The Bad Girl (31 page)

and reminded me of Salomon Toledano and his ill-fated Japanese

love. I went in and bought Yilal a small case with six horsemen of

the Imperial Russian Guard.

What else could be true in the bad girl's story? Probably that

Fukuda had dumped her in a cruel way and that she had been—and

perhaps still was—sick. It was obvious, it was enough to see her

prominent bones, her pallor, the dark circles under her eyes. And the

story about Lagos? Perhaps it was true that she'd had problems with

the police. It was a risk she ran in the dirty business her Japanese

lover had involved her in. Didn't she tell me that herself,

enthusiastically, in Tokyo? She was ingenuous enough to believe

that adventures as a smuggler and trafficker, and gambling her

freedom on trips to Africa, added spice to her life, made it more

succulent and entertaining. I remembered her words: "By doing

these things, I live more intensely." Well, whoever plays with fire

sooner or later gets burned. If she really had been arrested, it was

possible the police had raped her. Nigeria had a reputation as the

paradise of corruption; a military satrapy, its police force must be

rotted through. Raped by God knows how many men, brutalized for

hours and hours in a filthy hole, infected with a venereal disease and

crabs, and then treated by quacks who used unsterilized

instruments. I was assailed by a feeling of shame and anger. If all

that happened to her, even only some of it, and she had been on the

verge of death, my cold, incredulous response had been meanspirited,

the response of a rancorous man who wanted only to

assuage his pride, wounded by that ugly time in Tokyo. I should

have said something affectionate to her, pretended I believed her.

Because even if the story about the rape and prison was a lie, in fact

she was a physical ruin now. And, no doubt, half dead from hunger.

You behaved badly, Ricardito. Very badly, if it was true she turned to

me because she felt alone and uncertain and I was the only person

in the world she trusted. This last must be correct. She had never

loved me but did feel confidence in me, the affection awakened by a

loyal servant. Among her lovers and passing pals, I was the most

disinterested, the most devoted. The asshole, self-sacrificing and

docile. That's why she chose you to cremate her body. And will you

toss her ashes into the Seine or keep them in a small Sevres

porcelain vase on your night table?

I reached Rue Joseph Granier soaked from head to toe and dying

of the cold. I took a hot shower, put on dry clothes, and prepared a

ham and cheese sandwich that I ate with fruit yogurt. With the case

of toy soldiers under my arm, I knocked on the Gravoskis' door. Yilal

was already in bed, and they had just finished eating a supper of

spaghetti with basil. They offered me some, but all I accepted was a

cup of coffee. While Simon examined the toy soldiers and joked that

with gifts like these I wanted to turn Yilal into a militarist, Elena

noticed something strange in my reticence.

"Something's happened, Ricardo," she said, scrutinizing my eyes.

"Did the bad girl call you?"

Simon looked up from the toy soldiers and stared at me.

"I've just spent an hour with her in a bistrot. She's living in Paris.

She's a wreck and has no money, she's dressed like a beggar. She

says the Japanese dumped her after the police in Lagos arrested her

on one of those trips she made to Africa to help him in his

trafficking. And raped her. And infected her with crabs and chancre.

And then, in some foul hospital, they almost finished the job. It may

be true. It may be false. I don't know. She says Fukuda dropped her

because he was afraid Interpol had her on file and the blacks had

infected her with AIDS. The truth or an invention? I have no way of

knowing."

"The saga becomes more interesting every day," Simon exclaimed

in stupefaction. "True or not, it's a terrific story."

He and Elena looked at each other and looked at me, and I knew

very* well what they were thinking. I agreed.

"She remembers very clearly the call she made to my house. A

thin, high-pitched voice answered, in French, and she thought it

belonged to an Asian woman. He had her repeat 'bad girl' several

times in Spanish. She can't have invented that."

I saw Elena become agitated. She was blinking very rapidly.

"I always thought it was true," murmured Simon. His voice was

excited and he became flushed, as if he were suffocating from the

heat. He kept scratching at his red beard. "I turned it around and

around and reached the conclusion it had to be true. How could Yilal

invent anything like 'bad girl'? How happy you've made us with this

news, mon vieux"

Elena agreed, holding my arm. She was smiling and crying at the

same time.

"I always knew it too, knew that Yilal had talked to her," she said,

sounding out each word. "But please, we mustn't do anything. Or say

anything to the boy. It will all come on its own. If we try to force

him, things may get worse. He has to do it, break that barrier by his

own effort. He will, at the right time, he'll do it soon, you'll see."

"This is the moment to bring out the cognac," said Simon,

winking at me. "You see, mon vieux, I took precautions. Now we're

prepared for the surprises you give us periodically. An excellent

Napoleon, you'll see!"

We each had a cognac, almost without speaking, deep in our own

thoughts. The drink did me good, for the walk in the rain had chilled

me. When I said good night, Elena walked out to the landing with

me.

"I don't know, it just occurred to me," she said. "Maybe your

friend needs a medical exam. Ask her. If she wants, I can arrange it

at the Hopital Cochin, with my copains. At no charge to her, I mean.

I imagine she has no insurance or anything like that."

I thanked her. I'd ask the next time we spoke.

"If it's true, it must have been awful for the poor woman," she

murmured. "A thing like that leaves dreadful scars in one's mind."

The next day, I hurried home from UNESCO so I would see Yilal.

He was watching a cartoon on television, and beside him were the

six horsemen of the Russian Imperial Guard lined up in a row. He

showed me his slate: "Thank you for the nice gift, Uncle Ricardo."

