The Bad Girl by Mario Vargas Llosa Read Free Book Online Page B

together. Comrade Arlette, even if you don't believe it,
    has become an influential person, sharing bed and table with the
    comandantes."
    "It's just wonderful for the MIR," I said.
    "But shit for you." Paul gave me another little pat. "I'm damn
    sorry to have to give you the news, mon vieux. But it's better for you
    to know, isn't it? Okay, it's not the end of the world. Besides, Paris is
    full of damn fine women. Just look around."
    After attempting a few jokes, with absolutely no success, I asked
    Paul about Comrade Arlette.
    "As the companion of a comandante of the revolution she doesn't
    need a thing, I suppose," he said evasively. "Is that what you want to
    know? Or if she's richer or uglier than when she was here? Just the
    same, I think. A little more tanned by the Caribbean sun. You know,
    I never thought she was anything special. I mean, don't make that
    face, it's not that important, my friend."
    Often, in the days, weeks, and months that followed that meeting
    with Paul, I tried to imagine the Chilean girl transformed into
    Comandante Chacon's lover, dressed as a guerrilla fighter with a
    pistol at her waist, a blue beret, boots, alternating with Fidel and
    Raul Castro in the big parades and demonstrations of the revolution,
    doing voluntary work on weekends and toiling like a slave in the
    cane fields while her small hands with their delicate fingers
    struggled to hold the machete and, perhaps, with that facility of hers
    for phonetic metamorphosis which I already knew about, speaking
    with that lingering, sensual music of people from the Caribbean. The
    truth is, I couldn't envision her in her new role: her image trickled
    away as if it were liquid. Had she really fallen in love with this
    comandante? Or had he been the instrument for her getting out of
    guerrilla training and, above all, out of her commitment to the MIR
    to wage revolutionary war in Peru? It did me no good at all to think
    about Comrade Arlette, since each time I did I felt as if a new ulcer
    had opened in the pit of my stomach. To avoid this, and I wasn't
    completely successful, I dedicated myself zealously to my classes in
    Russian and simultaneous interpretation whenever Senor Charnes,
    with whom I got on very well, had no contract for me. And I had to
    tell Aunt Alberta—to whom I'd confessed in a letter, in a moment of
    weakness, that I was in love with a girl named Arlette, and who was
    always asking for her photograph—that we had broken up and from
    now on she should put the matter out of her mind.
    It must have been six or eight months following the afternoon
    that Paul gave me the bad news about Comrade Arlette when, very
    early one morning, the fat man, whom I hadn't seen for a while,
    came by the hotel so we could have breakfast together. We went to
    Le Tournon, a bistrot on the street of the same name, at the corner
    of Rue de Vaugirard.
    "Even though I shouldn't tell you, I've come to say goodbye," he
    said. "I'm leaving Paris. Yes, mon vieux, I'm going to Peru. Nobody
    knows about it here, so you don't know anything either. My wife and
    Jean-Paul are already there."
    The news left me speechless. And suddenly I was filled with a
    terrible fear, which I tried to conceal.
    "Don't worry," Paul said to calm me, with that smile that puffed
    up his cheeks and made him look like a clown. "Nothing will happen
    to me, you'll see. And when the revolution triumphs, we'll make you
    ambassador to UNESCO. That's a promise!"
    For a while we sipped our coffee in silence. My croissant was on
    the table, untouched, and Paul, bent on making jokes, said that since
    something apparently was taking away my appetite, he'd make the
    sacrifice and take care of that crusty half-moon.
    "Where I'm going the croissants must be awful," he added.
    Then, unable to control myself any longer, I told him he was
    going to commit an unforgivable act of stupidity. He wasn't going to
    help the revolution, or the MIR, or his comrades. He knew it as well
    as I did. His