Mata Hari's Last Dance (16 page)

He passes Boulevard Voltaire. I'm unnerved by the silence of the thoroughfare, by all of the white flowers hung over closed doors. We stop at the entrance to the Grand Hotel. I hand him a generous tip and he carts my remaining luggage, fifteen pieces, into a glittering foyer. Inside the hotel the war doesn't exist. I allow myself to imagine that Edouard is just around the corner, coming to tell me our rooms are ready. I act lighthearted as I check in and am given a suite on the
second floor. But as I stand alone, gazing out over Paris, my heart aches. There's a radio in my room and I turn it on. It's all news of the war. I should eat, but I want to find Edouard.

I know I could call, but I want to hear his voice. I want to see his face.

I walk the three blocks from my hotel to his office. In the streets, I see the same patterns again and again on women's dresses. They've been made from sacks. Flour companies have taken to embroidering pretty patterns on their cotton bags so women can turn them into clothes when they are empty. I haven't purchased a new dress in months, but now I feel wealthy.

I reach Edouard's office and knock. His secretary answers.

“Mata Hari.” She makes no move to let me inside. “I don't believe Monsieur Clunet will want to see you,” she says.

“That is not your decision to make,” I reply, affronted. I am ready to say more when she shocks me into silence.

“He is married, madam. He's a respectable man now and does not require your services anymore.”

She shuts the door and for several moments I can't breathe. I press my back against the door to keep from sliding to the pavement. Married? It has to be the blonde from Berlin. Pearl Buttons. The thought of them together, living in a house, talking about the war over coffee at breakfast, makes me physically ill.

*    *    *

I return directly to the Grand Hotel. I order dinner in bed. I stay in my blue silk robe all the following day. When I hear the bellboy leaving newspapers outside my door, I don't rise to fetch them. I don't even turn on the radio for news. I don't care what's happening anymore. I stay in bed for days.

After a week, I feel the strength to get up and get dressed.

I go downstairs, to the ivory-colored foyer.

There is no war or heartache in the Grand. In one of the back rooms is a piano, a black Steinway. A young man is playing and immediately I'm reminded of Evert. The double-breasted uniform decorated with medals. His high cheekbones and blue sapphire eyes. “You're a beautiful pianist,” I say.

“Thank you.”

“Russian?” I ask.

“Is my French that bad?”

“No, I have a good ear.” I motion for him to slide down the bench; then I sit next to him and pick up his tune. We play together.

“You are Mata Hari.”

For some reason, I'm disappointed. “Yes.”

“Vadime de Massloff,” he introduces himself. “An army captain.”

“What are you doing in Paris?”

“I have two weeks off before I return.”

“I didn't realize holidays were allowed in the middle of a war,” I say, flirting. We keep playing together, our fingers brushing on the ivory keys.

“Depends on how long you've been fighting.” He sounds a thousand years old. I'm guessing he's twenty-three or twenty-four. Just a few years older than Norman would have been, if he had survived.

“Where did you learn to play?” he asks.

In Leeuwarden. “Around.” I stop playing. “Would you like to take a walk with me?”

He nearly leaps out of his chair. I give him my arm and allow him to lead me along the Grand Boulevard, where we can admire the shops. No one has told the storefront decorators that a war is being fought.

“So is your family in Russia?” I ask.

“Yes. My family leads a hard life there.”

Meaning they are poor. “Do they have a trade?”

“Yes. They are shop owners.” I indicate a café and we go inside. “But the men in my family all serve their country. We are military men.” He is proud.

We order coffee and sit across from each other. There are other men in the café, some injured and some probably on leave. What must it feel like to be granted leave from hell, knowing eventually you'll have to go back? To come to Café de la Paix while your comrades are flying missions over Berlin, being shot down, wounded, maimed. And then to return a week later and fly those same missions. It must be unbearable.

“What are you thinking about?” he asks.

I consider lying to him. “War. How uncertain life is.”

“Let's not think about war, then,” he says in the way that only young people can. “Let's go back to the hotel.”

