  Your soul is hoisted up in mid-air, just like a pendulum. It was in a dream that he first saw himself smoking and then afterwards he started to smoke.

  51

  Smoking Daqianmen cigarettes was a habit cultivated my Miss Jiang.* She was from Shanghai. One time, after she returned from a visit home, she brought these cigarettes back with her. She said they were good and that she was going to have her family send her a carton every month. He liked to hear her speak Shanghainese, it sounds like the chirping of a bird, melodious, sharp and clear, complex; you could imagine her tongue being pointed and thin. It seemed as though he fancied her, but there wasn’t time to find out. Her problem was that when she walked there was too much noise, too much racket. Later it was as though she had horseshoes nailed to the soles of her feet, it was simply more than he could bear. In actual fact, this wasn’t a noise problem; rather it implied that his soul could at any moment float away – whilst floating it is common to grasp firmly the corner of one’s clothes, and then fall from up in the air.

  * Miss Jiang was his first female personal security guard.

  52

  If he had a choice between day and night, he would choose night.

  If he had a choice between a mountain and a river, he would choose the mountain.

  If he had a choice between a flower and grass, he would choose grass.

  If he had a choice between a man and a ghost, he would choose the ghost.

  If he had a choice between a living man and a dead man, he would choose a dead man.

  If he had a choice between being blind and being deaf, he would choose deafness.

  To sum up, he despised noise and anything that made it.

  This is also a kind of illness, like colour blindness, there is either a greater or lesser natural disposition to suffer from it.

  A sorcerer unable to reach his goal . . .

  54

  What a terribly sinister-looking thing!

  She said it was a chiton;* in folk legends they’re said to come from the unnatural mating of a toad and a snake,† and they are peculiarly effective in treating stomach ailments. This I believe: one reason being they are used as a folk remedy to treat incurable diseases; the second being that my stomach ailment is just like this sinister-looking animal, and perhaps I can only rely on such a sinister and frightening thing to bring it under control. Supposedly, she spent an entire day trekking through the mountains to collect them, which must have been very difficult for her. Until the day breaks and the shadows flee away, I will get me to the mountain of myrrh and to the hill of frankincense.‡

  * Chiton
s are marine molluscs: they survive between mountains and rocks and are a sort of soft-shelled turtle. Compared to other molluscs their exterior skin is much coarser and frightening. They are extremely rare and have a multitude of medicinal properties.

  † But in fact they do not; they are a type of soft-shelled turtle

  .‡ Taken from the Song of Solomon 4: 6.

  55

  The forest seems to be breathing under the moonlight, then it shrinks back, forming a thick mass, it becomes small, the treetops stand erect, then in a moment it unfolds, following the hillside, spreading out with it, becoming short, low brush, so much so that it becomes hazy, a far-off image . . . §

  § Source unknown.

  56

  I suddenly felt that my stomach was empty, at peace, as if it weren’t there – I haven’t felt this way for many years! For so long now I have felt that my stomach was a septic tank, permeated with a burning, evil smell; now it seemed as though it had sprung a leak, it had deflated, gone soft, loosened up. It is said that you need twenty-four hours before you feel the effects of Chinese medicine, but only a few hours have passed, it is simply unbelievable!

  Might this be a miracle cure?

  57

  It was the first time I saw her laugh.

  It was an incredibly restrained laugh, very unnatural, absolutely silent and very short, over in an instant, like someone laughing in a painting.

  Her laugh proved that she doesn’t like to laugh.

  Does she really dislike laughing? Or . . .

  58

  He abided by an old fisherman’s proverb to handle his affairs, the primary meaning of the proverb was: the flesh of an intelligent fish is much firmer than the flesh of a stupid fish and yet they are destructive, because a stupid fish is indiscriminate about what it eats, whereas an intelligent fish chooses to eat the stupid fish . . .