Mata Hari's Last Dance (13 page)

“On Aunt Marie's birthday, Taconis gave her a present. He'd secretly gifted me many pretty things, but he gave her a dowdy dressing gown and I was jealous. She whispered something in his ear that made him blush. As soon as we were alone, I wanted to know what she'd said.”

I can still see the coldness in Taconis's eyes after I asked. “Be careful, M'greet,” Taconis had warned me.

A rush of heat flowed into my face. “Why? Are you careful of my feelings?”

He caught my arm and held it tightly. “Don't think that telling her is going to assuage a guilty conscience. What's done is done. Don't hurt her more.”

I found Aunt Marie in the parlor, knitting. I wanted to get out of the house, so I claimed I was going to church. To my surprise, she put down her needles and said she'd join me. I was trapped. We put on our coats and walked together to St. James in silence. We crossed the threshold of the church and side by side we entered the first pew and knelt together. For a fleeting moment I caught her watching me with an odd expression. Then she said, “It's never too late for redemption,” and she started to pray.

St. James was chilly; I hugged the coat that Taconis had given me closer around myself. I watched Aunt Marie's lips move silently and I speculated on what she was praying for. I looked up at the crucifix, the gold and silver Christ.

“I want you out of my house.”

For a moment, I thought he was talking to me.

“I want you to leave.”

I turned, staring at her in shock. “Aunt Marie?”

“
Aunt
?
” Her voice was high and bitter. “Is that what I am in my house?”

I hesitated, unsure what to call her. “Marie—”

“I treated you like a
daughter
. I allowed you into my house even after you disgraced yourself at that school.” She shook her head. “I should have known, but I trusted in God.” She laughed, a sound harsh and tainted. “God works only minor miracles today.” She clicked her purse open, took out some money. “Pack your belongings when we return. I'll expect you'll be needing several suitcases to hoard all of the gifts my husband has bestowed on you. If he asks why you're leaving us, you'll do the first decent thing you've ever done and tell him you have relatives elsewhere who want you.”

The next morning Taconis left at six for the docks. He suspected nothing and I told him nothing.

“By six that night I was gone,” I tell Edouard. “My aunt cried while the coach drove me away. I saw her tearstained face through the curtains.” And I felt the coins she had pressed into my hand. I could taste them in my mouth. “That's the kind of person I am. You deserve better.”

“M'greet—”

“Don't say it!”

He leaves my apartment without another word.

*    *    *

Instead of dining with Edouard that evening I arrange to meet with Bowtie at the Grand Hotel Bellevue in Potsdamer Platz. He is in Berlin hoping to interview an actress, Henny Porten. After he rings, I dress in my most cheerful spring gown, white heels, and a white cashmere coat. When I arrive, he's standing in the garden behind the café. I'm prepared to accept his flattery and compliments, but he barely greets me.

“Hard day?” I ask, taken aback.

He hands me a newspaper clipping without a word. April 19, 1913:

MOTOR-CAR IN THE SEINE. MME. ISADORA DUNCAN'S TWO CHILDREN DROWNED

I glance up, flustered, and he motions for me to read on.

Yesterday, a little after three o'clock, the car carrying Isadora Duncan's nurse and her two children plunged into the river. Passersby tried to dive into the water but the car was beyond anybody's reach. On hearing the news, Isadora Duncan fainted. The children's chauffeur has been arrested for culpable homicide.

“This is horrible,” I whisper. “Why are you showing me this?”

“I know you failed to get your daughter back,” he says to me, and I feel the sentence like a blow. “I'm a reporter. It's my job to know these things. What I'm trying to say is, you still have hope—”

“I thought,” I say, cutting him off, “that you wanted some gossip.” I am fighting to keep my composure. “Ask me about
Tristan and Isolde
.”

“Pay attention, Mata Hari. Isadora's children are
gone
. They are dead. Your daughter is still
alive.
If she's alive, there's still hope.” He takes the clipping back and tucks it into his vest pocket. “We've known each other now for how many years?”

