The Bad Girl Read Online Free PDF

revolutionary
    journey. "Terrific," she replied, giving me a languid hand that she did
    not withdraw from mine right away. This was one very pretty, very
    flirtatious guerrilla fighter.
    The next morning I passed the exam for translators at UNESCO
    with about twenty other applicants. We were given half a dozen
    fairly easy texts in English and French to translate. I hesitated over
    the phrase "art roman" which I first translated as "Roman art" but
    then, in the revision, I realized it referred to "Romanesque art." At
    midday I went with Paul to eat sausage and fried potatoes at La
    Petite Source, and with no preambles asked his permission to take
    out Comrade Arlette while she was in Paris. He gave me a sly look
    and pretended to reprimand me.
    "It is categorically forbidden to fuck female comrades. In Cuba
    and the People's Republic of China, during the revolution, screwing
    a comrade could mean the firing squad. Why do you want to take
    her out? Do you like the girl?"
    "I suppose I do," I confessed, somewhat embarrassed. "But if it's
    going to make problems for you..."
    "Then you'd control your lust?" Paul laughed. "Don't be a
    hypocrite, Ricardo! Take her out, and don't let me know about it.
    Afterward, though, you'll tell me everything. And most important,
    use a condom."
    That same afternoon I went to pick up Comrade Arlette at her
    little hotel on Rue Gay Lussac and took her to eat steak frites at La
    Petite Hostellerie, on Rue de la Harpe. And then to L'Escale, a small
    boite de nuit on Rue Monsieur le Prince, where in those days
    Carmencita, a Spanish girl dressed all in black like Juliette Greco,
    accompanied herself on guitar and sang, or, I should say, recited old
    poems and republican songs from the Spanish Civil War. We had
    rum and Coca-Cola, a drink that was already being called a cuba
    libre. The club was small, dark, smoky, and hot, the songs epic or
    melancholy, not many people were there yet, and before we finished
    our drinks and after I told her that thanks to her magical arts and
    her rosary I'd done well on the UNESCO exam, I grasped her hand
    and, interlacing my fingers with hers, asked if she realized I'd been
    in love with her for ten years.
    She burst into laughter.
    "In love with me without knowing me? Do you mean that for ten
    years you've been hoping that one day a girl like me would turn up
    in your life?"
    "We know each other very well, it's just that you don't
    remember," I replied, very slowly, watching her reaction. "Back then,
    your name was Lily and you were passing yourself off as Chilean."
    I thought that surprise would make her pull back her hand or
    clench it convulsively in a nervous movement, but nothing like that
    happened. She left her hand lying quietly in mine, not agitated in the
    least.
    "What are you saying?" she murmured. In the half-light, she
    leaned forward and her face came so close to mine that I could feel
    her breath. Her eyes scrutinized me, trying to read my mind.
    "Can you still imitate the Chilean singsong so well?" I asked, as I
    kissed her hand. "Don't tell me you don't know what I'm talking
    about. Don't you remember I asked you to go steady three times and
    you always turned me down flat?"
    "Ricardo, Ricardito, Richard Somocurcio!" she exclaimed,
    amused, and now I did feel the pressure of her hand. "The skinny
    kid! That well-behaved snot-nose who was so proper he seemed to
    have taken Holy Communion the night before. Ha-ha! That was you.
    Oh, how funny! Even back then you had a sanctimonious look."
    Still, a moment later, when I asked her how and why it had
    occurred to her and her sister, Lucy, to pass themselves off as
    Chileans when they moved to Calle Esperanza, in Miraflores, she
    absolutely denied knowing what I was talking about. How could I
    have made up a thing like that? I was thinking about somebody else.
    She never had been named Lily, and didn't have a sister, and never
    had lived in that neighborhood of rich snobs. That would be her
    attitude