The Bad Girl (24 page)

rejuvenated and elated. He wore a bow tie I'd never seen before and

a suit with a modern, youthful cut. He joked, showered attention on

his friend, and on any pretext kissed her on the cheeks or mouth and

put his arm around her waist, which seemed to make her

uncomfortable. She was much younger than he, pleasant and rather

charming, in fact: nice legs and a porcelain face in which large,

vivacious eyes sparkled. She couldn't hide an expression of

displeasure each time Salomon drew her close. She spoke English

very well, but her naturalness and cordiality experienced a kind of

shutdown whenever my friend made these ostentatious displays of

affection. He seemed not to notice. We went first to a bar on Kabukicho,

in Shinjuku, a district filled with cabarets, erotic shops,

restaurants, discotheques, massage parlors, and a dense crowd

circulating among all of them. Deafening music poured out of every

establishment, and there was a real aerial forest of lights, banners,

and advertisements. It made me dizzy. Later we ate in a quieter

place, in Nishi-Azabu, where, for the first time, I tasted Japanese

food and drank the tepid, bitter sake. Throughout the evening my

impression grew that the relationship between Salomon and

Mitsuko was far from working as smoothly as the Dragoman had

claimed in his letters. But, I told myself, this is surely because

Mitsuko, sparing in her displays of affection, wasn't yet accustomed

to the expansive, Mediterranean manner in which Salomon

exhibited to the world the passion she had awakened in him. She'd

soon become used to it.

Mitsuko took the initiative of talking about the bad girl. She did

it halfway through the meal, and in the most natural maneuver,

asking if I wanted her to call my compatriot to let her know I had

arrived. I asked her to do that, and gave her the phone number of my

hotel. That was better than my calling her, keeping in mind that the

gentleman with whom she lived was, apparently, a Japanese Othello

and, perhaps, a killer.

"Is that what this man told you?" Mitsuko said with a laugh.

"How silly. Mr. Fukuda is a little strange, they say he's involved in

some rather obscure business in Africa. But I've never heard that

he's a criminal or anything like that. It's true he's very jealous. At

least, that's what Kuriko says."

"Kuriko?"

"The bad girl."

She said "bad girl" in Spanish, and she herself celebrated her

small linguistic accomplishment by applauding. In other words, now

her name was Kuriko. Well then.

That night, when we said goodbye, the Dragoman managed to

have a very brief private conversation with me. Pointing at Mitsuko,

he asked, "What do you think?"

"Very attractive, Dragoman. You were absolutely right. She's

charming."

"And you're only seeing her dressed," he said, winking and

hitting his chest. "We have to have a long talk, dear friend. You'll be

amazed at the plans I have brewing. I'll call you tomorrow. Sleep,

dream, and recover."

But the one who called, early, was the bad girl. She gave me an

hour to shave, shower, and dress. When I went down she was

waiting for me, sitting in one of the armchairs in the reception area.

She wore a light-colored raincoat, and under that a brick-colored

blouse and dark brown skirt. You could see her round, beautiful

knees and slender legs. She was slimmer than I remembered and

her eyes were rather tired. But no one in the world would have

thought she was past forty. She looked fresh and beautiful. From a

distance, she could have been taken for one of those delicate, tiny

Japanese women who float silently down the street. Her face

brightened when she saw me, and she stood for me to embrace her. I

kissed her cheeks and she didn't move her lips away when I brushed

them with mine.

"I love you very much," I stammered. "Thank you for still being

so young and good-looking, Chilean girl."

"Come, we'll take the bus," she said, grasping my arm. "I know a

nice place to talk. It's a park where all of Tokyo goes to have picnics

and get drunk when the cherry blossoms come out. There you can

tell me some more cheap, sentimental things."

Holding my arm, she led me to a bus stop two or three blocks

from the hotel, where we climbed onto a bus that was sparkling

clean. Both the driver and the woman who took the fares had on the

face masks I was surprised to see so many people wearing on the

street. In many ways, Tokyo resembled a clinic. I gave her the

Vuitton case I had brought for her and she accepted it without too

much enthusiasm. She examined me, half amused, half curious.

"You've become Japanese. In the way you dress, your gestures,

your movements, even the color of your skin. How long have you

been calling yourself Kuriko?"

"My friends gave me the name, I don't know whose idea it was. I

must have some Asian in me. You told me that once in Paris, don't

you remember?"

"Of course I remember. Do you know, I was afraid you'd become

ugly."

"But you've turned gray. And you have some wrinkles, here

under your lids." She pressed my arm and her eyes filled with

mischief. She lowered her voice. "Do you wish I were your geisha,

good boy?"

"Yes, that too. But above all, my wife. I've come to Tokyo to ask

you for the umpteenth time to marry me. This time I'll convince

you, I'm warning you. And by the way, how long have you been

riding buses? Can't the Yakuza boss give you a car with a driver and

bodyguard?"

"Even if he could, he wouldn't," she said, still holding my arm. "It

would be ostentatious, what the Japanese hate most. People here

disapprove of differentiating yourself from others, in any way. That's

why the rich masquerade as poor and the poor as rich."

We got off in a park filled with people, office workers using the

midday break to eat sandwiches and have a drink under the trees,

surrounded by grass and pools of brightly colored fish. The bad girl

took me to a teahouse in a corner of the park. There were small

tables with comfortable chairs among screens that offered a certain

amount of privacy. As soon as we sat down I kissed her hands, her

mouth, her eyes. I had been observing her for a long time, breathing

her in.

"Do I pass the test, Ricardito?"

