Decoded by Mai Jia

Author:Mai Jia
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
ISBN: 9780374135805
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 2013-12-01T23:00:00+00:00

6.

Seven years earlier, when Professor Jan Liseiwicz scooped up his family and relatives by marriage and took them to X country to live, he certainly had no idea that one day he would have to bring these bloody people back again. The fact is, he had no choice: bargaining his way out was not an option. Originally, his mother-in-law had been a very healthy woman, but thanks to her transplantation to an entirely alien country and an ever-growing homesickness, her health was quickly undermined. When she realized that she might very well be facing the prospect of dying far from home, she demanded with as much force as ever an old Chinese person did to go home to die.

Where was home?

In China!

Half the guns in X country were trained against China! As you will have gathered, it was not going to be easy to satisfy his mother-in-law’s demands. In fact, it was so difficult that Jan Liseiwicz simply refused to even consider the idea. However, his father-in-law revealed a thuggish streak in his character – belied by his family’s respectable reputation – by putting a knife against his neck and threatening to commit suicide. It was at that moment that Liseiwicz realized that he was caught in a horrible trap; he had no choice but to obey the old brute’s demands. It was also perfectly clear that the reason his father-in-law proceeded to this extreme – where he was prepared to risk his own life – was because his wife’s demands now were exactly the same as those he was planning to make one day. The knife that he put to his neck was there to tell his son-in-law that if it turned out that survival meant that he was doomed to die abroad, he would rather kill himself immediately so he could be buried with his wife back in China!

To tell the truth, Jan Liseiwicz found it very difficult to understand this old Chinese gentleman’s strange determination, but the fact that he did not understand did not matter in the least. When the knife was at the neck and a scene of carnage looked likely to unfold at any moment, what does it matter whether you understand or not? You have no choice but to do what he wants; if you don’t understand it you still have to do it; if you find it horrible you still have to do it; and what is more, you have to do it in person. Given the constant barrage of exaggerated propaganda that they were all living under, his family (including his wife) were very worried that he would not be able to come back alive. Nevertheless, that spring Jan Liseiwicz took his failing mother-in-law back to her old home town by plane, train, and finally by car.

The story goes that when his old mother-in-law was lifted into the car that had been hired to take her to her home town, she opened her eyes wide when she heard the driver speak in familiar accents, then she peacefully closed her eyes forever.

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