Mata Hari's Last Dance

by Michelle Moran

  “Wonderful. I’ll take two.”

  Purses, scarves, silk blouses, cashmere shawls. Everything comes home with me that day. I’m never supposed to repeat an outfit twice. Isn’t that what Edouard said? And now I’m one of the fashionable women in Paris. Bowtie thinks so, and the admiring gazes of other women tell me he’s right. The next morning I do it all over again. That afternoon I make a purchase I’ve been longing for since the day Edouard arrived at my vile little apartment in Montmartre: I buy my own car. A blue Renault. Louis Renault himself drives it home for me when I tell him that I will be finding a chauffeur, since I don’t know how to drive. I slide into the passenger seat and enjoy the stares of the people we pass. The blue of the car is bright, electric. He parks in front of my apartment and when my neighbors see Louis hand me the keys, I feel absolutely giddy.

  * * *

  La Cigale is filled to capacity. I drop my veils and men rush the stage, flashbulbs popping as women take out binoculars. It’s a stupendous opening.

  A little mustached man crowds the door to my dressing room after the performance, trembling with rage. “It is illegal in this city to perform in the nude,” he threatens. “I can have you arrested!”

  “But you won’t.”

  He draws himself up to full height. “I am Sergeant Bouchardon, the head of the French—”

  I hold up my hand. “Take your concerns to my lawyer, Edouard Clunet.”

  His face turns red. I watch it in the mirror. “I will have you arrested—”

  “But you won’t, monsieur. If you do, your superiors will be most displeased.”

  As if on cue the chief of police appears, so handsome in his uniform that I catch my breath. His sergeant cannot leave quickly enough.

  * * *

  People now recognize me wherever I go. At Longchamp, at Maxim’s, even on the Champs-Élysées they call out, “Mata Hari!” The public loves me, but Edouard is still angry. He doesn’t visit me for the entire three-week run of Samson and Delilah. Just as I start to think that maybe I don’t need him anymore, horrible news comes and he is the only person I want to speak with. I go to his office in tears, my makeup running in dark lines down my face. When his secretary sees me, she actually recoils.

  “Where is Edouard?”

  “Upstairs. But ma’am—”

  I go to his office and fall into his leather chair. “He’s divorcing me.”

  Edouard gets up quickly and shuts the door, a quiet click. He hands me a handkerchief and I wipe my eyes. Then I weep into the handkerchief.

  Edouard waits. When he speaks, his voice is calming. “Who is divorcing you, M’greet?”

  “My husband. I hate him. I left him. He was a captain. In the army.”

  “The Dutch army?”

  I nod.

  Edouard lets me cry, trying to piece the puzzle together in his mind. “On what grounds, M’greet?”

  It is too much to bear. “Adultery and debauchery.”

  His eyes go wide as I hiccup into the handkerchief.

  “He’s the one responsible for the death of our son and now he’s calling me debauched.” I can’t bear it. The memories are actually cutting me open. “Oh God, Edouard, what should I do?”

  “Nothing.”

  I think I must have misheard him and look up. “What?”

  “You say you hate him. Do you want to be independent of him?”

  “I already am! But Edouard—”

  “Why didn’t you tell me you were married?” He stands and I can see the hurt in his eyes. “You had a son?”

  “Norman John.” Edouard’s office is suddenly oppressive. “I need air.”

  He opens a window. “M’greet—”

  I hold up my hand. “Don’t ask me to tell you any more. I can’t.”

  “I could have had you divorced in a day.”

  “I didn’t think I needed it. We were living separately. I never considered he’d find another wife. I wish he was dead.” I bury my head in my hands. Of course Rudolph was going to divorce me. Why didn’t I see it? “And now my daughter—”

  “You have a living daughter?”

  I whisper her name. “Jeanne Louise.” I miss her so much I can’t bear it. Sometimes, I imagine I see her in the street, so much bigger and yet still my sweet girl—but of course it’s always someone else’s child. For a moment I thought I saw her in Berlin. “I never wanted to leave her. But Rudolph said he’d kill us both if I tried to take her. And he would have killed me if I’d stayed.”

