The Bad Girl (37 page)

the clinic, gesturing. "And that gentleman didn't drop her. She

escaped from him. Her terrors originate there. A mixture of fear and

remorse for having fled a person who exercised total control over

her, deprived her of her sovereignty, self-determination, pride, selfesteem,

and nearly her reason."

I opened my mouth in utter amazement. I didn't know what to

say.

"Fear he could pursue her to take his revenge and punish her,"

Dr. Roullin continued in the same amiable, discreet tone. "But her

daring to escape was a great thing, Monsieur. An indication that the

tyrant hadn't destroyed her personality completely. Deep down she

preserved her dignity. Her free will."

"But those wounds, those injuries," I asked, and immediately

repented, guessing what they would say.

"He subjected her to all kinds of abuse, for his amusement," the

director explained, getting directly to the point. "He was both an

esthete and a technician in the administration of his pleasures. You

must have a clear idea of what she endured in order to help her. I

have no choice but to give you the unpleasant details. That's the

only way you'll be in a position to provide all the support she needs.

He whipped her with cords that leave no marks. He lent her to his

friends and bodyguards during orgies and watched them, because he

is also a voyeur. Worst of all, perhaps, the thing that has left the

deepest scar in her mind, was breaking wind. It excited him very

much, apparently. He had her drink a solution of powders that filled

her with gas. It was one of the fantasies with which that eccentric

gentleman gratified himself: having her naked, on all fours, like a

dog, breaking wind."

"He not only destroyed her rectum and vagina, Monsieur," said

Dr. Roullin, with the same gentleness and without renouncing her

smile, "he destroyed her personality. Everything in her that was

worthy and decent. Which is why I must tell you again: she has

suffered and will still suffer a great deal, appearances to the

contrary. And at times she'll behave irrationally."

My throat was dry, and as if he had read my mind, Dr. Zilacxy

handed me a glass of sparkling water.

"All right, everything must be said. Make no mistake. She was

not deceived. She was a willing victim. She endured everything

knowing very well what she was doing." Suddenly, the director's

eyes began to scrutinize me in an insistent way, measuring my

reaction. "Call it twisted love, baroque passion, perversion,

masochistic impulse, or simply submission to an overwhelming

personality, one to whom she could offer no resistance. She was an

obliging victim and readily accepted all that gentleman's whims.

When she becomes aware of this now, it enrages her and throws her

into despair."

"It will be an exceedingly slow and difficult convalescence," Dr.

Roullin said. "Until she recovers her self-esteem. She agreed, she

wanted to be a slave, or almost a slave, and she was treated as such,

do you see? Until one day, I don't know how, I don't know why, and

neither does she, she realized the danger. She felt, guessed, that if it

continued, she would end very badly, crippled, insane, or dead. And

then she fled. I don't know where she found the strength to do it.

One must admire her for that, I assure you. People who reach that

extreme of dependence almost never free themselves."

"Her panic was so great she invented the entire story- about

Lagos, being raped by the police, her torturer dropping her for fear

of AIDS. And she even came to believe it. Living in the fiction gave

her reasons to feel more secure, less threatened than living in the

truth. It's more difficult for everyone to live in the truth than in a

lie. And even harder for someone in her situation. It will cost her

immense effort to become accustomed again to the truth."

He fell silent, and Dr. Roullin didn't speak either. Both looked at

me with indulgent curiosity. I sipped at the water, incapable of

saying anything. I felt flushed and sweaty.

"You can help her," said Dr. Roullin after a moment. "Something

else, Monsieur. It may surprise you to hear that you're probably the

only person in the world who can help her. Much more than we can,

I assure you. The danger is that she'll fold in on herself, in a kind of

autism. You can be her communicating bridge to the world."

"She trusts you, and no one else, I believe," the director said in

agreement. "With you she feels, how can I say it..."

"Dirty," said Dr. Roullin, lowering her eyes politely for a

moment. "Because to her, though you may not believe it, you're a

kind of saint."

My laugh sounded very false. I felt foolish, stupid, I wanted to

tell them both to go to hell, to say that the two of them justified the

suspicion I'd always had of psychologists, psychiatrists,

psychoanalysts, priests, wizards, and shamans. They looked at me as

if they could read my mind and forgave me. Dr. Roullin's

imperturbable smile was still there.

"If you have patience and, above all, a good deal of love, her spirit

can heal just as her body has," said the director.

I asked them, because I didn't know what else to ask, if the bad

girl had to return to the clinic.

"On the contrary," said the smiling Dr. Roullin. "She should

forget about us, forget she was here, that this clinic exists. Begin her

life again, from square one. A life very different from the one she's

had, with someone who loves and respects her. Like you."

"One more thing, Monsieur," said the director, getting to his feet

and indicating in this way that the interview was over. "You'll find

this strange. But she, and all those who live a good part of their lives

enclosed in fantasies they erect in order to abolish their real life,

both know and don't know what they're doing. The border

disappears for a while and then it reappears. I mean, sometimes

they know and other times they don't know what they're doing. This

is my advice: don't try to force her to accept reality. Help her, but

don't force her, don't rush her. This apprenticeship is long and

difficult."

"It could be counterproductive and cause a relapse," Dr. Roullin

said with a cryptic smile. "Little by little, through her own efforts,

she'll have to readjust and accept real life again."

