The Bad Girl: A Novel

by Mario Vargas Llosa

  We slept together, and when she tried to caress me I grasped her hands and moved them away.

  “Until you’re completely healed, we’re as chaste as two cherubs.”

  “It’s true, you’re a vrai con. At least hold me tight so I’m not afraid.”

  The next morning we took the train at the Saint Lazare station, and during the entire trip to Petit Clamart she was silent and downcast. We said goodbye at the door of the clinic. She held on to me as if we were never going to see each other again, and she wet my face with her tears.

  “At this rate, any moment now you’ll wind up falling in love with me.”

  “I’ll bet whatever you want that I never will, Ricardito.”

  I left for Helsinki that same afternoon, and for the two weeks I was working there I didn’t stop speaking Russian, every day, morning and afternoon. This was a tripartite conference, with delegates from Europe, the United States, and Russia, to design a policy of aid and cooperation from the Western powers to what remained of the ruins of the Soviet Union. There were commissions dealing with the economy, institutions, social policy, culture, and sports, and on all of them, the Russian delegates expressed themselves with a freedom and spontaneity inconceivable just a short time ago in those monotonous robots, the apparatchiks sent to international conferences by the governments of Brezhnev and even Gorbachev. It was evident things were changing there. I wanted to go back to Moscow and to the rebaptized Saint Petersburg, where I hadn’t been for many years.

  We interpreters had a great deal of work and almost no time to walk around. It was my second trip to Helsinki. The first had been in spring, when it was possible to walk the streets, and go out to the countryside and see the forests of fir trees dotted with lakes, and pretty villages with wooden houses in a country where everything was beautiful: the architecture, the landscape, the inhabitants, and, above all, the old people. Now, however, with the snow and a temperature of twenty degrees below zero, during my free hours I preferred to stay in the hotel reading or practicing the mysterious rituals of the sauna, which had a delicious anesthetic effect on me.

  After ten days in Helsinki I received a letter from the bad girl. She was settled into the clinic in Petit Clamart, to which she had adjusted with no difficulty. She wasn’t on a diet, she was overfed, but since she had to do a good deal of exercise in the gym—and was also swimming, helped by an instructor because she never had learned to swim, only to float and paddle in the water like a puppy—her appetite was good. She’d already had two sessions with Dr. Roullin, who was quite intelligent, and they got on very well. She hadn’t had occasion to talk to the other patients; she only exchanged greetings with some of them at meals. The only patient with whom she had talked two or three times was a German girl who was anorexic, very shy and timid, but a nice person. All she remembered of the hypnosis session with Dr. Zilacxy was that when she woke up, she felt very calm and rested. She also said she missed me, and that I shouldn’t do “a lot of dirty things in those Finnish saunas, which, as everyone knows, are great centers of sexual degeneracy.”

  In two weeks, when I returned to Paris, Señor Charnés’s agency had another five-day contract for me almost immediately, in Alexandria. I was in France barely a day, so I couldn’t visit the bad girl. But we spoke on the phone, at dusk. I found her in good spirits, happy above all with Dr. Roullin, who, she said, was doing her “an enormous amount of good,” and amused at the group therapy led by Dr. Zilacxy, “something like the confessions of priests, but in a group, and with sermons by the doctor.” What did she want me to bring her from Egypt? “A camel.” She added, seriously: “I know what: one of those dancing outfits with your belly exposed that Arab dancers wear.” Was she planning to please me, when she left the clinic, with a performance of belly dancing just for me? “When I get out, I’m going to do some things you don’t even know exist, little saint.” When I said I missed her a great deal, she replied, “Me too, I think.” She was getting better, no doubt about it.

  That night I had supper at the Gravoskis’ and gave Yilal a dozen toy soldiers I had bought in a store in Helsinki. Elena and Simon were beside themselves with joy. Though the boy sometimes sank back into mutism and wouldn’t give up his slate, each day he spoke a little more, not only with them but also at school, where his classmates, who had called him “the Mute” before, now called him “the Chatterbox.” It was a question of patience; he’d soon be totally normal. The Gravoskis had gone to visit the bad girl a couple of times and found her perfectly adjusted to the clinic. Elena spoke once on the phone with Dr. Zilacxy, and he read her a few lines in which Dr. Roullin made a very positive report on the patient’s progress. She had gained weight and had more and more control of her nerves every day.

