The Bad Girl: A Novel

by Mario Vargas Llosa

  There was a brief silence and another rapid exchange of glances between the director and the doctor. Through the picture window that faced the park, the falling snowflakes were now denser and whiter. The garden, the trees, the fountain had disappeared. “That rape probably never happened, Monsieur,” Dr. Roullin said affably, with a smile. And made a gesture as if in apology.

  “It’s a fantasy constructed to protect someone, to wipe away clues,” added Dr. Zilacxy, not giving me time to react. “Dr. Roullin suspected as much in their first interview. And then we confirmed it when I hypnotized her. The curious thing is her inventing this to protect someone who, for a long time, for years, systematically used and abused her. You were aware of that, weren’t you?”

  “Who is Mr. Fukuda?” Dr. Roullin asked gently. “She speaks of him with hatred and, at the same time, with reverence. Her husband? Her lover?”

  “Her lover,” I stammered. “A sordid individual involved in shady business dealings with whom she lived in Tokyo for several years. She told me he dropped her when he found out that the police who arrested her in Lagos had raped her. Because he thought they had infected her with AIDS.”

  “Another fantasy, this one to protect herself,” said the director of the clinic, gesturing. “And that gentleman didn’t drop her. She escaped from him. Her terrors originate there. A mixture of fear and remorse for having fled a person who exercised total control over her, deprived her of her sovereignty, self-determination, pride, self-esteem, and nearly her reason.”

  I opened my mouth in utter amazement. I didn’t know what to say.

  “Fear he could pursue her to take his revenge and punish her,” Dr. Roullin continued in the same amiable, discreet tone. “But her daring to escape was a great thing, Monsieur. An indication that the tyrant hadn’t destroyed her personality completely. Deep down she preserved her dignity. Her free will.”

  “But those wounds, those injuries,” I asked, and immediately repented, guessing what they would say.

  “He subjected her to all kinds of abuse, for his amusement,” the director explained, getting directly to the point. “He was both an esthete and a technician in the administration of his pleasures. You must have a clear idea of what she endured in order to help her. I have no choice but to give you the unpleasant details. That’s the only way you’ll be in a position to provide all the support she needs. He whipped her with cords that leave no marks. He lent her to his friends and bodyguards during orgies and watched them, because he is also a voyeur. Worst of all, perhaps, the thing that has left the deepest scar in her mind, was breaking wind. It excited him very much, apparently. He had her drink a solution of powders that filled her with gas. It was one of the fantasies with which that eccentric gentleman gratified himself: having her naked, on all fours, like a dog, breaking wind.”

  “He not only destroyed her rectum and vagina, Monsieur,” said Dr. Roullin, with the same gentleness and without renouncing her smile, “he destroyed her personality. Everything in her that was worthy and decent. Which is why I must tell you again: she has suffered and will still suffer a great deal, appearances to the contrary. And at times she’ll behave irrationally.”

  My throat was dry, and as if he had read my mind, Dr. Zilacxy handed me a glass of sparkling water.

  “All right, everything must be said. Make no mistake. She was not deceived. She was a willing victim. She endured everything knowing very well what she was doing.” Suddenly, the director’s eyes began to scrutinize me in an insistent way, measuring my reaction. “Call it twisted love, baroque passion, perversion, masochistic impulse, or simply submission to an overwhelming personality, one to whom she could offer no resistance. She was an obliging victim and readily accepted all that gentleman’s whims. When she becomes aware of this now, it enrages her and throws her into despair.”

  “It will be an exceedingly slow and difficult convalescence,” Dr. Roullin said. “Until she recovers her self-esteem. She agreed, she wanted to be a slave, or almost a slave, and she was treated as such, do you see? Until one day, I don’t know how, I don’t know why, and neither does she, she realized the danger. She felt, guessed, that if it continued, she would end very badly, crippled, insane, or dead. And then she fled. I don’t know where she found the strength to do it. One must admire her for that, I assure you. People who reach that extreme of dependence almost never free themselves.”