I can't be bothered with this. I don't know. Seven years? Eight? What does he know about my daughter and hope? I have done my best to let Non go. I have stretched my imagination to the limits fashioning a life for her in which she is happy living with her father.
A day after Anna's botched rescue attempt, a telegram arrived at Edouard's office. It said:
Your daughter is dead to you. Do not try again.
Still, I begged Edouard to send his men back, to arrange another attempt. I was nearly out of my mind with grief. I spent days drinking; I went to the south of France and visited every dance club on the Riviera. I took in the sights without seeing them, drank and danced all night, and then repeated it all the next day. Eventually, I accepted the truth. I had put Non in danger. The only way for me to keep my little girl safe was to leave her alone.

“I don't believe I know you at all,” I say coldly. Then I go inside the hotel and straight to the bar. I order myself a gin and tonic.

The next morning, it's the first drink I have when I wake.

Chapter 14

A Good Deal of Money to be Made

F
or weeks and weeks I drink to excess, shop to excess, and rehearse until my dancers fall asleep on their feet. I do this until one day I'm so sick of my life I decide to stay in bed and never leave. I draw the curtains and lock the front door. I unplug the phone and turn off the lights. I stay like this for three days. On the third night I dream of the cavalry officer I spent time with during my first visit to Berlin: Alfred Kiepert.

When I awaken, I am curious: Is he still married? Is he still tall and handsome in his military uniform? Is he still enthralled with me?

I rise and dress. Beyond my desire to see Alfred blooms an awareness that the manager at the Deutsches must be frantic and wondering where I've been. Soon they'll be beating down my door. Then they'll send Edouard. Even though I miss him desperately, I don't want to see him. Not yet. We haven't spoken in a month.

I put on my favorite red gown and a black hat with a short veil that I bought in Paris. The dress feels snug: a consequence of indulging in alcohol. I put on one of the many bracelets that Alfred gifted to me—a gold dragon with beautiful ruby eyes. Then I go to the lobby and ask the concierge to look up his address.

He's still married, handsome, and wonderful.

“You don't ever change, do you, Mata Hari?”

I lay my cheek on his naked chest, wanting to believe that his compliment is true.

“What is it like not to have a care in the world?” he asks. “No demanding husband, no needy children?”

I laugh as if he's said something funny. But for a moment I find it difficult to speak. If I was honest, I'd tell him, “I have too many cares. That's why I'm with you.” Instead, I make some silly remark about never being tethered down.

Later though, I can't shake off his question. I go back to my apartment and sit on my small balcony, watching the people go by. Men hurrying to the office. Women pushing prams with other women, laughing over something their babies did at home. So that's how I appear to all of these men. As a lighthearted diversion without any worries at all. A pretty dancing girl with a smile permanently etched on her face like one of the
apsaras
carved into the temples. I think of all the people in my life who know the truth, but all of them are gone. Even Edouard.

*    *    *

Six months somehow disappear and Edouard and I remain strangers. I know that he is still in Berlin, living in an apartment on Unter den Linden, because I see him one morning while I'm shopping for fruits and vegetables at the Bäckerei.

I catch his eye. He nods.

But we don't speak to each other.

*    *    *

The following Sunday as I am strolling with Alfred I spy Edouard window shopping with a woman. He doesn't see me and I watch
them until they are out of sight. For days I can't get their image out of my head. How she gazed up at him with her big blue eyes, how his arm touched the pearl buttons on her waist as he gently steered her from shop to shop. I was the one who told him to leave, but my heart aches when Kiepert presents me with a pendant shaped like a dragon, because I realize I want to feel Edouard's arm on my waist, and instead I only feel gold, heavy around my neck.

*    *    *

I invite a German general named von Schilling into my dressing room after one of my shows. He is tall, strong, with a rigid jaw, graying blond hair, and sharp blue eyes. We drink together at the Hotel Fürstenhof and then go to his apartment, a five-bedroom suite in cream and gold. He has no pictures of any children, no wife. He professes to be an extremely practical man: children are too expensive, brass buttons are not cost effective in the military, war is good for the economy. But when he takes me to his bed a second time and gifts me diamond earrings for entertaining him, I understand how practical he is in actual fact.

We see each other for several weeks and I amass an impressive collection of jewelry: two bracelets, an anklet, a necklace, an emerald brooch. My conquest makes me feel giddy. I decide to telegram both Givenchy and Guimet to boast of my success in Berlin. Givenchy writes back at once, inviting me to an important soiree in Paris.