  The next afternoon I left for Cairo, where, after five tedious hours of flying, I had to take another plane on an Egyptian airline to Alexandria. I was exhausted when I arrived. As soon as I was in my little room in a miserable hotel called the Nile—it was my fault, I chose the cheapest one offered to the interpreters—I didn’t feel like unpacking and fell asleep for almost eight hours, something that happened to me very rarely.

  The next day, which I had free, I walked around the ancient city founded by Alexander, visited its museum of Roman antiquities and the ruins of its amphitheater, and took a long walk on the beautiful avenue by the coast, with its cafés, restaurants, hotels, shops for tourists, and talkative, cosmopolitan crowd. Sitting on one of the terraces that made me think of the poet Kaváfis—his house in the vanished, now Arabified Greek district could not be visited; a sign in English indicated it was being renovated by the Greek consulate—I wrote a long letter to the patient, telling her how glad I was to know she was happy at the clinic in Petit Clamart and offering, if she behaved herself and left the clinic totally cured, to take her for a week to some beach in the south of Spain so she could get a tan. Would she like to have a honeymoon with this little pissant?

  I spent the afternoon reviewing all the documentation on the conference, which began the next day. It had to do with the economic cooperation and development of all the countries in the Mediterranean basin: France, Spain, Greece, Italy, Turkey, Cyprus, Egypt, Lebanon, Algeria, Morocco, Libya, and Syria. Israel had been excluded. They were five exhausting days, with no time for anything, immersed in confused and tedious papers and debates which, in spite of producing mountains of printed paper, seemed to serve no practical purpose. On the last day, one of the Arabic interpreters at the conference, a native of Alexandria, helped me find what the bad girl had asked for: an Arab dancer’s outfit, full of veils and sequins. I imagined her wearing it, swaying like a palm tree on the desert sand, under the moon, to the rhythm of flageolets, flutes, finger cymbals, timbrels, mandolins, cymbals, and other Arabic musical instruments, and I wanted her.

  The day after I arrived in Paris, even before I talked with the Gravoskis, I went to visit her at the clinic in Petit Clamart. It was a gray, rainy day, and the nearby woods had been stripped of leaves and almost entirely blasted by winter. The park with the stone fountain, without swans now, was covered by a wet, depressing mist. I was shown into a rather spacious room where some people were sitting in chairs in what looked like family groups. I waited beside a window through which I could see the fountain, and suddenly I saw her come in, wearing a bathrobe and sandals, a towel wrapped around her head like a turban.

  “I made you wait, I’m sorry, I was in the pool, swimming,” she said, standing on tiptoe to kiss me on the cheeks. “I had no idea you were coming. Just yesterday I received your note from Alexandria. Are we really going for a honeymoon to a beach in the south of Spain?”

  We sat in the same corner, and she drew her chair close to mine until our knees were touching. She extended both her hands so I could grasp them, and that’s how we sat, our fingers intertwined, for the hour our conversation lasted. The change was remarkable. She had, in fact, recovered, and her body again had a shape, the bones of her face were no longer visible under th
e skin of her face, her cheekbones were no longer prominent. In her eyes the color of dark honey, the old vivacity and mischief could be seen again, and the little blue vein wove along her forehead. She moved her full lips with a coquetry that reminded me of the bad girl of prehistoric times. I saw that she was confident, serene, happy because of how well she felt and because, she assured me, she had only very occasional attacks of the fear that in the past two years had brought her to the brink of madness.

  “You don’t need to tell me you’re better,” I said, kissing her hands and devouring her with my eyes. “I just have to see you to know. You’re pretty again. I’m so overwhelmed I barely know what I’m saying.”

  “And imagine, you’ve caught me coming out of the pool,” she responded, looking into my eyes in a provocative way. “Wait till you see me dressed and with my makeup on. It’ll knock you flat, Ricardito.”

