Mata Hari's Last Dance

by Michelle Moran

  “How does she look? How tall has she gotten?”

  “I am happy to see you so excited, M’greet. You deserve to be happy. I will ask for photographs. In the meanwhile, as we wait, you must earn. I’ve secured you a contract here in the city to dance as Salome at the Odéon.”

  “I danced Salome in Berlin. I thought I didn’t repeat performances?”

  “Let’s agree that you never repeat the same performance in the same country. This is France. And the pay is extraordinary.”

  “How much?”

  “Seventy thousand francs.”

  My God, that’s triple what the Rothschilds paid. It’s an absolute fortune.

  “But you will have to save everything, M’greet. These men I’ve contacted have the experience required, and they do not come cheap. This is a difficult case. It will cost.”

  “They are discreet—they won’t alert Rudolph, will they? If he finds out that I’m trying to get my little girl back . . .” I whisper the truth: “I’m afraid he’ll kill her.”

  I see in his expression that Edouard believes I’m being overly dramatic. I don’t want to dwell on Rudolph MacLeod. But I can still see him at the train station, gripping Non’s hand in his while I boarded, my face streaked with tears. “Because he told me he would.”

  Edouard takes my hands in his. “Rudolph MacLeod will have no inkling that he is being watched; my men are professionals.” There is steel in his voice as he says, “When the time is right, they will snatch your daughter from him and Jeanne Louise will be escorted safely out of The Netherlands so quickly that MacLeod’s head will spin. He will not be aware of anything unusual until after she’s gone, when he is powerless to do her any harm.”

  * * *

  I have revealed so much to Edouard about myself. But I have never told him that I found my husband through a personal ad. I was seventeen years old; I had no job and no money. Then I saw a paragraph in the paper:

  Captain from the Indies, passing his leave in Amsterdam, seeks a wife—preferably with a little money.

  I wrote to him immediately. We agreed to meet at the Rijksmuseum, in the glass-domed building that houses the museum’s military collection. I made my way to Amsterdam. I expected the city to have changed while I was gone, but as I walked along the narrow green canals and past the same brightly painted buildings, it became clear that the only thing that had changed was me. Was my brother, Johannes, still working in the same garment factory? All of my letters to him had gone unanswered. Perhaps the owners had kept them—perhaps he had never received my letters. I looked for signs along the canal that I should visit him, making little tests for the universe. If two ducks landed in the water before I reached the church, I would go and see him. Two ducks landed. I thought up another test. Then another. By the time I was finished I was standing in front of the dreary-looking building where my brother had been sent to work four years earlier. I mounted the steps and went inside. The chemical scent in the air was so strong I had to cover my nose with my hand.

  “May I help you?” a man asked. A manager of some sort. I could see by his suit.

  “I’m here to see a worker. Johannes Zelle.”

  “Stay here and I’ll get him.”

  I waited by two chairs and a very old couch. Beyond a pair of double wooden doors I could hear the sounds of a busy factory. Several minutes later the doors swung open and Johannes appeared. He lingered in the doorway for several moments. And when he finally spoke, all he had to say was, “Why are you here?”

  It was as if someone had stolen the air from my chest. “To see you,” I said. I knew I had changed, but I barely recognized him.

  He brushed his hands against his overalls. “So? Do you like what you see?”

  I moved forward to embrace him and he moved away.

  “Don’t. You’ll dirty your dress.”

  “Have you been getting my letters?”

  “About your hardships in Leyde? Your terrible time at school?”

  This wasn’t the boy who sat next to me in class and giggled at the teacher. Even Johannes’s voice was unrecognizable.

  “I didn’t feel like writing about my happy days soaking my hands in chemicals, dyeing women’s clothes. Or maybe you were hoping to hear how Ari enjoys the mill?”

  He turned to leave.

  “What about Cornelius?” I called after him.

  He stopped and turned. “He’s no happier than the rest of us.”

  “And Papa?”

  He covered his mouth with a dirty hand, as if he wanted to keep something truly vile from spilling out. “He has forgotten about us, M’greet. Take a lesson from him and forget about us as well.”

  * * *

  I met Captain Rudolph MacLeod in front of a glass case filled with rifles. He was tall and bald, with a white mustache and a sunburned face. He was holding a polished cane and looked old enough to be my father. But he wore the dazzling uniform of the Dutch colonial army.

  “Captain MacLeod?”

  “Lady Zelle.” I watched his face transform. He held out his hand. A bear paw. I felt the heat of tropical suns.

