Rong Jinzhen’s mental collapse

Rong Jinzhen’s mental collapse is presented not as a single break but as a prolonged undoing: after disappearing in a storm, he survives into old age with little apparent awareness of the world around him, while the memory of his missing notebook remains intact. That one surviving preoccupation turns a lost object into the last thread connecting him to his former life as a cryptographer—and makes the notebook’s eventual recovery both a relief for others and a fact that cannot reach him.

The Disappearance and Its Uncertain Meaning

On the evening of a torrential downpour, Rong Jinzhen disappeared. No one could establish when he had left his room, or whether he went out during the storm or after it. The uncertainty gave the disappearance the quality of an unfinished case: some suspected it was a second stage in the theft of his notebook, while others thought he had lost hope and could no longer endure the fear and pain surrounding its loss. Because ciphers had been his life, the notebook seemed inseparable from the person who had kept it. Without it, even the prospect of recovery appeared bleak; if found, its pages might already have become a water-soaked smear.

The story’s account of the disappearance holds two possible outcomes in tension. It resembles a bird leaving its nest for good, or a star torn from its orbit, images that make the loss seem final without confirming what happened to him. The discovery of a stretched leather shoe near the river on the eastern side of B City, close to an oil refinery, sharpened that uncertainty. Vasili recognized it as Rong Jinzhen’s from its distinctive stretched opening, caused by his recent rushes in search of the notebook. The shoe suggested a trace of his movements, but it did not resolve whether he had died or where he had gone.

The Notebook as the Last Recollection

The notebook is eventually found, yet its recovery does not repair Rong Jinzhen’s condition. He does not know that it has been recovered, and he appears unaware of how much time has passed. The contrast is stark: the missing object ceases to be missing for everyone else, while for him the search continues as if no resolution had occurred. His other memories seem to have receded, but the notebook remains, fixed in his mind with the force of something carved in stone.

That persistence is visible in an encounter at the nursing home. After eating, Rong Jinzhen notices the visiting narrator, moves toward him with a stiff, almost mechanical gait, and holds out both hands. His trembling mouth manages only to repeat his request for the notebook. The plea is not a general return to his former intellectual life: it names one object, again and again, as though that object were the only remaining route back to what has been lost. The narrator’s father later explains that anyone meeting Rong Jinzhen’s eyes might become the next person he approached to ask about it.

Life at Lingshan County Nursing Home

By the time of the narrator’s visit, Rong Jinzhen has lived at Lingshan County Nursing Home for several decades. His fellow residents know his story, which is told to each new arrival as a welcoming account of his exceptional talents and the rises and falls of his life. They regard him with unusual respect. People stop what they are doing when he appears, make way for him, and smile; doctors and nurses treat him with a care the narrator compares to the attention given to a family member or senior official. This public reverence exists alongside the account’s blunt recognition of his severe mental impairment, without making the two facts cancel each other out.

His daily life is marked by withdrawal. During the residents’ free time, others play chess or cards, walk, sit together, or talk. Rong Jinzhen stays in his room, silent and uncommunicative. He must be called for meals and exercise, and the day-shift nurses have the additional task of ensuring that he leaves his room for them. The narrator connects this seclusion to Rong Jinzhen’s earlier habit of remaining shut away in the cryptography room at Unit 701. The resemblance is not presented as proof that the two periods are alike: the former room held a working cryptographer, while the nursing-home room contains a man who rarely speaks or ventures out without help.

The Body of the Collapse

The visitor’s first sight of Rong Jinzhen in the canteen makes the passage of time physically legible. Bent over and motionless, he seems less like the promising young man described by the narrator’s father than a heap of clothes or a rag doll. The narrator recalls his earlier identity as a special operative of Unit 701 who had rendered distinguished service and made exceptional contributions. Against that remembered achievement, the old man’s apparent mental infirmity and frailty register as a devastating change, not as a simple continuation of his former work.

When Rong Jinzhen raises his head and recognizes the visitor’s gaze, a brief spark seems to return to his eyes. He approaches with difficulty, his face shadowed by pain, and reaches out with both hands. The suddenness of this movement interrupts the scene’s image of near-total absence: he is not wholly without purpose, but his remaining purpose emerges through the repeated request for the notebook. A nurse quickly comes to lead him away, placing an arm around him and guiding him step by step into the dark corridor. He continues looking between her and the visitor as he goes.

Return and Lasting Aftermath

A later return from hospital offers no sign of recovery. The visitor waits in the courtyard, where an administrator and Di Li help Rong Jinzhen out of a jeep. He seems reluctant to leave the vehicle and must descend slowly and carefully, as if easily broken. The man who emerges bears little resemblance to the Rong Jinzhen the visitor remembers: he is hunched and trembling, his head sits awkwardly, his eyes are wide but without a visible spark, and his mouth hangs open as drool escapes. His wife half carries him away while the visitor remains unable to greet him.

The outcome is therefore not simply that Rong Jinzhen vanishes or that his notebook is lost. He is later present among other people, cared for and remembered, yet largely inaccessible to them; the one memory that repeatedly breaks through is attached to a notebook already found. The narrative makes that mismatch the central measure of his collapse: others can preserve his story and recover the object, but neither their reverence nor the notebook’s return restores his awareness of time or releases him from the search.