The next morning, together with Lisa, they went to pay a visit to the Lins, purposely doing this around ten o’clock so that Lin Biao might not be in. Yomei wanted to call on him without having to see him in person. In fact, Lin Biao usually left home early in the mornings for the headquarters in a western suburb. He had to oversee the training of all field armies under his command and prepare his troops for a major campaign that was about to take place. The sentry in front of the Lins’ home, a light-blue Victorian, stopped the three women, who told him that they had been Commander Lin’s old friends back in Moscow, and had come to see him. Lisa’s Caucasian face and their ability to speak Russian to each other convinced the young man that they were people of some consequence, so he let them through.
Yomei knocked on the door, and a round-faced woman in an army uniform opened it partway and put her head out. “Who do you want to see?” She was pretty and in her late twenties, thin but apple-cheeked, and with caterpillar eyebrows matched by bright, fierce eyes that were a bit wide-set.
“Can we see Lin Biao?” Yomei said matter-of-factly.
The woman frowned and said proudly, “He’s not in.” Few people used Lin Biao’s personal name in front of his wife. Everyone called him Chief Commander Lin.
Yomei went on, “Can you let him know Yomei and Lily stopped by to say hello? We used to be his friends in Moscow.”
Hearing that and seeing Lisa standing behind the two Chinese women, Mrs. Lin opened the door and let them in. She took them into the living room, which was bright and spacious, with tall bay windows. In spite of several servants and orderlies at Mrs. Lin’s beck and call, the room felt untidy, as if the occupants didn’t intend to live here for long. The furniture, mostly mismatched, gave an impression of serving only as stopgaps. At a massive redwood desk, a pair of rickety ladder-back chairs stood, the paint on them chipped in places. The missus’s manner seemed to show she knew who Yomei was. Though polite in appearance, she must have been agitated; she said she was Yeh Qun, Lin Biao’s wife. Yomei turned to observe her closely. Yeh Qun was not as pretty as his ex-wife, Zhang Mei, and even a little sickly, but she must be better educated, and was probably a college graduate. Yomei hoped she wouldn’t phone Lin Biao so that they didn’t have to wait to meet him in person. Much to Yomei’s relief, Yeh Qun seemed determined not to call her husband and just told them that she would let “Chief Lin” know of their visit.
That moniker sounded odd to Yomei, then she realized that Lin Biao was the commander in chief in the whole northeast. In fact, he had become the CCP’s number one general, and was a really extraordinary man now. Still, she didn’t feel eager to meet him in person, being afraid of any more entanglements with him.
The visitors stood up to take their leave, and Mrs. Lin saw them out. Again she thanked them for stopping by and said to Lisa that she was pleased to meet her in the flesh finally. Through Yomei’s translation, Lisa assured Yeh Qun that she could come to the Lis’ anytime, especially whenever Lin Biao wanted to have a cup of good coffee or a bowl of borscht.
On their way back, Lisa said Harbin was an interesting place and she wouldn’t mind living here for some years. Both Lily and Yomei agreed. But Lily pointed out, “You need a fine theater for your directing work, don’t you?” She spoke Russian for the benefit of Lisa, who couldn’t speak Chinese yet.
“They have a small one here,” Yomei said, “which is pretty good.”
“Perhaps you should ask Lin Biao to build a big one for you,” joked Lily.
“I might do that indeed if I lived and worked here,” Yomei said. “For the art I love, I’d do anything.”
Lisa smiled and remarked, “That’s a true artist talking. The artist and the revolutionary are the same kind of person, willing to take risks and even live dangerously.”
Though apparently flippant about her relationship with the CCP’s chief here, Yomei felt a surge of unease. She wasn’t sure how to deal with Lin Biao, the man who had promised to wait for her six years back. Now he’d already become a family man with three children, including the one left in the Soviet Union, so she must be very careful about him. Perhaps she’d best avoid him.
