He is he.
He is also he.
09
The doctor said a good stomach is smooth on the outside and rough on the inside: if you turned it inside out, with the rough
* This is a Bible story. The Apostle Paul was on the road to Jerusalem to preach. One day he met a farmer down on his knees wailing profusely. They had the above conversation.
† This passage is derived from Ecclesiastes 5.
side outermost, then a good stomach would look very much like a newly hatched chick, covered from top to bottom with shaggy hair. The hair would be evenly distributed. But my stomach is the reverse: it looks like someone suffering from favus of the scalp, oozing with blood and pus. The doctor also said most people assume that stomach disease is caused by the consumption of unhealthy foods, but actually, the main reason for a stomach ailment is obsessive worrying. It is not brought about by injurious drink and food, but by utopian longings and flights of fancy.
When have I consumed injurious drink and food?
My stomach seems like a foreign substance in my body, an enemy (a spy); it has never smiled at me.
10
You should loathe your stomach.
But you cannot.
The imprint of Daddy rests upon it.
It was that old man who had forged your stomach: it has a harmful disposition, extremely fragile, like a pear blossom. Does your stomach know how many pear blossoms it has consumed?
When your stomach hurts, you think of pear blossoms, you think of that old man.
Daddy, you’re not dead, not only do you live in my heart, you also live on in my stomach.
11
You always exert great energy to walk forward; you don’t like to look behind. Because you don’t like to look behind, you make demands on yourself to exert even more energy to walk forward.
12
All that is under heaven has all been planned by God.
If you were allowed to make your own plans, you might make of yourself a hermit who has fled this world, or perhaps a prisoner. The best would be an innocent prisoner, or a prisoner who cannot be saved; in any case a man free of guilt.
At present, God’s plan conforms to your wishes.
13
A shadow has caught hold of you.
Because you stopped.
14
Yet another shadow has caught hold of you!
15
Klaus Johannes said sleeping is most exhausting because you have to dream.
I say not working is most exhausting because your mind is empty. It is very much like dreaming; the past can take advantage of your weakness and burst in.
Work is the means by which the past can be forgotten, and even the reason for it can be cast off.
16
Like a bird leaving its nest. Like running away. .
17
‘You ungrateful bastard, where are you running to?’
‘I’m to your west. . in the valley a kilometre away.’
‘Why haven’t you returned to see us?’
‘I can’t. . ’
‘Only a criminal cannot return home!’
‘I am almost a criminal. . ’
He is his own criminal!
18
You gave him too much! With too much he simply won’t dare to recollect, thinking makes him uncomfortable, he feels remorseful, humbled, he would think that all he has was obtained by luck and that would be depressing, as though his pitiful lot in life had been achieved by preying on your benevolence.
The ancients said, no more no less, no contentment no suffering. God said, all under heaven is unsatisfactory. .
19
Some people who are loved become blessed; others become cursed. Because of such a blessing, he wanted to return.
Because of being cursed, he wanted to leave.
He did not leave because he discovered this, it was because he hda left that he learnt of it.
20
An ignorant person has no fear.
Fear is like a cord wound around him, pulling him back; it seemed to be hung round him telling people he was unsuitable to be confided in.
21
Mummy, how are you?
Mother, mother, my dear mother!
22
Before drifting off to sleep last night you purposely encouraged yourself to dream. But no trace remains of what you dreamt. You most likely dreamt about work because that was your objective, you wanted to free yourself of ‘the worry about not working’.
23
Pointing his index finger at me, Klaus Johannes told me that in this profession he is the greatest, I’m next after him.* But he also criticised me, saying I had committed two fatal errors: first, I had become part of the system; second, I had gone about deciphering these mid to low-level ciphers that other people could easily crack — the second mistake derived from the first.† The outcome of these two errors, Johannes told me, pushed me farther and farther away from him; it did not bring me closer. I said that now our adversary was no longer using any new high-level cipher, if I didn’t do this work then what would I do? Klaus Johannes said he had recently completed writing a book, a work that represented the apex of high-level cryptography. Since comprehending the highest or the lowest level of secrets was difficult, then whoever deciphered his book, whoever understood its contents, within thirty years that person could easily decipher all of the most sophisticated ciphers in the world. He suggested that I try to decipher his book and at the same time stuck his thumb up to me saying that if I should crack it, then his thumb would represent me.
* Karl Johannes, of German origin, was a famous cryptographer during the Second World War. He died in 1948.
† This much was certain, since after becoming section chief he participated in the deciphering of every cipher that they encountered.
Contrary to what one might expect, this was actually good news. But where is this book?
In my dream.
No, it was in the dream within my dream, in the mind of my imaginary Klaus Johannes.
24
If this world truly had such a book, it could only have come from the hand of Klaus Johannes. No one else!
In all honesty, his mind was just like this book.
25
During his lifetime, Klaus Johannes did write one book; it was called The Writing of the Gods.* Someone once said that they saw it in a bookshop. But this is highly unlikely since I had have already mobilized all the forces at my disposal to search for the book and yet we have not found it. There is nothing in this world that my people can’t locate, unless there was nothing there to begin with.
26
You are a rat.
You are waiting inside a barn.
But you cannot eat the millet.
Each grain of millet has been daubed with a protective coating to prevent your teeth from gnawing into it.
— That is cryptography.
* The Writing of the Gods: Chunghwa Book Company, 1945; the translation was given the title The Riddle. Clearly Rong Jinzhen was angry that the secret services had searched for this book but could not find it.
Ciphers on the one hand make the intelligence that you need disappear from under your eyes — you reach out and yet you cannot touch it. On the other hand they blind your eyes, so that you can see nothing.