The Bad Girl (38 page)

obtained when she married him. She didn't dare use the French

passport acquired thanks to her earlier husband, because she didn't

know if Monsieur Robert Arnoux had finally decided to denounce

her, had begun a legal proceeding, or accused her of bigamy or

something else to take his revenge. For her trips to Africa, along

with the British one, Fukuda had procured a French passport issued

to Madame Florence Milhoun; in it, the photograph showed her

looking very young, with a hairdo entirely different from the one she

normally wore. She had used this passport to enter France the last

time. I was afraid that if she was found out, they would throw her

out of the country, or worse. In spite of this obstacle, the bad girl

continued making inquiries, answering the want ads in Les Echos

for tourist agencies, public relations offices, art galleries, and

companies that worked with Spain and Latin America and needed

personnel with a knowledge of Spanish. It didn't seem very likely

that, given her precarious legal status, she would find a regular job,

but I didn't want to disillusion her and encouraged her to continue

her search.

A few days before the Gravoskis' departure for the United States,

at a farewell supper we gave them at La Closerie des Lilas, and after

listening to the bad girl recounting how difficult it was to find a job

where they would accept her without papers, Elena had an idea.

"Why don't you two marry?" she said to me. "You have French

nationality, don't you? Well, marry* her and you give your nationality

to your wife. Her legal problems will be over, chico. She'll be a nice,

legal Frenchwoman."

She said it without thinking, as a joke, and Simon picked up the

thread: that wedding would be worth waiting for, he wanted to

attend and be a witness for the groom, and since they wouldn't

return to France for two years, we had to shelve the project until

then. Unless we decided to get married in Princeton, New Jersey, in

which case he'd not only be a witness but the best man too, and so

forth.

Back home, half serious and half in jest, I said to the bad girl as

she was undressing, "Suppose we follow Elena's advice? She's right:

if we marry, your situation is resolved instantly."

She put on her nightgown and turned to look at me, with her

hands on her, hips, a mocking little smile, and the stance of a

fighting cock. She spoke with all the irony she was capable of.

"Are you seriously asking me to marry you?"

"Well, I think so," I said, trying to joke. "If you want to. Just to

solve your legal problems. We don't want them to expel you from

France one day for being illegal."

"I marry only for love," she said, staring daggers at me and

tapping her right foot, which was extended in front of her. "I'd never

marry a clod who made a proposal of marriage as coarse as the one

you've just made to me."

"If you want, I'll get down on my knees, and with my hand over

my heart, I'll beg you to be my adored little wife until the end of

time," I said in confusion, not knowing if she was joking or speaking

seriously.

The short, transparent organdy nightgown showed her breasts,

her navel, and the dark little growth of hair at her pubis. It only

reached down to her knees and left her shoulders and arms bare.

Her hair was loose and her face lit up by the performance she had

initiated. The light from the bedside lamp fell on her back and

formed a golden halo around her figure. She looked very attractive

and audacious, and I desired her.

"Do it," she ordered. "On your knees, with your hands on your

chest. Tell me the best cheap, sentimental things in your repertoire

and let's see if you convince me."

I fell to my knees and begged her to marry me, while I kissed her

feet, her ankles, her knees, caressed her buttocks, and compared her

to the Virgin Mary, the goddesses on Olympus, Semiramis and

Cleopatra, Ulysses' Nausicaa, Quixote's Dulcinea, and told her she

was more beautiful and desirable than Claudia Cardinale, Brigitte

Bardot, and Catherine Deneuve all rolled into one. Finally I grasped

her waist and made her fall onto the bed. As I caressed and made

love to her, I heard her laugh as she said into my ear, "I'm sorry, but

I've received better requests for my hand than yours, little pissant."

Whenever we made love, I had to take great precautions not to

hurt her. And though I pretended to believe her when she said she

was getting better, the passage of time had convinced me it wasn't

true, that the injuries to her vagina would never disappear entirely

and would forever limit our sex life. I often avoided penetration, and

when I didn't, I entered very carefully, withdrawing as soon as I felt

her body contract and saw her face contort into a pained expression.

But even so, this difficult and at times incomplete lovemaking made

me immensely happy. Giving her pleasure with my mouth and

hands, and receiving it from hers, justified my life and made me feel

like the most privileged of mortals. Though she often maintained

that distant attitude she'd always had in bed, she sometimes seemed

to become animated and participate with enthusiasm and ardor, and

I would say to her, "Even though you don't like to admit it, I think

you're beginning to love me." That night, when we were exhausted

and sinking into sleep, I admonished her.

"You haven't given me an answer, guerrilla fighter. This must be

the fifteenth declaration of love I've made to you. Are you going to

marry me or not?"

"I don't know," she replied, very seriously, her arms around me.

"I still have to think about it."

The Gravoskis left for the United States on a sunny spring day

when the first green buds were coming out on the chestnuts,

beeches, and Lombardy poplars of Paris. We saw them off at the

Charles de Gaulle Airport. When she embraced Yilal, the bad girl's

eyes filled with tears. The Gravoskis had left us a key to their

apartment so we could look in once in a while and keep the dust

from invading. They were good friends, the only ones with whom we

had that South American kind of visceral friendship, and for the two

years of their absence we would miss them very much. When I saw

the bad girl so downhearted over Yilal's departure, I suggested that

instead of going home we take a walk or go to a movie. Then I'd take

her to have supper at a small bistrot on the lie Saint-Louis that she

liked very much. She had become so fond of Yilal that as we strolled

around Notre Dame on our way to the restaurant, I said, jokingly,

that if she'd like, once we were married we could adopt a child.

