The Bad Girl (2 page)

always by my nickname. They weren't exaggerating at all: I was so

hot for Lily I was burning up.

That summer, because of her, I had a fistfight with Luquen, one

of my best friends. During one of those get-togethers the girls and

boys of the neighborhood would have at the corner of Colon and

Diego Ferre, in the garden of the Chacaltanas, Luquen, trying to be

smart, suddenly said the Chilean girls were cheap because they were

bleached blondes, not real ones, and in Miraflores, behind my back,

people had started to call them the Camp Followers. I aimed one

straight at his chin, which he ducked, and we went to settle our

differences in a fight at the corner of the Reserva seawall, next to the

cliffs. We didn't speak to each other for an entire week until, at the

next get-together, the girls and boys of the neighborhood made us be

friends again.

Every afternoon Lily liked to go to a corner of Parque Salazar

overgrown with palm trees, floripondios, and bellflowers, and from

the redbrick wall we would contemplate all of Lima bay like the

captain of a ship contemplating the sea from the bridge. If the sky

was clear—and I'd swear the sky was cloudless all that summer and

the sun shone on Miraflores every single day—in the background, on

the ocean's horizon, you could see the red disk in flames, taking its

leave with blazing beams and fiery lights as it sank into the waters of

the Pacific. Lily's face focused with the same fervor she brought to

taking communion at twelve o'clock Mass at the Parque Central

church, her gaze fixed on the incandescent ball, waiting for the

moment when the sea swallowed up the last beam to formulate the

wish that the great star, or God, would grant. I had a wish too, only

half believing it would come true. Always the same one, of course:

that she would finally say yes, that we'd go steady, make out, love

each other, become engaged, and marry and end up in Paris, rich and

happy.

From the time I reached the age of reason I had dreamed of

living in Paris. My papa was probably to blame, and those books by

Paul Feval, Jules Verne, Alexandre Dumas, and so many others he

made me read before he died in the accident that left me an orphan.

Those novels filled my head with adventures and convinced me that

in France life was richer, happier, more beautiful, more everything

than anywhere else. That was why, in addition to my English classes

at the Instituto Peruano Norteamericano, I persuaded my aunt

Alberta to enroll me at the Alliance Fran^aise on Avenida Wilson,

where I'd go three times a week to learn the language of the

Frenchies. Though I liked to have a good time with my pals from the

neighborhood, I was a real bookworm, got good grades, and loved

languages.

When my funds allowed, I'd invite Lily to have tea—to say louche

hadn't become fashionable yet—at the Tiendecita Blanca, with its

snow-white facade, its little tables and umbrellas on the sidewalk, its

pastries out of the Arabian Nights—iced ladyfingers! almond-andhoney

cakes filled with blancmange! cream puffs!—bounded by

Avenida Larco, Avenida Arequipa, and the Alameda Ricardo Palma

shaded by exceedingly tall Ficus trees.

Going to the Tiendecita Blanca with Lily for ice cream and a piece

of pastry was a joy almost always clouded by the presence of Lucy,

her sister, whom I also had to drag along every time we went out.

She was not at all uncomfortable being the third wheel, interfering

with my making out, preventing me from talking alone with Lily and

telling her all the pretty things I dreamed of murmuring into her

ear. But even though our conversation had to avoid certain subjects

because Lucy was nearby, it was priceless to be with her, to see how

her curls danced whenever she moved her head, the

mischievousness in her eyes the color of dark honey, to hear that

way she had of talking, and at certain careless moments, at the lowcut

neckline of her close-fitting blouse, to catch a glimpse of the tops

of those round little breasts that were already pointing out, tender

buds undoubtedly as firm and soft as young fruits.

"I don't know what I'm doing here like a third wheel with you

two," Lucy would sometimes say apologetically. I lied to her: "What

an idea, we're happy to have your company, aren't we, Lily?" Lily

would laugh with a mocking demon in her eyes and that

exclamation: "Sure, puuuuu..."

Taking a stroll along Avenida Pardo under the alameda of Ficus

trees invaded by songbirds, between the houses on both sides of the

street where little boys and girls, watched over by nannies in

starched white uniforms, ran around gardens and verandas, was a

ritual of that summer. Since Lucy's presence made it difficult for me

to talk to Lily about the things I would have liked to talk about, I

steered our conversation toward insipid subjects: plans for the

future, for example, like going to Paris to fill a diplomatic post when

I had my law degree—because there, in Paris, living was living,

France was the country of culture—or perhaps going into politics to

help our poor Peru become great and prosperous again, which would

mean I'd have to postpone traveling to Europe for a little while. And

what about them, what would they like to be, to do, when they grew

up? Sensible Lucy had very precise objectives: "First of all, finish

school. Then, get a good job, maybe in a record store, that must be a

lot of fun." Lily was thinking of a travel agency or being a stewardess

for an airline, if she could convince her parents, that way she'd

travel free all around the world. Or maybe a movie star, but she'd

never let them take a picture of her in a bikini. Traveling, traveling,

seeing every country was what she'd like the most. "Well, at least

you've already seen two, Chile and Peru, what else do you want?" I'd

say. "Compare that to me, I've never even left Miraflores."

