The Bad Girl: A Novel

by Mario Vargas Llosa

  During the three days the bad girl stayed in my house, before Elena found a place for her at the Hôpital Cochin, my guest and Yilal became intimate friends. They played checkers and laughed and joked as if they were the same age. They had such a good time together that although they kept the television on for the sake of appearances, in reality they didn’t even look at the screen as they concentrated on JanKenPo, a hand game I hadn’t seen played since my childhood in Miraflores: the rock breaks the scissors, the paper encloses the rock, the scissors cuts the paper. Sometimes she began reading Yilal the stories of Jules Verne, but after a few lines she abandoned the text and began to tell a nonsensical version of the story until Yilal pulled the book from her hands, shaking with laughter. On all three nights we had supper at the Gravoskis’ house. The bad girl helped Elena cook and wash the dishes, while they chatted and told jokes. It was as if the four of us were two couples who had been friends all our lives.

  On the second night, she insisted on sleeping on the sofa bed and giving my bedroom back to me. I had to do as she asked, because she threatened to leave if I didn’t. Those first two days she was in good spirits; at least, she seemed to be at nightfall, when I returned from UNESCO and found her playing on equal terms with Yilal. On the third day, I awoke while it was still dark, certain I heard someone crying. I listened and had no doubt: it was quiet, intermittent weeping, with parentheses of silence. I went to the living room and found her curled up in the sofa bed, covering her mouth, drenched in tears. She was trembling from head to toe. I wiped her face, smoothed her hair, brought her a glass of water.

  “Do you feel sick? Do you want me to wake Elena?”

  “I’m going to die,” she said very quietly, whimpering. “They infected me with something in Lagos, and nobody knows what it is. They say it isn’t AIDS, but then, what is it? I hardly have strength for anything. Not for eating, or walking, or lifting my arm. The same thing happened to Juan Barreto in Newmarket, don’t you remember? And I always have a discharge down there that looks like pus. It isn’t only the pain. It’s that I feel so much disgust for my body and everything else since Lagos.”

  She sobbed for a long time, complaining of cold even though she was wrapped up. I dried her eyes and gave her some water, disheartened by a feeling of powerlessness. What should I give her, what should I say to her to take her out of this state? Until, at last, I felt her fall asleep. I went back to the bedroom with fear in my heart. Yes, she was very sick, perhaps with AIDS, and probably would end up like poor Juan Barreto.

  That afternoon, when I got home from work, she was ready to go to the Hôpital Cochin the following morning. She had gone in a cab for her things and had a suitcase and an overnight bag in the closet. I berated her. Why hadn’t she waited for me to go with her to pick up her luggage? She replied quickly that she was embarrassed to let me see the hole where she had been living.

  The next morning, carrying only the small overnight bag, she left with Elena; When she said goodbye, she murmured in my ear something that made me happy.

  “You’re the best thing that ever happened to me, good boy.”

  The two days the medical examination was supposed to take lengthened into four, and I couldn’t see her on any of them. The hospital was very strict about their schedule, and it was too late for visitors by the time I left UNESCO. And I couldn’t talk to her on the phone. At night, Elena told me what she had been able to find out. The bad girl was enduring the examinations, analyses, questions, and needles with fortitude: Elena worked in another pavilion but had arranged to stop in and see her a couple of times a day. Furthermore, Professor Bourrichon, an internist, one of the luminaries at the hospital, had taken her case because of his interest in it. In the afternoons, when I saw Yilal in front of the television set, I would find this question on his slate: “When will she be back?”

  On the night of the fourth day, after feeding Yilal and putting him to bed, Elena came to my house to give me news. Though they were still waiting for the results of a couple of tests, that afternoon Professor Bourrichon had told her a few conclusions in advance. The bad girl was suffering from extreme malnutrition and acute depressive dejection, a loss of the vital impulse. She required immediate psychological treatment to help her recover “hopefulness in life” without it any program of physical recuperation would be useless. The story about the rape was probably true; she showed signs of lacerations and scars in her vagina as well as her rectum, and had a suppurating wound produced by a metal or wooden instrument—she didn’t remember which—introduced by force, which had torn one of the vaginal walls very close to her womb. It was surprising that this badly treated lesion had not caused septicemia. A surgical intervention was necessary to clean the abscess and suture the wound. But the most delicate part of her clinical picture was the intense stress that, as a result of her experience in Lagos and the uncertainty of her current situation, made her depressed, insecure, lacking in appetite, and subject to attacks of terror. Her fainting spells were a consequence of that trauma. Heart, brain, and stomach were functioning normally.

