Mai Jia - Decoded

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. . [Transcript of the interview with Master Rong]

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.’‘Who?’ He immediately pricked up his ears.