  For several moments, Edouard is silent. “M’greet, how much money do you have? Can you live for the rest of your life on what you’ve earned?”

  “Never.” I wipe my eyes. “Why?”

  “It’s possible to get your daughter away from your husband. But you need money. A great deal of it. Forget your goddamn furs and trinkets. I know people who handle this kind of thing. Recovering the girl is one hurdle. You also need to be granted custody, and to do that you need to prove that you can provide stability.”

  “Edouard—”

  “Tell me about your daughter.”

  I dab at my eyes with the sleeve of my dress. “I called her Non.” My chin begins to tremble. “It means little girl. I don’t know where to start—”

  “At the beginning.”

  “On the morning of my mother’s funeral, then. I was thirteen years old.”

  If he is surprised at the start of my tale, his face doesn’t betray him.

  “My two aunts arrived—my mother’s sisters. They weren’t close to our family. I couldn’t remember meeting them before. They were strangers to me. And all they had to say about me was, ‘Look how dark she is,’ and ‘So tall.’ ”

  “Your father was still alive then?”

  “My father had deserted us. I thought he would come back as soon as he had word that his wife had died and his children were alone; I asked my aunts about him and my Aunt Mina told me that he was kloten.” I whisper the word.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Good-for-nothing. ‘You are an orphan,’ she said. She told me that she was willing to take my brothers. But they didn’t want me. Boys go to factories and collect paychecks. But a girl is a burden.”

  “You had no other relatives?”

  “An aunt on my father’s side in The Hague. I asked about her and they pointed out that if she couldn’t afford to attend a funeral, then she certainly couldn’t afford an extra mouth.”

  “So where did you go?”

  “A school for teachers. They put me on a train with my aunt’s husband. He was in his thirties and owned a shoe shop. They had the means to take me in.”

  Edouard is shaking his head. “One isn’t always blessed with relatives,” he observes.

  “On the way to Leyde,” I say, “my uncle told me that the city was as old as The Netherlands herself. Beautiful. He thought I’d like it there. When I arrived, I was still dressed in the mourning clothes I’d worn to my mother’s funeral.”

  “M’greet—”

  He pities me. He sees me as pathetic Margaretha Zelle now, the girl whose father abandoned her. Whose entire family refused to take her in. “That was the last time I saw him.” But I correct myself. “The last time I saw any member of my mother’s family.”

  “That’s a terrible story.”

  “Everything that happened after my mother died was terrible.” I don’t know why I’m exposing myself to him, laying everything in front of him like an offering. I blink quickly so I won’t start to cry again.

  “M’greet, you are going to get Non back.”

  “It’s impossible—”

  “Listen carefully to me.” I have never seen his face look so serious. “First, we will find out exactly where she is. Where she lives, what school she attends, where she goes to church. During this time—and this
is going to take time—you are going to save your money. I will make calls and we will gather information. But after that we will need to secure someone trustworthy who is willing to take her away from her father and out of The Netherlands. That requires a great deal of money. More importantly, M’greet—and this is the part you must understand—it takes additional time. From this point forward, there are to be no more frivolous purchases and lunches at Maxim’s unless someone else is paying the bill.”

  I am nodding. “Of course. Yes.”

  “We can do this. We can bring your daughter to live with you, here, in Paris.”

  * * *

  Back in my apartment I can’t sleep. I’m excited and happy, yet I can’t keep my mind from digging through the past. I was so young. Leyde had felt so big: three churches, two dozen shops, canals that were wider than any in Leeuwarden. My uncle had put me in a carriage alone and the ride to the school had seemed endless. When at last the driver stopped at a coffee-colored building, I couldn’t move, I could barely breathe. I just stared out the window as he took down my luggage and watched the cobbled streets until the tears in my eyes turned them into a sea of raised bruises.

