Poor Ricardo Somocurcio, in love with an amoral adventuress, who both enjoys and despises his devotion and who does not hesitate to inflict emotional harm in pursuit of her own self interest. Their series of passionate encounters, spaced years apart, provide him both joy and suffering and her with a bit of bemused comfort–or something. The episodes end badly for Ricardo and after each one, he swears off her forever. And yet, when eventually they meet again…
Love is a piano dropped from a fourth story window, and you were in the wrong place at the wrong time. –Ani Difranco
When love is not madness, it is not love. –Pedro Calderon de la Barca
For most of us, romantic love is a pretty big deal. Most people understand that it is both emotional and physical but not very rational. Hardcore hedonists and hardcore moralists have attacked this notion from their different directions, but thousands of songs and stories have affirmed it. The Bad Girl is just one more. But Mario Vargas Llosa is a merciless writer; so if you haven’t read this one, let me warn you, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.
When we first meet Ricardo, he is a teenager growing up in 1950’s Lima. In the magical summer of his fifteenth year, a new girl appears on the scene. She is different from the other girls and mesmerizes everyone with her vitality, her scandalous mambo moves, and her exotic accent. Ricardo falls for her in a big way. When he can afford it, he takes her to movies and to a place called The Little White Shop for tea and pastries. They stroll together around the streets of Miraflores and sit beside each other on the beach. They hold hands; he kisses her cheek, her ear, and her neck. And once, her lips brush briefly across his. Soon, however, after a surprising revelation, the two are separated.
His parents having died in an accident when he was twelve, Ricardo is being cared for by his aunt. His dream is to leave Peru and live in Paris. When he was younger, his farther had given him books by Paul Fèval, Jules Verne and Alexandre Dumas. Those books, he says, “filled my head with adventures and convinced me that life in France was richer, happier, more beautiful, more everything than anywhere else.”* He convinces his aunt to let him take French lessons at the Alliance Français in addition to his English lessons at the Instituto Norteamericano.
When next we meet Ricardo, he is managing, just barely, to live in Paris. He has a Peruvian law degree but struggles to find work. A Peruvian friend who works in a restaurant helps him out with occasional leftover food. The friend is part of a group of radicals who plan to bring a Castro-style socialist revolution to Peru. Soon Ricardo meets the bad girl again, then loses her again.
Soon afterward, Ricardo finally finds work as a translator/interpreter. He throws himself into his work and tries to forget her. But of course he does not, because he is in love. He stays in love, just barely, even as he finds out just how bad the bad girl can be. He makes a few friends, buys a small apartment, and obtains a French passport, but always feels rootless, no longer Peruvian but never really French. In his work as an interpreter he travels a great deal. Millions of words pass his lips, but none of them are his. He sometimes wonders who he really is. But that’s only when the bad girl isn’t around. When she is, the issues are generally much more serious. For better or worse, that’s when he is most alive.
It is Ricardo who tells us the story, which is all in first person. I suspect that most readers are going to identify with him and have sympathy for him. He may be a romantic fool, very unwise. But what is wisdom, really? And what else exactly was Ricardo ever meant to do? Arguably, the bad girl is an even more interesting character. Hers is an incredible story and as we get to know her, we see more and more clearly how she goes wrong, but less and less clearly how she might have gone right.
I know of at least one reader who objects to the implausibility of the whole thing, not only the love story but also certain mechanics of the plot. I don’t argue with that, but for me it has little importance. I loved the details of places and times and the wealth of interesting secondary characters. The Bad Girl is a wonderful book, well worth keeping around, at least for a little while.
*Picador edition translated by Edith Grossman