Mai Jia - Decoded

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.