The things Lily recounted about Santiago were for me a foretaste

of Parisian heaven. I listened to her with so much envy! In that city,

unlike here, there were no poor people or beggars in the streets,

parents allowed boys and girls to stay at parties until dawn and

dance cheek to cheek, and unlike here, you never saw old people like

mothers and aunts spying on young people when they danced just to

scold them if they went too far. In Chile boys and girls were allowed

to see adult movies and, from the time they were fifteen, smoke

without hiding. Life was more fun there than in Lima because there

were more movies, circuses, theaters, shows, and parties with live

orchestras, and ice-skating shows and ballet companies and

musicals were always coming to Santiago from the United States,

and no matter what job they had, Chileans earned two or three times

more than Peruvians did.

But if all this was true, why had the parents of the Chilean girls

left that marvelous country and come to Peru? Because at first

glance they weren't rich but very poor. For the moment they didn't

live the way we did, the girls and boys of Barrio Alegre, in houses

with butlers, cooks, maids, and gardeners, but in a little apartment

in a narrow, three-story building on Calle Esperanza, near the

Gambrinus restaurant. And in the Miraflores of those years, in

contrast to what would happen sometime later when tall buildings

began to spring up and the little houses disappeared, the only people

who lived in apartments were the poor, that diminished species of

human to which—ah, how sad—the Chilean girls seemed to belong.

I never saw their parents. They never took me or any

neighborhood girl or boy home. They never celebrated a birthday or

gave a party or invited us to have tea and play, as if they were

ashamed to let us see the modesty of the place where they lived. The

fact that they were poor and embarrassed by everything they didn't

have filled me with compassion, increased my love for the Chilean

girl, and inspired me with altruistic plans: "When Lily and I get

married, we'll bring her whole family to live with us."

But my Miraflores friends, especially the girls, were suspicious

about Lucy and Lily never opening their doors to us. "Are they so

hungry they can't even organize a party?" they asked. "Maybe it's not

because they're poor, maybe they're just stingy," said Tico Tiravante,

trying to make things better and only making them worse.

The kids in the neighborhood suddenly began to speak badly of

the Chilean girls because of their makeup and the clothes they wore,

making fun of their scant wardrobe—we all knew by heart those

skirts, blouses, and sandals that they combined in every possible

way to hide the fact they had so little—and filled with righteous

indignation, I'd defend them saying that this talk was just envy,

green envy, poisonous envy, because at parties the Chilean girls

never sat out a dance, all the boys lined up to dance with

them—"They let them rub up, of course they don't sit out a dance,"

replied Laura—or because, at the get-togethers in the neighborhood,

at games, at the beach, or in Parque Salazar, they were always the

center of attention and all the boys crowded around them, while the

rest of the girls..."They're show-offs and brazen and with them you

boys dare to tell the dirty jokes we wouldn't let you tell us!" Teresita

counterattacked. And, finally, because the Chilean girls were greatlooking,

modern, smart, while the Barrio Alegre girls were prudish,

backward, old-fashioned, narrow-minded, and bigoted. "And proud

of it!" said Use, mocking us.

But even though they gossiped about them, the girls from Barrio

Alegre kept inviting the Chilean girls to parties and going with them

in a group to the Miraflores beaches, to twelve o'clock Mass on

Sundays, to matinees, and to take the obligatory stroll around

Parque Salazar from dusk until the first stars came out, which

twinkled in the Lima sky that summer from January to March

without, I'm certain, being hidden for a single day by clouds,

something that happens four-fifths of the year in this city. They did

this because we boys asked them to, and because, at heart, the girls

of Miraflores were as fascinated by the Chileans as the bird is by the

cobra that hypnotizes it before swallowing it, as the saint is by the

sinner, the angel by the devil. They envied in these foreigners from

the remote land of Chile the freedom they didn't have to go

everywhere, to stay out walking or dancing until very late without

asking permission for just a little while longer, and without their

papa, their mama, their older sister or aunt coming to spy through

the windows at a party7 to see with whom they were dancing and

how, or to take them home because it was already midnight, a time

when decent girls weren't dancing or talking on the street with

men—that's what show-offs, cheap girls, and mixed breeds did—but

were in their own houses and their own beds, dreaming of the

angels. They envied the fact that the Chilean girls were so free and

easy and danced so boldly, not caring if they showed their knees, and