At the time, Harbin was the base of the CCP’s army in the northeast of China, thanks to its proximity to the Soviet Union. Moreover, the previous year the USSR’s forces had crushed the Japanese Kwantung Army and occupied Manchuria, so the CCP’s troops could resort to the Russian support—if they were in peril of being annihilated by the Nationalist army, they could flee across to the Soviet side and sometimes also into North Korea, the same tactics used by Kim Il Sung’s Liberation Army, which used to operate freely in the triangular region of Korea and Russia and China. With the Soviets’ help, Lin Biao had built the formidable Northeastern Army, more than a half million strong. They had inherited all the weapons and equipment the Soviets had seized from the Kwantung Army, and had also recruited tens of thousands of Japanese servicepeople, most of whom had special skills, such as medical personnel, artillerymen, tank operators, aircraft pilots, and engineers. Right before the Japanese surrendered, Mao Zedong had dispatched his most capable officers and cadres to the northeast to establish this powerful base, from which the CCP’s army could eventually march inland to topple the Nationalist regime and liberate the whole of China.
Although Yomei thought she and Lily could leave Harbin without seeing Lin Biao in person, that very evening he and his wife came to the Lis’ home in a jeep. Lin Biao was a little frail and even pallid, probably due to all the work he did at the commanding headquarters, where he had to spend more than twelve hours a day. Sometimes when a battle was underway somewhere in Manchuria, he even slept in his office so that he could make assessments and give orders promptly. Yomei was nonetheless pleased to see him and even felt a little thrilled. The man was more handsome in a peculiar way, more confident, with an assured manner, wearing a broad, shiny belt and cutting a dashing figure. Both he and his wife took off their fur hats and hung them on pegs in the anteroom and then rubbed the soles of their boots on the well-worn rug in there. At the sight of Yomei, Lin Biao rushed up and pumped her hand. “I’m so happy to see you here. Welcome!” he said in a husky voice.
She said, “Sorry we missed you this morning, but thanks for coming to see us.” She deliberately included Lily in their exchange, so Lin Biao turned and shook hands with Lily as well.
Li Lisan was pleased to see his boss here at this hour—obviously Lin Biao was eager to spend more time with Yomei, so Li Lisan told his chef to prepare dinner so that they could eat together. Lisa went into the kitchen to oversee the cooking—she wanted to serve something Russian, specifically a rich Luosong soup, which was a Chinese-Russian borscht with cubes of wild boar, turnip, napa cabbage, cellophane noodles, and red pepper rings. She also told the cook to prepare a platter of cold cuts and liver terrine that she had bought that day at the Michurin Store on Gogol Avenue.
In the living room, coffee was served, together with a plate of chocolate truffles. Lin Biao enjoyed the rich coffee, but its taste seemed to puzzle his wife. After a sip, Yeh Qun arched her eyebrows, forming a pair of crescents on her squarish forehead, her funnel-shaped nose twitching. She placed the cup beside her elbow and wouldn’t touch it again. Lily told her to take another cube of sugar if the coffee was too bitter for her. Mrs. Lin shook her head and said, “I’m good, just not thirsty.”
Feasting his eyes on Yomei, Lin Biao said, “I hope you can live and work here. We need experts like both of you. Few of us can speak Russian. Even though the Soviet Red Army has withdrawn from Manchuria, there’s still a lot of Russian personnel in town and you still can be of great help to us.”
Yomei couldn’t stop smiling happily in spite of Yeh Qun’s hawklike eyes, which were riveted on her all the while. “I’m a theater director by training, and that’s also my profession, so I can only work with actors,” said Yomei.
“That’s a not a problem at all. We need artists too,” Lin Biao went on.
But to his disappointment, Yomei explained that she and Lily planned to head for Yan’an soon because neither of them had seen their parents for many years. Lily’s dad, already sixty years old, was in Yan’an now, living with his new wife, a twentysomething, though her birth mother, his first wife, was still back in their hometown in Linli County, Hunan. Evidently the Central Committee of the CCP in Yan’an had plans for the two young women, who were both well educated, fluent in Russian, and both from revolutionary families—therefore trustworthy to the Party. So Lin Biao didn’t insist and only said their paths would definitely cross in the near future now that Yomei and Lily were back in the rank and file.
