The Bad Girl (20 page)

small, energetic woman whose manner of speaking, the soft tone

and abundance of diminutives, the music of my old Miraflores

neighborhood, made me nostalgic. As I listened to her, I felt. I had

left Peru a long time ago to live the European adventure. But

spending time with them also confirmed that it would be impossible

for me to go back and speak and think the way Juan's parents spoke

and thought. Their comments on what they saw in Earl's Court, for

example, revealed very* graphically how much I had changed over the

years. It wasn't an encouraging revelation. I undoubtedly had

stopped being a Permian in many senses. What was I, then? I hadn't

become a European either, not in France and certainly not in

England. So what were you, Ricardito? Maybe what Mrs. Richardson

called me in her fits of temper: a little pissant, nothing but an

interpreter, somebody, as my colleague Salomon Toledano liked to

define us, who is only when he isn't, a hominid who exists when he

stops being what he is so that what other people think and say can

pass through him more easily.

With Juan Barreto's parents in London, I could go back to Paris

and work. I accepted the contracts I was offered, even if they were

for only one or two days, because, as a result of the time I had spent

in England with Juan, my income had taken a nosedive.

Even though Mrs. Richardson had forbidden me to do so, I began

calling her house in Newmarket to find out when the couple would

return from their trip to Japan. The person who answered, a Filipina

maid, didn't know. Each time I pretended to be a different person,

but I suspected that the Filipina recognized my voice and was

slamming the phone in my face: "They aren't back yet."

Until one day, when I despaired of ever seeing her again, Mrs.

Richardson herself answered the phone. She recognized me

instantly because there was a long silence. "Can you talk?" I asked.

She replied in a cutting voice, full of contained fury, "No. Are you in

Paris? I'll call you at UNESCO or at home as soon as I can." And she

banged down the phone, emphasizing her annoyance. She called me

that same night at my apartment near the Ecole Militaire.

"Because I stood you up one time, you hit me and made that

commotion," I complained in an affectionate voice. "What must I

have done not to hear anything from you for three months?"

"Don't ever call Newmarket again," she reprimanded me with a

displeasure that raged in her words. "This isn't a joke. I'm having a

very serious problem with my husband. We shouldn't see each other

or talk for a while. Please. I beg you. If it's true you love me, do this

for me. We'll see each other when this is all over, I promise. But

don't ever call me again. I'm in trouble and I have to take care of

myself."

"Wait, wait, don't hang up. At least tell me how Juan Barreto is."

"He died. His parents took his remains back to Lima. They came

to Newmarket to put his cottage up for sale. Another thing, Ricardo.

Avoid coming to London for a while, if you don't mind. Because if

you come, without meaning to you can create a very serious problem

for me. I can't say anything else for now."

And she hung up without saying goodbye. I was left empty and

distraught. I felt so angry, so demoralized, so contemptuous of

myself that I resolved—once again!—to uproot Mrs. Richardson

from my memory and my heart, to use the kind of cheap

sentimental phrase that made her laugh. It was stupid to go on

loving someone so insensitive, someone who was sick of me, who

played with me as if I were an idiot, who never showed me the

slightest consideration. This time you must absolutely free yourself

from that Permian, Ricardo Somocurcio!

Several weeks later I received a few lines from Juan Barreto's

parents in Lima. They thanked me for helping them and apologized

for not having written or called me, as I had asked them to do. But

Juan's death, which was so sudden, had left them stunned, half

crazed, unable to do anything. The formalities involved in

repatriating his remains were horrible, and if it hadn't been for the

people at the Permian embassy, they would never have been able to

take him home and bury him in Peru as he wished. At least they had

succeeded in doing that for their adored son, whose loss had left

them inconsolable. In any case, in the midst of their sorrow, it was a

comfort to know Juan had died like a saint, reconciled with God and

religion, in a true angelic state. That's what the Dominican priest

who administered the last rites had told them.

Juan Barreto's death affected me deeply. Again I was left without

a close friend, for in a way he had replaced fat Paul. Since Paul had

disappeared in the guerrilla war, I hadn't known anyone in Europe

whom I esteemed as much and to whom I felt as close as the

Permian hippie who became a painter of horses in Newmarket.

London, England—they wouldn't be the same without him. Another

reason not to go back there for a good long while.

I tried to put my decision into practice with the usual recipe:

loading myself down with work. I accepted every contract and spent

weeks and months traveling from one European city to another,

working as an interpreter at conferences and congresses on all

imaginable topics. I had acquired the skill of the good interpreter,

which consists in knowing the equivalents of words without

necessarily understanding their contents (according to Salomon

Toledano, understanding them was a hindrance), and I continued to

perfect Russian, the language I loved, until I acquired a sureness

and naturalness in it equivalent to my skills in French and English.

Even though I'd had a residency permit in France for years, I

began to take the steps necessary to obtain French nationality, since

with a French passport greater possibilities for work would open to

me. A Permian passport aroused suspicion in some organizations

when it was time to hire an interpreter, for they had difficulty

situating Peru in the world and determining its status in the

community of nations. Further, beginning in the 1970s, an attitude

of rejection and hostility toward immigrants from poor countries

became widespread throughout western Europe.

One Sunday in May, as I was shaving and getting ready to take

advantage of the spring day and stroll along the quays of the Seine to

the Latin Quarter, where I intended to have couscous for lunch in

one of the Arab restaurants on Rue Saint-Severin, the phone rang.

