In the dark, p.14
In the Dark, page 14
10
Young man, do you think this will do? I can’t carry on, I am too tired. Let’s continue tomorrow …
11
There’s no need to be in such a hurry. I want you to look at these photographs.
These are pictures of me as a young man. Look at that one – that’s nice and clear. I was pretty good-looking when I was young. Some people admired my nose, and said such a straight bridge and such neat nostrils were a sign I was a reliable man. Some people admired my mouth, with its generous, well-defined lips, and said it was a sign of honesty. Some people admired my forehead, square and with a strong eyebrow ridge, and said it was a sign I would be successful. Look at this picture – you can see how tall and fit I was. Some people said my proportions were pretty much perfect. People said all girls loved men like me – serious, stable, upstanding, good-looking, with a great future in front of me; attractive. But to tell the truth, when I was young none of the girls fancied me. I found it very difficult to get married, and though I had three serious girlfriends none of these relationships worked out, so that in the end the Party had to find me a wife. The reason I’m telling you this is because I want you to understand that other people thought of me as a really outstanding guy. By the time I met Huang Yiyi I was past forty; I had been married and had children; women were no longer a mystery to me. That meant that when Huang Yiyi unfurled like a flower beside me and started murmuring seductive words, it never excited or flustered me: I treated the whole thing as a joke.
I should explain that the journey to Unit 701 was very smooth, though we did have problems getting the train.
At that time there weren’t as many trains as there are now, and besides Unit 701 was based in an out-of-the-way little rural county, a backwater – until our work unit moved out there, they didn’t even have a train station. Every day the trains just went through with a whistle; they were not willing to stop. Unlike buses, trains are proud creatures: they don’t halt when they see people. Of course, it depends on what kind of person you are; for a member of Unit 701, trains go when you want them to and stop when you say so. If there isn’t a track, then one has to be laid; if there isn’t a platform, then one has to be built. That’s why after our arrival at that rural backwater trains had to stop there. There was only one direct service a day from Beijing Main Train Station though, and it didn’t stop for long, just three minutes. That train left at eleven o’clock in the morning. Because Huang Yiyi didn’t want to go with me, it took ages to get her ready and she kept being tiresome: one minute she wanted to do one thing, the next she wanted to see so-and-so – anyway, what with one thing and another we were delayed. The train left at eleven, and on the stroke of eleven we were running for the platform. Like I say, trains aren’t like buses: you can’t yell at them to stop. The train was deaf – even as I yelled, it started gathering speed as it pulled out of the station. I could see carriage after carriage speeding past me as it left the platform, each of the windows packed with black heads, and I was so furious that if I could have ripped up the tracks, I would have done!
Well, we’d missed it – we would have to wait until the following day. So another day would be wasted. This wasn’t just a question of time, but a security problem: my own personal safety and the security of the secret I was carrying. My personal safety was the responsibility of a whole chain of people; I didn’t know what they were up to, but I knew that they had everything under control. Sometimes they were beside me, sometimes they were far away, sometimes they were both. In every sense of the words, they knew me better than I knew myself; before I had arrived, they knew exactly what time I would come; before I had left, they knew when I would set out. I have reason to believe that on that day at eleven o’clock, as they saw the train I was supposed to be travelling on pull out from the platform, they all went home feeling that the job had been well done, and didn’t give me another thought. Thinking like that, I gave myself goose-bumps. When people become nervous, it is hard to avoid acting hastily. I found the station guards and showed my pass, asking that they allow me to make a phone call. I wasn’t entirely clear who I was talking to, but I had been told that if I encountered some problem that needed sorting out in a hurry, I should phone that number. I started to explain the situation over the phone, but before I had got very far, the person at the other end gave me two orders:
One: not to move from my present location.
Two: someone would arrange for us to be on our way immediately.
Ten minutes later the station master was standing in front of me.
Half an hour after that the station master personally escorted us onto a special train consisting of a single sleeper carriage. The station master informed me that this train would stop specially for a couple of minutes in the middle of nowhere to allow the two of us to get off. I thought with amazement of the mysterious phone call that I had just placed. I didn’t know who I had phoned – I still don’t know today. But I could sense, and have good reason to believe, that I was talking to someone very powerful, perhaps in Zhongnanhai, perhaps in some other, even more secret place.
Of course, this phone call did not just spare me a potentially very worrying wait; it also allowed me to enjoy a comfortable and safe journey. I had travelled by soft-sleeper before, but always with lots of other people around. This was the very first time I got a whole compartment without any strangers. Given that there were just myself and Huang Yiyi there, it felt like part of Unit 701, so we could discuss things openly, without having to worry and hide. But it was those special circumstances that allowed Huang Yiyi to start to unburden herself to me without restraint.
She said, ‘You dragging me to your work unit kicking and screaming – is this because you fancy me and are looking for a relationship?’
In the previous few days I had become very used to her way of speaking, and had come to know a lot about the sort of thing that she was likely to do, so now I wasn’t in the least bit surprised. I said calmly, ‘What kind of person do you take me for? I have children, a boy and a girl.’
