The Bad Girl: A Novel

by Mario Vargas Llosa

  She pretended not to understand.

  “Don’t make that face, silly,” she said. “Don’t you love me anymore?”

  “I hate you,” I said. “I’ve never been as jealous as I am now. Can that dwarf, that abortion of a man, be the great love of your life?”

  “Stop talking nonsense and kiss me instead.”

  She threw her arms around my neck, offered me her mouth, and I felt the tip of her tongue become entangled with mine. She let me give her long kisses, and she responded with joy.

  “I love you, damn you, I love you, I want you,” I implored in her ear. “Come away with me, Japanese girl, come, I swear we’ll be happy.”

  “Careful, we’re almost there,” she said. She moved away from me, took a tissue from her bag, and touched up her lips. “Wipe your mouth, my lipstick smeared a little.”

  The theater-restaurant was a music hall with a gigantic stage, large and small tables arranged along a ramp that opened like a fan, and immense chandeliers that shed a powerful light on the enormous room. The table reserved by Fukuda was fairly close to the stage and had a magnificent sight line. The show began almost immediately after we arrived. It recalled the great Broadway hits, with numbers that were sometimes parodic, sometimes mimetic, the footwork and figures performed by a large group of dancers. There were also acts by clowns, magicians, and contortionists, and songs in English and Japanese. The emcee seemed to know almost as many languages as the Dragoman, though, according to Salomón, he spoke them all badly.

  This time too Mr. Fukuda, with commanding gestures, decided our places. Again he sat me next to Kuriko. As soon as the lights went down—the table was lit by bulbs half hidden among the floral arrangements—I felt the bad girl’s foot on mine. I looked at her and, with the most natural air in the world, she was talking to Mitsuko in a Japanese that, to judge by the efforts Mitsuko made to understand her, must have been as approximate as her French and English. She looked very attractive in this semidarkness, with her burnished hair, pale skin, rounded shoulders, long neck, shining honey-colored eyes, well-defined lips. She took off her shoe so I could feel the sole of her foot, which was on mine for almost the entire meal, moving at times to rub my ankle and remind me she was there, aware of what she was doing, defying her lord and master. He, hieratic, watched the show or conversed with the Dragoman, barely moving his mouth. Only once, I believe, did he turn to me to ask in English how things were going in Peru and if I knew people in the Japanese colony there, which, apparently, was fairly large. I told him I hadn’t been in Peru for many years and didn’t know much about what was going on in the country where I was born. And had never known any Japanese Peruvians, though there certainly were many of them, since Peru had been the second country in the world, after Brazil, to open its borders to Japanese immigration at the end of the nineteenth century.

  Supper had already been ordered and the dishes, nicely presented and very bland miniatures of vegetables, shellfish, and meat, came in endless succession. I hardly tasted them, just enough to be polite. On the other hand, I drank several tiny porcelain cups in which the gangster served us the warm, syrupy sake. I felt dizzy before the first part of the show was over. But, at least, my initial uneasiness had disappeared. When the lights went on, to my surprise the bad girl’s bare foot was still there, touching me. I thought: “She knows I’m suffering horrible jealousy and she’s trying to make amends.” That was it: each time I turned to look at her, trying not to betray what I was feeling, I told myself that I had never seen her look so beautiful or desirable. For example, her ear was a miracle of minimalist architecture with its gentle curves and the slight bend in the upper part of the lobe.

  At one point there was a minor incident between Salomón and Mitsuko, though I don’t know how it began. Suddenly she stood and left without saying goodbye to anyone or giving any explanation. The Dragoman jumped up and followed her.

  “What happened?” I asked Mr. Fukuda, but he sat looking at me, immutable, not saying anything.

  “She doesn’t like to be touched or kissed in public,” said Kuriko. “Your friend has wandering hands. Mitsuko will leave him soon. She told me so.”

  “Salomón will die if she leaves him. He loves Mitsuko like a mooning calf. Head over heels in love.”

  The bad girl laughed, her mouth open, her full lips very red now with makeup.

  “In love like a mooning calf! Head over heels in love!” she repeated. “I haven’t heard those laughable things for ages. Do they still say them in Peru, or are there other Peruvianisms for being in love?”