He smells like rainwater and musk. I lead him to my room and his strength becomes my new shelter in this world.

*    *    *

During the next two weeks we are inseparable. I learn about Va­­dime's family in northern Russia and I tell him about my childhood in Leeuwarden. He's surprised to learn I'm not from India.

“So all of those dances?”

“I learned them in Java,” I confess.

It's still exotic to him. India, Java . . . both are entire worlds away from machine guns and trenches. We don't speak about war. In my suite in the Grand we don't open a single newspaper. Europe may be crumbling beneath our feet or sliding into the sea, but neither of us wants to know.

*    *    *

I dream of Evert, and in the dream he is sailing away. The significance isn't lost on me: In two days Vadime will return to his unit. I do not want to feel the pain of loss before it is necessary, but it's almost impossible to ignore. I focus on enjoying the moments, but in the dance hall, outside the café, in my suite—all I can think about is vanishing time.

On our last day in Paris together, I wake early and dress while Vadime's still in bed. Downstairs in the lounge I order a gin and tonic.

“Excuse me, Mata Hari?” A waiter stops at my table. “The man across the room has asked me to deliver this.”

He hands me a card. It reads
JEAN HALLURE, LIEUTENANT
. I search my memory. The Kursaal. He was the musician who had gotten so drunk we'd had to cancel our rehearsal. A lifetime ago. That afternoon, Edouard and I went to the museum. I squeeze my eyes shut against the memory. I don't want to think about that day. I don't want to think about Edouard being married. I look at Lieutenant Hallure and he tips his hat to me. The years have been good to him: He is tan; his hair is still thick and dark. He also looks sober.

“Jean.” I hold out my hand as he approaches my table.

“Mata Hari,” he says, kissing it. “After all these years, what a surprise.”

“A delightful one. Are you really a lieutenant? What brings you to the Grand?”

“I am—discharged. My hearing is not so good anymore. What are you doing in Paris?”

I tell the shortest version of my story. “I met a man,” I say.

“Let me guess. An officer?”

Of course. “Vadime de Massloff. But his leave is up tomorrow.”

“Where is he going?”

“Vittel.”

“That's not bad. I'd call it a resort.”

“Until they send him to the front,” I counter. “I'm hoping to visit him.”

“Has the government given you permission?”

I stare at him. Why would I need permission to visit a French town?

“There's an airbase in Vittel,” he explains, glancing at my drink. “You can't drop in for a social call.”

“He didn't tell me that.” Do I have any contacts left in Paris? I have more in Berlin.

“I can ring the Secret Service and tell them Mata Hari is looking for a pass.”

I think he is joking. But he takes out a pen from his vest pocket and writes down an address. Then he reaches over and tucks it into my brassiere, an intimacy that gives me chills.

“When the time comes.” He winks. “Tell them Jean Hallure sent you.”

*    *    *

Vadime takes off his scarf and wraps it around my neck, holding the ends down and pulling me toward him. “Will you think of me when I'm gone?”

“Of course.” I feel my throat close. “And you'll be fine,” I say, convincing myself.

“I want to come back to you.” He stands at the door, ready to go. “I love you, Mata Hari. I've loved you since the first time I saw you performing Salome.”

“You never told me that.”

He shrugs, embarrassed. “There were men going back stage to see you. I knew I'd never be invited, so I didn't try.”

“I'm sure I would have.” My face warms and my eyes fill with tears. “Come back, Vadime.”

“I will.”

When he leaves, I don't retreat to my room. I haven't lost him. When the war is finished and the broken pieces of Europe slip back together, he'll return to me.

*    *    *

I fill my days with trips to museums and dinners with men who don't interest me. Ambassadors, police chiefs, military men of various ranks. I don't phone Edouard or Givenchy to tell them that I've returned to Paris. If they care about me, they will find me. I'm preparing to go out to dinner with a new acquaintance when the concierge stops me as I am leaving the Grand.

“Madam, if you would come back inside for a moment? A telegram has arrived.”