At dinner, Lin Biao was unusually talkative, saying his army was going to prevail in the northeast, and that the Communist revolution was likely to succeed in a few years. Li Lisan agreed with his assessment. All the CCP leaders used to think it might take two decades for them to seize the country, but now the goal was clearly attainable in the near future because the Japanese Imperial Army had exhausted Chiang Kai-shek’s military power and resources, and because the CCP’s army had grown many times stronger.
“There isn’t another major city like Harbin. It’s our number one urban base now,” Lin Biao told Yomei.
“I’ve met with a local theater group. They’re interesting and very capable,” she told him.
“So please consider Harbin as a possible base for your career.” He clinked glasses with her, then with the others.
Yomei enjoyed the red wine and took another swallow. She was pleased that the host served red wine instead of hard liquor, baijiu, which was too strong for her palate.
Lisa piped up, “I’m going to teach at the Foreign Language School here. It will be a great start for me.”
After translating for Lisa, Lily added, “I’d love to live in such a Russified city too. I saw croissants and apple turnovers for sale in a patisserie and chleb the size of a car wheel in a store. There’s also strawberry ice cream, smoked red sausage, pine-nut terrine, even foie gras. That’s wonderful.”
“True, you can get all kinds of Russian groceries here,” Li Lisan chimed in.
Yeh Qun looked ill at ease and didn’t seem to like the food. Halfway through dinner, she said she was getting a migraine and wanted to go home. Lin Biao’s face fell, but he managed to appear cheerful. After the main courses, without having tea, he and his wife took their leave. They put on their hats and headed for the jeep that had been waiting for them more than two hours in the frosty night.
Lily smiled and said that Lin Biao hadn’t been able to tear his eyes away from Yomei the whole time. Yomei slapped her on the shoulder and muttered, “He’s a married man now, nothing will happen between him and me.”
Lisa said to Yomei, “That couple might have some trouble tonight. I could see plainly that he’d been dancing attendance on you ever since he stepped in.”
“I don’t like that,” Yomei said flatly.
Sharing the upstairs guest room at the Lis’, Yomei and Lily had a heart-to-heart chat before going to sleep, just like they used to do back at the Hotel Lux in Moscow. “Tell me honestly,” Lily said in the dark, “are you still not interested in Lin Biao? He’s extraordinary, to say the least, isn’t he?”
“He’s married now,” Yomei said. “I’d hate to become someone’s mistress.”
“What if he divorces his wife? You can see that they can’t be living peacefully together.”
“In any case, I don’t want to be pilloried as a home-wrecker.”
“So there’s no possibility for you and him to be together?”
“He promised to wait for me six years ago, showing great patience. Then he married someone else in just one year. I cannot trust him anymore.”
“Maybe it was Yeh Qun who pursued him. A man like him must’ve had lots of women around him.”
“He broke his word nevertheless,” Yomei said in an earnest whisper.
“What if he’d kept his promise?”
“That would’ve been a hard call. I might have been moved to agree to marry him since that would have proved he loved me wholeheartedly and that he was honest and kept his word. But still I couldn’t say I love him. As a woman, I’m just not attracted to him. How about you? Say Lin Biao fell for you. Would you be willing to be his bride?”
“In total honesty, very few women could resist that. He’s like a ruler of all of Manchuria, powerful and brilliant. In the Communist army he is regarded as a legend—a godlike figure of warfare. So I would say I’d be overwhelmed if that happened.”
“What does that mean?” Yomei pressed.
“I’d be too muddled to think clearly.” Lily giggled, then continued, “Perhaps in my heart of hearts, I wouldn’t mind becoming Madame Lin. My family name is already Lin anyway.”
“After he left his wife?”
“That would be the prerequisite.”
“I wish I could have your frame of mind, Lily. I just can’t say I love him. If I marry someone, I can do it only for love.”