I didn't understand very clearly what they were attempting to tell

me, but I didn't try to find out. I wanted to go, to leave that place and

never think again about what I had heard. Knowing very well it

would be impossible. On the suburban train back to Paris, I felt

profoundly demoralized. Anguish closed my throat. It wasn't

surprising that she had invented the Lagos story. Hadn't she spent

her life inventing things? But it hurt me to know that the injuries to

her vagina and rectum had been caused by Fukuda, whom I began to

hate with all my strength. Subjecting her to what practices? Did he

sodomize her with metal objects, with those notched vibrators

placed at the disposal of clients at Chateau Meguru? I knew the

image of the bad girl, naked and on all fours, her stomach swollen by

those powders, loosing strings of farts because that sight and those

noises and odors gave erections to the Japanese gangster—only to

him, or were they shows he put on for his buddies too?—would

pursue me for months, years, perhaps the rest of my life. Is that

what the bad girl called—and with what feverish excitement she had

said it to me in Tokyo—living intensely? She had lent herself to all of

it. At the same time that she was his victim, she had been Fukuda's

accomplice. That meant something as devious and perverse as the

desires of the horrendous Japanese lived in her too. How could she

not think the imbecile who had just gone into debt so she would be

cured, so that after a while she could move on to someone richer or

more interesting than the little pissant, was a saint! And in spite of

all that rancor and fury I only wanted to get home soon to see her,

touch her, and let her know I loved her more than ever. Poor thing.

How much she had suffered. It was a miracle she was still alive. I

would dedicate the rest of my life to getting her out of that pit.

Imbecile!

Back in Paris, my concern was to force myself to put on a natural

face and not let the bad girl suspect what was whirling around my

head. When I walked into the apartment, I found Yilal teaching her

to play chess. She complained that it was very difficult and required

a lot of thought, and the game of checkers was simpler and more

fun. "No, no, no," insisted the boy's high-pitched voice. "Yilal will

learn you." "Yilal will teach you, not learn you," she corrected.

When the boy left, I began to work on the translations to hide my

state of mind and typed until it was time for supper. Since the table

was covered with my papers, we ate in the kitchen, at a small

counter with two stools. She had prepared a cheese omelet and

salad.

"What's wrong?" she asked suddenly, as we were eating. "You

seem strange. You went to the clinic, didn't you? Why haven't you

told me anything? Did they tell you something bad?"

"No, on the contrary," I assured her. "You're fine. What they said

is that now you need to forget about the clinic, Dr. Roullin, and the

past. That's what they told me: you should forget about them so

your recovery can be complete."

In her eyes I saw that she knew I was hiding something, but she

didn't insist. We went to have coffee with the Gravoskis. Our friends

were very excited. Simon had received an offer to spend a couple of

years at Princeton University, doing research, in an exchange

program with the Pasteur Institute. Both of them wanted to go to

New Jersey: in two years in the United States, Yilal would learn

English and Elena could work at Princeton Hospital. They were

finding out if the Hopital Cochin would give her a two-year, unpaid

leave of absence. Since they did all the talking, I almost didn't have

to say anything, just listen, or rather, pretend I was listening, for

which I was extremely grateful.

I worked very hard in the weeks and months that followed. To

pay off the loans and at the same time meet ongoing expenses that

had increased now that the bad girl was living with me, I had to

accept all the contracts offered to me, and at the same time, at night

or very early in the morning, spend two or three hours translating

documents given to me by the office of Senor Charnes, who, as

always, made a constant effort to help me, I traveled throughout

Europe, working at all kinds of conferences and congresses, and I

brought the translations with me and did them at night, in hotels

and pensions, on a portable typewriter. I didn't care about the

excessive work. The truth is I felt happy living with the woman I

loved. She seemed completely recovered. She never spoke of

Fukuda, or Lagos, or the clinic at Petit Clamart. We would go to the

movies, or sometimes listen to jazz at a cave on Saint-Germain, and

on Saturdays have supper at some restaurant that wasn't too

expensive.

My only extravagance was the cost of the gym, because I was

sure it did the bad girl a lot of good. I enrolled her in a gym on

Avenue Montaigne that had a warm-water pool, and she went very

willingly several times a week to take aerobics classes with a trainer

and swim. Now that she knew how to swim, it was her favorite sport.

When I was away, she spent a good deal of time with the Gravoskis,

who, finally, now that Elena had obtained permission, were

preparing to travel to the United States in the spring. Occasionally

they would take her to see a movie, an art show, or to have supper at

a restaurant. Yilal had succeeded in teaching her chess, and beat her

just as he had in checkers.

One day the bad girl told me that since she was feeling perfectly

fine, which seemed true, given her healthy appearance and the love

of life she seemed to have recovered, she wanted to find a job, not

waste her days, and help me with expenses. It mortified her that I

was killing myself with work and she didn't do anything but go to

the gym and play with Yilal.

But when she began to look for work, the problem of her papers

resurfaced. She had three passports, a Permian one that had expired

and a French and a British one, both false. They wouldn't give her a

decent job anywhere if she was illegal. Least of all during those

times when, in all of western Europe, and especially in France,

paranoia with regard to immigrants from Third World countries had

increased. Governments were restricting visas and beginning to

persecute foreigners without work permits.

The British passport, which showed a photograph of her wearing

makeup that changed her appearance almost completely, had been

issued to a Mrs. Patricia Steward. She explained that since her exhusband,

David Richardson, had proven the bigamy that annulled

her British marriage, she automatically lost the citizenship she had