Mai Jia - Decoded

That summer, the summer of 1956, Zheng the Gimp was still in his thirties — a strong and healthy young man. Thanks to the built-up soles of the shoes he wore on his left foot, nobody realized his physical problems — his limp disappeared and to the outside observer, he looked pretty much like anyone else. It was purely by chance that the people at the university discovered what was wrong with him.

This is how it all came about. The afternoon of the day that Zheng the Gimp came to the university, the entire student body was in the main auditorium, listening to a report about the amazing feats of valour achieved by the heroes of the Chinese People’s Volunteer Army. The campus was very quiet and the weather was lovely. It was not roasting hot, that day, and there was a light breeze blowing, fluttering the leaves of the avenue of French plane trees growing on either side of the road. That light susurration made the university seem even quieter than it actually was. He found the peace of the place so striking that he decided to order his jeep to stop — telling the driver to come back three days later to collect him from the university guest house. He got out of the car and started walking through the grounds alone. Some fifteen years earlier, he had spent three years at the attached high school, followed by the freshman year at the university. After such a long absence, he was keenly aware of the changes that had overtaken his alma mater and he was overtaken by a strange sense of nostalgia — many memories from the past seemed to press around him as he walked slowly along, as if called to life by his footsteps. When the presentation for the students finished, he was standing just outside the auditorium. The crowd poured out of the hall, spreading out like a flood. In an instant, he found himself engulfed, surrounded on all sides. He followed the crowd nervously, worried that someone might bump into him; because thanks to his gammy leg, if he fell it would be impossible for him to get up. The students continued coming and he found himself being moved to the back of the crowd, but these stragglers picked him up and marched along, shoulder to shoulder. The young people around him were careful, though; every time it seemed as though someone were just about to knock him down, they moved away just in time to prevent a collision. Nobody looked back, nobody seemed to have so much as noticed him; clearly his special shoe hid his condition from all casual observers. Maybe knowing this gave him confidence; anyway, he started to feel a sudden affection for this band of students, male and female, so bright and lively, chatting with each other; like a bubbling stream carrying him along. He felt himself rejuvenated — time had rolled back fifteen years.

When they arrived at the playing field, the crowd broke up the way a wave does when it hits the sand. He was now in no danger of being knocked off his feet. It was just at that moment that he suddenly felt something fall against the back of his neck. Before he had time to react, the crowd were already beginning to shout: ‘Rain!’ ‘It’s raining!’ When this cry first went up, people didn’t move, they just looked up at the sky. A moment later, the first drops were followed by a huge bolt of lightning, and then the rain really did begin to hammer down, as if someone had turned on a high-pressure hose. Immediately the crowd began to scatter like a flock of frightened hens — some were running forward, others had turned back towards the auditorium, some were rushing towards nearby buildings, some were heading for the bike sheds. As people ran around shouting at each other, the playing field was reduced to chaos. He was now in a real fix — he couldn’t run and he couldn’t not run: if he ran people would realize that he had a gammy leg; if he didn’t run he was going to get soaked. Maybe he didn’t even particularly want to run — he had faced the full force of enemy fire so why should he be scared of rain? Of course he wasn’t bothered by the prospect of getting wet. But his feet were obeying commands from some other part of his brain — he was starting to hop forward, one foot striking out, the other dragging behind. That was the way he had to run, the way a lame man runs, one leap at a time, as if there was a shard of glass stuck in the bottom of his shoe.

When he first started, everyone else was too busy running themselves to pay any attention to him. Later on, when they had found sanctuary in nearby buildings, he was still in the middle of the playing field. He hadn’t wanted to run in the first place, he was hampered by his gammy leg, he was still carrying his suitcase — no wonder he was so slow! No wonder everyone else had vanished! Now, in the whole of that massive playing field, he was the only person to be seen — he stuck out like a sore thumb. Once he realized that, he decided to get away from the playing field as quickly as possible, but that meant having to hop even faster. It was valiant, it was comical; to the people watching, it seemed like this was all part of the spectacle. Some people even started to shout encouragement at him.

‘Faster!’

‘Faster!’

Once the cry of ‘Faster!’ went up, it attracted the attention of even more people. It seemed as if all eyes were fixed on him — he felt almost nailed in place by their stares. He immediately decided to stop, cheerfully waving his hands in the air: a gesture of appreciation for the people who had shouted encouragement to him. Afterwards he began to walk forward, a smile on his face, like an actor leaving the stage. At that moment, seeing him walk normally, it looked as if his hopping run had been put on: a performance. In reality, something that he tried to cover up had been glaringly revealed to everyone. You could say that this sudden rainstorm forced him to play a role which disclosed the secret of his gammy leg — on the one hand this embarrassed him, and on the other, it made sure that everyone recognized him as. . a gimp! An amusing and friendly gimp. The fact is that when he left this place fifteen years earlier, having spent four years there, nobody noticed that he had gone. However, this time, in the space of just a couple of minutes, he had become famous throughout the university. A couple of days later, when he took Jinzhen away on his mysterious mission, everyone said, ‘It was the cripple who danced in the rain that took him away.’

He had come to take someone away.

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.