Without saying "Hello" or "Good morning," the bad girl shouted at

me, "Did you tell David I was married in France to Robert Arnoux?"

I was about to hang up. Four or five months had gone by since

our last conversation. But I controlled my anger.

"I should have but it didn't occur to me, Senora Bigamist. You

can't know how sorry I am that I didn't. They arrested you, didn't

they?"

"Answer me and don't play the fool," her voice insisted, giving off

sparks. "I'm in no mood for jokes now. Was it you? You once

threatened to tell him, don't think I've forgotten that."

"No, it wasn't me. What's going on? What kind of trouble are you

in now, you savage?"

There was a pause. I heard her anxious breathing. When she

spoke again, she seemed weak, tearful.

"We were getting a divorce and things were going well. But

suddenly, in these past few days, I don't know how, my marriage to

Robert came up. David has the best lawyers. Mine is a nobody and

now he says that if they prove I'm married in France, my marriage to

David in Gibraltar will automatically be nullified and I can find

myself in big trouble. David won't give me a cent, and if he reaches

an agreement with Robert, they can bring criminal charges against

me, demand compensation for damages, and I don't know what else.

I might even go to jail. And they'll throw me out of the country. Are

you sure it wasn't you who told? Good, I'm glad, you didn't seem

like the kind of person who does those things."

There was another long pause, and she sighed, as if choking back

a sob. As she talked she seemed sincere, speaking without a hint of

self-pity.

"I'm very sorry*," I said. "The truth is, your last call hurt me so

much I decided not to see you, or talk to you, or look for you, or

think about your existence ever again."

"Aren't you in love with me anymore?" she said with a laugh.

"Yes, I am, apparently. Too bad for me. What you've told me

breaks my heart. I don't want anything to happen to you, I want you

to go on doing every mean thing in the world to me. Can I help you

somehow? I'll do whatever you ask. Because I still love you with all

my heart, bad girl."

She laughed again.

"At least I still have those cheap, sentimental things you say,"

she exclaimed. "I'll call you so you can bring me oranges in jail."

4

Salomon Toledano boasted of speaking twelve languages and being

able to interpret all of them in both directions. He was a short, thin

little man, half lost in baggy suits that looked as if he bought them

too big intentionally, and he had tortoise-like eyes hovering between

wakefulness and sleep. His hair was thinning, and he shaved only

every two or three days, so there was always a grayish shadow

staining his face. No one looking at him—so unprepossessing, the

perfect nobody—could have imagined the extraordinary facility he

had in learning languages and his phenomenal aptitude for

interpreting. International and transnational organizations, as well

as governments, argued over him, but he never accepted a

permanent position because as a freelancer he felt more liberated

and earned more money. Not only was he the best interpreter I had

met in all the years I earned a living practicing the "profession of

phantoms"—that's what he called it—but he was also the most

original.

Everyone admired and envied him, but very few of our colleagues

liked him. They were annoyed by his loquacity, his lack of tact, his

childishness, and the avidity with which he monopolized the

conversation. He spoke in an ostentatious and sometimes crude

manner, because although he knew the generalities of languages, he

was ignorant of local nuances, tones, and usages, which often made

him seem dull or coarse. But he could be entertaining, recounting

anecdotes and memories of his family and his travels around the

world. I was fascinated by his personality—that of a childish

genius—and since I spent hours listening to him, he developed a fair

amount of esteem for me. Whenever we met in the interpreters'

booths at some conference or congress, I knew I'd have Salomon

Toledano sticking to me like a leech.

He had been born into a Ladino-speaking Sephardic family from

Smyrna, and for that reason he considered himself "more Spaniard

than Turk, though with a five-century lag." His father must have

been a very prosperous businessman and banker because he sent

Salomon to study in private schools in Switzerland and England and

to attend universities in Boston and Berlin. Before obtaining his

degrees he already spoke Turkish, Arabic, English, French, Spanish,

Portuguese, Italian, and German, and after specializing in Romanic

and Germanic philology, he lived for some years in Tokyo and

Taiwan, where he learned Japanese, Mandarin, and the Taiwanese

dialect. With me he always spoke a chewed-over and slightly archaic

Spanish in which, for example, he gave us "interpreters" the name

"dragomans." That was why we nicknamed him the Dragoman.

Sometimes, without realizing it, he passed from Spanish to French

or English, or to more exotic languages, and then I had to interrupt

and ask that he confine himself to my limited (compared to his)

linguistic world. When I met him he was learning Russian, and after

a year of effort he read and spoke it more fluently than I, who had

spent five years scrutinizing the mysteries of the Cyrillic alphabet.

Though he generally translated into English, when necessary he

also interpreted into French, Spanish, and other languages, and I

always marveled at the fluency of his expression in my language in

spite of his never having lived in a Spanish-speaking country. He

wasn't a man who read very much, and he wasn't especially

interested in culture except for grammar books and dictionaries, and

unusual pastimes like collecting stamps and toy soldiers, subjects in

which he said he was as well versed as in languages. The most

extraordinary thing was to hear him speak Japanese, because then,

like a true chameleon but without being aware of it, he adopted the

postures, bows, and gestures of an Asian. Thanks to him, I

discovered that the predisposition for languages is as mysterious as

the inclination of certain people for mathematics or music and has

nothing to do with intelligence or knowledge. It is something

separate, a gift that some possess and others don't. Salomon