The Bad Girl by Mario Vargas Llosa Page B

she
    wanted.
    Instead of answering, she asked, in a mocking tone, "The idea of
    spending the night with me makes you the happiest man in the
    world, Miraflores boy? I'm asking so you can tell me one of those
    cheap, sentimental things you love saying so much."
    "Nothing could make me happier," I said, pressing my lips to
    hers. "I've been dreaming about it for years, guerrilla fighter."
    "How many times will you make love to me?" she continued in
    the same mocking tone.
    "As many as I can, bad girl. Ten, if my body holds out."
    "I'll allow you only two," she said, biting my ear. "Once when we
    go to bed, and another when we wake up. And no getting up early. I
    need a minimum of eight hours' sleep so I'll never have wrinkles."
    She had never been as playful as she was that morning. And I
    don't think she ever was again. I didn't remember having seen her
    so natural, giving herself up to the moment without posing, without
    inventing a role for herself, as she breathed in the warmth of the day
    and let herself be penetrated and adored by the light that filtered
    through the tops of the weeping willows. She seemed much younger
    than she actually was, almost an adolescent and not a woman close
    to thirty. We had a ham sandwich with pickles and a glass of wine at
    a bistrot in Asnieres, on the banks of the river, and then went to the
    Cinematheque on Rue d'Ulm to see Marcel Carne's Les enfants du
    paradis, which I had seen but she hadn't. When we came out she
    spoke about how young Jean-Louis Barrault and Maria Casares
    looked, and how they didn't make movies like that anymore, and she
    confessed that she had cried at the end. I suggested we go to my
    apartment to rest until it was time for supper, but she refused: going
    home now would give me ideas. Instead, the afternoon was so nice
    we ought to walk for a while. We went in and out of the galleries
    along Rue de Seine and then sat down at an open-air cafe on Rue de
    Buci for something cold to drink. I told her I had seen Andre Breton
    around there one morning, buying fresh fish. The streets and cafes
    were full of people, and the Parisians had those open, pleasant
    expressions they wear on the rare days when the weather's nice. I
    hadn't felt this happy, optimistic, and hopeful for a long time. Then
    the devil raised his tail and I saw the headline in Le Monde, which
    the man next to me was reading: A R M Y DESTROYS HEADQUARTERS O F
    PERUVIAN G U E R R I L L A S . The subtitle said: "Luis de la Puente and Other
    MIR Leaders Killed." I hurried to buy the paper at the stand on the
    corner. The byline was Marcel Niedergang, the paper's
    correspondent in South America, and there was an inset by Claude
    Julien explaining what the Permian MIR was and giving
    information about Luis de la Puente and the political situation in
    Peru. In August 1965, special forces of the Permian army had
    surrounded Mesa Pelada, a hill to the east of the city of
    Quillabamba, in the Cuzcan valley of La Convention, and captured
    the Illarec ch'aska (morning star) camp, killing a good number of
    guerrillas. Luis de la Puente, Paul Escobar, and a handful of their
    followers had managed to escape, but the commandos, after a long
    pursuit, surrounded and killed them. The article indicated that
    military planes had bombed Mesa Pelada, using napalm. The corpses
    had not been returned to their families or shown to the press.
    According to the official communique, they had been buried in a
    secret location to prevent their graves from becoming destinations
    for revolutionary pilgrimages. The army showed reporters the
    weapons, uniforms, documents, as well as maps and radio
    equipment the guerrillas had stored at Mesa Pelada. In this way the
    Pachacutec column, one of the rebel focal points of the Permian
    revolution, had been wiped out. The army was hopeful that the
    Tupac Amaru column, headed by Guillermo Lobaton and also under
    siege, would soon fall.
    "I don't know why you're making that face, you knew this