  And passing from Spanish to Japanese, she began to explain to Fukuda what those expressions meant. He listened to her, rigid and inscrutable. From time to time, like an articulated puppet, he would pick up his glass, raise it to his mouth without looking at it, take a sip, and return it to the table. Unexpectedly, a short while later the Dragoman and Mitsuko came back. They had made peace, for they were smiling and holding hands.

  “Nothing like arguments to keep love alive,” Salomón said with the smile of a satisfied man, winking at me. “But the man has to discipline the woman occasionally to keep her in her place.”

  When we left there were two taxis waiting for us again, and as he had earlier, Mr. Fukuda decided with a gesture that I would get into one of them with Kuriko. He left with Salomón and Mitsuko. I began to like the hated Japanese because of the privileges he granted me.

  “At least let me have the shoe for the foot you’ve been touching me with all night. I’ll go to bed with it, since I can’t do that with you. And I’ll keep it next to the Guerlain toothbrush.”

  But to my surprise, when we reached Fukuda’s building, Kuriko, instead of saying good night, took me by the hand and invited me to go up with her to have “one for the road” in her apartment. In the elevator I kissed her desperately. As I kissed her I said I would never forgive her for looking so beautiful on this night in particular, when I had discovered that her ears were miraculous minimalist creations. I adored them and would like to cut them off, embalm them, and carry them around the world in the jacket pocket closest to my heart.

  “Go on, go on with your cheap, sentimental things, you sentimental man.” She looked pleased, smiling, very much in control.

  Fukuda wasn’t in the living room. “I’ll see if he’s back,” she murmured, after pouring me a glass of whiskey on the rocks. She returned right away, her face afire with a provocative expression.

  “He hasn’t come back. You have what you wanted, good boy, that means he won’t come back at all. He’ll sleep somewhere else.”

  She didn’t seem very sorry that her sickness, her vice, had abandoned her. On the contrary, it seemed to make her happy. She explained that Fukuda would disappear suddenly like this after a supper or going to the movies, not saying anything to her. And the next day, when he came back, he wouldn’t explain anything.

  “Do you mean he’s going to spend the night with another woman? Having the most beautiful woman in the world in his house, the imbecile is capable of spending the night with someone else?”

  “Not all men have your good taste,” said Kuriko, dropping onto my knees and throwing her arms around my neck.

  As I embraced her and caressed her and kissed her on the neck, the shoulders, the ears, she said it wasn’t possible that fate, or the gods, or whatever, had been so generous with me, chasing away the Yakuza boss and granting me so much happiness.

  “Are you sure he won’t come back?” I asked after a moment, in a sudden attack of lucidity.

  “No, I know him, if he hasn’t come back it’s because he won’t spend the night here. Why, Ricardito? Are you afraid?”

  “No, not afraid. If you asked me today to kill him, I’d kill him. I’ve never been so happy in my life, Japanese girl. And you’ve never been as beautiful as you are tonight.”

  “Come, come.”

  I followed her, resisting my vertigo. The objects in the living room moved around me in slow motion. I felt so hap
py as I passed the picture window through which you could see the city, that I thought if I went through one of the panes and threw myself into the void, I’d float like a feather over the interminable blanket of lights. A hallway in the semidarkness had erotic prints on the walls. A room in shadows, carpeted, where I stumbled and fell onto a large, soft bed with a number of pillows. Without my asking, Kuriko began to take off her clothes. And when she had finished, she helped me to strip.

  “What are you waiting for, silly?”

  “Are you sure he won’t come back?”

  Instead of answering, she pressed her body to mine, wrapped herself around me, searched for my mouth, and filled it with her saliva. Never had I felt so excited, so moved, so fortunate. Was all this really happening? The bad girl never had been so ardent, so enthusiastic, never had taken so many initiatives in bed. She always had adopted a passive, almost indifferent attitude, seeming to resign herself to being kissed, caressed, loved, with no contribution on her part. Now she was the one kissing and nibbling my entire body, responding to my caresses instantly, with a resolution that astonished me. “Don’t you want me to do what you like?” I murmured. “First me,” she replied, pushing me with affectionate hands so I’d lie down on my back and spread my legs. She squatted between my knees, and for the first time since we made love in that chambre de bonne in the Hôtel du Sénat, she did what I had begged her to do so many times and she had always refused: to put my sex in her mouth and suck it. I heard myself moan, overwhelmed by the immeasurable pleasure that was disintegrating me piece by piece, atom by atom, transforming me into pure sensation, into music, into crackling flame. Then, in one of those seconds or minutes of miraculous suspension, when I felt my entire being concentrated in that piece of grateful flesh the bad girl was licking, kissing, sucking, swallowing, while her fingers caressed my testicles, I saw Fukuda.

