The Bad Girl (41 page)

anything else you might want." There was no way to convince her,

she wouldn't accept my enticements, serious or humorous. She

wouldn't go to Peru, not now, not ever. She wouldn't set foot there

even for a couple of hours. And when I wanted to cancel the trip so

she wouldn't be left alone, she insisted I go, claiming the Gravoskis

would be in Paris then, and she could turn to them if she needed

help at any time.

Finding that job had been the best remedy for her state of mind.

It also helped her, I think, when after overcoming a thousand

complications, we married and she became, according to what she

sometimes told me at moments of intimacy, "a woman who, when

she was almost forty-eight years old, had her papers in order for the

first time in her life." I thought that for the restless, freewheeling

person she always had been, working in a company that organized

"social events" would soon bore her, and she would be an employee

so incompetent they would fire her. This didn't happen. On the

contrary, in a short time she earned the confidence of the woman

who hired her. And she took very seriously being busy, doing things,

taking on obligations, even if it was asking prices at hotels and

restaurants, making comparisons and negotiating discounts, finding

out what the businesses, associations, and families really

wanted—what kinds of landscapes, hotels, menus, shows,

orchestras—for their meetings, banquets, anniversaries. She worked

not only at the office but at home as well. In the afternoons and

evenings I heard her, glued to the telephone, discussing the details

of contracts with infinite patience, or reporting to Martine, her

employer, on the arrangements made that day. Sometimes she had

to travel to the provinces—generally to Provence, the Cote d'Azur, or

Biarritz—either with Martine or as her representative. Then she

would call every night and tell me, with a wealth of detail, what she

had done that day. It had been good for her to be occupied, acquire

responsibilities, and earn money. Once again she dressed

flirtatiously, went to hairdressers, masseuses, manicurists,

pedicurists, and constantly surprised me with a change in makeup,

hairdo, or outfit. "Do you do this to be fashionable or to keep your

husband forever in love?" "I do it above all because clients love to

see me looking attractive and elegant. Are you jealous?" Yes, I was. I

still was head over heels in love with her, and I think she was with

me too, because except for small, passing crises, since the night I

almost threw myself into the Seine I had noticed details in our

relationship that would have been unthinkable before. "This twoweek

separation will be a test," she said on the night I left. "We'll see

if you love me even more or leave me for one of those mischievous

Permian girls, good boy." "As far as mischievous Permian girls go, I

have more than enough with you." She had kept her slender

figure—on weekends she always went to the gym on Avenue

Montaigne to exercise and swim—and her face was still fresh and

animated.

Our marriage had been a true bureaucratic adventure. Though it

calmed her to know she now had her situation normalized at last, I

suspected that if one day, for whatever reason, the French

authorities began to dig through her papers, they would discover

that our marriage was invalid because it had so many defects in

form and substance. But I didn't tell her that, least of all now, when

the French government had just granted her citizenship two years

after our marriage, not suspecting that the new Madame Ricardo

Somocurcio had already been made a naturalized French citizen

through an earlier marriage under the name of Madame Robert

Arnoux.

In order for us to marry, we had to create false papers for her,

using a name different from the one she had when she married

Robert Arnoux. We wouldn't have managed without the help of

Uncle Ataulfo. When I described the problem for him, in very broad

strokes, without giving him any explanations except the

indispensable ones and avoiding the scandalous details of the bad

girl's life, he responded immediately, saying he didn't need to know

anything else. Underdevelopment has rapid, though somewhat

complicated, solutions for cases like this. And no sooner said than

done: in a few weeks he sent me birth and baptismal certificates,

issued by the municipality and parish of Huaura, in the name of

Lucy Solorzano Cajahuaringa, and with them, following his

instructions, we appeared before the Permian consul in Brussels,

who was a friend of his. Uncle Ataulfo had told him earlier, in a

letter, that Lucy Solorzano, the fiancee of his nephew Ricardo

Somocurcio, had lost all her papers, including her passport, and

needed a new one. The consul, a human relic wearing a waistcoat,

watch chain, and monocle, received us with cool, prudent good

breeding. He didn't ask a single question, by which I understood that

Uncle Ataulfo had told him more things than he appeared to know.

He was courteous, impersonal, and respectful of all the forms. He

communicated with the Ministry of Foreign Relations, and through

the ministry with the government and police, and sent copies of my

fiancee's birth and baptismal certificates, requesting authorization

to issue a new document. At the end of two months the bad girl had

a new passport and a new identity, with which we could obtain, in

Belgium, a tourist visa for France, endorsed by me, a nationalized

French citizen residing in Paris. We immediately began the

application process at the mayor's office in the fifth arrondissement,

on Place du Pantheon. There we finally were married on an autumn

afternoon in October 1982, accompanied only by the Gravoskis, who

acted as witnesses. There was no wedding banquet or any kind of

celebration, because that same afternoon I left for Rome with a twoweek

contract at the Food and Agriculture Organization.

The bad girl was much better. At times it was difficult for me to

see her leading a life that was so normal, enjoying her work and, it

seemed to me, happy in, or at least resigned to, our petit bourgeois

life, working hard all week, preparing supper at night, going to the

movies, the theater, an art show, or a concert, and eating out on

weekends, almost always by ourselves, or with the Gravoskis when

they were here, for they were still spending several months a year in

Princeton. We saw Yilal only in the summer; for the rest of the year

he was in school in New Jersey. His parents had decided he should

be educated in the United States. There was no trace of his old

problem. He spoke and grew normally, and seemed very well

integrated into the world of the United States. He sent us postcards

or an occasional letter, and the bad girl wrote to him every month

and was always sending him presents.

