The Bad Girl (34 page)

thing that matters is that you survived and soon you'll be completely

well. And never get involved again in the kinds of entanglements

that have consumed half your life."

On the fourth day, a Thursday, Elena told us that Dr. Zilacxy,

director of the clinic in Petit Clamart, would see us on Monday at

noon. Professor Bourrichon had spoken with him by phone and

given him all the results of the bad girl's medical examination, as

well as his prescriptions and advice. On Friday I went to speak to

Senor Charnes, who had asked the secretary of the translators' and

interpreters' agency he headed to call me. He offered me a well-paid

contract for two weeks in Helsinki. I accepted. When I returned

home, I heard voices and giggles in the bedroom as soon as I opened

the door. I stood still with the door half open, listening. They were

speaking in French, and one of the voices belonged to the bad girl.

The other, thin, high-pitched, a little hesitant, could only be Yilal's.

Suddenly my hands were sweating. I was ecstatic. I couldn't hear

what they were saying, but they were playing something, perhaps

checkers, perhaps JanKenPo, and, to judge by the giggles, having a

very good time. They hadn't heard me come in. I closed the door

slowly and walked toward the bedroom, exclaiming in a loud voice,

in French, "I bet you're playing checkers and the bad girl is

winning."

There was an immediate silence, and when I took another step

and went into the bedroom I saw that they had the checkerboard

open in the middle of the bed and were sitting on either side, both of

them leaning over the pieces. Yilal looked at me, his eyes flashing

with pride. And then, opening his mouth very wide, he said in

French, "Yilal wins!"

"He always wins, it's not fair." The bad girl applauded. "This kid

is a champion."

"Let's see, let's see, I want to referee this match," I said, dropping

onto a corner of the bed and examining the board. I tried to feign

absolute naturalness, as if nothing extraordinary were happening,

but I could hardly breathe.

Leaning over the pieces, Yilal was studying the next move. For an

instant the bad girl's eyes met mine. She smiled and winked.

"He wins again!" Yilal exclaimed, applauding.

"Well, of course, mon vieux, she has no place to move. You won.

Give me five!"

I shook his hand, and the bad girl gave him a kiss.

"I'm not playing checkers with you again, I'm sick of being

beaten," she said.

"I've thought of a game that's even more fun, Yilal," I

improvised. "Why don't we give Elena and Simon the surprise of

their lives? Let's put on a show for them that your parents will

remember for the rest of their days. Would you like to do that?"

The boy's expression had turned wary and he waited, motionless,

for me to continue, not committing himself. As I laid out the plan I

was inventing as I described it to him, he listened, intrigued and

somewhat intimidated, not daring to reject it, attracted and repelled

at the same time by my proposal. When I finished, he was

motionless and silent for a long time, looking first at the bad girl and

then at me.

"What do you think, Yilal?" I insisted, still speaking French.

"Shall we give Simon and Elena a surprise? I promise you they won't

forget it for the rest of their lives."

"All right," said Yilal's thin voice, his head nodding assent. "We'll

give them a surprise."

We did just what I had improvised, caught up in the emotion and

confusion that hearing Yilal had thrown me into. When Elena came

to pick him up, the bad girl and I asked if she, Simon, and the boy

would come back after supper because we had a delicious dessert we

wanted to share with them. Somewhat surprised, Elena said all

right, just for a little while, because otherwise it would be very hard

for Yilal the sleepyhead to wake up the next day. I ran as if the devil

were pursuing me to the corner of Ecole Militaire, to the bakery with

the croissants on the Avenue de la Bourdonnais. Fortunately, it was

open. I bought a cake with a lot of cream and fat, red strawberries on

top. We were so excited we barely tasted the meal of vegetables and

fish I shared with the convalescent.

When Simon, Elena, and Yilal—already in slippers and

robe—arrived, we were waiting for them, the coffee ready and the

cake cut into slices. I saw immediately that Elena suspected

something. Simon, on the other hand, preoccupied with an article by

a dissident Soviet scientist he had read that afternoon, was over the

moon and told us, while the cream from the overly sweet dessert

dirtied his beard, that not long ago the Soviet scientist visited the

Pasteur Institute and all the researchers and scientists had been

struck by his modesty and intellectual accomplishments. Then,

following the nonsensical script I had devised, the bad girl asked in

Spanish, "How many languages do all of you think Yilal speaks?"

I saw that Simon and Elena froze immediately and widened their

eyes slightly, as if asking: "What's going on here?"

"I think two," I declared. "French and Spanish. And you two,

what do you think? How many languages does Yilal speak, Elena?

Simon, how many do you think?"

Yilal's eyes moved from his parents to me, from me to the bad

girl, and back to his parents again. He was very serious.

"He doesn't speak any," Elena stammered, looking at us and not

turning her head toward the boy. "At least, not yet."

"I think...," said Simon, and then fell silent, overwhelmed,

begging us with his eyes to tell him what he should say.

"In reality, it doesn't matter what we think," the bad girl

interjected. "It only matters what Yilal says. What do you say, Yilal?

How many do you speak?"

"He speaks French," said the thin, high-pitched voice. And, after

a very brief pause, changing languages, "Yilal speaks Spanish."

Elena and Simon sat staring at him, struck dumb. The slice of

cake Simon was holding slid off the plate and landed on his trousers.

The boy burst into laughter, raising his hand to his mouth, and

pointing at Simon's leg, he exclaimed in French, "You dirty

trousers."