  “Her panic was so great she invented the entire story about Lagos, being raped by the police, her torturer dropping her for fear of AIDS. And she even came to believe it. Living in the fiction gave her reasons to feel more secure, less threatened than living in the truth. It’s more difficult for everyone to live in the truth than in a lie. And even harder for someone in her situation. It will cost her immense effort to become accustomed again to the truth.”

  He fell silent, and Dr. Roullin didn’t speak either. Both looked at me with indulgent curiosity. I sipped at the water, incapable of saying anything. I felt flushed and sweaty.

  “You can help her,” said Dr. Roullin after a moment. “Something else, Monsieur. It may surprise you to hear that you’re probably the only person in the world who can help her. Much more than we can, I assure you. The danger is that she’ll fold in on herself, in a kind of autism. You can be her communicating bridge to the world.”

  “She trusts you, and no one else, I believe,” the director said in agreement. “With you she feels, how can I say it…”

  “Dirty,” said Dr. Roullin, lowering her eyes politely for a moment. “Because to her, though you may not believe it, you’re a kind of saint.”

  My laugh sounded very false. I felt foolish, stupid, I wanted to tell them both to go to hell, to say that the two of them justified the suspicion I’d always had of psychologists, psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, priests, wizards, and shamans. They looked at me as if they could read my mind and forgave me. Dr. Roullin’s imperturbable smile was still there.

  “If you have patience and, above all, a good deal of love, her spirit can heal just as her body has,” said the director.

  I asked them, because I didn’t know what else to ask, if the bad girl had to return to the clinic.

  “On the contrary,” said the smiling Dr. Roullin. “She should forget about us, forget she was here, that this clinic exists. Begin her life again, from square one. A life very different from the one she’s had, with someone who loves and respects her. Like you.”

  “One more thing, Monsieur,” said the director, getting to his feet and indicating in this way that the interview was over. “You’ll find this strange. But she, and all those who live a good part of their lives enclosed in fantasies they erect in order to abolish their real life, both know and don’t know what they’re doing. The border disappears for a while and then it reappears. I mean, sometimes they know and other times they don’t know what they’re doing. This is my advice: don’t try to force her to accept reality. Help her, but don’t force her, don’t rush her. This apprenticeship is long and difficult.”

  “It could be counterproductive and cause a relapse,” Dr. Roullin said with a cryptic smile. “Little by little, through her own efforts, she’ll have to readjust and accept real life again.”

  I didn’t understand very clearly what they were attempting to tell me, but I didn’t try to find out. I wanted to go, to leave that place and never think again about what I had heard. Knowing very well it would be impossible. On the suburban train back to Paris, I felt profoundly demoralized. Anguish closed my throat. It wasn’t surprising that she had invented the Lagos story. Hadn’t she spent her life inventing things? But it hurt me to know that the injuries to her vagina and rectum had been caused by Fukuda, whom I began to hate with all my strength. Subjecting her to what practices? Did he sodomize her with metal objects, with those notched vibrators placed at the disposal of clients at Château Meguru? I knew the image of the bad girl, naked and on all fours, her stomach swollen by those powders, loosing strings of farts because that sight and th
ose noises and odors gave erections to the Japanese gangster—only to him, or were they shows he put on for his buddies too?—would pursue me for months, years, perhaps the rest of my life. Is that what the bad girl called—and with what feverish excitement she had said it to me in Tokyo—living intensely? She had lent herself to all of it. At the same time that she was his victim, she had been Fukuda’s accomplice. That meant something as devious and perverse as the desires of the horrendous Japanese lived in her too. How could she not think the imbecile who had just gone into debt so she would be cured, so that after a while she could move on to someone richer or more interesting than the little pissant, was a saint! And in spite of all that rancor and fury I only wanted to get home soon to see her, touch her, and let her know I loved her more than ever. Poor thing. How much she had suffered. It was a miracle she was still alive. I would dedicate the rest of my life to getting her out of that pit. Imbecile!

