The Bad Girl (10 page)

Everything in the life of Madame Arnoux remained extremely

mysterious, as it had been in the lives of Lily the Chilean girl and

Arlette the guerrilla fighter. If what she told me was true, she now

led an intense social life of receptions, dinners, and cocktail parties,

where she rubbed elbows with le tout Paris; for example, yesterday

she had met Maurice Couve de Murville, General de Gaulle's

minister of foreign relations, and last week she had seen Jean

Cocteau at a private screening of To Die in Madrid, a documentary

by Frederic Rossif, on the arm of his lover, the actor Jean Marais,

who, by the way, was extremely handsome, and tomorrow she was

going to a tea given by friends for Farah Diba, the wife of the Shah of

Iran, who was on a private visit to Paris. Mere delusions of grandeur

and snobbery, or had her husband in fact introduced her to a world

of luminaries and frivolity that she found dazzling? And she was

constantly making, or she told me she was making, trips to

Switzerland, Germany, Belgium, for just two or three days, and for

reasons that were never clear: expositions, gala events, parties,

concerts. Since her explanations seemed so obviously fantastic to

me, I chose not to ask more questions about her trips, pretending to

believe absolutely the reasons she occasionally deigned to give me

for those glittering excursions.

One afternoon in the middle of 1965, at UNESCO, a colleague at

the office, an old Spanish republican who years ago had written "a

definitive novel on the Civil War that corrected Hemingway's

errors," entitled For Whom the Bells Don't Toll, handed me the copy

of Le Monde he was leafing through. The guerrillas of the Tupac

Amaru column of the MIR, led by Lobaton and operating in the

provinces of La Conception and Satipo, in the department of Junin,

had plundered the powder magazine of a mine, blown up a bridge

across the Moraniyoc River, occupied the Runatullo ranch, and

distributed the provisions to the peasants. And a couple of weeks

later, it ambushed a detachment of the Civil Guard in the narrow

Yahuarina pass. Nine guards, among them the major in command of

the patrol, died in the fighting. In Lima, there had been bombing

attacks on the Hotel Crillon and the Club Nacional. The Belaunde

government had decreed a state of siege throughout the central

sierra. I felt my heart shrink. That day, and the days that followed, I

was uneasy, the face of fat Paul etched in my mind.

Uncle Ataulfo wrote to me from time to time—he had replaced

Aunt Alberta as my only correspondent in Peru—his letters filled

with commentary on the political situation. Through him I learned

that although the guerrilla war was very sporadic in Lima, military

actions in the central and southern Andes had convulsed the

country. El Comercio and La Prensa, and Apristas and Odristas now

allied against the government, were accusing Belaunde Terry of

weakness in the face of the Castrista rebels, and even of secret

complicity with the insurrection. The government had made the

army responsible for suppressing the rebels. "This is turning ugly,

nephew, and I'm afraid there may be a coup at any moment. You can

hear the sound of swords crossing in the air. When don't things go

badly in our Peru!" To his affectionate letters Aunt Dolores would

always add a message in her own hand.

In a totally unexpected way, I ended up getting along very- well

with Monsieur Robert Arnoux. He showed up one day at the Spanish

office at UNESCO to suggest that, when it was time for lunch, we go

to the cafeteria to have a sandwich together. For no special reason,

just to chat for a while, the time needed to have a filtered Gitane, the

brand we both smoked. After that, he stopped by from time to time,

when his commitments allowed, and we'd have coffee and a

sandwich while we discussed the political situation in France and

Latin America, and cultural life in Paris, about which he was also

very knowledgeable. He was a man who read and had ideas, and he

complained that even though working with Rene Maheu was

interesting, the problem was that he had time to read only on

weekends and couldn't go to the theater and concerts very

frequently.

Because of him I had to rent a dinner jacket and wear formal

dress for the first and undoubtedly the last time in my life in order

to attend a benefit for UNESCO—a ballet, followed by dinner and

dancing—at the Opera. I had never been inside this imposing

building, adorned with the frescoes Chagall had painted for the

dome. Everything looked beautiful and elegant to me. But even

more beautiful and elegant was the ex-Chilean girl and ex-guerrilla

fighter, who, in an ethereal strapless gown of white crepe with a

floral print, an upswept hairdo, and jewels at her throat, ears, and

fingers, left me openmouthed with admiration. The old men who

were friends of Monsieur Arnoux came up to her all night, kissed

her hand, and stared at her with glittering, covetous eyes. "Quelle

beaute exotique!" I heard one of those excited drones say. At last I

was able to ask her to dance. Holding her tight, I murmured in her

ear that I'd never even imagined she could ever be as beautiful as

she was at that moment. And it tore my heart out to think that, after

the dance, in her house in Passy, it would be her husband and not

me who would undress her and make love to her. The beaute

exotique let herself be adored with a condescending little smile and

then finished me off with a cruel remark: "What cheap, sentimental

things you say to me, Ricardito." I inhaled the fragrance that floated

all around her and wanted her so much I could hardly breathe.

Where did she get the money for those clothes and jewels? I was

no expert in luxury items, but I realized that to wear those exclusive

models and change outfits the way she did—each time I saw her she

was wearing a new dress and exquisite new shoes—one needed more

money than a UNESCO functionary could earn, even if he was the

director's right hand. I tried to learn the secret by asking her if,

besides occasionally deceiving Monsieur Robert Arnoux with me,

she wasn't also deceiving him with some millionaire thanks to

whom she could dress in clothes from the great shops and wear

jewels from the Arabian Nights.

"If you were my only lover, I'd walk around like a beggar, little

pissant," she replied, and she wasn't joking.

