The Bad Girl: A Novel

by Mario Vargas Llosa

  “I’d like to meet this Mata Hari,” said Simon.

  “Over my dead body,” Elena threatened, tugging at his beard. “Do you have any pictures of her? Will you show them to us?”

  “Not even one. As I recall, we never took a picture together,”

  “The next time she calls, I beg you to answer that phone,” said Elena. “The story can’t end like this, with a phone ringing and ringing, like something in Hitchcock’s worst movie.”

  “Besides,” said Simon, lowering his voice, “you have to ask her if Yilal talked to her.”

  “I’m mortified,” I said, apologizing for the second time. “I mean, crying and everything.”

  “You didn’t see it, but Elena shed a few tears too,” Simon said. “I would have joined you two if I weren’t Belgian. My Jewish ancestors inclined me to weeping. But the Walloon prevailed. A Belgian doesn’t fall into the emotionalism of tropical South Americans.”

  “To the bad girl, to that fantastic woman!” said Elena, raising her glass. “Holy God, what a boring life I’ve had.”

  We drank the entire bottle of wine, and with the laughter and jokes, I felt better. To prevent my feeling uncomfortable, not once in the days and weeks that followed did my friends the Gravoskis make the slightest reference to what I had told them. In the meantime, I decided that if the Peruvian girl called again, I would talk to her. So she could tell me if the last time she called, she had talked with Yilal. Was that the only reason? Not the only one. Ever since I confessed my love affair to Elena Gravoski, it was as if sharing the story with someone had lifted the burden of rancor, jealousy, humiliation, and susceptibility that trailed behind it, and I began to wait for her phone call with anticipation, afraid that because of my rebuffs of the past two years, it might not happen. I assuaged my feelings of guilt by telling myself this would in no way signify a relapse. I would talk to her like a distant friend, and my coldness would be the best proof that I was truly free of her.

  As for the rest, the wait had a fairly good effect on my state of mind. Between contracts at UNESCO or outside Paris, I resumed the translation of Ivan Bunin’s stories, gave them a final revision, and wrote a short prologue before sending the manuscript to my friend Mario Muchnik. “It’s about time,” he replied. “I was afraid arteriosclerosis or senile dementia would come to me before your Bunin.” If I was at home when Yilal watched his television program, I would read him stories. He didn’t like the ones I had translated very much, and he listened more out of politeness than interest. But he adored the novels of Jules Verne. At the rate of a couple of chapters a day, I read several to him in the course of that autumn. The one he liked best—the episodes made him jump up and down with delight—was Around the World in Eighty Days. Though he was also fascinated by Michael Strogoff: A Courier to the Czar. Just as Elena had requested, I never asked him about the call only he could have received, though I was devoured by curiosity. In the weeks and months that followed the message for me that he had written on his slate, I never saw the slightest indication that Yilal was capable of speaking.

  The call came two and a half months after the previous one. I was in the shower, getting ready to go to UNESCO, when I heard the phone ring and had a premonition: “It’s her.” I ran to the bedroom and picked up the receiver, dropping onto the bed even though I was wet.

  “Are you going to hang up on me this time too, good boy?”

  “How are you, bad girl?”

  There was a brief silence, and finally, a little laugh.

  “Well, well, at last you deign to answer me. May I ask to what I owe this miracle? Did you get over your fit of anger or do you still hate me?”

  I felt like hanging up on her when I heard the lightly mocking tone and triumphant irony in her words.

  “Why are you calling?” I asked. “Why did you call those other times?”

  “I need to talk to you,” she said, changing her tone.

  “Where are you?”

  “I’ve been here in Paris for a while: Can we see each other for a moment?”

  I was dumbfounded. I had been sure she was still in Tokyo, or in some distant country, and would never set foot in France again. Knowing she was here and that I could see her at any time plunged me into total confusion.

  “Just for a little while,” she insisted, thinking my silence was prelude to a refusal. “What I have to tell you is very personal, I prefer not to do it on the phone. No more than half an hour. Not too long for an old friend, is it?”