  Back in Paris, my concern was to force myself to put on a natural face and not let the bad girl suspect what was whirling around my head. When I walked into the apartment, I found Yilal teaching her to play chess. She complained that it was very difficult and required a lot of thought, and the game of checkers was simpler and more fun. “No, no, no,” insisted the boy’s high-pitched voice. “Yilal will learn you.” “Yilal will teach you, not learn you,” she corrected.

  When the boy left, I began to work on the translations to hide my state of mind and typed until it was time for supper. Since the table was covered with my papers, we ate in the kitchen, at a small counter with two stools. She had prepared a cheese omelet and salad.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked suddenly, as we were eating. “You seem strange. You went to the clinic, didn’t you? Why haven’t you told me anything? Did they tell you something bad?”

  “No, on the contrary,” I assured her. “You’re fine. What they said is that now you need to forget about the clinic, Dr. Roullin, and the past. That’s what they told me: you should forget about them so your recovery can be complete.”

  In her eyes I saw that she knew I was hiding something, but she didn’t insist. We went to have coffee with the Gravoskis. Our friends were very excited. Simon had received an offer to spend a couple of years at Princeton University, doing research, in an exchange program with the Pasteur Institute. Both of them wanted to go to New Jersey: in two years in the United States, Yilal would learn English and Elena could work at Princeton Hospital. They were finding out if the Hôpital Cochin would give her a two-year, unpaid leave of absence. Since they did all the talking, I almost didn’t have to say anything, just listen, or rather, pretend I was listening, for which I was extremely grateful.

  I worked very hard in the weeks and months that followed. To pay off the loans and at the same time meet ongoing expenses that had increased now that the bad girl was living with me, I had to accept all the contracts offered to me, and at the same time, at night or very early in the morning, spend two or three hours translating documents given to me by the office of Señor Charnés, who, as always, made a constant effort to help me, I traveled throughout Europe, working at all kinds of conferences and congresses, and I brought the translations with me and did them at night, in hotels and pensions, on a portable typewriter. I didn’t care about the excessive work. The truth is I felt happy living with the woman I loved. She seemed completely recovered. She never spoke of Fukuda, or Lagos, or the clinic at Petit Clamart. We would go to the movies, or sometimes listen to jazz at a cave on Saint-Germain, and on Saturdays have supper at some restaurant that wasn’t too expensive.

  My only extravagance was the cost of the gym, because I was sure it did the bad girl a lot of good. I enrolled her in a gym on Avenue Montaigne that had a warm-water pool, and she went very willingly several times a week to take aerobics classes with a trainer and swim. Now that she knew how to swim, it was her favorite sport. When I was away, she spent a good deal of time with the Gravoskis, who, finally, now that Elena had obtained permission, were preparing to travel to the United States in the spring. Occasionally they would take her to see a movie, an art show, or to have supper at a restaurant. Yilal had succeeded in teaching her chess, and beat her just as he had in checkers.

  One day the bad girl told me that since she was feeling perfectly fine, which seemed true, given her healthy appearance and the love of life she seemed to have recovered, she wanted to find a job, not waste her days, and help me with expenses. It mortified her that I was killing myself with work and she didn’t do anything but go to the gym and play with Yilal.

  But when she began to look for work, the problem of her papers resurfaced. She had three passports, a Peruvian one that had expired and a French and a British one, both false. They wouldn’t give her a decent job anywhere if she was illegal. Least of all during those times when, in all of western Europe, and especially in France, paranoia with regard to immigrants from Third World countries had increased. Governments were restricting visas and beginning to persecute foreigners without work permits.

  The British passport, which showed a photograph of her wearing makeup that changed her appearance almost completely, had been issued to a Mrs. Patricia Steward. She explained that since her ex-husband, David Richardson, had proven the bigamy that annulled her British marriage, she automatically lost the citizenship she had obtained when she married him. She didn’t dare use the French passport acquired thanks to her earlier husband, because she didn’t know if Monsieur Robert Arnoux had finally decided to denounce her, had begun a legal proceeding, or accused her of bigamy or something else to take his revenge. For her trips to Africa, along with the British one, Fukuda had procured a French passport issued to Madame Florence Milhoun; in it, the photograph showed her looking very young, with a hairdo entirely different from the one she normally wore. She had used this passport to enter France the last time. I was afraid that if she was found out, they would throw her out of the country, or worse. In spite of this obstacle, the bad girl continued making inquiries, answering the want ads in Les Echos for tourist agencies, public relations offices, art galleries, and companies that worked with Spain and Latin America and needed personnel with a knowledge of Spanish. It didn’t seem very likely that, given her precarious legal status, she would find a regular job, but I didn’t want to disillusion her and encouraged her to continue her search.