  Chapter 10

  The Haanstra School for Girls

  The next morning, sitting in the warm sunshine outside of the café Les Deux Magots, I tell Edouard everything. The light is ­extraordinary—soft and bright and perfectly golden. I see it, but I don’t feel it; in my mind I’m in Leyde and the weather is dark and ominous, threatening rain.

  “The Haanstra School for Girls was where I learned to reinvent myself,” I say quietly. I think of the director, Heer Haanstra. A large sweaty man with fleshy jowls. His long mustache looked like two ivory tusks. I thought of him as the “Walrus.” On my arrival, he studied me, trying to make out the shape of my body beneath my mourning dress. And although my aunt had telegrammed in advance, he gave me the impression that he was unaware that I was meant to join his school. “I was afraid that if I didn’t impress him, he would put me out in a strange city, so I told him I was born in Caminghastate.”

  Edouard frowns.

  “It was a game my father and I used to play: Papa would pretend that I was born in the castle, to nobility. That we both had power and status.”

  “Your father taught you this?”

  “My father was full of dreams. I loved them, once.”

  I think of how my father used to call me his Scarlet Princess and how, on my sixth birthday, he built me a miniature bokkenwagen. He painted it red and bought two goats and two shiny gold ­harnesses to pull it. My whole family stood outside to watch as I flipped the reins and the goats took off, charging out the arched gates of 28 Groote Kerkstraat. “Before he abandoned us, he owned a shop that sold the finest hats in Leeuwarden.” Edouard is nodding and I wonder if he can see it the way I can. The largest shop on the nicest street in town. “But the September when I was thirteen,” I say, “he invested in the stock market. By that November we had nothing.”

  “And then your mother passed away.”

  “Yes. She died of a broken heart.” And so, I think, did Margaretha Zelle. “I was sent to Leyde and—reluctantly—the school’s director agreed to take me on.”

  I’d followed him down a whitewashed hall and my heart beat so loud I could hear it in my ears. There were children crying and little boys chasing after girls with paint on their hands. He took me to a room with fifteen beds. White sheets, white walls, white curtains. As if the school wanted the history of their girls whitewashed right out of them. He told me to put my things away and that I could join the other girls for dinner. “I owned so few things that they fit into an overnight bag. I had the outfit I was wearing, a worn birthday dress, a photo of my family, and a silk scarf my father brought me from the Indies.”

  “And you think buying things now will make up for that time of deprivation.”

  I stare across my coffee at Edouard.

  “It’s not unusual,” he says softly. “You’re not the first and you won’t be the last. But all the spending in the world—it can’t bring your family back.”

  “No.” And it can’t change the past, I think. As soon as the Walrus disappeared the other girls came upstairs to change out of one black dress into another.

  “What’s your name?” one asked. She had porcelain blue eyes and soft blonde ringlets. A daughter my aunts could have loved.

  “Margaretha Zelle. But I am called M’greet.”

  “Adda Groot. Nice to make your acquaintance, M’greet. Have you met Mrs. Van Tassel yet?”

  “Who is Mrs. Van Tassel?”

  “She’s the one who trains us.” She looks me up and down. “She doesn’t like girls who are untidy or idiots.” She leans closer and speaks in my ear, “That’s why she doesn’t like Hendrika Ostrander.” Adda nods slightly, indicating a heavyset girl across the room who is wearing a dirty cap. “They get the worst jobs.”

  I don’t want to ask, but I have to know. “What are the worst jobs?”

  “Washing down the toilets,” she says, without hesitation. She grimaces. “After twenty-five children have used them.” Then she says, “Most of us have been here for two years, except for her.” She flicks her eyes to a girl at the very far end of the room. “Clara’s only been here for three months. She didn’t like the man her parents wanted her to marry, so she was sent here. As punishment.”

  If my aunts had found me a husband, I’d have married him. No matter who he was.

  “Did the other girls treat you well?” Edouard asks. “Were they welcoming to you?”

  I think back. “They were. I wanted them to like me—I wanted to impress them. I told them I was born in Caminghastate and that my mother had died giving birth to me. That one day my beloved papa and I were out riding when he grabbed his chest and collapsed. The doctors did everything they could, but he was gone. The last part was true, at least.”

