The Bad Girl (33 page)

was a girl. I've done the impossible to forget her, but the truth is it's

useless. I'll always love her. Life wouldn't have meaning for me if

she died."

"What luck that girl has, inspiring love like this," my neighbor

said with a laugh. "Chapeau! I'll ask her for the recipe. Simon's

right: that nickname she gave you fits like a glove."

The next morning I asked permission at UNESCO to go to the

Hopital Cochin during the minor operation. I waited in a frigid

corridor, with very high ceilings, where an icy wind blew and nurses,

doctors, and patients passed by and, occasionally, sick people lying

on cots with oxygen pumps or bottles of plasma suspended over

their heads. There was a "No Smoking" sign that nobody seemed to

pay attention to.

Dr. Pineau spoke to me for a few minutes, in front of Elena, as he

removed his latex gloves and meticulously scrubbed his hands with

lathering soap in a stream of water that emitted steam. He was a

fairly young man, sure of himself, who didn't beat around the bush.

"She'll be perfectly fine. But you already know her condition. Her

vagina is damaged, prone to inflammation and bleeding. Her rectum

is also damaged. You'll have to control yourself, my friend. Make

love very carefully, and not very* often. At least for the next two

months, I recommend restraint. The best thing would be not to

touch her. If that isn't possible, then with extreme delicacy. The

woman has suffered a traumatic experience. It wasn't a simple rape,

but from what I understand, a real massacre."

I was with the bad girl when they brought her from the operating

room to the large ward where they put her in an area isolated by two

screens. It was a spacious, badly lit place with stone walls and dark

concave ceilings that made one think of bats' nests, scrupulously

clean tile floors, and a strong odor of disinfectant and bleach. She

was even paler and more cadaverous, and her eyes were half closed.

When she recognized me, she extended her hand. When I held it in

mine, it seemed as thin and small as Yilal's.

"I'm fine," she said emphatically, before I could ask her how she

felt. "The doctor who operated on me was very nice. And goodlooking."

I kissed her hair, her pretty ears.

"I hope you didn't start flirting with him. You're very capable of

that."

She pressed my hand and fell asleep almost immediately. She

slept the entire morning and didn't wake until early afternoon,

complaining of the pain. On the doctor's instructions, a nurse came

to give her an injection. A short while later Elena appeared, wearing

a white lab coat, to bring her a bed jacket. She put it on over her

nightgown. The bad girl asked about Yilal and smiled when she

heard that the Gravoskis' son asked for her constantly. I was with

her for a good part of the afternoon, and stayed with her as she ate

from a small plastic tray: vegetable soup and a piece of poached

chicken with boiled potatoes. She carried the spoonfuls to her

mouth unwillingly, and only because of my urging.

"Do you know why everybody's so nice to me?" she said.

"Because of Elena. Nurses and doctors adore her. She's the most

popular person in the hospital."

A short while later, visitors had to leave. That night, at the

Gravoskis', Elena had news for me. She had made inquiries and

consulted with Professor Bourrichon. He suggested a small, private

clinic in Petit Clamart, not very far from Paris, where he had sent

other patients who were victims of depression and nervous

disorders due to physical abuse, with good results. The director had

been a classmate of his. If we wanted, he could recommend the bad

girl's case to him.

"You don't know how grateful I am, Elena. It seems like the right

place. Let's proceed, as soon as we can."

Elena and Simon looked at each other. We were having the

inevitable cup of coffee after a supper of an omelet, a little ham, and

salad, with a glass of wine.

"There are two problems," said an uncomfortable Elena. "The

first, as you know, is that it's a private clinic and will be very

expensive."

"I have some savings, and if that's not enough, I'll get a loan.

And, if necessary, I'll sell the apartment. Money isn't a problem, the

important thing is for her to get better. What's the other one?"

"The passport she presented at the Hopital Cochin is false," said

Elena, with an expression and a tone of voice that seemed to be

begging my pardon. "I've had to do a lot of juggling to keep the

administration from denouncing her to the police. But she has to

leave the hospital tomorrow and not set foot there again,

unfortunately. And I don't discount the possibility that as soon as

she leaves, they'll tip off the authorities."

"That lady will never cease to astonish me," exclaimed Simon.

"Do the two of you realize how dull our lives are compared to hers?"

"Can the question of her papers be straightened out?" Elena

asked me. "I imagine it'll be difficult, of course. I don't know, it

might be a huge obstacle at Dr. Zilacxy's clinic in Petit Clamart. They

may not admit her if they find out her situation in France is illegal.

They could even turn her in to the police."

"I don't think the bad girl has ever had her papers in order," I

said. "I'm absolutely certain she has several passports, not just one.

Maybe one of them looks less false than the others. I'll ask her."

"We'll all wind up in jail," said Simon with a laugh. "They'll

prohibit Elena from practicing medicine and throw me out of the

Pasteur Institute, and then we'll finally begin to live real life."

The three of us ended up laughing, and the laughter shared with

my two friends did me good. It was the first night in the past four

that I slept through until the alarm clock rang. The next day, when I

came home from UNESCO, I found the bad girl installed in my bed,

with the bouquet of flowers I had sent her in a vase of water on the

night table. She was feeling better, without any pain. Elena had

brought her from the Hopital Cochin and helped her up to the

apartment, but then she went back to work. Yilal was with her, very

happy about her recent arrival. When the boy left, the bad girl spoke

to me in a low voice, as if the Gravoskis' son could still hear her.

"Tell Simon and Elena to come here for coffee this time. After

they put Yilal to bed. I'll help you prepare it. I want to thank them

for everything Elena has done for me."

