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reaches you, I will be dying; in which case – even if it is a mistake – I will no longer care. I can use the special powers granted to those who are about to die to refuse to carry any further the burdens life has placed upon me. These burdens have been, if I may say so, quite sufficiently numerous and heavy. However, I am also planning to use the all-seeing eyes supposed to be granted to the dead to check up on how seriously you take the points raised in my letter and what you propose to do about them. In many ways, you could say that this is my last will and testament. I have lived on this difficult and dangerous planet for a long time – almost a century. I know how well you treat the dead in this country, not to mention how badly you treat the living. The first is entirely praiseworthy; the latter is not. It is for this very reason that I am certain you will not disobey my final instructions.
    I have only one regret and that is Duckling. I have been his guardian for many years, faute de mieux , but now I can hear the bell tolling for me and it is clear that I have only a few days left. It is time for someone else to take care of him. I beg you to take over as his guardian. There are three reasons that you would be the perfect choice.
    1. It is thanks to your bravery and generosity – you and your father (Old Lillie) – that he was ever born at all.
    2. Whether you admit it or not, he is a member of the Rong family and his grandmother was the person that your father loved and admired more than anyone else in the world.
    3. This child is very clever. These last few years, he has been my new-found-land. At every step, I have found myself amazed and impressed by his truly remarkable intelligence. Do not be misled by his somewhat misanthropic and cold personality; I believe that he is just as clever as his grandmother was, not to mention the fact that the two of them are as alike in appearance as two peas in a pod. She was exceptionally clever, extremely creative; an amazingly forceful personality. Archimedes said, ‘Give me a place to stand and I will move the earth.’ I believe that he is that kind of person. However, right now he needs you, because he isn’t quite twelve years old.
    Believe what I tell you and take the child away from here. Bring him up in your home because he needs you, needs your love, and needs an education. Perhaps more than anything else, he needs you to give him a name. I beg you!
    I beg you!
    This is the first and last time I have ever begged anyone for anything.
    The dying R. J.
    Tongzhen, 8 June 1944

2.
    1944 was the worst year that the people of the provincial capital, C City – and N University at its heart – had ever experienced. First they suffered in the front line of battle; then they were ground under the heel of the Nanjing puppet government. This brought about an enormous change not only to the appearance of the city, but also to the hearts of its people. When Young Lillie received Mr Auslander’s letter, the worst of the fighting was already over, but the chaos unleashed by the bad faith of the temporary government had reached the point of no return. By this time Old Lillie had been dead for many years and Young Lillie’s position at N University had been adversely affected by the collapse in his father’s fortunes, not to mention the intransigent attitude of the puppet government. Nevertheless, the puppet government thought very highly of Young Lillie. First of all he was famous, which meant that he was useful to them in a way that an ordinary man wouldn’t have been; secondly the Rong family had suffered a great deal at the hands of the KMT government, so they were hoping that he would prove amenable. So when the puppet government was first established, they generously offered Young Lillie (at that time just acting vice-chancellor of the university) the job of chancellor, imagining that this would be all that it took to buy him. They were not expecting that he would