Elena rose to her feet and now, standing beside the boy, looking

at him ecstatically, she caressed his hair with one hand and passed

the other along his lips, over and over again, the way a pious old

woman caresses the image of her patron saint. But, of the two, the

more moved was Simon. Incapable of saying anything, he looked at

his son, at his wife, at us, stupefied, as if asking us not to wake him

but to let him go on dreaming.

Yilal said nothing else that night. His parents took him home a

short while later, and the bad girl, acting as mistress of the house,

wrapped up the rest of the cake and insisted the Gravoskis take it. I

shook Yilal's hand when we said good night.

"It turned out very well, didn't it, Yilal? I owe you a present

because of how well you did. Another six toy soldiers for your

collection?"

He made affirmative movements with his head. When we closed

the door behind them, the bad girl exclaimed, "Right now they're the

happiest couple on earth."

Much later, when I was beginning to fall asleep, I saw a

silhouette slip into the living room and silently approach the sofa

bed. She took me by the hand.

"Come, come with me," she ordered.

"I can't, I mustn't," I said, getting up and following her. "Dr.

Pineau has forbidden it. For two months at least I can't even touch

you, let alone make love to you. And I won't touch you, or make love

to you, until you're well again. Understood?"

We got into bed, she curled up against me and leaned her head

on my shoulder. I felt her body, nothing but skin and bone, and her

small, icy feet rubbing against my legs, and a shudder ran from my

head down to my heels.

"I don't want you to make love to me," she whispered, kissing me

on the neck. "I want you to hold me, keep me warm, take away my

fear, I'm dying of terror."

Her body, a form full of angles, trembled like a leaf. I embraced

her, rubbed her back, her arms, her waist, and for a long time

whispered sweet things in her ear. I would never let anybody hurt

her again, she had to do everything she could to get better soon and

get back her strength, her desire to live and be happy. So she could

be attractive again. She listened in silence, clinging to me, attacked

at intervals by terrors that made her moan and writhe. Much later, I

sensed she was sleeping. But throughout the night, as I dozed, I felt

her shudder and groan, seized by recurrent attacks of panic. When I

saw her like this, so helpless, images of what had happened in Lagos

came into my mind, and I felt sadness, rage, and a fierce desire for

vengeance against her torturers.

The visit to the Petit Clamart clinic of Dr. Andre Zilacxy, a

Frenchman of Hungarian descent, turned out to be a country

excursion. A brilliant sun that day made the tall poplars and plane

trees in the woods shine. The clinic was at the far end of a park that

had chipped statues and a pond with swans. We arrived at midday,

and Dr. Zilacxy had us come into his office immediately. The old

building was a nineteenth-century, two-story seigneurial house that

had a marble staircase and balconies with grillwork but was

modernized in the interior. A new pavilion that had large floor-toceiling

windows had been added—perhaps it was a solarium or a

gym with a swimming pool. Through the windows in Dr. Zilacxy's

office, people could be seen in the distance moving about under the

trees, among them the white coats of nurses or doctors. Zilacxy also

seemed to come from the nineteenth century, with his square-cut

beard framing a thin face and a gleaming bald head. He wore black,

with a gray vest, a stiff collar that looked false, and instead of a tie, a

four-in-hand held by a vermilion pin. He had a pocket watch with a

gold chain.

"I've spoken with my colleague Bourrichon, and read the report

from the Hopital Cochin," he said, coming to the point right away, as

if he couldn't allow himself to waste time in banalities. "You're

fortunate, the clinic is always full and there are people who wait a

long time to be admitted. But, as the lady is a special case because

she comes recommended by an old friend, we can make a place for

her."

He had a very well-modulated voice, and an elegant, somewhat

theatrical way of moving and displaying his hands. He said the

"patient" would follow a special diet planned by a dietician so she

could regain the weight she had lost, and a personal trainer would

monitor her physical exercise. Her head physician would be Dr.

Roullin, a specialist in traumas of the kind the lady had suffered.

She could have visitors twice a week, between five and seven in the

evening. In addition to her treatment with Dr. Roullin, she would

take part in group therapy sessions that he led. Unless there was

some objection on her part, hypnosis might be used in her

treatment, under his direction. And—here he paused so we would

know an important statement was coming—if the patient at any

point in her treatment felt "disappointed," she could stop

immediately.

"It never has happened to us," he added, clicking his tongue. "But

the possibility is there in case it ever does."

He said that after talking to Professor Bourrichon, they both had

agreed in principle that the patient should remain at the clinic a

minimum of four weeks. Then they would see if it was advisable for

her to prolong her stay or if she could continue her convalescence at

home.

He responded to all of Elena's questions and mine—the bad girl

didn't open her mouth, she did no more than listen as if the matter

had nothing to do with her—regarding the functioning of the clinic,

his colleagues, and after a joke about Lacan and his fantastic

combinations of structuralism and Freud, which, he pointed out

with a smile in order to set our minds at ease, "we don't offer on our

menu," he had a nurse take the bad girl to the office of Dr. Roullin,

who was waiting to talk to her and show her around the

establishment.

When we were alone with Dr. Zilacxy, Elena cautiously brought

up the delicate matter of how much the month of treatment would

cost. And she quickly indicated that "the lady" had no insurance or

personal funds and the friend who was here now would assume the

cost of her cure.

"One hundred thousand francs, approximately, not counting the

medicines that—well, it is difficult to know ahead of time—probably

would amount to twenty or thirty percent more, in the worst-case

scenario." He paused for a moment and coughed before he added:

"This is a special price, since the lady comes recommended by

Professor Bourrichon."

He looked at his watch, rose to his feet, and said that if we had

decided, we should stop by administration to fill out forms.