The look on the concierge's face is grave and immediately I'm unsettled. I follow him across the lobby and he hands me a slip of paper. I take it with trembling hands. My eyes scan so quickly I can barely understand the contents. I see “Vadime” and “hospital in Vittel.” I read it again, slower this time, and the world stops.

Vadime has been seriously injured. He may be blind.

Chapter 16

Welcome to the French Secret Service

I
'm from The Netherlands, Commandant. We are neutral. My passport allows me to travel to any nation. How many of your people can do that?”

Commandant Ladoux studies me from across his desk. I have gone to the address Jean Hallure gave me, to the heart of the French Secret Service, and have offered to bring them information. Spain, Germany, Belgium, England—wherever they want me to go. All I am asking for is a million francs in return. Enough to get myself and Vadime out of France. I want to take him far from this horrible war to America, where it is safe. I want us to live in New York. We can start over in that city of magic.

The Commandant nods slowly and my heart leaps.

“For that sum, significant information must be produced. Information that will benefit France.”

“I have a way with military men, Commandant. Whatever they tell me I will pass on to you.”

“We would need you in Belgium.”

“That's fine.”

“And you understand what's required? To reach Belgium you
must travel through Amsterdam. To reach Amsterdam, you must pass through Spain. Intelligence from any of these countries—”

“I have relationships with men in every major city in Europe, monsieur.” What do I care about the route I travel? “You read the papers, don't you?”

“Then welcome to the French Secret Service, Mata Hari.”

*    *    *

I show my papers from Commandant Ladoux to the soldier at the Hôtel de Ville in Vittel. I smile at him so he thinks that I'm at ease, but the sounds of dying men from beyond the lobby are making me feel very uncomfortable. While the uniform continues to check over my papers, every few moments the doors swing open and men carry wounded soldiers in on stretchers. Some of them are covered in blood. Others are so pale I wonder if they're already dead. The entire hotel has been turned into an American military hospital with very few rooms still reserved for guests. There's nothing of the resort town Vadime wrote to me about. It's all military tents and army cars now.

“If you'll wait here,” the soldier behind the desk says, “I'll find someone to escort you back.”

I try to make myself comfortable in the lobby, but I don't know where to look and the sounds of men crying out for their mothers is heartbreaking. Is Vadime's voice among them? What will I find when they take me back there? My stomach begins to tie itself in knots.

I search the lobby for something to read—
anything
—and discover several old copies of the New York
Tribune
. I wonder who left them and why they're here. I read the date of the paper on top. August 31, 1914. I can't imagine why anyone would want to keep such old news. There's an article by Richard Harding Davis. I skim it, not wanting
to face anything more horrible than the wails around me, but my hands grow cold as I read.

London, August 30
—I left Brussels on Thursday afternoon and have just arrived in London. For two hours on Thursday night I was in what for six hundred years has been the city of Louvain. The Germans were burning it, and to hide their work kept us locked in the railway carriages. But the story was written against the sky, was told to us by German soldiers incoherent with excesses; and we could read it in the faces of women and children being led to concentration camps and of citizens on their way to be shot.

On their way to be shot.
Is this what would have happened to Va­­dime if he'd been captured? If the Germans are shooting civilians, what are they doing to soldiers?

“Mata Hari?” someone calls, but I can't respond. I'm transfixed by the story.

In the darkness the gray uniforms filled the station with an army of ghosts. You distinguished men only when pipes hanging from their teeth glowed red or their bayonets flashed.

Outside the station in the public square the people of Louvain passed in an unending procession, women bareheaded, weeping, men carrying the children asleep on their shoulders, all hemmed in by the shadowy army of gray wolves. Once they were halted, and among them marched a line of men. They well knew their fellow townsmen. These were on their way to be shot. And bet
ter to point the moral an officer halted both processions and, climbing to a cart, explained why the men were going to die. He warned others not to bring down upon themselves a like vengeance.

