“Of course you will stay!” Madame Houssong reassured her cheerfully. “We have enough rooms.”
Yvette stepped forward. “I am Yvette,” she said reaching for Lin’s hand. “Do you really come from China?”
“Yes, Yvette.”
“It must have been awful…”
“It was hell” Lin exclaimed. The surprise in Yvette’s face dissolved in a warm smile. She embraced Lin lightly and I saw her parents exchanging glances. “Now you will be all right, cherie,” she said softly. “You will stay with us.”
Lin made a swift half-turn, raising her hand to her eyes. Her shoulders quivered under the sudden strain of emotions which she tried to control.
“Let her relax!” Madame Houssong ushered Yvette aside.
The colonel interposed. “Why don’t we go into the salon?” Lin turned. “Please, I feel… so filthy…” she muttered. Her voice trailed off and her cheeks flushed.
“Do you want a bath?” Yvette asked.
“I would like it very much,” Lin replied, her face now ablaze. She felt embarrassed, but Madame Houssong came to her rescue. She called the maid and ordered her to prepare a bath for Lin. The maid took the girl to the bathroom and we sat down. The colonel prepared drinks and questioned me briefly about our trip. Then Yvette turned to me.
“How old is Lin?”
“She will be eighteen in September.”
Yvette turned on her heels and disappeared into the other room. When she returned her face was flushed with excitement and she was carrying a pile of clothes which she cheerfully dumped onto the couch. “I think we can give these to Lin,” she explained. “I really don’t need them and we are about the same size.”
Her generous offer warmed my heart and I noticed a smile of approval on her mother’s face. “Tomorrow I will buy her a pair of nice shoes.”
“Have you any money?” the colonel asked nonchalantly.
“I have my savings.”
“I thought you wanted to buy a stereo set.”
“Well,” Yvette sighed, lifting and dropping her shoulders, “poor Lin needs more important things now.”
When Lin reappeared, we all looked at her astonished. Her cheeks were pink, the weariness in her eyes was gone, and with her hair washed, dried, and tightened with a blue ribbon, her face was transformed. All the hardness had vanished from her features and she looked younger than Yvette. Her legs were beautifully shaped and the light summer dress that Yvette had given her made her look even more slender. I could have encircled her waist between my hands.
After coffee, Lin began talking about her life—and soon our cheerfulness was gone.. The air in the room seemed to grow heavier and heavier.
“We used to live near Hankow beside a wonderful lake,” Lin began. “My father built a cottage there. He was an architect. They were building a hospital at Hankow. My father’s name was Carver, John Carver. My mother was from China. She was the best mother, good and beautiful like an angel. I was their only child and they loved me more than anything on earth. My mother used to call me “my little blue sky.”
They bought me the best of everything and every summer we went to the sea near Shanghai. When the Communists approached Hankow my father refused to evacuate. He did not want to give up everything he had been working for. He wanted to finish the hospital and said that not even the Communists would prevent him from building a hospital for their own people.
“When the siege came he took me to a friend of his, a missionary doctor who lived in a small Christian colony with his wife, also a doctor. My parents thought I’d be safer at the missionary station. There were only teachers, priests, nurses, and doctors caring for old people and children. They did not think of themselves, only of me. My father decided to stay in the partly finished hospital. There were already hundreds of crates of expensive surgical equipment stored in the cellars, gifts from the American and British people. He was afraid that the ignorant soldiers might loot the containers or destroy the machines. My father was sure that once he spoke to the Communist commander, he would be permitted to continue with his work. How wrong my poor father was…”
She sighed deeply and her eyes clouded. “The fathers and sisters at the missionary station worked night and day. More and more people were brought in, most of them wounded. Many of them had to sleep in the open and the doctors operated on a table in the yard. I have seen so much suffering—and as the front came nearer and nearer…”
She broke off again, lifting her hand to her eyes nervously. Madame Houssong urged her not to continue if she felt tired. But Lin only shook her head. “Oh, no, if I won’t make you tired…”
Colonel Houssong then shook his head.
“One morning a couple of wounded soldiers came and told us that the Communist army had already occupied the hospital compound for three hours but had been driven out again. Of my parents they knew nothing. When they told me that, I just picked up my little doll and ran out of the station. I ran like a maniac all the way. I did not hear the explosions or the bullets, I did not see the burning houses. I just ran, jumping over debris, broken furniture, and deep craters—many of them full with corpses.”
Lin flushed and her breasts heaved; her breath came in little gasps but she went on bravely. “I found our housekeeper standing at the gate of the hospital. I noticed immediately that he was wearing my father’s leather jacket, but I did not pay much attention to it. I was glad to see him alive and grasped his hand. “Huang, I am so glad to see you. Where are my parents? How are they? Please…”
He pulled away from me and acted so strangely cool, so hostile. But my thoughts were with my parents. “Please,” I cried, “where are they?” He pointed toward the main building. “You will find them in there,” he said and smiled. But his smile frightened me. I could not imagine what was wrong with him. I rushed toward the main building and as I entered I saw… I saw my father… in a pool of blood… When I fell on him, he was icy cold… then my mother… she lay in a nearby room with bullet holes in her breasts… and, and…” She could not continue. Her words faded into a stream of tears. Her frail body shook as she buried her face in her hands. Madame Houssong rushed to her and caught her in her arms, herself crying. Yvette was weeping too and the colonel covered his face, shaking his head slowly. “Don’t talk, cherie,” I heard Madame Houssong speak to Lin gently. “We have heard enough for tonight.”
Lin, with her eyes closed, her tears rolling freely, grabbed Madame Houssong’s hand and pressed her face against it. “I must… I must tell. You are so good to me… I could never tell anyone how much I was hurt.”
Lin had to tell us the rest of her story. We could not stop her. She talked as if she wanted to cast away those tragic memories forever. “When I left the hospital, I saw Huang talking to some strange soldiers. They were the Communists. I still cannot imagine why he had turned so hostile. We were always good to him. When his son was ill, my father drove them all the way to Shanghai, to the hospital. We gave them food, clothes, toys for his children. But then I saw he was wearing a big red star—like the ones the Communists wore. I tried to run away but the soldiers caught me and… dragged me… into…”
She began to weep again. “I… I cannot tell you what they did to me… until I was pushed into a wagon with many other people… They took us to a camp, and we had to work in a brick factory three miles away. We walked there and back, every day. By the end of the year over a hundred of us had died. Our huts were cold and wet and the food was something we could chew and swallow but it was not food. They always told us that if we worked well we would be taken into better barracks in another camp with good food. We worked like animals to gain admittance to that other camp but they never moved us. We were taken out to bury people whom they had shot. There were thousands of people executed every week… Then one night a big storm came and the wind wrecked the watch towers and a part of the fence. I fled.”