  He was half hidden in the shadows beside a large television set, as if he were separated by the darkness in that corner of the bedroom, two or three meters at the most from the bed where Kuriko and I were making love, sitting on a chair or a bench, as motionless and mute as a sphinx, with his eternal movie gangster’s dark glasses and both hands in his fly.

  Grabbing her by the hair, I obliged the bad girl to let go of the sex she had in her mouth—I heard her complain about my pulling her hair—and completely shaken by surprise, fear, and confusion, I stupidly said in her ear, in a very quiet voice: “But, he’s there, Fukuda’s there.” Instead of jumping out of the bed, putting on a horrified expression, starting to run, going mad, screaming, after a second’s vacillation during which she began to turn her head toward the corner but thought better of it, I saw her do the only thing I never would have suspected or wanted her to do: put her arms around me, press against me with all her strength to keep me in the bed, seek out my mouth, bite me, pass me her saliva mixed with my semen, and say desperately, hurriedly, in anguish, “And what do you care if he’s here or not, silly? Aren’t you enjoying it, aren’t I making you enjoy it? Don’t look at him, forget about him.”

  Paralyzed by astonishment, I understood everything: Fukuda hadn’t surprised us, he was there with the complicity of the bad girl, enjoying a show prepared by the two of them. I had fallen into a trap. The surprising things that had happened were clarified, they had been carefully planned by the Japanese and executed by her, submissive to his orders and desires. I understood the reason for how effusive Kuriko had been with me these two days and, above all, tonight. She hadn’t done it for me, or for herself, but for him. To please her lord. For the enjoyment of her master. My heart pounded as if it would burst, and I could hardly breathe. I was no longer dizzy, and I felt my penis go flaccid, slipping away, shrinking, as if it were ashamed. I shoved her away and partially sat up, restrained by her, as I shouted, “I’ll kill you, you son of a bitch! Damn you!”

  But Fukuda was no longer in the corner, or in the room, and now the bad girl’s mood had changed and she insulted me, her voice and face distorted by rage.

  “What’s wrong with you, you idiot? Why are you making a scene?” She hit me on the face, the chest, wherever she could, with both hands. “Don’t be ridiculous, don’t be provincial. You always have been and always will be a sorry bastard, what else could I expect from you, little pissant.”

  In the semidarkness, as I tried to move her away, I looked for my clothes on the floor. I don’t know how I found them, or got dressed, or put on my shoes, or how long the farcical scene lasted. Kuriko had stopped hitting me, but she sat on the bed and screeched, hysterical, mixing sobs and insults.

  “Did you think I’d do this for you, you pauper, you failure, you imbecile? But who are you, who did you think you were? Ah, you’d die if you knew how much I despise you, how much I hate you, you coward.”

  At last I finished dressing and almost ran down the hall with the erotic prints, wanting Fukuda to be waiting for me in the living room with a revolver in his hand and two bodyguards armed with clubs, because then I’d rush him, try to pull off those hateful glasses, spit in his face so they would kill me right away. But nobody was in the living room or the elevator. Downstairs, in the doorway of the building, trembling with cold and rage, I had to wait a long time for the taxi that the uniformed doorman called for me.

  In my hotel room I lay on my bed, fully dressed. I felt exhausted, distressed, offended, and I didn’t even have the energy to take off my clothes. I was awake for hours, my mind a blank, feeling like human junk saturated with a stupid innocence, a naïve imbecility. I kept repeating, like a mantra: “It’s your fault, Ricardo. You knew her. You knew what she was capable of. She never loved you, she always despised you. What are you crying about, little pissant? What are you complaining about, what are you grieving for, dimwit, prick, imbecile? That’s what you are, everything she called you and more. You ought to be happy, and like assholes and modern, intelligent people do, tell yourself you got what you wanted. Didn’t you fuck her? Didn’t she suck your dick? Didn’t you come in her mouth? What else do you want? What do you care if that midget, that Yakuza was there, watching you fuck his whore? What do you care about what happened? Who told you to fall in love with her? You’re to blame for everything, Ricardito, you and no one else.”