  We made a date for two days later, when I left UNESCO at six, in La Rhumerie on Saint-Germain-des-Prés (the bar had always been called La Rhumerie Martiniquaise, but recently, for some mysterious reason, it had lost its nationality). When I hung up, my heart was pounding in my chest. Before going back to the shower, I had to sit for a while with my mouth open until my respiration returned to normal. What was she doing in Paris? Special little jobs for Fukuda? Opening the European market to exotic aphrodisiacs made of elephant tusks and rhinoceros horns? Did she need my help in her smuggling operations, money laundering, or other criminal business? It had been stupid of me to answer the phone. It would be the same old story all over again. We’d talk, I’d submit again to the power she always had over me, we’d have a brief false idyll, I’d have all kinds of illusions, and when least expected she would disappear and I’d be left battered and bewildered, licking my wounds as I had in Tokyo. Until the next chapter!

  I didn’t tell Elena and Simon about the call or our appointment, and I spent forty-eight hours in a somnambulistic state, alternating between spasms of lucidity and a mental fog that lifted occasionally so I could give myself over to a masochistic session of insults: imbecile, cretin, you deserve everything that happens to you, has happened to you, will happen to you.

  The day of our appointment was one of those gray, wet, late-autumn Parisian days when there are almost no leaves on the trees or light in the sky, people’s bad temper increases with the bad weather, and you see men and women on the street concealed by coats, scarves, gloves, umbrellas, hurrying along and filled with hatred for the world. When I left UNESCO I looked for a taxi, but since it was raining and there was no hope of finding one, I opted for the Métro. I got off at the Saint-Germain station, and from the door of La Rhumerie I saw her sitting on the terrace, with a cup of tea and a bottle of Perrier in front of her. When she saw me she stood and reached up to my cheeks.

  “Can we give each other an accolade, or can’t we do that either?”

  The place was filled with people typical of the district: tourists, playboys with chains around their necks and flamboyant vests and jackets, girls in daring necklines and miniskirts, some of them made up as if for a gala party. I ordered grog. We were silent, looking at each other with some discomfort, not knowing what to say.

  Kuriko’s transformation was notable. She seemed not only to have lost ten kilos—she had become a skeleton of a woman—but to have aged ten years since that unforgettable night in Tokyo. She dressed with a modesty and neglect I only remembered seeing in her on that distant morning when I picked her up at Orly Airport at Paúl’s request. She wore a threadbare jacket that could have been a man’s, faded flannel trousers, shoes that were worn and unpolished. Her hair was disheveled, and on her very thin fingers the nails seemed badly cut, unfiled, as if she bit them. The bones of her forehead, cheeks, and chin were prominent, stretching her very pale skin and accentuating its greenish cast. Her eyes had lost their light, and there was something fearful in them that recalled certain timid animals. She didn’t have on a single adornment or any trace of makeup.

  “How hard it’s been for me to see you,” she said at last. She extended her hand, touched my arm, and attempted one of those flirtatious smiles from the old days, which didn’t turn out well this time. “At least tell me if you’re over your anger and hate me a little less.”

  “Let’s not talk about that,” I replied. “Not now, not ever. Why did you call me so many times?”

  “You g
ave me half an hour, didn’t you?” she said, letting go of my arm and sitting up straight. “We have time. Tell me about yourself. Are things going well? Do you have a girlfriend? Are you still doing the same work?”

  “A little pissant until death,” I said with a reluctant laugh, but she remained very serious, observing me.

  “The years have made you touchy, Ricardo. Once your rancor wouldn’t have lasted so long.” The old light twinkled in her eyes for a second. “Are you still telling women cheap, sentimental things, or don’t you do that anymore?”

  “How long have you been in Paris? What are you doing here? Working for the Japanese gangster?”

  She shook her head. I thought she was going to laugh, but instead her expression hardened and those full lips that were still prominent on her face trembled, though they too seemed somewhat faded now, like the rest of her.

  “Fukuda dropped me more than a year ago. That’s why I came to Paris.”