‘You may be married with a family, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have other relationships.’
‘That’s bourgeois corruption.’
‘It’s not bourgeois corruption, it’s romantic. Don’t tell me you’ve never had a romantic relationship?’
‘During all these years of warfare, we relied on the romantic fervour of our revolutionary spirit to bring us victory over every danger.’
‘And in the end brought about the liberation of the whole of China,’ she continued where I had left off, ‘allowing patriotic intellectuals such as myself who had been forced into exile overseas to have their own country and their own home.’
‘Yeah,’ I said.
‘But I still don’t have a home.’
‘You will.’
‘Are you trying to cheer me up?’
‘No.’
‘But I feel really depressed.’
‘Why?’
‘Because the person I love doesn’t love me.’
‘Who?’
‘You!’
It was then that she told me that the reason she had come to see me in the guest house was that the afternoon of my arrival, as she walked across the playing field, she had glanced up and caught sight of me standing at the window, staring out. Although I was a long way away, she had been deeply attracted by my handsome and thoughtful appearance.
‘I was sure you were looking at me,’ she said.
‘I was not,’ I said quickly. ‘The first time I saw you was the day that you came looking for me.’
‘Oh. Well, what did you feel when you saw me? Your first impression.’
‘Unusual.’
‘You didn’t fancy me?’
‘No.’
‘You don’t love me?’
‘Right.’
‘You don’t dare to love me.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘You’re a coward, for all that you look like a real man.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘But I still love you. Please can you take my hand?’
Of course, I refused.
That wasn’t the problem – the problem was that something an ordinary person would have the greatest difficulty in putting into words, she would say in such a relaxed, generous, unhurried, thoughtless, open, direct way, as if it were a quite ordinary question, a perfectly normal request. She would just open her mouth and out it came – that really did startle me, time and time again. I had heard of this kind of thing, but never experienced it myself before. So I felt a bit light-headed and tense, as if I were looking down into an abyss. At that moment I really thought she was a devil in an angel’s body. Whatever you might think of her, she really did have an angelic side: she was very pretty. Whether you consider her intelligence, her abilities, her position, or her good looks they were all amazing: she was absolutely dazzling. That kind of woman is very special – you might happen across one but you are not going to find one by looking for her. But at the same time I could sense a kind of evil spirit in her, passionate, coquettish, obsessive, daring, bitter, dissolute, selfish, fearless, contemptuous of all authority – shameless, like a witch.
Unique – witch – pretty – passionate – intelligent – dissolute – clickety-clack – clickety-clack … The closer we got to Unit 701, the more nervous I became: I wasn’t bringing back a cryptographer but a Western capitalist poisonous weed!
12
In a sense you could say that the people I brought back to the unit became part of me. If they did well, that reflected on me; if they did badly, that was also my problem. Thanks to my usual caution, and due to a well-founded concern about Huang Yiyi’s unconventional actions and way of speaking, after I got back to our work unit, I didn’t tell our superiors too much about her special abilities, nor did I explain that she was particularly suited to the work of cracking RECOVERY thanks to the fact that she had been von Neumann’s assistant and had spent time in Moscow. I just vaguely explained that she was a mathematician, somewhat independent and free and easy in character, but that she ought to be suited to cryptography work. It was my intention not to encourage people to expect too much of her – a bit conservative, a bit low-key – so that when she did come up with a result people would be even more amazed, which would give us the upper hand.
It seemed as though the people at Unit 701 couldn’t wait, because the afternoon of the day after we arrived, Unit Director Luo summoned all the relevant personnel for a get-together in her office. Among those present were Chen Erhu, one of the Deputy Directors of the unit, and a cryptography Bureau Chief; Comrade Jiang, the manager of the calculations division; and Comrade Jin, the manager of the analysis division, all of them mainstays of Unit 701. This was described as a get-together, but in fact it was intended to be a mobilizing meeting, since we not only had to swear oaths and sign our names right on the spot, but we also opened the steel suitcase that I had been carrying to discover its secrets (which turned out to be a commercial encryption machine invented by Sivincy, three books of mathematical theory that she had written, and a black folder containing a list of the names of all KMT army officers above the rank of major, senior government ministers, and police officers above the rank of chief superintendent), and created a little special working party of which I was the head, having selected ten top-class people from the calculations division and five from the analysis division to assist us in our work. Comrade Jiang and Comrade Jin both volunteered to join the special working party, and I naturally expressed my warmest welcome. I invited Chen Erhu to join as well, but he didn’t want to, so I couldn’t force him. He mentioned a couple of good cryptographers to me and suggested that I go and meet them and get to know them a bit. Anyone that I wanted, he would transfer to me. I said that would be fine. Huang Yiyi then took it upon herself to start bickering with him. ‘And if we want you?’
Comrade Chen said coldly, ‘I accept whatever the Party demands.’
