Everything that Young Lillie had said was perfectly true, however. Jan Liseiwicz did not know that a couple of months earlier, the remnants of the family property at Tongzhen had been seized in the Land Reform, and the only thing that was left in their possession was a few ramshackle buildings in the old mansion. One commercial property remained in the provincial capital, but a few days earlier at the welcome ceremony for the new mayor, Young Lillie (as a member of a well-known patriotic family) presented it to the people’s government of C City as a sign of his support for the newly established People’s Republic of China. The decision to select such a public occasion for making the gift might seem like he was currying favour but in fact this was not the case — it was the recipients who decided it should be done this way. Furthermore, he agreed with their reasoning that it would set an example encouraging other members of wealthy and socially prominent families to support the new government. I can say categorically that the Rong family were great patriots and that Young Lillie was no exception — he beggared himself in order to demonstrate his loyal support for the People’s Republic. His support was determined both by his appreciation of the bigger picture and his personal experience of unfair treatment at the hands of the KMT government. Anyway, of the property that Old Lillie had inherited from his ancestors, when it reached the hands of himself and his son, some had been given away, some had been spent, some had been ruined and some had been divided, to the point where it was now all gone. Young Lillie’s own personal savings had gone in the battle to save his daughter’s life. His salary had not risen to cover the rising cost of living and he had lost all other possible sources of income. Now Jinzhen wanted to go and study abroad, but even though Young Lillie supported him wholeheartedly, there was nothing that he could do to help.
Eventually Liseiwicz realized what had happened. That came about just a couple of months later, when Liseiwicz received a letter from Dr Gábor Szego, then the Head of the Department of Mathematics at Stanford University, which accepted Jinzhen as a scholarship student and included a money order of $110 for travel expenses. This had been extracted from department funds purely thanks to Liseiwicz’s persuasive lobbying. He had written a 3,000-word letter to Dr Szego, and now those 3,000 words had returned, metamorphosed into a fully funded PhD place at Stanford and a ticket for the boat. When he told Young Lillie the news, Liseiwicz was delighted to see how happy the old man was.>
Just as Jinzhen was getting ready to spend his last summer at the university before heading off to Stanford, he became terribly sick. It was this that determined he would spend the rest of his life in China.
[Transcript of the interview with Master Rong]
He had renal failure!
Zhendi almost died!
When he first became sick, the doctor told us that he was going to die — at best, he would live for another six months. During that time, death was near him all the time; we watched a young man who had always been slim swell up until he looked vast, though his actual body weight continued to drop.
He was suffering from oedema. The renal failure affected him so badly that it was as if Zhendi’s body was made of dough, constantly fermenting, constantly swelling, making him as light and soft as a cotton-boll; it seemed as though he would burst if you poked him with a finger. The doctors said it was a miracle that Zhendi survived — in fact, in his case he did practically rise from the dead. He was in hospital for close on two years and the whole of that time he was not allowed to eat any salt, it was poison to him. The struggle to live wore him out. The money that the people at Stanford had sent to pay for his journey ended up going on his medical expenses and his scholarship to study there, his diploma, his life as a student, his very future were all swallowed up by the appalling present, becoming a vaguer and vaguer dream. All of Liseiwicz’s hard work went for nothing — he had wanted to create a brilliant future for his very best student but now he had to face two unpalatable facts: One, the money was gone and there was no way that the state of the Rong family finances would ever allow us to be able to replace that $110. Two, the people Liseiwicz relied on for his own future security (including me) had suspected him of the worst possible motives.
Liseiwicz’s actions had demonstrated the purity of his intentions and proved beyond any reasonable doubt that he was genuinely fond of Zhendi. Just think about it — if Liseiwicz was really using Zhendi to get results for his own research, there is no way that he would encourage him to go to Stanford. There are no true secrets in this world — over time the truth is always revealed. Liseiwicz’s secret was that he — more than anyone else — had become convinced that Zhendi was a truly rare mathematical genius. Maybe he saw in Zhendi some kind of reflection of himself as a boy — he loved him in the same kind of selfless way as he loved his own childhood — he was completely serious and totally innocent in this.
If Liseiwicz was ever unfair to Zhendi, it came much later and came about as a result of the mathematical chess game that they had developed together. It ended up being very influential in mathematical circles in Europe and America — lots of mathematicians played it. It wasn’t called mathematical chess though, because it was named after Jan Liseiwicz: Liseiwicz chess. I got to read a number of articles on Liseiwicz chess over the years and people clearly thought very highly of it. Sometimes its significance was even compared to that of von Neumann’s theory of chess as a two-person zero-sum game. It was said that while von Neumann’s concept was of particular importance in economic theory, Liseiwicz chess had great significance in military strategy. Although the practical applications of the two games had yet to be demonstrated, their theoretical importance was supposed to be enormous. People pointed to Liseiwicz, the youngest ever recipient of the Fields Medal, and said that he was an ornament to the world of mathematics — however, after he went to China, he had really done no original research of any importance with the exception of Liseiwicz chess — the last great achievement of his later career.
As I said before, Liseiwicz chess was originally known as mathematical chess and it was developed by Jan Liseiwicz and Zhendi together — Zhendi deserves some of the credit. Once Liseiwicz called the game after himself, there was no chance that Zhendi’s role would be recognized: he was eliminated from the story and Jan Liseiwicz took all the credit himself. You could say that he was unfair to Zhendi, but you could also say that the pair were really fond of each other and that Liseiwicz really did do his best for the boy. .[To be continued]
9
Early in the summer of 1950, it began pouring with rain one evening and just continued through the night without a break. Enormous raindrops fell against the tiles, sometimes with a noise almost like that of hammering, at other times with a duller thudding. From the sound of the rain lashing against the roof, you might have imagined that there was some kind of giant centipede up there, running for its life. The changes in the noise were the result of the wind getting up — when it blew strongly the sound became sharper. At the same time you could hear the tug of the wind on the window frames. Thanks to all this racket, Young Lillie hadn’t slept at all well. The sleepless night had given him a headache and his eyes were somewhat swollen. He listened to the sound of the wind and rain, realizing that he and his house were both getting old. He finally fell asleep just before dawn. However, he woke up again pretty quickly — something seemed to have woken him. Mrs Lillie said it was the sound of a motor-car.