Though they say only imbeciles are happy, I confess that I felt

happy. Sharing my days and nights with the bad girl filled my life. In

spite of her affection toward me, compared to how icy she had been

in the past, she had, in fact, succeeded in making me live in constant

uneasiness, apprehensive that one day, when least expected, she

would return to her old ways and disappear without saying goodbye.

She always managed to let me know—or, I should say, guess—that

there was more than one secret in her daily life, a dimension of her

existence to which I had no access, one that could give rise at any

moment to an earthquake that would topple our life together. I

hadn't gotten it into my head yet that Lily, the Chilean girl, would

accept the rest of her life being what it was now: the life of a middleclass

Parisian, without surprises or mystery, submerged in strict

routine and devoid of adventure.

We were never so close as in the months following what we

might call our reconciliation on the night the anonymous clochard

emerged from the rain and darkness on the Pont Mirabeau to save

my life. "Wasn't it God himself who grabbed your legs, good boy?"

she asked mockingly. She never fully believed I was on the verge of

killing myself. "When people want to commit suicide, they do it, and

there's no clochard who can stop them, Ricardito," she said more

than once. During this time she still suffered occasionally from

terror attacks. Then, pale as a ghost, with gray lips, ashen skin, and

dark circles under her eyes, she would not move away from me for a

second. She followed me around the house like a lapdog, holding my

hand, clutching at my belt or shirt, because the physical contact gave

her a minimum of security without which, she stammered, "I'd fall

apart." Seeing her suffer like that made me suffer too. And, at times,

the insecurity that possessed her during the crisis was so great that

she couldn't even go to the bathroom alone; overwhelmed by

embarrassment, her teeth chattering, she asked me to go in with her

to the toilet and hold her hand while she did what she needed to do.

I never could get a clear idea of the nature of the fear that would

suddenly invade her, undoubtedly because it had no rational

explanation. Did it consist of vague images, sensations,

presentiments, the foreboding that something terrible was about to

crush and annihilate her? "That and much more." When she

suffered one of the attacks of fear, which generally lasted a few

hours, the bold woman with so much character became as

defenseless and vulnerable as a little girl. I would sit her on my lap

and have her curl up against me. I felt her trembling, sighing,

clinging to me with a desperation that nothing could diminish. After

a while, she would fall into a deep sleep. In one or two hours she

awoke, feeling fine, as if nothing had happened. All my pleas that

she return to the clinic in Petit Clamart were useless. In the end, I

stopped insisting because the mere mention of the subject enraged

her. During those months, in spite of being so close physically, we

hardly ever made love, because not even in the intimacy of bed could

she achieve the minimum of tranquility, the momentary surrender

that would allow her to yield to pleasure.

Work helped her emerge from this difficult period. The crises

didn't disappear all at once, but they did become less frequent and

less intense. Now she seemed much better, almost transformed into

a normal woman. Well, at heart I knew she'd never be a normal

woman. And I didn't want her to be one, because what I loved in her

were the indomitable and unpredictable aspects of her personality.

In the talks we had during his convalescence, Uncle Ataulfo

never asked me questions about my wife's past. He would send her

his regards, he was delighted to have her in the family, he hoped

that one day she would want to come to Lima so he could meet her,

because if not, he would have no choice but to visit us in Paris. He

had framed the photograph taken on the day of our marriage as we

were leaving the mayor's office, with the Pantheon as a backdrop,

and kept it on an end table in the living room.

In these conversations, generally in the afternoon after lunch

and sometimes lasting for hours, we talked a great deal about Peru.

He had been an enthusiastic Belaundista all his life, but now,

sorrowfully, he confessed that Belaunde Terry's second government

had disappointed him. Except for returning the newspapers and

television stations expropriated by the military dictatorship of

Velasco Alvarado, he hadn't dared to correct any of the pseudoreforms

that had impoverished and inflamed Peru even further and

provoked an inflation that would give victory to APRA in the next

elections. And, unlike his nephew Alberto Lamiel, my uncle had no

illusions concerning Alan Garcia. I told myself that in the country of

my birth, from which I was disengaged in an increasingly

irreversible way, there undoubtedly were many men and women like

him, basically decent people who had dreamed all their lives of the

economic, social, cultural, and political progress that would

transform Peru into a modern, prosperous, democratic society with

opportunities open to all, only to find themselves repeatedly

frustrated, and, like Uncle Ataulfo, had reached old age—the very

brink of death—bewildered, asking themselves why we were moving

backward instead of advancing and were worse off now, with more

discrimination, inequality, violence, and insecurity than when they

were starting out.

"How right you were to go to Europe, nephew," was his refrain,

which he repeated as he smoothed the graying beard he had grown.

"Imagine what would have happened to you if you had stayed here

to work, with all these blackouts, bombs, and kidnappings. And the

lack of work for young people."

"I'm not so sure, uncle. Yes, it's true, I have a profession that

allows me to live in a marvelous city. But there I've become a person

without roots, a phantom. I'll never be French, even though I have a