As the meeting went on, I could clearly feel that Comrade Chen was unhappy about Huang Yiyi. I felt that this was her fault – after all she had only just arrived and shouldn’t speak so rudely to anyone; and when the person concerned was Comrade Chen, she really should be modest and polite, given that he was not only one of the most important people in the unit, but also one of our best cryptographers. At least, before Huang Yiyi arrived in our unit and after she left, he was the very best cryptographer. But in Huang Yiyi’s dictionary there was no such word as modest. That was her problem.
When the meeting was over, it was my intention to take Huang Yiyi to the calculations division, the analysis division and the cryptography division to have a look, so that she could familiarize herself with conditions here. But she was in a listless mood and didn’t want to go; she wanted me to take her for a walk around the unit. So I took her all round, which I guess counts as letting her get to know the place. I discovered that with practically every step we took, there was a pair of curious eyes weighing us up, as if they had just seen something unusual or discovered a secret. She became really cheerful, looking at this and asking questions about that – if she saw a pretty flower then she wanted to pick it, if she saw a pretty bird she wanted to run after it. In that manner we wandered out of the strictly guarded work area into the living area outside it, and finally we ended up in the guards’ little compound. There was a vast magnolia tree in the middle of the compound, which was completely covered in white flowers. The moment Huang Yiyi caught sight of the tree with all its flowers and buds, she emitted an excited squeak. There was a concrete ping-pong table under the tree, and a load of soldiers were standing around watching a game of elephant chess. When they noticed us, they all looked up and gawped at Huang Yiyi. Bureau Chief Yuan of the guards unit saw that Huang Yiyi really liked the magnolia and told one of the guards to climb the tree to pick some flowers for her. The soldier was just about to get up into the tree when Huang Yiyi stopped him. She was looking at the interrupted game laid out on the ping-pong table, and asked which one of them was the best player. They all said it was Comrade Zhang, the clerk in their office. Huang Yiyi said to Bureau Chief Yuan, ‘I don’t want a reward I haven’t earned. I’ll play a game of elephant chess with the best player you have, and if he loses then you have to send someone up into the tree to pick flowers for me, OK? If I lose, I’ll climb the tree myself.’
Of course, the Bureau Chief agreed.
Huang Yiyi walked up to the ping-pong table and slapped down her chariots, horses and cannons, and then told Comrade Zhang that he could go first. The soldiers all looked at her in stupefaction. But what surprised them even more was that she put down her pieces really quickly, moving her delicate hands all over the board at a speed that made us dizzy, almost as if she wasn’t thinking about it at all. Nevertheless she beat Comrade Zhang in no time at all. Then someone went up into the tree and picked an armful of magnolia flowers for her.
Huang Yiyi gathered up her flowers, and followed me happily out of the guards’ barracks. Everyone we passed seemed to look at her, staring at the flowers in her hand, or at her appearance. On the way, Huang Yiyi noticed some people walking along the road carrying bowls and chopsticks, and so she asked me if it was lunchtime, and could we go and get something to eat. I thought that she shouldn’t go to the canteen looking like that, so I told her to take the flowers home first and get changed. But when Huang Yiyi reappeared at the canteen having left her flowers at home and got changed, everyone’s eyes stood out on stalks! Why? Well, she had changed into a very low-cut jumper, which she was wearing without a jacket, and the top two buttons of her white shirt had been left undone – revealing an expanse of pale flesh to the point where you could almost see her cleavage – and she had put on bright red lipstick. When I told her to go home and get changed I was thinking that she’d put on something plainer; I had no idea that she … Well, she’d got herself dressed up like a Mata Hari, and when she came to a halt in front of us, we were all stunned. They stared at her and then they stared at me, which clearly meant: What the hell kind of person is this that you’ve brought back?
You could say that while lots of people used their eyes to ask me that question, only old Comrade Chen came right out and said it.
I met Chen in his office. He had an office, and a cryptography room next to it. When Huang Yiyi and I went to his office, we found nobody there, so we went to the cryptography room. When he heard the sound of knocking, Chen came out, but when he caught sight of Huang Yiyi he immediately shut the door to his cryptography room, as if he had seen a ghost, and insisted that we go to his office. I had heard that Chen was terribly superstitious, and would not let a woman into his cryptography room under any circumstances whatsoever. Cryptographers all have their own idiosyncrasies and taboos, because in addition to knowledge, experience, intelligence and application, the job also requires the kind of luck that comes from far beyond the stars. Luck is a mysterious, elusive thing, and if you want to catch it, you have to become mysterious yourself.
When we got to his office, Chen came straight to the point. ‘You’re here to pick someone?’
Huang Yiyi got in ahead of me. ‘I guess so.’
Chen clearly didn’t like the way that she was taking charge, and with some resentment he got out a list of names and gave it to her. ‘Everyone’s here. Have a look. You can choose one or two comrades off this list to be your assistants.’
Huang Yiyi leafed idly through it and then gave it back to him. ‘This doesn’t tell me anything: it’s just a list of names.’
