Mai Jia - Decoded

Serial No.: __________

Code No.: __________

Date: __________

The serial number gave the number in the series; the date indicated from when to when the notebook was used; the code number would tell you the agent’s name. For instance, Rong Jinzhen’s code number was 5603K. No one outside Unit 701 would recognize who that was, but everyone inside would: the year he began work at Unit 701 — 1956; the section he worked in — cryptography; the 03 in the middle indicating that during the aforementioned year he was the third person to have been recruited by Unit 701. Finally, each page is stamped with the words ‘Top Secret’ on the top right-hand side and a page number on the bottom right-hand side, all in dark red ink.

Looking at the copy given to me by Di Li I noticed immediately that it had been tampered with because the ‘top secret’ banner on the right and the page numbers had all been removed. I thought, ‘I can understand why the “Top Secret” banner was removed, since this material was no longer considered top secret. But why erase the page numbers?’ At first, I couldn’t figure it out. I counted the number of pages. There were seventy-two. I then began to understand. In the course of my research, I had learnt that this type of notebook contained ninety-nine pages, and so it was clear that the photocopy provided by Di Li was incomplete. She offered two explanations: first, Rong Jinzhen had not used the entire notebook and thus many pages were blank and did not need to be copied; secondly, certain pages contained their personal secrets — the secrets between husband and wife — and so she did not wish me to see those. Hence they were omitted. From my point of view, those omitted pages were what I most wanted to see.

2. Looking at the data and the content, the early pages of the notebook concerned a time when Rong Jinzhen fell ill.

One day in the middle of June in 1966, after he had eaten breakfast and had left the canteen, Rong Jinzhen abruptly lost consciousness and fell to the floor in the middle of the hallway. The side of his head hit the corner of a wooden bench — and the blood came gushing out. He was taken to hospital, whereupon they discovered that the blood dripping down his face was nothing compared to the bleeding in his stomach. The problem with his stomach had actually caused the fainting fit. The result of this diagnosis, coupled with the doctor believing that it was quite severe, meant that Rong Jinzhen was admitted to the hospital for treatment.

This hospital was exactly the same one as the chess-playing lunatic had been taken to all those years before — it was attached to Unit 701. Located next to the training base in the Southern Complex, the quality of its equipment and the skill of its physicians was no whit inferior to that of a big-city hospital. With respect to Rong Jinzhen’s ailment — well, there was nothing really difficult about treating such a common condition, and it certainly would not give rise to the same kind of problem that the treatment of the lunatic had caused. The difficulty lay in the fact that although this hospital was attached to Unit 701, it was located in the Southern Complex and, as you can imagine, its level of secrecy could not be compared to that of the Northern Complex. To employ a rather inappropriate analogy: the relationship between the northern compound and the southern one was like the relationship between master and servant. A servant is always busy fulfilling his master’s wishes, but what is the master up to? Alas, the servant is not privy to such information. Even if they were to learn of such things, they would not be permitted to talk about them, at least not openly. Strictly speaking, Rong Jinzhen’s true identity was not to be disclosed even when he was in hospital. Of course, that was easier said than done, especially since he was such a well-known person; most people had already learned of him through formal or informal channels and everyone understood that he was a really important man. Of course, if your identity is made public then it is public; you could say that everyone in Unit 701 was part of the same family and so it didn’t really matter one way or the other. Still, when it comes to work or other professional matters — well, those things are not to be revealed at any cost.

As we all now know, Rong Jinzhen always carried a notebook on his person. But when he got sick, when his blood was flowing down his face, he wasn’t really cognisant of his own person to say nothing of others, and so his notebook was brought along with him to the clinic. Of course, this was strictly prohibited. However, even though his personal security guard knew that he had been admitted to the hospital (in other words he was out of the Northern Complex), she didn’t rush over to immediately collect it. Consequently, it wasn’t until the evening of the day he took sick that Rong Jinzhen himself handed it in. Once the security bureau authorities learnt of what had happened, they straightaway reprimanded the guard, dismissed her from her position and began to make arrangements to appoint a new security officer to manage Rong Jinzhen’s affairs. The new guard was none other than his future wife. From the looks of it, all of this must have happened three or four days after Rong Jinzhen had signed out this particular notebook — on the fourth or fifth day after he was admitted to hospital.

This notebook was most definitely not that notebook! In truth, when Rong Jinzhen handed in the notebook himself, he didn’t forget to make a request for a new one, because he was only too aware of his own personal habits — only too aware of his need to have a notebook always on his person. This was part of his life. You could say that this habit began on the day that Young Lillie gave him that Waterman pen; even though he was sick, a habit is a habit and they are hard to break. Of course, given his surroundings at the time, it would have been impossible for him to write anything involving work, and this is the reason why this particular notebook has been declassified and allowed to be held personally by Di Li. In my opinion, the notebook contains random thoughts and impressions about his time spent at the hospital.

3. The people he mentioned in the notebook are unclear.

The people he writes about are simply called ‘you’, ‘he’ and ‘she’. It seems to me that all of these people lack any clear designation; the pronouns do not point to any single person. To use a linguist’s vocabulary, the ‘signifieds’ are at play. That is to say, at times these pronouns seem to refer to himself, at other times to Liseiwicz, or Young Lillie, or his mother, or Master Rong. At yet other times it seems that the pronouns used refer to his wife, or the chess-playing lunatic, or the Christian God. There are times when they even seem to be referring to a tree or a dog. In any case, it’s all very confusing, and perhaps he didn’t really know himself who or what he was talking about, so the whole thing is quite a mess. Understanding it is something you will just have to play by ear. Why is it that I think you, my readers, can choose to read this section or not? Well, this is my reason: there is no way we can be sure we understand what is written in the notebook, no way to be certain, no way to clearly grasp the exact meaning; all we can do is rely upon our feelings and play it by ear — accept it for what it is. That being the case, reading what follows is up to you. It doesn’t matter one way or the other. If you do want to continue, then to assist you in doing so, I’ve added numbers to each entry to help organize them, at least somewhat. Also, whatever was written in English has been translated.

01

He continues to demand that I live my life like a mushroom, to grow and flourish with the sun and earth, with the clouds and rain, and to eventually die by their hands. But it seems as though I can’t do this. And now, for instance, he’s changed into a house pet.