  “They’ll perform a small surgical procedure on her womb early tomorrow,” Elena added. “Dr. Pineau, the surgeon, is a friend and won’t charge anything. Only the anesthetist and the medicines will have to be paid for. About three thousand francs, more or less.”

  “No problem, Elena.”

  “After all, the news isn’t too bad, is it?” she said encouragingly. “It could have been much worse, keeping in mind the butchery performed on the poor woman by those savages. Professor Bourrichon recommends that she have absolute rest in a clinic where they have good psychologists. She mustn’t fall into the hands of one of those Lacanians who could trap her in a labyrinth and make things more complicated for her than they already are. The problem is that those kinds of clinics tend to be very expensive.”

  “I’ll take care of getting her what she needs. The important thing is to find her a good specialist who’ll get her out of this so she can be what she was, not the corpse she’s turned into.”

  “We’ll find one, I promise,” Elena said with a smile, patting my arm. “She’s the great love of your life, isn’t she, Ricardo?”

  “The only one, Elena. The only woman I’ve loved, ever since she was a girl. I’ve done the impossible to forget her, but the truth is it’s useless. I’ll always love her. Life wouldn’t have meaning for me if she died.”

  “What luck that girl has, inspiring love like this,” my neighbor said with a laugh. “Chapeau! I’ll ask her for the recipe. Simon’s right: that nickname she gave you fits like a glove.”

  The next morning I asked permission at UNESCO to go to the Hôpital Cochin during the minor operation. I waited in a frigid corridor, with very high ceilings, where an icy wind blew and nurses, doctors, and patients passed by and, occasionally, sick people lying on cots with oxygen pumps or bottles of plasma suspended over their heads. There was a “No Smoking” sign that nobody seemed to pay attention to.

  Dr. Pineau spoke to me for a few minutes, in front of Elena, as he removed his latex gloves and meticulously scrubbed his hands with lathering soap in a stream of water that emitted steam. He was a fairly young man, sure of himself, who didn’t beat around the bush.

  “She’ll be perfectly fine. But you already know her condition. Her vagina is damaged, prone to inflammation and bleeding. Her rectum is also damaged. You’ll have to control yourself, my friend. Make love very carefully, and not very often. At least for the next two months, I recommend restraint. The best thing would be not to touch her. If that isn’t possible, then with extreme delicacy. The woman has suffered a traumatic experience. It wasn’t a simple rape, but from what I understand, a real massacre.”

  I was with the bad girl when they brought her from the operating room to the large ward where they put her in an area isolated by two screens. It was a spacious, badly lit place with stone walls and dark concave ceilings that made one think of bats’ nests, scrupulously clean tile floors, and a s
trong odor of disinfectant and bleach. She was even paler and more cadaverous, and her eyes were half closed. When she recognized me, she extended her hand. When I held it in mine, it seemed as thin and small as Yilal’s.

  “I’m fine,” she said emphatically, before I could ask her how she felt. “The doctor who operated on me was very nice. And good-looking.”

  I kissed her hair, her pretty ears.

  “I hope you didn’t start flirting with him. You’re very capable of that.”

  She pressed my hand and fell asleep almost immediately. She slept the entire morning and didn’t wake until early afternoon, complaining of the pain. On the doctor’s instructions, a nurse came to give her an injection. A short while later Elena appeared, wearing a white lab coat, to bring her a bed jacket. She put it on over her nightgown. The bad girl asked about Yilal and smiled when she heard that the Gravoskis’ son asked for her constantly. I was with her for a good part of the afternoon, and stayed with her as she ate from a small plastic tray: vegetable soup and a piece of poached chicken with boiled potatoes. She carried the spoonfuls to her mouth unwillingly, and only because of my urging.