I wouldn't let her get up to help me. I prepared the coffee and a

short while later the Gravoskis knocked on the door. I carried the

bad girl—she didn't weigh anything, barely as much as Yilal—to sit

with us in the living room, and I covered her with a blanket. Then,

without even greeting them, with radiant eyes she came out with the

news.

"Please don't faint from the shock. This afternoon, after Elena

left us alone, Yilal put his arms around me and said very clearly in

Spanish: 'He loves you very much, bad girl.' He said 'he loves,' not 'I

love.'"

And, so there wouldn't be the slightest doubt she was telling the

truth, she did something I hadn't seen since my days as a student at

the Colegio Champagnat in Miraflores: she raised two fingers in the

shape of a cross to her mouth and kissed them as she said, "I swear

to you, that's just what he said, down to the last letter."

Elena began to cry, and as she shed those tears she laughed, her

arms around the bad girl. Had Yilal said anything else? No. When

she tried to initiate a conversation with him, the boy returned to his

mutism and to answering in French on his slate. But that sentence,

spoken in the same thin little thread of a voice she remembered

from the phone, proved once and for all that Yilal wasn't mute. For a

long time we didn't talk about anything else. We drank coffee, and

Simon, Elena, and I had a glass of malt whiskey that I'd had in my

sideboard since time immemorial. The Gravoskis decided on the

strategy to follow. None of us should let on that we knew. Since the

boy had spoken to the bad girl on his own initiative, she, in the most

natural way, without any pressure on him at all, should try to

establish a dialogue, asking him questions, speaking without looking

at him, distractedly, avoiding at all costs any possibility* that Yilal

might feel watched over or subjected to a test.

Then Elena spoke to the bad girl about Dr. Zilacxy's clinic in Petit

Clamart. It was rather small, in a well-tended park filled with trees,

and the director, a friend and classmate of Professor Bourrichon,

was a prestigious psychologist and psychiatrist who specialized in

the treatment of patients suffering from depression and nervous

disorders resulting from accidents, various kinds of abuse and

trauma, as well as anorexia, alcoholism, and drug addiction. The

conclusions of the examination were categorical. The bad girl

needed to withdraw for a time to the right kind of place for absolute

rest, where, as she followed a regimen of diet and exercise to recover

her strength, she would receive psychological support that would

help her wipe out the reverberations in her mind of that awful

experience.

"Does this mean I'm crazy?" she asked.

"You always were," I said. "But now you're also anemic and

depressed, and they can cure that at the clinic. You'll be hopelessly

mad until the end of your days, if that's what's worrying you."

She didn't laugh but yielded rather reluctantly to my arguments

and agreed to Elena requesting an appointment with the director of

the clinic in Petit Clamart. Our neighbor would go with us. When

the Gravoskis left, the bad girl looked at me reproachfully, filled

with anxiety.

"And who's going to pay for this clinic when you know very well I

don't have a pot to piss in?"

"Who but the usual imbecile?" I said, adjusting her pillows.

"You're my praying mantis, didn't you know? The female insect

devours the male while he's making love to her. He dies happy,

apparently. My case exactly. Don't worry* about the money. Don't

you know I'm rich?"

She grasped one of my arms with both her hands.

"You're not rich, you're a poor little pissant," she said in a fury.

"If you weren't, I wouldn't have gone to Cuba, or London, or Japan. I

would have stayed with you after that time when you showed me

around Paris and took me to those horrible restaurants for beggars.

I've always left you for rich men who turned out to be trash. And

this is how I've ended up, a ruin. Are you happy that I acknowledge

it? Do you like to hear it? Are you doing all this to show me how

superior you are to all of them, and what I lost in you? Why are you

doing this, may I ask?"

"Why do you think, bad girl? Maybe I want to earn indulgences

and go to heaven. And it could also be that I'm still in love with you.

And now, enough riddles. It's time to sleep. Professor Bourrichon

says that until you're completely recovered, you should try to sleep

at least eight hours a night."

Two days later my seasonal contract with UNESCO ended and I

could devote the entire day to caring for her. At the Hopital Cochin

they had prescribed a diet for her based on vegetables, poached fish

and meat, fruit, and stews, and had prohibited alcohol, including

wine, as well as coffee and all spicy condiments. She was to exercise

and walk at least an hour a day. In the morning, after breakfast—I

bought croissants fresh from the oven at a bakery on Ecole

Militaire—we would take a walk, arm in arm, to the foot of the Eiffel

Tower, along the Champs de Mars, and sometimes, weather

permitting, and if she was in the mood, we would go along the quays

of the Seine to Place de la Concorde. I let her lead the conversation,

but I did try to keep her from talking about Fukuda or the episode in

Lagos. It wasn't always possible. Then, if she insisted on bringing up

the subject, I listened to what she wanted to tell me and asked no

questions. From things occasionally hinted at in those semimonologues,

I deduced that her capture in Nigeria took place on the

day she was leaving the country. But her threadbare story always

occurred in a kind of fog. She had already passed through customs at

the airport and was in the line of passengers making their way

toward the plane. A couple of policemen took her out of line, very

courteously; their attitude changed completely as soon as they put

her in a van with windows painted black, and especially when they

took her into a foul-smelling building with barred cells and a stink

of excrement and urine.

, :I believe I wasn't found out, those police weren't capable of

finding anything out," she'd say occasionally. "I was turned in. But

who did it? Who? Sometimes I think it was Fukuda himself. But

why would he have done that? It doesn't make any sense, does it?"

"It doesn't matter now. It's over. Forget about it, bury it. It's not

good for you to torture yourself with those memories. The only