"I've discovered a maternal vocation in you. I always thought you

didn't want children."

"When I was in Cuba, with Comandante Chacon, I had my tubes

tied because he wanted a child and the idea horrified me," she

replied, drily. "Now I'm sorry."

"Let's adopt one," I encouraged her. "Isn't it the same thing?

Haven't you seen the relationship Yilal has with his parents?"

"I don't know if it's the same," she murmured, and I heard her

voice become hostile. "Besides, I don't even know if I'll marry you.

Let's change the subject, please."

She was in a very- bad mood, and I understood that, without

meaning to, I had touched a wounded place deep inside her. I tried

to distract her and took her to look at the cathedral, a sight that

never failed to overwhelm me even after all the years I had been in

Paris. And that night more than other times. A faint light, with a

slightly pink aura, bathed the stones of Notre Dame. The large mass

seemed light because of the perfect symmetry of its parts, delicately

balanced and sustained so that nothing was disordered or

disarranged. History and the sifted light charged the facade with

allusions and resonances, images and references. There were many

tourists taking pictures. Was this same cathedral the setting for so

many centuries of French history, the inspiration for the novel by

Victor Hugo that excited me so when I read it as a boy, in Miraflores,

in my aunt Alberta's house? It was the same one and a different one

that had accrued more recent mythologies and events.

Extraordinarily beautiful, it transmitted an impression of stability

and permanence, of having escaped the usury of time. The bad girl,

lost in her own thoughts, heard me praise Notre Dame as if she were

hearing the rain. During supper she was dejected, peevish, and

hardly ate a bite. And that night she fell asleep without saying good

night, as if I were responsible for Yilal's departure. Two days later, I

went to London with a contract for a week's work. When I said

goodbye, very early in the morning, I said, "It doesn't matter if we

don't get married if you don't want to, bad girl. It isn't necessary. I

have to tell you something before I leave. In my forty-seven years

I've never been as happy as in these months we've been together. I

don't know how to repay the happiness you've given me."

"Hurry, you'll miss the plane, you tiresome man," she said,

pushing me toward the door.

She was still in a bad mood, withdrawn day and night. Since the

departure of the Gravoskis, I almost hadn't been able to talk to her.

Did Yilal's leaving affect her so much?

My work in London was more interesting than at other

conferences and congresses. The meeting had one of those

innocuous titles, tirelessly repeated with different topics: "Africa: An

Impetus to Development." It was sponsored by the Commonwealth,

the United Nations, the Organization of African Unity, and several

independent institutes. But unlike other debates, there were very

serious testimonies by political, business, and academic leaders

from African countries regarding the calamitous state in which the

former French and British colonies had been left when they

achieved independence, and the obstacles they were confronting

now in their efforts to order society, stabilize institutions, eliminate

militarism and local strongmen, integrate into harmonious unity the

distinct ethnicities in each country, and move forward economically.

The situation in almost all the represented nations was critical, yet

the sincerity and lucidity with which the Africans, most of them very

young, described their reality had something vibrant that injected a

hopeful energy into their tragic condition. Though I was also using

Spanish, for the most part I had to interpret from French to English

or the reverse. And I did it with interest, curiosity, and a desire to

take a vacation one day in Africa. I couldn't forget, however, that the

bad girl had made her trips to that continent in the service of

Fukuda.

Whenever I left Paris for a job, we spoke every other day. She

called me since it was cheaper; hotels and pensions charged a

fortune for international calls. But even though I left her the

telephone number at the Hotel Shoreham, in Bayswater, the bad girl

didn't call on my first two days in London. On the third, I called her,

early, before I left for the Commonwealth Institute where the

conference was being held.

She seemed very strange. Laconic, evasive, irritated. I was

frightened, thinking the old panic attacks had returned. She assured

me that they hadn't, that she felt fine. Then did she miss Yilal? Of

course she missed him. And did she miss me a little too?

"Let's see, let me think," she said, but her tone wasn't that of a

woman who's joking. "No, frankly, I don't miss you very much yet."

I had a bad taste in my mouth when I hung up. Well, everybody

had periods of neurasthenia, when they chose to seem hateful in

order to establish their disgust with the world. It would pass. Since

she still hadn't called two days later, I called her again, very early

this time too. She didn't answer. She couldn't possibly have gone out

at seven in the morning: she never did that. The only explanation

was that she was still in a bad mood—but over what?—and didn't

want to answer, since she knew very well I was the one calling. I

called again at night and she still didn't pick up the phone. I called

four or five times in the course of a sleepless night: total silence.

The intermittent screech of the phone pursued me for the next

twenty-four hours until, as soon as the last session ended, I hurried

to Heathrow Airport to catch my plane to Paris. All kinds of gloomy

thoughts made the flight, followed by the cab ride from Charles de

Gaulle to Rue Joseph Granier, seem infinite.

It was a little after two in the morning when, under a persistent

drizzle, I opened the door to my apartment. It was dark, empty, and

on the bed was a note written in pencil on the lined yellow paper we

kept in the kitchen to jot down daily reminders. It was a model of

laconic iciness: "I'm tired of playing the petit bourgeois housewife

you'd like me to be. That's not what I am or what I'll ever be. I'm

very grateful for everything you've done for me. I'm sorry. Take care