  “Do you know why everybody’s so nice to me?” she said. “Because of Elena. Nurses and doctors adore her. She’s the most popular person in the hospital.”

  A short while later, visitors had to leave. That night, at the Gravoskis’, Elena had news for me. She had made inquiries and consulted with Professor Bourrichon. He suggested a small, private clinic in Petit Clamart, not very far from Paris, where he had sent other patients who were victims of depression and nervous disorders due to physical abuse, with good results. The director had been a classmate of his. If we wanted, he could recommend the bad girl’s case to him.

  “You don’t know how grateful I am, Elena. It seems like the right place. Let’s proceed, as soon as we can.”

  Elena and Simon looked at each other. We were having the inevitable cup of coffee after a supper of an omelet, a little ham, and salad, with a glass of wine.

  “There are two problems,” said an uncomfortable Elena. “The first, as you know, is that it’s a private clinic and will be very expensive.”

  “I have some savings, and if that’s not enough, I’ll get a loan. And, if necessary, I’ll sell the apartment. Money isn’t a problem, the important thing is for her to get better. What’s the other one?”

  “The passport she presented at the Hôpital Cochin is false,” said Elena, with an expression and a tone of voice that seemed to be begging my pardon. “I’ve had to do a lot of juggling to keep the administration from denouncing her to the police. But she has to leave the hospital tomorrow and not set foot there again, unfortunately. And I don’t discount the possibility that as soon as she leaves, they’ll tip off the authorities.”

  “That lady will never cease to astonish me,” exclaimed Simon. “Do the two of you realize how dull our lives are compared to hers?”

  “Can the question of her papers be straightened out?” Elena asked me. “I imagine it’ll be difficult, of course. I don’t know, it might be a huge obstacle at Dr. Zilacxy’s clinic in Petit Clamart. They may not admit her if they find out her situation in France is illegal. They could even turn her in to the police.”

  “I don’t think the bad girl has ever had her papers in order,” I said. “I’m absolutely certain she has several passports, not just one. Maybe one of them looks less false than the others. I’ll ask her.”

  “We’ll all wind up in jail,” said Simon with a laugh. “They’ll prohibit Elena from practicing medicine and throw me out of the Pasteur Institute, and then we’ll finally begin to live real life.”

  The three of us ended up laughing, and the laughter shared with my two friends did me good. It was the first night in the past four that I slept through until the alarm clock rang. The next day, when I came home from UNESCO, I found the bad girl installed in my bed, with the bouquet of flowers I had sent her in a vase of water on the night table. She was feeling better, without any pain. Elena had brought her from the Hôpital Cochin and helped her up to the apartment, but then she went back to work. Yilal was with her, very happy about her recent arrival. When the boy left, the bad girl spoke to me in a low voice, as if the Gravoskis’ son could still hear her.

  “Tell Simon and Elena to come here for coffee this time. After they put Yilal to bed. I’ll help you prepare it. I want to thank them for everything Elena has done for me.”

  I wouldn’t let her get up to help me. I prepared the coffee and a short while later the Gravoskis knocked on the door. I carried the bad girl—she didn’t weigh anything, barely as much as Yilal—to sit with us in the living room, and I covered her with a blanket. Then, without even greeting them, with radiant eyes she came out with the news.

  “Please don’t faint from the shock. This afternoon, after Elena left us alone, Yilal put his arms around me and said very clearly in Spanish: ‘He loves you very much, bad girl.’ He said ‘he loves,’ not ‘I love.’”

  And, so there wouldn’t be the slightest doubt she was telling the truth, she did something I hadn’t seen since my days as a student at the Colegio Champagnat in Miraflores: she raised two fingers in the shape of a cross to her mouth and kissed them as she said, “I swear to you, that’s just what he said, down to the last letter.”