As those being led to spend the night in the fields looked across to those marked for death they saw old friends, neighbors of long standing, men of their own household. The officer bellowing at them from the cart was illuminated by the headlights of an automobile. He looked like an actor held in a spotlight on a darkened stage. It was all like a scene upon the stage, so unreal, so inhuman, you felt that it could not be true, that the curtain of fire, purring and crackling and sending up hot sparks to meet the kind, calm stars, was only a painted backdrop; that the reports of rifles from the dark rooms came from blank cartridges, and that these trembling shopkeepers and peasants ringed in bayonets would not in a few minutes really die, but that they themselves and their homes would be restored to their wives and children. You felt it was only a nightmare, cruel and uncivilized. And then you remembered that the German Emperor has told us what it is. It is his Holy War.

Holy War.

“Mata Hari?”

I look up and realize that I'm crying. The author of the piece has such a way with words that for several minutes it was as if I was standing right there with him. I could see the German officers as he saw them. I could hear their boots crunch against the gravel as they moved in unison to destroy people's homes. I stand and wipe the tears from my eyes.

“We ask that our visitors remain composed,” the man says. “If you don't feel you can see wounded men on their deathbeds without being overcome, I ask that you reconsider.”

“No. I can do it.”

He stares at me as if he's unsure. Then he nods and leads the way. The hotel carpets are stained with blood. I do not allow myself to wonder who bled their last here and what happened to them. Did they die here alone? Did their mothers come for them? Perhaps, like Vadime, this isn't even their country. The man takes me through a series of halls to a second lobby that has been transformed into a makeshift hospital room. Two dozen beds line the walls, and nurses in white uniforms rush from patient to patient. In the farthest corner of the room, I see him. It takes all of my reserve not to run.

We walk across the lobby and the men who are able sit up straighter in their beds to watch me. When we arrive at Vadime, he gapes at me, as if he thinks I am not real.

“Vadime! Oh my God, Vadime.” I want to smother him with kisses. I want to wrap him in my arms. His one eye is covered by a thick black patch, but he's alive. I sit on the side of his bed and try my best not to be overcome. He takes my hands in his and squeezes tightly.

“Mata Hari, you came.”

The soldier leaves us to our privacy and I allow several tears to spill onto Vadime's pillow. “Of course. What did you think?”

“So few of us here get visitors. I've heard it is almost impossible to get a pass. How—”

“I'm here.” I put my finger to his lips. They're cracked and dry. “That's all that matters.”

Now he is the one who is weeping.

We sit like this, holding each other's hands in silence, sobbing quietly, until he asks me where I've come from.

“Paris. It's not the same though. You wouldn't recognize her now.”

“Nothing will be when this war is finished. All of Europe will be burning rubble.”

“Let's go to America,” I say.

Vadime tightens his grip. “Honestly?”

“Yes. New York. Look at these Americans.” I keep my voice low. “There's no war on American soil. They aren't starving in the streets. Look how healthy they are.”

“How? How can we get to New York?”

“I'll make all the arrangements,” I promise him.

“When?”

As soon as I have the money,
I think.

*    *    *

By the sixth of November I am in Madrid. I book a room at La Paz and recall Edouard in his silk evening gown, smoking cigars on the balcony of his room in this very hotel. I've made so many foolish mistakes in my life. But I will not be reckless or imprudent with Vadime.

I have saved every mark I received from Cramer. When Ladoux sends my payment, I will have enough money to support both of us in America. I will have enough capital to begin a new campaign to contact Non. I dare to dream that the three of us will be a family.

The leaves have started to turn on the trees, and I am pleased to learn that even this far south November still feels crisp. I worry about Vadime as I roam the streets of Madrid; I am so impatient to see him yet I must linger here for three weeks. That is when my papers will be ready, Commandant Ladoux will forward them to me, and I'll sail for Amsterdam. After that I should be only a short time in Belgium—it will not take me long to find a military man to charm secrets out of while we're in bed. I've promised Vadime I will be by his side at Christmas. A nurse has been reading the letters I've been
writing to him and sending me his replies; the notes are not penned in his hand, but I recognize his voice, his words. He promises he will wait for me. But God, the time passes slowly! I want to board that ship to Amsterdam and be done with all of this business. I am finished with my life in Europe, of this I have never been more certain.