  “Now I understand why you’re in this lamentable condition,” I said ironically. “I never imagined I’d see you like this, so broken.”

  “I was much worse,” she acknowledged harshly. “At one point I thought I was going to die. The last two times I tried to talk to you, that was the reason. So at least you would be the one to bury me. I wanted to ask you to have me cremated. The thought of worms eating my body horrifies me. Well, that’s over.”

  She spoke calmly, though allowing glimpses of a contained fury in her words. She didn’t seem to be putting on a self-pitying act to impress me, or if she was, it was done with supreme skill. Instead, she described things objectively, from a distance, like a police officer or a notary.

  “Did you try to kill yourself when the great love of your life left you?”

  She shook her head and shrugged.

  “He always said that one day he’d get tired of me and drop me. I was prepared. He didn’t talk to hear his own voice. But he didn’t choose the best moment to do it, or the best reasons.”

  Her voice trembled and her mouth twisted into a grimace of hatred. Her eyes filled with sparks. Was all of this just another farce to make me feel sorry for her?

  “If the subject makes you uncomfortable, we’ll talk about something else,” I said. “What are you doing in Paris, what are you living on? Did the gangster at least give you some compensation that will let you live for a while without difficulties?”

  “I was in prison in Lagos, a couple of months that seemed like a century,” she said, as if I suddenly were no longer there. “The most awful, ugly city, and the most evil people in the world. Never even think about going to Lagos. When I finally got out of prison, Fukuda wouldn’t let me come back to Tokyo. ‘You’re burned, Kuriko.’ Burned in both senses of the word, he meant. Because now I was on file with the international police. And burned because the blacks in Nigeria probably infected me with AIDS. He hung up on me, just like that, after telling me I shouldn’t see him, or write to him, or call him ever again. That’s how he dropped me, as if I were a mangy dog. He didn’t even pay for my ticket to Paris. He’s a cold, practical man who knows what suits him. I no longer suited him. He’s the exact opposite of you. That’s why Fukuda is rich and powerful and you are and always will be a little pissant.”

  “Thanks. After all you’ve told me, that’s praise.”

  Was any of it true? Or was it another of those fabulous lies that marked all the stages of her life? She had regained her self-control. She held her cup in both hands, sipping and blowing on the tea. It was painful to see her so ruined, so badly dressed, looking so old.

  “Is this great melodrama true? Isn’t this another of your stories? Were you really in prison?”

  “Not only in prison but also raped by the Lagos police,” she said, fixing my eyes with hers, as if I were responsible for her misfortune. “Some blacks whose English I couldn’t understand because they spoke pidgin. That’s what David called my English when he wanted to insult me: pidgin. But they didn’t give me AIDS. Just crabs and chancre. A horrible word, isn’t it? Have you ever heard it? You probably don’t even know what it is, little saint. Chancre, infectious ulcers. Something disgusting but not serious if you treat it in time with antibiotics. But in damn Lagos they didn’t treat me properly and the infection almost killed me. I thought I was going to die. That’s why I called you. Now, fortunately, I’m all right.”

  What she was telling me could be true or false, but the immeasurable rage that permeated everything she said was no pose. Though with her, a performance was always possible. A formidable pantomime? I felt disconcerted, confused. The last thing I expected from our meeting was a story like this.

  “I’m sorry you went through that hell,” I said at last, just to say something, because what can you say in response to this kind of revelation? “If what you’re telling me is true. You see, something dreadful has happened to me where you’re concerned. You’ve told me so many stories in my life, it’s difficult for me to believe anything you say.”

  “It doesn’t matter if you don’t believe me,” she said, grasping my arm again and making an effort to seem cordial. “I know you’re still offended, that you’ll never forgive me for what happened in Tokyo. It doesn’t matter. I don’t want you to feel sorry for me. I don’t want money, either. What I want, in fact, is to call you once in a while and occasionally have a cup of coffee with you, the way we’re doing now. That’s all.”

  “Why don’t you tell me the truth? For once in your life. Go on, tell me the truth.”

