The Bad Girl (25 page)

was crystal clear: the bad girl would never be yours, little pissant.

"What an unhappy expression on your face," she said with a

smile. "Does what I told you make you sad? You're the only person I

could have told it to. Besides, I needed to tell somebody. But maybe

I've done a bad thing. Will you forgive me if I give you a kiss?"

"It makes me sad that for the first time in your life, you really

love somebody and it's not me."

"No, no, it's not love," she repeated, shaking her head. "It's more

complicated, more like a sickness, I already told you that. He makes

me feel alive, useful, active. But not happy. It's a kind of possession.

Don't laugh, don't joke, sometimes I feel possessed by Fukuda."

"If you're so afraid of him, I imagine you won't dare make love to

me. And I came to Tokyo expressly to ask you to take me to the

Chateau Meguru."

She had been very serious telling me about her life with Fukuda,

but now, opening her eyes wide, she burst into laughter.

"And how the hell do you know about the Chateau Meguru when

you've only just come to Tokyo?"

"From my friend, the interpreter. Salomon calls himself 'the

Dragoman of the Chateau Meguru.'" I grasped her hand and kissed

it. "Would you dare, bad girl?"

She looked at her watch and was thoughtful for a few moments,

calculating. Suddenly, decisively, she asked the waitress to call us a

taxi.

"I don't have much time," she said. "But for some reason it

makes me feel bad to see you with that face of a beaten dog. Let's go,

though I'm taking a huge risk doing this."

The Chateau Meguru was a house of assignation operating in a

labyrinthine building filled with hallways and dark stairs that led to

rooms equipped with saunas, Jacuzzis, water beds, mirrors on the

walls and ceilings, radios, and television sets, next to which were

piles of pornographic videos with fantasies for every imaginable

taste and a marked preference for sadomasochism. And in a small

glass cabinet, condoms and vibrators of various sizes with features

like rooster crests, tufts, and miters, as well as a rich paraphernalia

of sadomasochistic toys, whips, masks, handcuffs, and chains. Like

the buses, the streets, and the park, here too the cleanliness was

meticulous and morbid. When I entered the room, I had the feeling

I was in a laboratory or a space station. In fact, it was difficult for me

to understand the enthusiasm of Salomon Toledano, who called

these technological bedrooms and mini sex shops an Eden of

pleasures.

When I began to undress Kuriko, and saw and touched her soft

skin, and smelled her perfume, in spite of my efforts to control

myself, the anguish that had tightened my chest ever since she told

me about her unconditional surrender to Fukuda overcame me. I

burst into tears. She let me cry for a long time, not saying anything.

Pulling myself together, I stammered some excuses, and I felt her

caress my hair again.

"We haven't come here to be sad," she said. "Put your arms

around me and tell me you love me, foolish boy."

When we were both naked I saw she really had become very thin.

You could see the ribs on her chest and back, and the small scar on

her belly had lengthened. But her shape was as harmonious as ever,

and her small breasts firm. I kissed her slowly, for a long time,

everywhere on her body—the faint perfume of her skin seemed to

emanate from inside—whispering words of love. I didn't care about

anything. Not even that she was bewitched by the Japanese. I was

terrified that, because of the work he had her doing, she'd end up

with her belly ripped open by bullets, or in an African jail. But then I

would move heaven and earth to rescue her. Because, why deny it, I

loved her more and more each day. And I would always love her,

even if she deceived me with a thousand Fukudas, because she was

the most beautiful and delicate woman in creation: my queen, my

princess, my torturer, my liar, my Japanese girl, my only love.

Kuriko had covered her face with her arm and said nothing, she

didn't even listen to me, totally concentrated on her pleasure.

"What I like, good boy," she finally ordered, spreading her legs

and drawing my head to her sex.

Kissing and sucking, relishing the fragrance that came from the

depths of her womb, made me as happy as it always had. For a few

eternal minutes, submerged in a silent, feverish exaltation,

swallowing the sweet juices I absorbed from inside her, I forgot

about Fukuda and the thousand and one adventures she had told me

about. After I felt her climax I lifted myself over her, and with the

same difficulty as always I penetrated her, hearing her groan and

seeing her frown. I was very excited but managed to hold off inside

her, lost in a frenzied vertigo until I finally ejaculated. For a long

time I gripped her, holding her tight against me. I caressed her, bit

her hair, her perfect ears, I kissed her and begged her pardon for not

being able to hold back longer.

"There's a remedy so you don't finish so quickly, so you keep

your erection for a long time, for hours," she finally said into my ear

in her old, mischievous voice. "Do you know what it is? No, what

would you know about these things, you're such a saint. It's a

powder prepared from ground elephant tusks and rhinoceros horns.

Don't laugh, it isn't witchcraft, it's true. I'll give you a vial of it to

remember me by in Paris. I'm telling you it's worth a fortune all

over Asia. This way you'll think of Kuriko every time you go to bed

with a Frenchwoman."

I raised my head from her neck to see her face: she looked very

beautiful this way, pale, with bluish circles under her eyes and the

languor she sank into after love.

"Is that what you smuggle on your trips through Asia and Africa,

aphrodisiacs prepared from elephant tusks and rhinoceros horns to

swindle the gullible?" I asked, shaking with laughter.

"It's the best business in the world, though you may not believe

it," she said with a laugh, infected by my laughter. "The ecologists

are to blame, they made the hunting of elephants, rhinoceroses, and

who knows how many other animals illegal. Now those tusks and

horns are worth a fortune in the countries here. I also bring in other

things I don't intend to tell you about. But that's Fukuda's big

business. And now I have to go, good boy."