*    *    *

The room I've been given on board ship is tiny: a bed, two chairs, a wooden table.

But I don't complain because I'm not truly present on this vessel; my heart is in a military hospital in Vittel. When I am not in my room writing to Vadime, I walk the deck taking the fresh air and keeping to myself. I am propping up my feet in the cozy reading room and writing to Vadime when I overhear another passenger say the ship is making a brief stop in England. I add this to my letter.

*    *    *

“You.” A British soldier is looking at me. “What is your name?”

As soon as the ship docked at Falmouth we passengers were instructed to gather at the muster station. Several uniformed men have boarded and demand to see our passports.

“You don't read the papers?” I say flirtatiously. I want to lighten the mood; the other passengers look grim.

“This is not the time to be flippant,” he warns. “Tell me your name.”

“My name is Mata Hari.”

He looks me up and down, then motions for the other men to come over. They confer in whispers, then one of them says, “Clara Benedix, you will be coming with us.”

I glance at the other passengers, wondering who Clara Benedix is and what she has done. Then I realize that he is addressing me.

“You are mistaken,” I say. “My name is Mata Hari.” The only Clara I've known was blonde and never had to worry over money. Her father rescued her from the Haanstra School for Girls after she agreed to marry the man he had chosen for her. “I am a dancer.”

“And I'm the queen of England,” he says. “You are coming with us.”

I look around at the other passengers, waiting for them to confirm my identity. They know who I am. They must. Not one of them says a word. “You can't take me off of this ship,” I say defiantly.

“We're not,” the officer replies. “We're taking you to your cabin.”

I sit on my bed while the soldiers search through my tiny cabin, tearing apart my luggage. One of the men leaves and returns with a woman. She has severe features and introduces herself as Janet Grant. She orders the men to leave.

“Thank you,” I tell her, vastly relieved. “This is ludicrous—”

“Strip.”

I think I've misheard. “I'm sorry, what did you say?”

“They tell me you claim to be Mata Hari. So this shouldn't be difficult for you—I said strip. That means remove your clothes. I am here to perform a body-cavity search.”

I do as she says and her hands explore every part of me. Not even Rudolph was able to make me feel so violated. When she's finished, she turns her back to let me dress.

“Why bother?” I snap, but my voice is shaking. “Why are you doing this to me?”

“This is my job.”

I have barely finished dressing when there's a knock at the door. Janet Grant opens it and I count six men in uniform.

“Miss Benedix,” one of them says, “we ask that you come with us.”

I am almost uncertain if I am awake or dreaming. “My name is Mata Hari and I—”

“We'll let Scotland Yard determine that.”

Despite my protests, I'm removed from the ship. The other passengers watch as six men escort me away like a wily criminal capable of executing an ingenious escape. They take me to a car waiting beyond the dock.

“Where are you taking me?”

“London,” one of the men says.

“I can't go there. I don't have the time to go there.”

No one listens.

“Do you hear me? Is anyone listening? I have somewhere else to be! It is important—”

“Tell that to investigators at Scotland Yard.”

The driver starts the car and when I see the railway station in the distance, I begin to panic. “You understand you're making a big mistake. No one in London is going to believe this. My photograph is in every newspaper!”

“Miss Benedix, it would be better for you if you simply stop ­talking.”

“I'm not Miss Benedix!” I say, ice in my voice.

I'm taken directly to Scotland Yard. I feel both humiliated and enraged. If I live to be a hundred, I will never set foot in England again.

Everyone turns to look at me as I'm marched through the building. Is it possible that not a single person—at Scotland Yard of all places!—can recognize me? I can't fathom the odds. It is absurd. Who is so removed from day-to-day news that they can't instantly spot that I'm not Miss Clara Benedix—whoever she is. I acknowledge the onlookers, imagining that any moment this charade will end. It must. But then we pass into a windowless hall and I am led to a cell that contains nothing but a single bed and a chair.