"With outstanding grades. But you look a little tired, Japanese

girl. Is it the emotion of seeing me after totally abandoning me for

six years?"

"And the tension in my life as well," she added, very seriously.

"What wicked things are you doing to make your life so tense?"

She sat looking at me, not answering, and she passed her hand

over my hair in her usual affectionate gesture, half loving and half

maternal.

"You have so many gray hairs," she repeated, examining me. "I

gave you some, didn't I? Soon I'll have to call you good old man

instead of good boy."

"Are you in love with this Fukuda? I hoped you were with him

only out of self-interest. Who is he? Why does he have such a bad

reputation? What does he do?"

"A lot of questions at one time, Ricardito. First tell me some of

those things from soap operas. Nobody's done that for years."

I spoke to her very quietly, looking into her eyes and occasionally

kissing the hand I held in mine.

"I haven't lost hope, Japanese girl. Even if you think I'm an utter

cretin, I'll keep insisting until you come and live with me. In Paris,

and if you don't like Paris, wherever you want. As an interpreter I

can work anywhere in the world. I swear I'll make you happy,

Japanese girl. Too many years have gone by for you to have any

doubts: I love you so much I'll do anything to keep you with me

when we're together. Do you like gangsters? I'll become a robber, a

kidnapper, a swindler, a drug trafficker, whatever you want. Six

years without hearing anything from you, and now I can hardly

speak, hardly think, I'm so moved to feel you close to me."

"Not bad," she said with a laugh as she brought her face forward

and gave me a bird's rapid peck on the lips.

She ordered tea and some cakes in a Japanese that the waitress

had her repeat several times. After the order had been brought and

she poured me a cup of tea, she gave a delayed response to my

question.

"I don't know if what I feel for Fukuda is love. But never in my

life have I depended so much on anyone the way I depend on him.

The truth is he can do whatever he wants with me."

She didn't say this with the joy or euphoria of someone, like the

Dragoman, who had discovered a love-passion. Instead she was

alarmed, surprised at something like this happening to a person like

her, who had thought herself immune to those weaknesses. There

was something anguished in her eyes the color of dark honey.

"Well, if he can do whatever he wants with you, that means

you've finally fallen in love. You're a glacial woman, and I hope this

Fukuda makes you suffer the way you've made me suffer for so

many years..."

I felt her grasp my hand and rub it.

"It isn't love, I swear. I don't know what it is, but it can't be love.

More a sickness, a vice. That's what Fukuda is for me."

The story she told me may have been true, though she surely left

many things in the shadows, and dissimulated, softened, and

embellished others. It was difficult for me to believe anything she

said, because ever since I met her she had always told me more lies

than truths. And I believe that, unlike the common run of mortals,

by this time the new Kuriko found it very difficult to differentiate

the world in which she lived from the one she claimed to live in. As I

imagined, she had met Fukuda years earlier, on one of the trips she

made to the Orient with David Richardson, who, in fact, had

business dealings with the Japanese. Fukuda once told the bad girl it

was a shame a worldly woman like her, with so much character, had

settled for being Mrs. Richardson, because she could have had a

great career in the world of business. The phrase kept sounding in

her ears. When she felt her world collapsing because her ex-husband

had found out about her marriage to Robert Arnoux, she called

Fukuda, told him what had happened, and proposed working for him

in any capacity. The Japanese sent her a ticket on a flight from

London to Tokyo.

"When you called me from the airport in Paris to say goodbye,

were you going to join him?"

She nodded. "Yes, but in fact I called from the airport in London."

On the very night she arrived in Japan, Fukuda made her his

mistress. But he didn't have her live with him for another couple of

years. Until then she lived alone, in a boardinghouse, in a minuscule

room with a bathroom and a wall kitchen, "tinier than the room my

Filipina maid had in Newmarket." If she hadn't traveled so much,

"running errands for Fukuda," she would have gone mad with

claustrophobia and loneliness. She was Fukuda's mistress, but one

among several. The Japanese never hid the fact that he slept with

other women. He brought her sometimes to spend the night with

him, but then weeks could go by without his inviting her to his

house. During those periods, their relationship was strictly that of

employee and employer. What were Mr. Fukuda's "errands"?

Smuggling drugs, diamonds, paintings, weapons, money? Often not

even she knew. She carried what he prepared for her, in suitcases,

packages, bags, or briefcases, and so far—she knocked the wooden

table—she had always gotten past customs, borders, and police

without too much difficulty. Traveling this way through Asia and

Africa, she discovered what panicked fear meant. At the same time,

she never had lived with so much intensity and the kind of energy

that on each trip made her feel that life was a marvelous adventure.

"How different living this way is from that limbo, that slow death

surrounded by horses in Newmarket!" After two years of working for

him, Fukuda, satisfied with her services, rewarded her with a

promotion: "You deserve to live under my roof."

"You're going to end up knifed, murdered, locked up for years

and years in some horrible jail," I said. "Have you lost your mind? If

you're telling me the truth, what you're doing is stupid. When you're

caught smuggling drugs or something worse, do you think this

gangster is going to worry about you?"

"I know he won't, he told me so himself," she interrupted. "At

least he's very frank with me, you see. 'If they ever catch you, you're

on your own. I don't know you and I've never known you. You're on

your own.'"

"You see how much he loves you."

"He doesn't love me. Not me, not anybody. He's like me that way.

But he has more character and he's stronger than I am."

We had been there more than an hour, and it was growing dark. I

didn't know what to say. I felt demoralized. It was the first time she

seemed to have given herself totally, body and soul, to a man. Now it