  A few days before the Gravoskis’ departure for the United States, at a farewell supper we gave them at La Closerie des Lilas, and after listening to the bad girl recounting how difficult it was to find a job where they would accept her without papers, Elena had an idea.

  “Why don’t you two marry?” she said to me. “You have French nationality, don’t you? Well, marry her and you give your nationality to your wife. Her legal problems will be over, chico. She’ll be a nice, legal Frenchwoman.”

  She said it without thinking, as a joke, and Simon picked up the thread: that wedding would be worth waiting for, he wanted to attend and be a witness for the groom, and since they wouldn’t return to France for two years, we had to shelve the project until then. Unless we decided to get married in Princeton, New Jersey, in which case he’d not only be a witness but the best man too, and so forth.

  Back home, half serious and half in jest, I said to the bad girl as she was undressing, “Suppose we follow Elena’s advice? She’s right: if we marry, your situation is resolved instantly.”

  She put on her nightgown and turned to look at me, with her hands on her, hips, a mocking little smile, and the stance of a fighting cock. She spoke with all the irony she was capable of.

  “Are you seriously asking me to marry you?”

  “Well, I think so,” I said, trying to joke. “If you want to. Just to solve your legal problems. We don’t want them to expel you from France one day for being illegal.”

  “I marry only for love,” she said, staring daggers at me and tapping her right foot, which was extended in front of her. “I’d never marry a clod who made a proposal of marriage as coarse
as the one you’ve just made to me.”

  “If you want, I’ll get down on my knees, and with my hand over my heart, I’ll beg you to be my adored little wife until the end of time,” I said in confusion, not knowing if she was joking or speaking seriously.

  The short, transparent organdy nightgown showed her breasts, her navel, and the dark little growth of hair at her pubis. It only reached down to her knees and left her shoulders and arms bare. Her hair was loose and her face lit up by the performance she had initiated. The light from the bedside lamp fell on her back and formed a golden halo around her figure. She looked very attractive and audacious, and I desired her.

  “Do it,” she ordered. “On your knees, with your hands on your chest. Tell me the best cheap, sentimental things in your repertoire and let’s see if you convince me.”

  I fell to my knees and begged her to marry me, while I kissed her feet, her ankles, her knees, caressed her buttocks, and compared her to the Virgin Mary, the goddesses on Olympus, Semiramis and Cleopatra, Ulysses’ Nausicaa, Quixote’s Dulcinea, and told her she was more beautiful and desirable than Claudia Cardinale, Brigitte Bardot, and Catherine Deneuve all rolled into one. Finally I grasped her waist and made her fall onto the bed. As I caressed and made love to her, I heard her laugh as she said into my ear, “I’m sorry, but I’ve received better requests for my hand than yours, little pissant.”

  Whenever we made love, I had to take great precautions not to hurt her. And though I pretended to believe her when she said she was getting better, the passage of time had convinced me it wasn’t true, that the injuries to her vagina would never disappear entirely and would forever limit our sex life. I often avoided penetration, and when I didn’t, I entered very carefully, withdrawing as soon as I felt her body contract and saw her face contort into a pained expression. But even so, this difficult and at times incomplete lovemaking made me immensely happy. Giving her pleasure with my mouth and hands, and receiving it from hers, justified my life and made me feel like the most privileged of mortals. Though she often maintained that distant attitude she’d always had in bed, she sometimes seemed to become animated and participate with enthusiasm and ardor, and I would say to her, “Even though you don’t like to admit it, I think you’re beginning to love me.” That night, when we were exhausted and sinking into sleep, I admonished her.