The Bad Girl
by Mario Vargas Llosa
Award: Nobel Winner 2009
Nomination: Dublin Longlist 2009
Date Read: November 30, 2022
What happens when you love someone that is a shape-shifter, a liar, a compulsive cheat? This is the focus of Llosa’s The Bad Girl. Ricardo meets the Bad Girl as a child in Miraflores, Peru and is immediately besotted. He repeatedly asks her to be his girlfriend and she rebuffs him every time. After she is publicly humiliated for being found out in a life (telling everyone she was Chilean when she was Peruvian like everyone else), she drops out of site and he doesn’t see her again.
Ricardo’s singular focus in life is to escape Peru and to live in France. He accomplishes this by becoming fluent in English and French and, over time and with great effort, in Russian. He has casual encounters with women but is never quite taken with anyone. And one day, out of the blue, when he hasn’t been in Paris that long, he meets the bad girl as Comrade Arlette who has been recruited to train in Cuba as a guerilla fighter in Peru. He tells her he would marry her but commits to meeting up with her when she gets back to France. Of course, he loses track of her and she disappears after leaving.
He then meets her again in Paris as Mrs. Arnoux, the wife of UNESCO diplomat Robert Arnoux. Although she is married, they have an affair and she ultimately cleans out Mr. Arnoux’s bank account and disappears. Ricardo is devastated again that she slipped through his fingers. In between finding her throughout his life, Ricardo immerses himself in work and developing his skills as an UNESCO translator and occasional literature translator.
Ricardo stumbles upon the Bad Girl again in Newmarket, England as the wife of David Richardson, a wealthy horse breeder. She is miserable but fabulously wealthy. Readers can begin to see that she has finally obtained the life she has so desired, however, the price she is paying does not seem to be worth it. They once again embark on a torrid affair until her marriage begins to crumble and she stops seeing Ricardo. Richardson’s attorneys discover that the Bad Girl was married before and never divorced so her marriage to Richardson was never legal. The big payday she had hoped for does not materialize and she flees the country to avoid prosecution.
Ricardo once again come upon her in Tokyo as Furuku, the girlfriend of Mr. Fukuda, an importer of drugs (?) Africa. Furuku is a mysterious figure and uses her to seduce Ricardo for his own voyeuristic pleasure. When Ricardo discovers Furuku watching them, he flees Tokyo and swears he will never communicate with the Bad Girl again. He is completely humiliated and used.
She, of course, doesn’t stay away but this time she is the one who seeks Ricardo out. After calling him repeatedly and Ricardo refusing to speak with her, he finally agrees to meet with her and discovers her a physically and mentally broken woman. She is malnourished, has tears in all her holes and is terrified of being alone. Risking his own sanity and financial future, Ricardo assumes responsibility for her rehabilitation and sends her to a recovery facility that puts her back together from head to toe. And for many years, they live a quiet and blissful life, eventually marrying so her paperwork can become legitimate. But all this time, you know what’s going to come.
And come it does, in the form of her bosses husband. One day she runs off with him, leaving Ricardo devastated once again. But this time, Ricardo is so broken that he is just resigned to his fate. He actually moves on and begins living with Marcella, a theater set designer in Spain. But like a moth to the flame, the Bad Girl resurfaces, demanding his love and against his own strength and will, Ricardo succumbs to his feelings and accepts her back.
While this is an overly simplistic summary of the torment and anguish Ricardo endures at the hands of the Bad Girl, Llosa is clearly a master at longing and the illogic of love. The heart wants what the heart wants. He also paints a masterly portrait of the cliché that money can’t buy happiness no matter how much someone may want that to be true.
Overall, a fantastic introduction to this Novel Prize winner.
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