He shook my hand, smiling. I began to read Le Monde while he, his

attention hypnotized, was involved in his program. Afterward,

instead of reading to him, I told him about Salomon Toledano. I

talked about his collection of toy soldiers that I had seen invading

every inch of his house, and his incredible ability to learn languages.

He had been the best interpreter in the world. When he asked on his

slate if I could take him to Salomon's house to see his Napoleonic

battles, and I said he had died very far from Paris, in Japan, Yilal

became sad. I showed him the hussar I kept on my night table, the

one Salomon had given me the day he left for Tokyo. A little while

later, Elena came to take him home.

In order not to think too much about the bad girl, I went to a

movie in the Latin Quarter. In the dark, warm theater filled with

students, on Rue Champollion, as I distractedly followed the

adventures in Stagecoach, John Ford's classic Western, the

deteriorated, wretched image of the Chilean girl appeared and

reappeared in my head. That day, and all the rest of the week, her

figure was always on my mind, along with the question to which I

never found a reply: Had she told me the truth? Was the story about

Lagos and Fukuda true? I was tormented by the conviction that I

would never know with any certainty.

She called me a week later, at home, again very early in the

morning. After asking how she was—"Fine, I'm fine now, I told you

that"—I proposed having supper that night. She agreed, and we

arranged to meet at the old Procope, on Rue de l'Ancienne Comedie,

at eight. I arrived before she did and waited for her at a table beside

the window that overlooked the Rohan passage. She arrived right

after me. Better dressed than the last time, but still shabby: under

the ugly, asexual jacket she wore a dark blue dress, without a collar

or sleeves, and her medium-heeled shoes were cracked but recently

polished. It was very strange to see her without rings, bracelets,

earrings, or makeup. At least she had filed her nails. How could she

have gotten so thin? It looked as if she would shatter with a single

misstep.

She ordered consomme and grilled fish and barely sipped at the

wine during the meal. She chewed very* slowly and reluctantly and

had difficulty swallowing. Did she really feel all right?

"My stomach has shrunk and I can hardly tolerate food," she

explained. "After two or three bites I feel full. But this fish is

delicious."

In the end I drank the bottle of Cotes du Rhone by myself. When

the waiter brought coffee for me and verbena tea for her, I said,

holding her hand, "I beg you, by what you love most, swear that

everything you told me the other day in La Rhumerie is true."

"You'll never believe anything I tell you again, I know that." She

had an air of fatigue, of weariness, and didn't seem to care in the

least if I believed her or not. "Let's not talk about it anymore. I told

you so you would let me see you from time to time. Because even if

you don't believe this either, talking to you does me good."

I felt like kissing her hand but controlled myself. I told her

Elena's proposal. She sat looking at me, disconcerted.

"But, she knows about me, about us?"

I nodded. Elena and Simon knew* everything. In an outburst I

had told them "our" entire story. They were very good friends, she

had nothing to fear from them. They wouldn't denounce her to the

police as a trafficker in aphrodisiacs.

"I don't know why I confided in them. Perhaps because, like

everybody, occasionally I need to share with someone the things

that distress me or make me happy. Do you accept Elena's

proposal?"

She didn't seem very enthusiastic. She looked at me uneasily, as

if fearing a trap. That light, the color of dark honey, had disappeared

from her eyes. Along with the mischief, the mockery.

"Let me think about it," she said at last. "We'll see how I feel. I'm

feeling fine, now. The only thing I need is quiet, and rest."

"It's not true that you're fine," I insisted. "You're a ghost. You're

so thin a simple grippe could send you to the grave. And I don't feel

like attending to that sinister little chore of incinerating you, and so

forth. Don't you want to be attractive again?"

She burst into laughter.

"Ah, so now you think I'm ugly. Thanks for your honesty." She

pressed the hand I was still holding hers with, and for a second her

eyes came alive. "But you're still in love with me, aren't you,

Ricardito?"

"No, not anymore. And I'll never be in love with you again. But I

don't want you to die."

"It must be true you don't love me anymore if you haven't said a

single cheap, sentimental thing to me this time," she acknowledged,

making a half-comic face. "What do I have to do to conquer you

again?"

She laughed with the flirtatiousness of the old days, and her eyes

filled with mischievous light, but suddenly, with no transition, I felt

the pressure of her hand on mine weaken. Her eyes went blank, she

turned livid and opened her mouth, as if she needed air. If I hadn't

been beside her, holding her, she would have fallen to the floor. I

rubbed her temples with a dampened napkin, had her drink some

water. She recovered a little but was still very pale, almost white.

And now there was an animal panic in her eyes.

"I'm going to die," she stammered, digging her nails into my arm.

"You're not going to die. I've allowed you every despicable thing

in the world since we were children, but not dying. I forbid it."

She smiled weakly.

"It was time you said something nice to me." Her voice was

barely audible. "I needed it, even if you don't believe that, either."

When, after a while, I tried to have her stand, her legs were

trembling and she dropped, exhausted, onto the chair. I had a waiter

at Le Procope bring a taxi from the stand on the corner of Saint-

Germain to the door of the restaurant, and then help me walk her to

the street. The two of us carried her, lifting her at the waist. When

she heard me tell the driver to take us to the nearest hospital—"The

Hotel-Dieu on the Cite, all right?"—she grabbed me in despair. "No,

no, not to a hospital, under no circumstances, no." I found myself

obliged to rectify that and ask the driver to take us instead to Rue

Joseph Granier. On the way to my house—I had her leaning on my

shoulder—she lost consciousness again for a few seconds. Her body

went slack and slipped in the seat. When I straightened her, I could

feel all the bones in her back. At the door to the art deco building, I

called Simon and Elena on the intercom and asked them to come