Free Decoded by Mai Jia

made such a point of this is that he wanted Jinzhen to find a way to forgive himself for the mistake that he had made. Thanks to the way that Young Lillie first shouted at him and then cajoled him, Jinzhen finally calmed down.
    [Transcript of the interview with Master Rong]
    Later on, Daddy explained to us how Mr Auslander had asked Zhendi to work out his age. Thinking of how upset he had been, I suddenly found myself feeling moved by his obvious affection for the old foreign gentleman. On the other hand I also realized that he had an obsessive streak in his character – not to mention an inability to cope with his own mistakes. Later on we realized more and more clearly that Zhendi could on occasion be really stubborn and fierytempered; most of the time he was so quiet and kept himself to himself. He could put up with all sorts of things and simply carry on as if nothing had happened – in fact he could tolerate things that most people would find absolutely unendurable. But once an invisible line was crossed, once something had touched the most delicate part of his psyche, he would lose control very easily. This loss of control was always expressed by some extreme act. I could give you lots of examples of this kind of thing. For example, he really loved my mother and so one day he wrote a message in his own blood, completely in secret. What he said was: ‘Daddy is dead. The rest of my life is going to be devoted to looking after Mummy.’
    When he was seventeen, he got terribly sick and spent a long time in hospital. Mummy discovered this note then, because she was forever popping into his room to look for something or other that he wanted. It was slipped inside the binding of his diary and written in large characters. It looked as though he had used the tip of a finger to write it, but there was no date on it, so we didn’t know when it had been written. It was clear that it was not recent, so I reckon that he probably wrote it during the first year or two that he was living with us. The foxing on the paper and the fading of the characters certainly suggested that it had been there for some time.
    My mother was a very kind and gentle woman, friendly with everyone. She remained the same throughout her long life. When you think about her relationship with Zhendi, it really seemed as though they were destined to be friends, because the two of them got along amazingly well right from the very beginning. They had the kind of silent rapport that you normally only see among close family members. From the very first day that he came to live with us, Mummy called him Zhendi. I don’t know why she called him that; maybe it was because my little sister had only just passed away and she was transferring all her affection to him. After my sister died, Mummy didn’t set foot outside the house for the longest time; she just sat at home and mourned. Many nights she had nightmares, and during the day she often imagined that she saw my dead sister. Once Zhendi arrived, Mummy gradually recovered. Maybe you don’t know this, but Zhendi knew how to interpret people’s dreams. He was wonderfully good at it, just like visiting a professional shaman. He was a Christian though and read a little English-language Bible every day, even though he knew lots of passages completely off by heart. I think that the reason Mummy recovered so quickly and with so few setbacks along the way was entirely thanks to the fact that Zhendi was there interpreting her dreams for her and telling her stories out of the Bible. It is hard to explain exactly why they got on so well together. Of course, Mummy loved Zhendi; she always thought of him as one of the family and respected and cared about him. What nobody knew at the time was how deeply Zhendi was affected by this and how he became determined to repay her for everything that she did for him. That is why he secretly wrote that message in his own blood. In my opinion, Zhendi had lacked affection in his earlier