“Why are you so thin?” I asked in her ear.
“Tell me first you love me. That you don’t love this hippie, that you began to live with her only out of spite, because I left you. Since I found out you were with her, I’ve been dying slowly of jealousy.”
Now I felt her little heart beating against mine. I searched for her mouth and gave her a long kiss. I felt her tongue entwined with mine, and I swallowed her saliva. When I slipped my hand under her blouse and caressed her back, I felt all her ribs and her spine as if they weren’t separated from my fingers by even the slightest film of flesh. She had no breasts; her diminutive nipples were flat against her skin.
“Why are you so thin?” I asked again. “Have you been sick? What did you have?”
“I can’t make love to you, don’t touch me there. They operated on me, they took out everything. I don’t want you to see me naked. My body’s covered with scars. I don’t want you to be disgusted by me.”
She cried in despair and I couldn’t calm her. Then I sat her on my knees and caressed her for a long time, the way I did in Paris when she had her attacks of fear. Her bottom too had melted away, and her thighs were as thin as her arms. She looked like one of those living corpses shown in photographs of concentration camps. I caressed her, kissed her, told her I loved her and would take care of her, and, at the same time, I felt an indescribable horror because I was absolutely certain she hadn’t been gravely ill but was gravely ill now and would die soon. No one could be so thin and recover.
“You still haven’t told me you love me more than the hippie, good boy.”
“Of course I love you more than her and more than anybody, bad girl. You’re the only woman in the world I ever loved, the only one I love now. And though you’ve done bad things to me, you’ve also given me wonderful happiness. Come, I want to have you naked in my arms and make love to you.”
I carried her to the bed, lay her down, and undressed her. With her eyes closed, she let herself be undressed, turning to the side, showing me as little of her body as possible. But, caressing and kissing her, I made her straighten and open out. They hadn’t operated on her, they had destroyed her. Her breasts had been removed and the nipples crudely replaced, leaving thick, circular scars like two red corollas. But the worst scar started at her vagina and meandered up to her navel, a crust between brown and pink that seemed recent. The impact it had on me was so huge that, without realizing what I was doing, I covered it with the sheet. And I knew I’d never be able to make love to her again.
“I didn’t want you to see me like this and feel repelled by your wife,” she said. “But—”
“But I love you and now I’ll take care of you until you’re completely healed. Why didn’t you call me so I could be with you?”
“I couldn’t find you anywhere. I’ve been looking for you for months. It’s what made me most desperate: dying without seeing you again.”
They had operated on her the second time barely three weeks ago, in a hospital in Montpellier. The doctors had been very frank. The tumor in her vagina had been detected too late, and though they removed it, the postoperative examination indicated that metastasis had begun, and there was almost nothing they could do. Chemotherapy would only delay the inevitable, and in her extremely weakened condition, she probably wouldn’t survive it. The operation on her breasts took place a year earlier, in Marseille. Because of her extreme weakness they hadn’t been able to operate again to reconstruct her bosom. She and Martine’s husband, when they ran away, had lived on the Mediterranean coast, in Frontignan, near Sète, where he owned property. He had behaved very well with her when they found the cancer. He had been generous and attentive, showering her with attentions, not letting her see, when they removed her breasts, the disappointment he felt. On the contrary, it was she who gradually convinced him that since her fate was decided, the best thing he could do was reconcile with Martine and end the lawsuit with his children, from which only the lawyers would benefit. The gentleman returned to his family, saying goodbye to the bad girl with generosity: he bought her the house in Sète that she now wanted to transfer to me, and in her name deposited in the bank the Electricity of France stocks that would allow her to live without financial worries for the rest of what remained to her of life. She had begun looking for me at least a year ago and finally found me in Madrid, thanks to a detective agency that “charged me an arm and a leg.” When they gave her my address, she was having tests at the hospital in Montpellier. She’d had pains in her vagina since the days of Fukuda and hadn’t paid much attention to them.
She told me all this in a long conversation that lasted the entire afternoon and a good part of the night, while we lay in bed, pressed together. She had dressed again. At times she stopped talking so I could kiss her and tell her I loved her. She told me the story—true? very embellished? totally false?—without dramatics, with apparent objectivity, without self-pity, but with relief, and happily, as if after telling it to me she could die in peace.
She lasted another thirty-seven days, during which time she behaved, just as she promised she would in the Café Barbieri, like a model wife. At least, when the terrible pain didn’t keep her in bed, sedated with morphine. I went to live with her in an apartment hotel on Los Jerónimos, where she was staying, taking with me one suitcase with a few articles of clothing and some books, and I left Marcella a very hypocritical and dignified letter, telling her I had decided to leave, giving her back her freedom, because I didn’t want to be an obstacle to a happiness that—I understood this very well—I couldn’t offer her, given the difference in our ages and vocations, but only a young man of her own age, with a disposition akin to hers, like Víctor Almeda, could. After three days the bad girl and I took the train to her little house on the outskirts of Sète, at the top of a hill, from which you could see the beautiful sea sung about by Valéry in Le Cimetière marin. It was a small house, austere, pretty, nicely arranged, with a small garden. For two weeks she felt so well, so happy, that contrary to all reason I thought she might recover. One afternoon, when we were sitting in the garden at twilight, she said that if it ever occurred to me one day to write our love story, I shouldn’t make her look too bad, because then her ghost would come and pull on my feet every night.
“And what made you think of that?”
“Because you always wanted to be a writer and didn’t have the courage. Now that you’ll be all alone, you can make good use of the time, and you won’t miss me so much. At least admit I’ve given you the subject for a novel. Haven’t I, good boy?”
Also by Mario Vargas Llosa
The Cubs and Other Stories
The Time of the Hero
The Green House
Captain Pantoja and the Special Service
Conversation in the Cathedral
Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter
The War of the End of the World
The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta
The Perpetual Orgy
Who Killed Palomino Molero?
The Storyteller
In Praise of the Stepmother
A Fish in the Water
Death in the Andes
Making Waves
The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto
The Feast of the Goat
Letters to a Young Novelist
The Language of Passion
The Way to Paradise
Wellsprings
THE BAD GIRL. Copyright © 2006 by Mario Vargas Llosa. Translation copyright © 2007 by Edith Grossman. All rights reserved. For information, address Picador, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
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ISBN: 978-0-312-42776-4
Originally published in 2006 by Alfaguara, Spain, as Travesuras de la Ni
ña Mala
First published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
The Bad Girl: A Novel Page 35