  I had supper with the Gravoskis that night and told them about the incredible improvement in the bad girl after three weeks of treatment. They had visited her the previous Sunday and had the same impression. They were still delighted with Yilal. The boy was more and more willing to speak, at home and in school, though on certain days he enclosed himself again in silence. But there could be no doubt: going back was not a possibility. He had left the prison where he had taken refuge and was increasingly integrated into the community of speaking individuals. That afternoon he greeted me in Spanish: “You have to tell me about the pyramids, Uncle Ricardo.”

  I devoted the next few days to cleaning, arranging, and beautifying the apartment on Rue Joseph Granier, preparing to receive the patient. I had the curtains and sheets washed and ironed, hired a Portuguese woman to help me clean and wax the floors, dust the walls, and wash the linens, and bought flowers for the four large vases in the house. I placed the package with the Egyptian dancing outfit on the bed in the bedroom, with a cheerful card. The night before she was to leave the clinic, I was as eager as a young kid going out with a girl for the first time.

  We went to pick her up in Elena’s car, accompanied by Yilal, who had no classes that day. In spite of the rain and the gray, dull air, I felt as if streams of golden light were pouring down from the sky over France. She was ready, waiting for us at the entrance to the clinic, her suitcase at her feet. She had arranged her hair carefully, put on a little lipstick and rouge, manicured her hands, and lengthened her lashes with mascara. She wore a coat I hadn’t seen before, navy blue and belted, with a large buckle. When he saw her, Yilal’s eyes lit up and he ran to embrace her. While the porter placed her luggage in Elena’s car, I went to administration and the woman with her hair in a bun handed me the bill. It came to approximately the amount Dr. Zilacxy had predicted: 127,315 francs. I had deposited 150,000 in my account to pay it and sold all the treasury bonds where I kept my savings and obtained two loans, one from the professional credit union I belonged to, which charged very low interest, and another from my bank, the Société Générale, at higher rates. Everything indicated it had been an excellent investment: the patient looked so much better. The administrator told me to call the director’s secretary for an appointment, since Dr. Zilacxy wanted to see me. “Alone,” she added.

  That was a very beautiful night. We had a light supper at the Gravoskis’ apartment, though we did have a bottle of champagne, and as soon as we returned home, we embraced and kissed for a long time. At first tenderly, then avidly, passionately, desperately. I ran my hands over her entire body and helped her to undress. It was marvelous, her figure, which had always been slim, once again had curves, sinuous forms, and it was delicious to feel in my hands and on my lips her small breasts, warm, soft, shapely, with their erect nipples and puckered areolas. I never wearied of inhaling the perfume of her depilated underarms. When she was naked I picked her up and carried her to the bedroom. She watched me undress with one of those mocking little smiles from the old days.

  “Are you going to make love to me?” she incited me, speaking in a singsong. “But the two months the doctor ordered aren’t over yet.”

  “Tonight I don’t care,” I replied. “You’re too beautiful, and if I don’t make love to you I’ll die. Because I love you with all my heart.”

  “I thought it strange that you hadn’t told me any cheap, sentimental things yet,” she said with a laugh.

  While I kissed her body, slowly, with infinite delicacy and immense love, beginning with her hair and ending with the soles of her feet, I felt her purring, contracting and stretching with excitement. When I kissed her sex she was very wet, throbbing, swollen. Her legs tightened around me. But as soon as I entered her, she howled and burst into tears, her face distorted with pain.

  “It hurts, it hurts,” she whimpered, pulling me out with both hands. “I wanted to please you tonight, but I can’t, it’s tearing me apart, it hurts.”