  When day broke I shaved, showered, packed my bag, and called Japan Airlines to move up my return to Paris, which I was obliged to do by way of Korea. I managed to arrange a seat on the noon plane to Seoul, so I had just enough time to get to Narita Airport. I called the Dragoman to say goodbye, telling him it was urgent I return to Paris because I had just been offered a good contract. He insisted on seeing me off even though I did everything I could to talk him out of it.

  When I was at reception, paying the bill, I received a phone call. As soon as I heard the voice of the bad girl saying “Hello, hello,” I hung up. I went out to the street to wait for the Dragoman. We took a bus that picked up passengers from different hotels, so it took more than an hour to reach Narita. On the way, my friend asked if I’d had some problem with Kuriko or with Fukuda, and I assured him I hadn’t, that my impetuous departure was due to the excellent contract Señor Charnés had offered me by fax. He didn’t believe me but didn’t insist.

  And then, turning to his own affairs, he began to talk to me about Mitsuko. He had always been allergic to matrimony, he considered it a surrender for any free person like himself. But, since Mitsuko was so insistent on their marrying, and had turned out to be such a nice girl, and had treated him so well, he was thinking about sacrificing his liberty, giving her that pleasure, and marrying. “In the Shinto rite, if necessary, dear friend.”

  I didn’t dare even to suggest it probably would be a good idea for him to wait a while before taking so transcendental a step. As he talked to me, I felt sorry down to the marrow of my bones, thinking about how much he was going to suffer when, one of these days, Mitsuko found the courage to tell him she wanted to break it off because she didn’t love him and even had grown to detest him.

  At
Narita, as I gave the Dragoman a hug when they announced my flight to Seoul, I felt, absurdly enough, my eyes fill with tears when I heard him say, “Would you agree to be a witness at my wedding, dear friend?”

  “Of course, old man, it would be an honor.”

  Two days later I arrived in Paris, a physical and moral ruin. I hadn’t closed my eyes or had a bite of food in forty-eight hours. But I arrived, also decided—I had reflected on this resolution during the entire trip—not to allow myself to be completely disheartened, to overcome the depression that was undermining me. I knew the recipe. This could be cured by working and filling my free time with occupations that would at least be absorbing if they couldn’t be creative or useful. Feeling that my will was dragging my body behind it, I asked Señor Charnés to find me a good number of contracts because I needed to pay off an important debt. He did, with the benevolence he had always shown for as long as I had known him. In the months that followed, I was not in Paris very often. I worked at all kinds of conferences and meetings in London, Vienna, Italy, the Scandinavian countries, and a couple of times in Africa, in Cape Town and in Abidjan. In every city, after work I would sweat blood at a gym, doing abdominal exercises, running on the treadmill, pedaling on a stationary bike, swimming or doing aerobics. And I continued to perfect my Russian, on my own, and to translate, slowly, for my own pleasure, the stories of Ivan Bunin, which, after Chekhov’s, were the ones I liked best. When I had three translated, I sent them to my friend Mario Muchnik, in Spain. “With my insistence on publishing only masterpieces, I’ve already bankrupted four publishing houses,” he replied. “And even though you may not believe it, I’m persuading a suicidal entrepreneur to finance the fifth. That’s where I’ll publish your Bunin and even pay you some rights that will be enough for a few coffees. The contract will follow.” This incessant activity gradually took me out of the emotional disorder caused by my trip to Tokyo. But it couldn’t do away with a certain inner sadness, a certain profound disillusionment that accompanied me for a long time, like a double, and corroded like acid any enthusiasm or interest I might begin to feel for anything or anyone. And on many nights I had the same filthy nightmare in which, on a background dense with shadows, I would see the weak little figure of Fukuda, motionless on his bench, as inexpressive as a Buddha, masturbating and ejaculating a shower of semen that fell on the bad girl and me.