The Bad Keith

Read from Wednesday, June 1st to Monday, June 6th.

The Bad Girl, by Mario Vargas Llosa.  I had been meaning to return to Vargas Llosa for awhile now, ever since I read The War of the End of the World.  This book, the Bad Girl, is much different, with a completely new and more light-hearted tone.  At its heart, this is a love story between Ricardo and 'the bad girl,' but it encompasses the entire history of the world in the second half of the 20th century. 

Each chapter in the book tells a story of Ricardo and the bad girl from a different time in their lives, chronologically, up til her death.  Each time, many of the themes are repeated and the story plays out in a similar way; Ricardo is madly in love with the bad girl, she lets him give her attention, then she leaves suddenly for a richer guy or otherwise betrays him.  Ricardo meets the bad girl when he was a teenager in Peru.  One summer, she appears as Lily, a new Chilean immigrant to the neighborhood.  He falls in love, but she will not agree to be his girlfriend, even though they hang out all the time.  Finally, it is revealed that she was just pretending to be Chilean to be popular, and she was Peruvian the whole time. 

They lose contact after that, and many years go by.  Ricardo moves to Paris, where he works as a translator.  This is in the 1960's, after the Cuban revolution, and Ricardo's friend runs a program where he gets young Peruvians to train in Cuba in order to bring a revolution to Peru.  One of these young revolutionaries is the bad girl.  They reconnect, and finally sleep together.  Ricardo once again professes his undying love, but she is indifferent.  Content to be treated like a princess, she teases Ricardo and his many 'sentimental' sayings.  She does not believe in love, but just wants to move up in the world.  She is not a revolutionary, but she just pretended to be in order to get out of Peru.  However, she is obliged to go to Cuba, and Ricardo cannot stop her. 

Years later, the bad girl turns up again in Paris, but this time as the wife of a bureaucrat she met in Cuba.  Ricardo is still obsessed, and they have an affair.  He is very happy for a time, even though she remains reserved.  Once again, she disappears suddenly.  Ricardo hears from her husband, and he says that she ran off with another man, and she stole all his savings.  Ricardo is very hurt again, and he resolves to stop becoming obsessed with this shape-shifting woman.  Years go by, and Ricardo becomes an expert translator.  He has a few minor girlfriends, but none that stick.  He reconnects with an old friend from Peru in London, one of the first hippies.  In London, he finds the bad girl again, this time as the wife of a rich international businessman that is obsessed with horse breeding.  Ricardo travels from Paris to London almost weekly and he meets the bad girl in a hotel to continue their affair.  But when the husband gets suspicious, the bad girl returns to him, leaving Ricardo alone.

They next reconnect in Tokyo years later.  The bad girl is one of the girlfriends of a Japanese gangster, and she goes on smuggling missions for him to Africa.  The bad girl is obsessed with this mafioso, and he has a powerful hold on her.  They all go out together, and the bad girl is affectionate with Ricardo, and she takes him home to sleep with him.  However, Ricardo sees that the gangster is masturbating in a corner.  The bad girl only did it to give him a sick voyeuristic pleasure.  Ricardo storms out and does not speak to her for many years, even though she tried getting in touch every few months.  Finally, with the help of his neighbor, a mute child, Ricardo agrees to meet the bad girl again.  She had left the gangster, but she was very mentally distraught and very sick.  Ricardo puts her in a clinic where she is able to get better.  She claimed she was gang-raped in Lagos, but really the therapist found out she was just very mentally abused.

Ricardo is the only person in her life that she could turn to.  He nurses her back to health, and she gradually returns to a normal life.  She agrees to marry him, mainly in order to get a legal status in Paris so she can work.  She appears to be a normal, loving wife, even though Ricardo is very nervous she will run off again. At one point, she almost leaves, and Ricardo almost commits suicide.  Of course, eventually she does leave him, although they talk about it first and have a normal break-up.  Ricardo moves to Madrid with a young playwright.  The bad girl finds him there many years later.  This time, she is very sick, and close to dying from cancer.  Together, they move in together and have a few months as a normal happy couple before she dies.  The bad girl leaves all her money and some land in the south of France to Ricardo.

It is an interesting life story of obsession with the one girl that could make him happy, even though she destroyed him many times.  It follows politics as well, mostly of his home country of Peru, but also of France, England and the rest of the world.  It is fitting that Ricardo works as a translator.  Even though he can speak many languages, he feels like he doesn't have a natural home.  The only time he is really happy is with the bad girl.  Even though it was a bit repetitive at times, each chapter and meeting between the two is a little different, and the characters grow more complex as the story develops.  The bad girl is given a history as a young girl in Peru that was very poor, with a father that designed breakwaters.  She yearned to be something more and different, even though she treated people poorly along the way, especially poor Ricardo.  Three out of five stars.