But she immediately offered an explanation that seemed perfect,

though I was certain it was false. The clothes and jewels she wore

weren't bought but lent by the great modistes along Avenue

Montaigne and the jewelers on Place Vendome; as a way to publicize

their creations, they had chic ladies in high society wear them. And

so because of her social connections, she could dress and adorn

herself like the most elegant women in Paris. Or did I think that on

the miserable salary of a French diplomat she'd be able to compete

with the grandes dames in the City of Light?

A few weeks after the dance at the Opera, the bad girl called me

at my office at UNESCO.

"Robert has to go with the director to Warsaw this weekend," she

said. "You won the lottery, good boy! I can devote all of Saturday and

Sunday to you. Let's see what you arrange for me."

I spent hours thinking about what would surprise and amuse

her, what odd places in Paris she didn't know, what performances

were being-offered on Saturday, what restaurant, bar, or bistrot

might appeal to her because of its originality* or secret, exclusive

character. Finally, after shuffling through a thousand possibilities

and discarding all of them, I chose for Saturday morning, if the

weather was good, an excursion to the Asnieres dog cemetery on a

tree-filled little island in the middle of the river, and supper at

Allard, on Rue de Saint-Andre-des-Arts, at the same table where one

night I had seen Pablo Neruda eating with two spoons, one in each

hand. To enhance its stature in her eyes, I'd tell Madame Arnoux it

was the poet's favorite restaurant and invent the dishes he always

ordered. The idea of spending an entire night with her, making love

to her, enjoying on my lips the flutter of her "sex of nocturnal

eyelashes" (a line from Neruda's poem "Material nuptial" that I had

murmured in her ear the first night we were together in my garret at

the Hotel du Senat), feeling her fall asleep in my arms, waking on

Sunday morning with her warm, slim body curled up against mine,

kept me, for the three or four days I had to wait until Saturday, in a

state in which hope, joy, and fear that something would frustrate

our plan barely allowed me to concentrate on my work. The reviewer

had to correct my translations several times.

That Saturday was a glorious day. At midmorning, in the new

Dauphine I had bought the previous month, I drove Madame

Arnoux to the Asnieres dog cemetery, which she had never seen. We

spent more than an hour wandering among the graves—not only

dogs but cats, rabbits, and parrots were buried there—and reading

the deeply felt, poetic, cheerful, and absurd epitaphs with which

owners had bid farewell to their beloved animals. She really seemed

to be having a good time. She smiled and kept her hand in mine, her

eyes the color of dark honey were lit by the springtime sun, and her

hair was tousled by a breeze blowing along the river. She wore a

light, transparent blouse that revealed the top of her breasts, a loose

jacket that fluttered with her movements, and brick-red high-heeled

boots. She spent some time contemplating the statue to the

unknown dog at the entrance, and with a melancholy air lamented

having "so complicated" a life, otherwise she would adopt a puppy. I

made a mental note: that would be my gift on her birthday, if I could

find out when it was.

I put my arm around her waist, pulled her to me, and said that if

she decided to leave Monsieur Arnoux and marry me, I'd undertake

to see that she had a normal life and could raise all the dogs she

wanted.

Instead of answering, she asked, in a mocking tone, "The idea of

spending the night with me makes you the happiest man in the

world, Miraflores boy? I'm asking so you can tell me one of those

cheap, sentimental things you love saying so much."

"Nothing could make me happier," I said, pressing my lips to

hers. "I've been dreaming about it for years, guerrilla fighter."

"How many times will you make love to me?" she continued in

the same mocking tone.

"As many as I can, bad girl. Ten, if my body holds out."

"I'll allow you only two," she said, biting my ear. "Once when we

go to bed, and another when we wake up. And no getting up early. I

need a minimum of eight hours' sleep so I'll never have wrinkles."

She had never been as playful as she was that morning. And I

don't think she ever was again. I didn't remember having seen her

so natural, giving herself up to the moment without posing, without

inventing a role for herself, as she breathed in the warmth of the day

and let herself be penetrated and adored by the light that filtered

through the tops of the weeping willows. She seemed much younger

than she actually was, almost an adolescent and not a woman close

to thirty. We had a ham sandwich with pickles and a glass of wine at

a bistrot in Asnieres, on the banks of the river, and then went to the

Cinematheque on Rue d'Ulm to see Marcel Carne's Les enfants du

paradis, which I had seen but she hadn't. When we came out she

spoke about how young Jean-Louis Barrault and Maria Casares

looked, and how they didn't make movies like that anymore, and she

confessed that she had cried at the end. I suggested we go to my

apartment to rest until it was time for supper, but she refused: going

home now would give me ideas. Instead, the afternoon was so nice

we ought to walk for a while. We went in and out of the galleries

along Rue de Seine and then sat down at an open-air cafe on Rue de

Buci for something cold to drink. I told her I had seen Andre Breton

around there one morning, buying fresh fish. The streets and cafes

were full of people, and the Parisians had those open, pleasant

expressions they wear on the rare days when the weather's nice. I

hadn't felt this happy, optimistic, and hopeful for a long time. Then

the devil raised his tail and I saw the headline in Le Monde, which

the man next to me was reading: A R M Y DESTROYS HEADQUARTERS O F

PERUVIAN G U E R R I L L A S . The subtitle said: "Luis de la Puente and Other

MIR Leaders Killed." I hurried to buy the paper at the stand on the

corner. The byline was Marcel Niedergang, the paper's

correspondent in South America, and there was an inset by Claude

Julien explaining what the Permian MIR was and giving

information about Luis de la Puente and the political situation in

Peru. In August 1965, special forces of the Permian army had

surrounded Mesa Pelada, a hill to the east of the city of