You have no idea how bored I am without you. All of Paris is black and gray for me now. Why don't you return and the two of us will attend the Marcell soiree? Think of the entrance we'd make! Maybe you're angry that I was photographed taking Edith Lane to the Rothschilds' château last week? Don't be,
ma chérie
. You know very well that your
Givenchy can't go anywhere alone. Come back and all of Paris will talk about us again. Then we can go south. Think of all the fun we'd have on the Riviera. Your Givenchy in a bathing costume. My exotic dancer in—well, preferably nothing at all.

I imagine myself with him. Perhaps I should catch a train, only for the weekend. But I have plans with Kiepert that I don't want to break. The Rothschilds and the Riviera will have to wait. I fold the letter into my collection. Guimet is more reserved. His brief response comes by telegram a week later. Givenchy, at least, is still mine.

*    *    *

“Come,” Kiepert says. We are in my apartment, the bedsheets twisted around us like vines. He wants me to accompany him to Silesia where we are invited to watch the German army practice their maneuvers. It's tempting to join him. Especially when he drapes himself across the bed and watches me with his deep blue eyes. But I can't leave Berlin; Edouard may want to reconcile.

“I'm sorry,” I say. “But you know I can't.”

“If that lawyer needs to find you, he can send a telegram.”

I look away and Kiepert goes alone. When he returns, a German reporter discovers him visiting my apartment. Berlin's leading paper runs a photo of us linked arm in arm. Underneath, the ­caption:
SCANDAL! MATA HARI LURES GERMAN OFFICER FROM WIFE
. The next day, another paper picks it up. By the end of the week we are everywhere. “The temptress Mata Hari and her innocent victim.” Berlin was in love with me; now women hiss at me in the streets. I tell Kiepert that it is time for us to part.

“I rely on the papers to draw in audiences. If they focus on you—”

“I don't care what these papers print!” Kiepert rages.

He's so passionate that I can't make him see reason. It's as if he is
on fire and using all of the oxygen in my apartment. I want him to leave, and I claim I must go to attend rehearsal. He says he will wait for me. Exasperated, I pretend to head to the theater and instead take a walk. It's winter and the streets are too cold. I spot a little shop selling stationery and confections. I go inside to browse and warm up. The items for sale are exquisite. I pick out a frosted pink card decorated with hearts and, unbidden, an image of Non comes to me. I wonder if she's an orchid among buttercups now? She's a young woman. When she was a child, Edouard's men reported that she had my dark hair and features; they said no one would fail to recognize her as mine.

I return to my apartment and Kiepert—thankfully—is gone.

I take out the pink card I purchased and write my lost daughter a letter that I know I'll never send. I tell her what I've been doing in Berlin these past six months without Edouard's guidance. I confide in her about Kiepert and von Schilling. Then I say what is truly important: I apologize for failing to save her. “If I had known what a disaster Anna's attempt would create and the danger it would put you in, I never would have undertaken it. One false move destroyed our future together. I have never forgiven Rousseau for hiring Anna and I never will. Never.” I underline the last word. “He and I are no longer on speaking terms. How can I look at him when all he reminds me of is the way I failed you?”

*    *    *

We walk along the Ratsplatz beneath a vault of stars and I slip my hand inside my white muff. Von Schilling has taken me to Freiberg's Christmas Market. I am charmed by the dozens of stalls selling brightly colored toys, roasted almonds, and wooden trains. Everywhere, there are children laughing. Von Schilling doesn't notice; all he talks about is war.

“We don't want to be like the French, going into battle in red and blue.”

I try to turn our conversation to something more pleasant as we walk arm in arm—the elaborate facades of the renaissance buildings, I say, are delightful—but von Schilling continues describing the importance of green uniforms over red. Music from the carousel dances into the night, German songs I've never heard before. The air is crisp and the Christmas stalls are decorated with fairy lights, selling bags of chocolate nuts and gingerbread cookies.
Edouard would love this,
I think. Out of habit and hope I glance around, but he isn't here. I notice straw shoes, hundreds of them, lined up on long tables and selling briskly.

“What are all those shoes for?” I ask.

“The
Pantoffeln
? Children find presents in them on Nikolaustag.”

