The bad girl takes on many forms throughout the novel: first as a Chilean in Peru where the narrator Ricardo first meets her and first falls in love with her at the age of 15. After a summer spent courting her, asking her to be his girlfriend, and stealing kisses every now again from the Chilean who refuses to commit herself to him or any of the other teenage boys who are also attracted to the hip-swaying, free-spirited girl, she is discovered to be not who she says she is. After she disappears into the night, Ricardo is left feeling lost and confused but above all feeling an even greater desire for the girl who would come to abandon him time and time again.
After completing his studies at the university in Peru, Ricardo makes his way to Paris and eventually becomes a translator for UNESCO. Initially, Ricardo struggles in Paris, and a fellow Peruvian, a chef, takes him under his wing. Paul is also a recruiter for socialist guerrilla fighters preparing young Peruvians for their training in Cuba in hopes to bring communism and socialism to Peru. While Ricardo takes no official political stance, he helps his friend by collecting recent recruits from the airport and settling them in in Paris before they make their way to Cuba. Once again, Ricardo meets his bad girl. And in the week that they spend together, he once again falls in love with her. Yet, when she proposes they get married so she won't have to go to Cuba, Ricardo hesitate not wanting to cause trouble for Paul, and she leaves him without any true hope of their meeting again.
Yet, a few years later they do meet. In the hallways of UNESCO, Ricardo is over taken with his bad girl, his love for her even stronger than before. She agrees to meet him at Les Deux Magots, and for the third time she has transformed herself- from Chilean to guerrilla fighter, and now the wife of French diplomat.
"Are you still in love with me?" was her opening remark, to break the ice.
"The worst thing is that I think I am," I admitted, feeling my cheeks flush. "And if I weren't, I'd fall in love all over again today. You've turned into a very beautiful woman, and an extremely elegant one. I see you and don't believe what I see, bad girl."
"Now you see what you lost because you are a coward," she replied, her honey-colored eyes glistening with mocking sparks as she intentionally exhaled a mouthful of smoke in my face. "If you had said yes that I proposed staying with you, I'd be your wife now. But you didn't want to get in trouble with your friend Comrade Jean, and you sent me off to Cuba. You missed the opportunity of a life, Ricardito."
"Can't this be resolved? Can't I search my conscience, suffer from heartache, and promise to reform?"
"It's too late now, good boy. What kind of match for a wife of a French diplomat can a little pissant translator for UNESCO be?"
And throughout the rest of the book she tortures him; she ensnares him, takes a small piece of hm and then disappears. From Paris, to the English countryside, Japan, and eventually back to France, Ricardo swears he will never love her again, each time she leaves him, but she always returns once more.
The Bad Girl is a fascinating character in of herself. Despite her mistreatment of Ricardo, she is endearing and outrageous. Each time her plan falls apart. She is, if nothing else, a professional bridge burner and the moment she asks herself, "now what?", the easiest and most obvious answer is "reinvention." The only bridge that ever stays in tact, no matter how many times she tries to burn it, is her bridge to Ricardo. Ricardo is truly the good boy- he has no secrets, the layers of his being reveal only the inner workings of himself: his insecurities, his talents, his dreams, and his desires. The bad girl understands this about him from their days as teenagers in Peru. She resents him for making an honest person of himself, calls him boring, insults him, and takes advantage of him. Yet, his is her only connection to reality, to consequence, stability and integrity. She never lies to Ricardo- she is honest about what she can give and what she desires to do, but she also teaches him that she cannot be a caged bird. And this is Ricardo's main flaw: he wants to cage her up, leave her in the corner of his apartment and hear her sing.
Note: I have not read "The Bad Girl." I am intrigued.
ReplyDeleteTwo immediate reactions: (1) professional bridge burner who overturns with reinvention - this lead me to Diderot and his "Tragedy of the Actor" essay - acting (in this case, reinvention) is a diversion from the empty shell of existence inside - we play others because we have no self. Could not the same be said of the bad girl? (2) Self-sabotage, hurting the only man who "truly" loved her - I'm totally over the theme of flippant female tragic hero who is emotionally scared and internally damaged who disposes of human emotions in the same fashion as cigarettes.
I think your first point: "we play others because we have no self" is an excellent jumping point to further analyze The Bad Girl. There are two important scenes in the novel that help to sketch the bad girl and humanize her. Initially, you meet her in such short bursts-- she comes and goes so frequently that you wonder if she is merely a product of Ricardo's imagination or if she does exist in reality.
ReplyDeleteRicardo's neighbors in Paris have an adopted son who is mute. He answers questions on a small chalk board that he wears around his neck but when he meets the bad girl he slowly begins to speak. Adopted from Vietnam, the boy's parents do not know much about his family or how he came to be an orphan. The bad girl is very much the same- Llosa gives very few hints to who she actually is rather creating her character out of who she is not.
It isn't until much later in the novel that Ricardo returns home to Peru that he happens to meet the bad girl's father (and finally learns her true name), and discovers that she has completely rejected who she was born of and where she is from. In the beginning it wasn't out of disdain, but out of a desire to be someone else.
Ricardo, though his parents died in a car accident when he was a child, has a stable and loving family who have always supported him. I think the bad girl's constant reinvention of herself is a product or desire to find the self that she truly believes she is. Almost in a Lacanian sense, she is looking for the girl in the mirror. That is also not to say she isn't a complete opportunist, constantly taking what she wants to benefit herself and only herself. Her rejection of her family is the ultimate sacrifice to her selfish desires.
However, considering your second point, I can't help but wonder if the bad girl's character is simply a construct of what men (and in this case Llosa) truly imagine untamed women to be. To quote Simone de Beauvoir,
"To say that woman is mystery is to say, not that she is silent, but that her language is not understood; she is there, but hidden behind veils; she exists beyond these uncertain appearances. What is she? Angel, demon, one inspired, an actress? It may be supposed either that there are answers to these questions which are impossible to discover, or, rather, that no answer is adequate because a fundamental ambiguity marks the feminine being. And perhaps in her heart she is even for herself quite indefinable: a sphinx."
Is it easier on Ricardo to imagine his bad girl as this thing he can love if only he can tame her? Absolutely. Does he love her despite the fact that he never truly possess her? Certainly. Yet, I can't help but wonder, is it because he doesn't see her as his equal but this sort of sphinx he cannot and will not define? In this case, Ricardo, to borrow from your comment, is more likely to dispose of human emotions (even if they are his- and in fact most likely are his) in the same fashion of a cigarette. This is the beauty of Llosa's book- the bad girl and Ricardo do not meet because they have some common ground but because they need something from one another. Ricardo needs to feel the agony of love and the bad girl is exercising the demons of her empty shell of existence inside.
La Maman et La Putain.
ReplyDelete