NONFICTION - Oct. 31, 1993

LIAISON by Joyce Wadler (Bantam: $22.95; 321 pp.) There are more mysteries under a Chinese kimono than under a Scotsman’s kilt. Just ask Bernard Boursicot, who made love with a Chinese man for years under the impression that his paramour was a woman--or so says Bernard. A 10th-grade dropout, a bumpkin from Brittany whose put-upon salesman father was “Willie Loman without the smile,” Bernard was--is--a misfit, a bisexual little man who rode an astonishingly naive French foreign service all over the world and back, stopping only when he was arrested and convicted as a petty spy.

The story of Bernard and Shi Pei Pu, his lover, has been overly romanticized both by David Henry Hwang in his acclaimed play “M. Butterfly” and in the current film of the same name. The French press has a better handle on Bernard, calling him “the greatest sexual buffoon in history.” Author Joyce Wadler capitalizes on both in a well-researched book subtitled “The Gripping Real Story of the Diplomat Spy and the Chinese Opera Star Whose Affair Inspired ‘M. Butterfly’ “--the M. being, of course, the French abbreviation for monsieur. Interviews with Bernard give the Frenchman his own voice, one that assumes more gullibility on the reader’s part than his own. Craving adventure, he alights in Beijing, where he begins his affair with Pei Pu. (“I don’t know what he did. Maybe sorcery. He was becoming Marlene Dietrich (!)”) He delivers stolen documents because he converted to Maoism, he says, or because “spying was exciting. I enjoyed it. It was like stealing apples.” Take your pick. Pei Pu--probably not an “opera star” either--is sent to the country by the Red Guards. Bernard withholds documents until “she” is sent back. “She” says she’s had a baby. He takes the child to France, as his own. . . .

A wild story, told in effective deadpan. Believe it if you will.