  “The truth is, for the first time I feel uncertain and don’t know what to do. Very alone. It hasn’t happened before, even though I’ve had extremely difficult moments. If you must know, I’m sick with fear.” She spoke with a proud dryness, with a tone and attitude that seemed to give the lie to what she was saying. She looked into my eyes without blinking. “Fear’s a sickness too. It paralyzes me, it nullifies me. I didn’t know that and now I do. I know some people here in Paris, but I don’t trust anybody. But I do trust you. That’s the truth, whether you believe me or not. Can I call you from time to time? Can we see each other occasionally, in a bistrot, the way we’re doing today?”

  “That’s no problem. Of course we can.”

  We talked for another hour until it grew dark and the shop windows and windows of the buildings on Saint-Germain lit up, and the red and yellow lights of the cars formed a luminescent river that flowed slowly along the boulevard past the terrace of La Rhumerie. Then I remembered. Who answered the phone in my house the last time she called? Did she remember?

  She looked at me, intrigued, uncomprehending. But then she nodded.

  “Yes, a young woman. I thought you had a lover, but then I realized she must have been a maid. Filipina?”

  “A child. Did he talk to you? Are you sure?”

  “He said you were away on a trip, I think. Nothing, a couple of words. I left a message, I see he gave it to you. Why are you asking about that now?”

  “He talked to you? Are you sure?”

  “A couple of words,” she repeated, nodding. “Who’s the boy? Did you adopt him?”

  “His name’s Yilal. He’s nine or ten years old. He’s Vietnamese, the son of neighbors who are friends of mine. Are you sure he spoke to you? Because the boy is mute. His parents and I have never heard his voice.”

  She was bewildered and for a long moment, half closing her eyes, consulted her memory. She made several affirmative movements with her head. Yes, yes, she remembered very clearly. They spoke French. His voice was so delicate it seemed feminine to her. High-pitched and exotic. They exchanged very few words. Just that I wasn’t there, I was away on a trip. And when she asked him to say “the bad girl” had called—she said this in Spanish—the thin voice interrupted: “What? What?” She had to spell “bad girl” in Spanish for him. She remembered very well. The boy had spoken to her, there was no doubt about it.

  “Then you performed a miracle. Thanks to you, Yilal began to speak.”

  “If I h
ave those powers, I’m going to use them. I imagine witches must make a ton of money in France.”

  A short while later, when we said goodbye at the entrance to the Saint-Germain Métro station and I asked for her phone number and address, she wouldn’t give them to me. She would call me.

  “You’ll never change. Always the same mysteries, the same stories, the same secrets.”

  “It’s done me a lot of good to see you finally and talk to you.” She silenced me. “You won’t hang up on me again, I hope.”

  “That depends on how you behave.”

  She stood on tiptoe and I felt her mouth purse in a rapid kiss on my cheek.

  I watched her disappear into the Métro entrance. From the back, so thin, in flat shoes, she didn’t seem to have aged as much as she did from the front.

  Though it was still drizzling and fairly cold, instead of taking the Métro or a bus, I decided to walk. It was my sole physical activity now; my visits to the gym had lasted only a few months. Exercises bored me, and I was even more bored by the kind of people I met running on the treadmill, chinning themselves, doing aerobics. On the other hand, I enjoyed walking around this city filled with secrets and marvels, and on days when emotions ran high, like this one, a long walk, even under an umbrella in the rain and wind, would do me good.

  Of all the things the bad girl told me, the only thing undoubtedly true was that Yilal had exchanged a few words with her. This meant the Gravoskis’ son could speak; perhaps he had done it before, with people who didn’t know him, at school, on the street. It was a small mystery he would reveal to his parents one day. I imagined the joy of Simon and Elena when they heard the thin voice, a little high-pitched, that the bad girl had described to me. I was walking along Boulevard Saint-Germain toward the Seine, when just before the Juilliard bookstore I discovered a small shop that sold toy soldiers and reminded me of Salomón Toledano and his ill-fated Japanese love. I went in and bought Yilal a small case with six horsemen of the Imperial Russian Guard.