  Edouard looks sad and I’m not sure if it’s me he pities or my lies. “How did you explain your poverty to them?”

  “I told them that men came after my father died and took everything away. The paintings, the silver, the china. I said that there were debts that had to be paid off. The tale wasn’t so different from the real reasons some of the other girls were there. Adda’s mother was widowed and could no longer afford her. Adda’s dearest hope was to get married. Another girl, Naatje, wanted to travel the world. Whenever she and I talked, I conjured all of the faraway locations I’d dreamed or read about with my father. I reminisced about the Indies, France, England. I was poor but my stories lifted us all out of that awful school. Some days we were able to forget we were there, in service, unlikely to ever get married and have children of our own.”

  “Your father was alive. Did he ever try to contact you?”

  “No. I wrote to him. I described the school and what my life had become and I believed he would collect me and my brothers and bring us all home.”

  “How many brothers?”

  “Three. Ari, Cornelius, and Johannes. For months and months I held on to the dream of my father’s return. It became a precious gem, one I polished into different visions of reality. Outside of my fantasies, every day was the same: up at six, greet the children at seven, read to them for an hour, take them for a walk. Paint with them. Take them to lunch. Nap time. Clean up after them as they sleep. Songs followed by more stories. Then the children go home. Then preparing for the following day. Then dinner.” It was an endless cycle: endless whining, endless crying, endless runny noses. The school said it was good for children to have fresh air. No matter the weather. I didn’t have a warm coat.”

  “And now you have half a dozen furs.”

  I see what he’s implying. He’s suggesting my outrageous spending is related to my wretched past. “There are times when it’s very cold here,” I say defensively.

  “And your father . . . He never came for you?�
�

  “Of course not.”

  A waiter comes and asks if I would like a second cup of coffee. Edouard isn’t halfway through with his first. I tell him yes. Then I close my eyes briefly and concentrate on the warm scent of spring. I hear the bells ringing at St.-Germain-des-Prés and am instantly reminded of my church days in Leyde.

  “The newest girl always sits next to me,” the Walrus said the first Sunday I arrived. But there wasn’t any room for him in the pew where I was seated. He hooked his thumbs around his suspenders and stared at Naatje, who was sitting next to me.

  “I’m sure we are as tightly packed as we can be,” our head instructor, Mrs. Van Tassel, said primly.

  “Did your family take you to church often?” the Walrus asked me, ignoring Van Tassel.

  “Every Sunday,” I told him. I didn’t like the way he focused on me. He was paying me too much attention, often following me during school hours. He squeezed my shoulders. “A good girl,” he said, and sat behind me.

  Naatje narrowed her eyes and Mrs. Van Tassel hissed in my ear, “This is church, Miss Zelle. I suggest you stop encouraging him.”

  I looked at the headmistress with her gray hair wrapped tightly in a small, neat bun, and I was mute with outrage. The preacher was talking about Jonah’s sins and I was thinking that if there was a God, he would have sent my father already. He would have told my brothers to answer my letters. I had already written to them five times. As I knelt to pray I could feel the Walrus’s heavy breath on my neck.

  “I’m sorry to learn that your father behaved so terribly toward you,” Edouard says, interrupting my thoughts, and I’m in Paris again, not Leyde. I’m safe in Les Deux Magots. “I have some news that I hope will make you very happy. I’ve made contact with several men in Amsterdam. They will help us get your daughter, Jeanne Louise.”

  My hands knock into my empty coffee cup and it shatters on the ground. “When? How?” A waiter hurries over to clean it up. Non. My tiny angel, Non. Or maybe not so tiny. She was six years old when I left her.

  “The when remains to be seen. We must be patient. As for the how, we have verified that she is still in The Netherlands and still living with Rudolph MacLeod. My men are observing his daily routines and her daily habits. As I’ve told you, getting a child out of a foreign country requires a great deal of planning and coordination.”