"I don't plan to go back to Paris," I said as I watched her, her back

to me, walking naked on tiptoe to the bathroom. "I'll live in Tokyo,

and if I can't kill Fukuda, I'll settle for being your dog, just like

you're that gangster's dog."

"Bowwow," the Chilean girl barked.

When I returned to my hotel, I found a message from Mitsuko.

She wanted to see me alone on an urgent matter. Could I call her at

her office early tomorrow?

I called as soon as I got up, and with interminable Japanese

courtesies, the Dragoman's friend asked me to have coffee with her

midmorning in the cafeteria at the Hotel Hilton, because she had

something important to tell me. As soon as I hung up, the phone

rang. It was Kuriko. She had told Fukuda that an old Permian friend

was in Tokyo, and the Yakuza boss had invited me, along with the

Dragoman and his girlfriend, to have a drink at their house tonight

and then a dinner-show at the most popular musical in the Ginza.

Had I heard right?

"And then I said I'd be showing you around for the next few days.

He didn't object."

"How generous, how gallant," I responded, indignant at what she

had just told me. "You, asking permission of a man! I don't

recognize you, bad girl."

"You've made me blush," she murmured in some confusion. "I

thought you'd be happy to know we could see each other for as long

as you're in Tokyo."

"I'm jealous. Don't you realize that? Before it didn't matter,

because your lovers or husbands didn't matter to you, either. But

this Japanese does. You never should have told me he can do

whatever he wants with you. That dagger in my heart will go with

me to the grave."

She laughed, as if I had made a joke.

"I don't have time now for those cheap, sentimental things, good

boy. I'll get rid of that jealousy of yours. I've made a wonderful plan

for the day, you'll see."

I asked her to pick me up at the Hilton cafeteria at noon, and I

went to my appointment with Mitsuko. When I arrived she was

already there, smoking. She seemed very nervous. She apologized

again for her audacity in calling me, but, she said, she had no one

else to turn to. "The situation has become very difficult and I don't

know what to do." Perhaps I could advise her.

"Are you referring to your relationship with Salomon?" I asked,

suspecting what was to follow.

"I thought our affair would be a little flirtation," she agreed,

exhaling smoke from her nose and mouth. "A pleasant, passing

adventure, the kind that doesn't involve commitment. But Salomon

doesn't understand it that way. He wants to turn this into a lifelong

relationship. He insists we get married. I'll never marry again. I

went through one failed marriage and I know what it means.

Besides, I have a career ahead of me. The truth is, his obstinacy is

driving me crazy. I don't know what to do to end this once and for

all."

I wasn't happy to have my suspicions confirmed. The Dragoman

had built castles in the air and was going to suffer the greatest

frustration of his life.

"Since the two of you are such good friends and he thinks so

highly of you, I thought, I mean, I hope it's not an imposition, I

thought you could help me."

"But how can I help you, Mitsuko?"

"By talking to him. Explaining things to him. That I'll never

marry him. That I don't want to and can't continue this relationship

in the way he insists on having it. The truth is he's harassing me,

crushing me. I have a great number of responsibilities at the

company and this is affecting my work. It's been very difficult for

me to get where I am at Mitsubishi."

All the smokers in Tokyo seemed to have congregated in the

impersonal cafeteria of the Hotel Hilton. Clouds of smoke and a

strong odor of tobacco filled the place. You could hear English

spoken at almost every table. There were as many foreigners as

Japanese.

"I'm very sorry, Mitsuko, but I won't do it. This isn't something

third parties should interfere in, it's between you and him. You

ought to talk to him, openly, and right away. Because Salomon is

head over heels in love with you. As he's never been before with

anybody else. And he's filled with illusions. He thinks you love him

too."

I told her some of what the Dragoman had said in his letters.

How meeting her had changed the way he had thought about love

ever since that distant experience of his youth in Berlin, when his

Polish fiancee left him in the midst of preparations for the wedding.

I could see that what I was saying didn't move her in the least: she

must have been sick of the poor Dragoman.

"I understand that girl," she remarked icily. "Your friend can be, I

don't know how to say this in English, overwhelming, suffocating.

Sometimes, when we're together, I feel I'm in prison. He doesn't

give me any space to be myself, to breathe. He wants to touch me all

the time. Even though I've explained to him that here in Japan we're

not used to that kind of demonstrativeness in public."

She spoke in such a way that, within a few minutes, I thought the

problem was even more serious: Mitsuko felt so sickened by the

Dragoman's kissing and pawing in full view of everyone, and by who

knows what kind of besiegement in private, that she had grown to

detest him.

"Then, do you think I ought to talk to him?"

"I don't know, Mitsuko, don't make me give you advice about

something so personal. The only thing I want is for my friend to

suffer as little as possible. And I believe that if you aren't going to

continue with him, if you've decided to break it off, it's better to do it

right away. It'll be worse later."

When she left, with more excuses and courteous phrases, I felt

uncomfortable and ill at ease, I would have preferred not to have

had that conversation with Mitsuko, not to have learned that my

friend was going to be brutally awakened from the dream he was in

and returned to harsh reality. Fortunately, I didn't have to wait very

long: Kuriko appeared in the doorway of the cafeteria and I went to

meet her, happy to leave that smoke-filled den. She was wearing a

little hat and a raincoat of the same light checkered cloth, dark

flannel trousers, a high-necked garnet-colored sweater, and sporty

moccasins. Her face looked fresher and younger than it had the

night before. An adolescent over forty. Just seeing her made my bad

mood vanish. She offered her lips so I could kiss her, something she

didn't usually do, I was always the one who searched out her mouth.