“In The Netherlands we put out
klompen
: wooden shoes.”

“The Netherlands?”

I hesitate; that was careless. “Yes. My family—we settled there. After India.”

The general nods and I focus on the Black Forest pines decorated with lights. I look at cinnamon cookies on red platters, spiced biscuits in the shape of snowmen. I ask von Schilling the names of everything:
Zimsterne, Spekulativs, Stube
.

“How many languages do you speak?” he asks me.

“If my Spanish was better, six.”

“That's impressive, especially for a woman. You would enjoy meeting Elsbeth Schragmuller. She has a doctorate in political ­science. She's also a very unusual woman. She could develop your talents. There's a good deal of money to be made at this juncture in time. I will introduce you.”

In the twinkling lights, our breaths are a pair of ghosts haunting the space between us. I let him slip his hand into my muff and I ask for some
Spekulativs
.

*    *    *

It's been eight months since I've last spoken to Edouard. I cancel my performances—I have no desire to dance. Still, he doesn't appear. I wait for him to bang down my door or at least phone and demand to know what I'm doing. I plan how I'll tell him that there's more money to be made in being a mistress than in dancing, but he doesn't materialize, doesn't even call. I consider sending him a telegram, something cryptic, forcing him to come to me. But what if it doesn't work? What if he's only interested in Pearl Buttons now? Immediately, I pick up the phone and dial. It rings several times before I'm put through.

“Von Schilling.”

*    *    *

Six months after our stroll through the Ratsplatz, the general holds up a newspaper at the breakfast table. He reads the headline out loud. “Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, assassinated in Sarajevo.” There's a new light in his eyes. He is excited about this. “The Austro-Hungarians will blame the Serbs,” he predicts.

“How terrible.” I recall the archduke's marriage and the outrage it caused—the heir to the Hapsburg throne marrying a lady-in-­waiting! It wasn't as if she had no royal blood at all, but all of Europe was consumed by the scandal. I calculate the dates; their marriage lasted fourteen years. How sad to think of it ending in such tragedy. “Who do you think will raise their children, now that they're gone?” I muse.

The general stares at me. “What does it matter?” He folds the newspaper and rises from the table. “There's going to be war, Mata Hari. Focus on what is important.”

After this, he is relentless in mentioning Elsbeth Schragmuller. To appease him, I agree to go to the Palasthotel to meet with her. I dress in red, from my long silk skirt to my wide-brimmed hat. Schragmuller is a short woman; when she recognizes me, she marches across the lobby, and despite her green skirt and simple blouse, she moves like a man, stomping across the marble floor without any grace whatsoever. I feel embarrassed for her and suggest we walk outside, where there will be fewer spectators.

“You are a dancer,” she says.

“Yes. Eastern dance.”

“I've always wanted to visit Java,” she discloses, holding my gaze.

Java, not India. I understand by her tone that Elsbeth Schragmuller is telling me she knows my story is false and I put myself on guard. “Is that so? Why?”

“I'm fascinated by Hinduism,” she says. “Such an extraordinary religion. Are you Hindu?” she asks.

Do I believe that life is a cycle of birth, death, and rebirth, governed by Karma? “I don't know,” I say, unwilling to share myself with her. I do believe in Karma. It's a Sanskrit word that literally means action. Every action will have an equal reaction. It can happen immediately or at some time in the future. Good actions will create good reactions. Bad actions will bring bad consequences.

“You've worn the mask for so long you're not sure anymore.” Without giving me a chance to respond, she offers, “I'd like to visit Prambanan. Though I doubt I will.” She glances up at me. “The world is changing, Mata Hari.”

“How so?” I decide I will let her do the majority of the talking.

“Look around.” She indicates the men and women leisurely strolling in the gardens. “Are any of these people preparing for the future? Or are they taking a pleasant stroll through life, spending what they earn, living for today, worrying nothing for tomorrow?”

I look at her. “What should they be doing, in your opinion?”

“Peace never lasts, Margaretha.”

Her use of my real name startles me.

“Anyone who reads history knows this. Yet these people act as if the good times are going to last forever. They should be reading. Talking about things that matter.”

I'm curious. “How do you know they aren't? This is only one activity in their day.”