  Elena began to cry, and as she shed those tears she laughed, her arms around the bad girl. Had Yilal said anything else? No. When she tried to initiate a conversation with him, the boy returned to his mutism and to answering in French on his slate. But that sentence, spoken in the same thin little thread of a voice she remembered from the phone, proved once and for all that Yilal wasn’t mute. For a long time we didn’t talk about anything else. We drank coffee, and Simon, Elena, and I had a glass of malt whiskey that I’d had in my sideboard since time immemorial. The Gravoskis decided on the strategy to follow. None of us should let on that we knew. Since the boy had spoken to the bad girl on his own initiative, she, in the most natural way, without any pressure on him at all, should try to establish a dialogue, asking him questions, speaking without looking at him, distractedly, avoiding at all costs any possibility that Yilal might feel watched over or subjected to a test.

  Then Elena spoke to the bad girl about Dr. Zilacxy’s clinic in Petit Clamart. It was rather small, in a well-tended park filled with trees, and the director, a friend and classmate of Professor Bourrichon, was a prestigious psychologist and psychiatrist who specialized in the treatment of patients suffering from depression and nervous disorders resulting from accidents, various kinds of abuse and trauma, as well as anorexia, alcoholism, and drug addiction. The conclusions of the examination were categorical. The bad girl needed to withdraw for a time to the right kind of place for absolute rest, where, as she followed a regimen of diet and exercise to recover her strength, she would receive psychological support that would help her wipe out the reverberations in her mind of that awful experience.

  “Does this mean I’m crazy?” she asked.

  “You always were,” I said. “But now you’re also anemic and depressed, and they can cure that at the clinic. You’ll be hopelessly mad until the end of your days, if that’s what’s worrying you.”

  She didn’t laugh but yielded rather reluctantly to my arguments and agreed to Elena requesting an appointment with the director of the clinic in Petit Clamart. Our neighbor would go with us. When the Gravoskis left, the bad girl looked at me reproachfully, filled with anxiety.

  “And who’s going to pay for this clinic when you know very well I don’t have a pot to piss in?”

  “Who but the usual imbecile?” I said, adjusting her pillows. “You’re my praying mantis, didn’t you know? The female insect devours the male while he’s making love to her. He dies happy, apparently. My case exactly. Don’t worry about the money. Don’t you know I’m rich?”

  She grasped one of my arms with both her hands.

  “You’re not rich, you’re a poor little pissant,” she said in a fury
. “If you weren’t, I wouldn’t have gone to Cuba, or London, or Japan. I would have stayed with you after that time when you showed me around Paris and took me to those horrible restaurants for beggars. I’ve always left you for rich men who turned out to be trash. And this is how I’ve ended up, a ruin. Are you happy that I acknowledge it? Do you like to hear it? Are you doing all this to show me how superior you are to all of them, and what I lost in you? Why are you doing this, may I ask?”

  “Why do you think, bad girl? Maybe I want to earn indulgences and go to heaven. And it could also be that I’m still in love with you. And now, enough riddles. It’s time to sleep. Professor Bourrichon says that until you’re completely recovered, you should try to sleep at least eight hours a night.”

  Two days later my seasonal contract with UNESCO ended and I could devote the entire day to caring for her. At the Hôpital Cochin they had prescribed a diet for her based on vegetables, poached fish and meat, fruit, and stews, and had prohibited alcohol, including wine, as well as coffee and all spicy condiments. She was to exercise and walk at least an hour a day. In the morning, after breakfast—I bought croissants fresh from the oven at a bakery on École Militaire—we would take a walk, arm in arm, to the foot of the Eiffel Tower, along the Champs de Mars, and sometimes, weather permitting, and if she was in the mood, we would go along the quays of the Seine to Place de la Concorde. I let her lead the conversation, but I did try to keep her from talking about Fukuda or the episode in Lagos. It wasn’t always possible. Then, if she insisted on bringing up the subject, I listened to what she wanted to tell me and asked no questions. From things occasionally hinted at in those semi-monologues, I deduced that her capture in Nigeria took place on the day she was leaving the country. But her threadbare story always occurred in a kind of fog. She had already passed through customs at the airport and was in the line of passengers making their way toward the plane. A couple of policemen took her out of line, very courteously; their attitude changed completely as soon as they put her in a van with windows painted black, and especially when they took her into a foul-smelling building with barred cells and a stink of excrement and urine.