Her name was Yin-hsi, and she was lovely beyond words. Her oval face was graced with a wide, sensuous mouth and almond-shaped eyes as clear and dark as the night between the stars. Her hair was piled high atop her head and held in place by antique jeweled pins that were the same sapphire shade as her silk robe. Her skin was far silkier than the robe: warm yellow-brown, taut, scented with a delicate Western perfume. She was only twenty-three years old, young enough to be his granddaughter.
In 1949 her real grandparents and her mother — who was then still a child — had fled to Taiwan with Chiang Kai-shek's followers. Her mother had grown up on the island and had married Yin-hsi's father there. The newlyweds had then emigrated to South Korea, where, in the aftermath of the United Nations' war against North Korea, there were many golden opportunities. Her father had become a moderately successful businessman, and her mother had settled down to raise a family, one son and two daughters.
Yin-hsi had been born in Seoul, and her parents had raised her much as Chinese girls had been raised before Mao's revolution. She had never been meant for factory work or for farm work on some dust-choked commune. She was too soft for that, too delicate, too like a flower of flesh and hair. She had none of the virtues of an emancipated Communist woman — but those were not the only virtues that a woman might rightfully cultivate. Yin-hsi's great strength lay in her desire to serve her master, be he her husband or only her owner. She gloried in giving her Tai-Pan all the pleasure she could produce with her woman's knowledge, obedient nature, personal devices, and body. And because this was what she had been educated to do, Yin-hsi was a very great credit to her father, mother, and to herself.
After extensive and prolonged negotiations, General Lin had purchased Yin-hsi six years ago, shortly after she had turned seventeen. He had given many tasteful gifts and considerable cash to her father. He had promised to treat her well always and to keep her always unspoiled. He had bought a four-room, gracefully designed pine bungalow two doors from her family, and there he had set her up in housekeeping with a female servant and all the necessities. Before Yin-hsi, there had been another mistress of whom the general had grown weary. He didn't think he would ever grow weary of his Yin-hsi, even if he were to live well into his eighties.
The general considered himself to be a good Communist, yet he did not feel guilty about owning another human being. This was, of course, an inexcusable sin in the eyes of other Communists. General Lin knew, however, that he owned the girl only in the most abstract sense. He never treated her as a slave; and he had impressed upon her that if she should ever want to quit this life in favor of the more modern and conventional path of marriage and suburban life, he would free her instantly upon her request.
Nevertheless, had any officials in China known about Yin-hsi, General Lin would have been stripped of his authority and drummed out of the Party. Quite likely, he would also be put on trial and found guilty and sentenced to prison or to “reeducation” on a pig farm.
Which would have been terribly tragic, for the general really was a good Communist. He believed that the Party had fed, clothed, housed, and educated the masses better than any capitalistic system could have done. He deeply desired a lasting Communistic future for China.
What he did not believe in or desire was the joyless, sexless, robotistic Communism that had grown out of the Maoist State. Mao Tse-tung had always been a crushing bore and a prude: a brilliant and admirable political leader but a rather shallow human being. Lin had been close enough to him to see this much from the start of the revolution. But to think that in just a few short decades Mao and his most ardent followers had managed to lead an entire nation of nearly a billion people into voluntary sexual self-denial and outright self-repression! Incredible! And more than incredible, he thought, it was nonrevolutionary. Criminal. If you allowed yourself to be programmed as an asexual automaton, you were no different from capitalism's programmed worker-drones who had been propagandized into denying themselves the full rewards and joys of their own labors.
From the beginning of his association with the Maoist cause, General Lin had rejected asexuality and had, indeed, assiduously cultivated his erotic drives. At sixty-four he was still an extremely active man — and quietly proud of it.
His cover was perfect. He had been made chief of the Internal Security Force in 1951, and from the earliest days of the ISF he had done field work just like the agents who were answerable to him. He was the ISF's leading expert on South Korea and made regular monthly undercover missions into that country, often remaining there for a week or ten days at a time. This activist role was applauded by the Party's highest executives. As they saw it, any general who took the same risks as those he required of his subordinates was in no danger of being corrupted by power or by a sense of elitism. (And, in fact, this was part of the reason why he had always worked in the field as well as behind the desk.) He was, they said, an excellent example of revolutionary Communism at work. Accepting this constant praise with calculated modesty, the general continued his field work in South Korea, where, until such a time as the Korean dictator could be overthrown, he could enjoy a vigorous and very non-Maoist sex life beyond the sight and suspicion of his superiors.
“I am a failure,” Yin-hsi said.
“Are you fishing for more compliments?”
“I am a failure.”
“That isn't true.”
“It is true.”
“Why is it true?”
“You think too much.”
“How does that reflect on you?”
“If I were a good woman to you, I should be able to take your mind off all your troubles. But I am no good. I am a failure. You sit there frowning, worrying.”
He stood up in the bath while she dried him with a large, thick towel. “I frown only because I can think of no way to be with you more often.”
She tilted her head and looked at him coquettishly. “Are you telling the truth?”
“Yes.”
“This is why you were frowning?”
“Yes.”
“Then I am not a failure?”
“Indeed, you are too much of a success.”
Smiling, she finished drying him.
“Stand before me,” he said.
She did, her arms at her sides.
He removed the jeweled pins from her hair. Rich, shining, dark crescents of hair fell about her face.
“You desire me?” she asked.
“Perhaps.”
“Only perhaps?”
“I have not decided.”
“Oh?”
“I have high standards.”
She looked down at his thick erection and giggled.
“Ah, woman,” he said in mock exasperation. “Where is your modesty? Have you no shame?”
She pouted and said, “I am a failure.”
Laughing, he untied the sash of her robe and slipped the silk from her. Her sweet breasts quivered before him. He took them in his gnarled, scarred hands and gently massaged them.
“Should I turn down the bed?” she asked.
“Yes — unless you want to be taken on a brick floor.”
“You would bruise me?”
“If necessary.”
“But you would not like me with bruises.”
“Then I would leave you.”
“Oh?"'
“Until the bruises had vanished.”
“You are a cruel man,” she said teasingly.
“Oh, terribly cruel.”
She crossed the softly lighted room to the low-standing bed and pulled back the quilted blankets. The sheets were yellow silk. She stretched out on them, her golden thighs slightly parted, the shaven petals of her sex visible in dust-soft shadows. Her hair was fanned across both pillows. Smiling at him, she put the tip of one finger against her right breast and murmured wordlessly as the nipple rose and stiffened under it.