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

grasped her hand and kissed it.
    "Be still," she said, looking around in fake alarm. "Are you
    forgetting I'm a married woman? Suppose somebody here knows
    Robert and tells him about this?"
    I said I knew perfectly well that her marriage to the diplomat was
    a mere formality to which she had resigned herself in order to leave
    Cuba and settle in Paris. Which seemed fine to me, because I too
    believed one could make any sacrifice for the sake of Paris. But,
    when we were alone, she shouldn't play the faithful, loving wife,
    because we both knew very well it was a fairy tale. Without
    becoming angry in the least, she changed the subject and said there
    was a damn bureaucracy here too and she couldn't get French
    nationality for two years, even though she was legally married to a
    French citizen. And they had just rented a nice apartment in Passy.
    She was decorating it now, and as soon as it was presentable she'd
    invite me over to introduce me to my rival, who, in addition to being
    congenial, was a very cultured man.
    "I'm going to Lima tomorrow," I told her. "How can I see you
    when I get back?"
    She gave me her telephone number and address and asked if I
    was still living in that little room in the garret of the Hotel du Senat,
    where she had been so cold.
    "It's hard for me to leave it because I had the best experience of
    my life there. And that's why, for me, that hole is a palace."
    "This experience is the one I think it is?" she asked, bringing her
    face, where mischief was always mixed with curiosity and coquetry,
    close to mine.
    "The same."
    "For what you said just now, I owe you a kiss. Remind me the
    next time we see each other."
    But a moment later, when we said goodbye, she forgot her
    marital precautions and instead of her cheek she offered me her lips.
    They were full and sensual, and in the seconds I had them pressed
    against mine, I felt them move slowly, provocatively, in a
    supplementary caress. When I already had crossed Saint-Germain
    on the way to my hotel, I turned to look at her and she was still
    there, on the corner by Les Deux Magots, a bright, golden figure in
    white shoes, watching me walk away. I waved goodbye and she
    waved the hand holding the flowered parasol. I only had to see her
    to discover that in these past few years I hadn't forgotten her for a
    single moment, that I loved her as much as I did the first day.
    When I arrived in Lima in March 1965, shortly before my
    thirtieth birthday, photographs of Luis de la Puente, Guillermo
    Lobaton, fat Paul, and other leaders of the MIR were in all the
    papers and on television—by now there was television in Peru—and
    everybody was talking about them. The MIR rebellion had an
    undeniable romantic aspect. The Miristas themselves had sent the
    photos to the media, announcing that in view of the iniquitous
    exploitative conditions that made victims of peasants and workers,
    and the surrender of the Belaunde Terry government to imperialism,
    the Movement of the Revolutionary Left had decided to take action.
    The leaders of the MIR showed their faces and appeared with long
    hair and full-grown beards, with rifles in their hands and combat
    uniforms consisting of black turtleneck sweaters, khaki trousers,
    and boots. I noticed that Paul was as fat as ever. In the photograph
    that Correo published on the front page, he was surrounded by four
    other leaders and was the only one smiling.
    "These wild men won't last a month," predicted Dr. Ataulfo
    Lamiel in his study on Calle Boza in the center of Lima, on the
    morning I went to see him. "Turning Peru into another Cuba! Your
    poor aunt Alberta would have fainted dead away if she could see the
    outlaw faces of our brand-new guerrillas."
    My uncle didn't take the announcement of armed actions very
    seriously, a feeling that seemed widespread. People thought it was a
    harebrained scheme that would end in no time. During the weeks I
    spent in Peru, I was crushed by a sense of oppressiveness and felt
    like