  She cried, kissing me on the mouth in distress, and her hair and tears were in my eyes and nose. She trembled the way she had when she suffered a terror attack. I asked her to forgive me for having been a brute, an irresponsible egotist. I loved her, I’d never make her suffer, she was for me the most precious, the sweetest, most tender thing in life. Since the pain didn’t lessen, I got up, naked, and brought from the bathroom a washcloth soaked in warm water, and with her I gently pressed it on her sex until, gradually, the pain began to disappear. We wrapped ourselves in the blanket, and she wanted me to finish in her mouth but I refused. I was sorry I had made her suffer. Until she was completely healed, what happened tonight would not be repeated: we would live a chaste life, her health was more important than my pleasure. She listened, not saying anything, holding me close, not moving a muscle. But much later, before she fell asleep, with her arms around my neck and her lips pressed to mine, she whispered, “I read your letter from Alexandria ten times at least. I slept with it every night, holding it between my legs.”

  The next morning, I called the clinic in Petit Clamart from the street, and Dr. Zilacxy’s secretary gave me an appointment for two days later. She too specified that the director wanted to see me alone. In the afternoon I went to UNESCO to explore possibilities for a contract, but the head of interpreters said there was nothing for the rest of the month, and he proposed instead to recommend me for a three-day conference in Bordeaux. I didn’t accept. Señor Charnés’s agency didn’t have anything for me in Paris or its outskirts, but since my old patrón saw I needed work, he gave me a pile of documents to translate from Russian and English, at fairly good pay. And so I settled in to work in my living room, with my typewriter and my dictionaries. I imposed a schedule of regular hours on myself. The bad girl prepared cups of coffee for me and took care of the meals. From time to time, like a newly-wed attentive to her husband, she came over to embrace my shoulders and give me a kiss on my back, neck, or ear. But when Yilal arrived she forgot about me completely and devoted herself to playing with the boy as if they were the same age. At night, after supper, we listened to records before going to bed, and sometimes she fell asleep in my arms.

  I didn’t tell her I had an appointment at the clinic in Petit Clamart, and I left the house on the pretext of an interview for a possible job at a firm on the outskirts of Paris. I arrived at the clinic half an hour early, dying of the cold, and waited in the visitors’ room, watching light snow fall on the grass. The bad weather had made the stone fountain and the trees disappear.

  Dr. Zilacxy, dressed exactly the same as the first time I saw him a month earlier, was with Dr. Roullin. I liked her right away. She was a stout woman, still young, with intelligent eyes and an amiable smile that almost never left her lips. She held a folder and passed it, rhythmically, from one hand to the other. They were standing when they received me, and though there were chairs in the office, they didn’t invite me to sit down.

  “How does she seem to you?” the director asked by way of greeting, making the same impression he had before: he was someone unwilling to waste time in circumlocutions.

  “Magnificent, Doctor,” I
replied. “She’s another person. She’s recuperated, and her shape and color have returned. I find her very serene. And the terror attacks that tormented her so have disappeared. She’s very grateful to both of you. As am I, of course.”

  “Fine, fine,” said Dr. Zilacxy, rubbing his hands together like a magician and shifting his weight. “Still, I caution you, in these things, one can never trust appearances.”

  “What things, Doctor?” I interrupted, intrigued.

  “Things of the mind, my friend,” he said with a smile. “If you prefer to call it the spirit, I have no objection. The lady is fine physically. Her organism, in fact, has recovered, thanks to a disciplined life, a good regimen of diet and exercise. Now we must try to have her follow the instructions we gave her regarding meals. She shouldn’t abandon going to the gym and swimming, which have done her so much good. But, in matters of the psyche, you’ll have to show a great deal of patience. She is well oriented, I think, though the road she still has to travel will be a long one.”

  He looked at Dr. Roullin, who hadn’t said a word so far. She nodded. Something in her penetrating eyes alarmed me. I saw her open the folder and leaf through it quickly. Were they going to give me bad news? Only now did the director point to the chairs. They sat down too.

  “Your friend has suffered a great deal,” said Dr. Roullin, so pleasantly that she seemed to mean something very different. “She has real turmoil inside her head. As a result of how wounded she is. I mean, because of what she still is suffering.”

  “But I also find her much improved psychologically,” I said, for the sake of saying something. The preambles of both physicians had frightened me. “Well, I suppose no woman ever recovers completely after an experience like the one in Lagos.”