  “Please, call me M’greet.”

  We strolled arm in arm around the museum. I wondered what his house in Java looked like; I imagined bamboo floors and fans turning slowly on hot afternoons. With each step we took I left The Netherlands behind. When he asked for my hand, I’d known him for six days. We were married on July 11, 1895, in city hall. My wedding dress was yellow tulle. I bought it in the most elegant shop in Amsterdam. “In yellow, mademoiselle?” the French dressmaker questioned. “You can’t possibly desire yellow. Cream, perhaps?”

  “Yellow,” I insisted. Like saffron. And curry. And tropical suns.

  * * *

  Before I could leave Amsterdam behind, I climbed the seven steps to 148 Lange Leidschedwarsstraat and knocked. A blonde woman answered the door and I was surprised by how young she was, a thirty-year-old version of my mother, but not as pretty.

  “Is Adam Zelle here?” I could smell hutsput cooking. My mother made hutsput.

  “May I ask who’s calling?”

  “Tell him his daughter has arrived.”

  Her hand moved to her chest. “Daughter?”

  I wondered if he hadn’t told her, or if she simply believed I’d never intrude on his new life. I saw him in the kitchen and my chest constricted; he turned and I would have forgiven him anything at that moment. But then a terrible thought occurred to me. What if he wouldn’t let me in the door? What if he denied knowing me, his black orchid? “Look at her. Could a girl that dark belong to me? No, my children are lilies, pale as snow.”

  “Margaretha, you’ve come back!” He rushed over to embrace me but I backed away. I glanced at his wife as I said, “You were the one who left me. You left us all.”

  “No.” He shook his head. “No, come into the parlor.”

  I let myself be led into the parlor. I watched him. He was happy. No tears, no regret. He sat in a straight-backed chair, still the baron of Leeuwarden, now with a wife named Catherine. He sat forward in his chair. What had he been telling people all these years? That his children had abandoned him? That our mother had run off?

  His wife sat next to him, pulling her chair close to his.

  “I’m getting married,” I said, my voice flat. I couldn’t accept that he was married to another woman, letting her cook for him, sleep with him. Had she given him children?

  I held my purse tighter, watching my knuckles turn white on the clasp. “Will you give me permission to marry?”

  “Oh.” He sat back. “So is that what this is about? I thought you had come to visit.”

  A wave of anger swept over me. I felt a new M’greet blooming in place of the old, something darker. I stood, enraged. “Are you not the least bit curious to know what happened after you abandoned my mother? Aren’t
you interested to know why I was thrown out of Leyde’s school for teachers? I waited for you,” my voice was shrill. “In Leeuwarden, in Leyde, in The Hague. You never came! Where were you?”

  Catherine pulled a handkerchief from her pocket, giving it to me. I hadn’t even realized that I was crying. “It’s all right.”

  She patted my hand as if I were a child, making a fuss over nothing.

  What had he told her? That I had left? “Where are my brothers?” I demanded.

  My father hesitated. “In the factories. They’re doing well.”

  No one did well in the factories. Grief overwhelmed me. This was not the man I remembered. My father really was dead. “Do you give me permission to marry?” I asked, moving toward the door. My body felt like lead.

  My father hurried to his feet. “You’re not leaving?”

  I didn’t answer him.

  “Of course you can marry. As long as he comes to me to ask for your hand.”

  I stopped. He hadn’t cared what happened to me for years, and now he wanted a formal visit?

  “He must come to ask for your hand.” The idea was blossoming in his mind. He was thinking of all the fruit it could bear.

  My cheeks flushed. “How dare you ask this.” He was living in his own world. I wasn’t his daughter. I considered telling him about fending off the Walrus. How would he react when I told him that I’d had half a dozen men at the Grand Hotel? I wanted him to see what he’d created, to feel the sharp edges of my pain.

  “Margaretha,” Catherine interjected. “A formal proposal is only right.”

  I turned around, prepared to give her a lesson on what was right. But I stopped myself. A woman can’t marry in Amsterdam until she’s thirty without her father’s permission. It was either comply with my father’s wishes or lose a husband, and I wanted Java too much to lose Rudolph.

  I set my jaw, cursing him to hell. “Tomorrow, then.”

  Chapter 11

  A Girl's Private Laundry

  I’m changing my clothes after an exceptional opening night when Edouard lets himself into my dressing room at the Odéon. “Did you see the prince of Schwarzburg?” I ask. “He was in the second row tonight. I have to hurry. He’s waiting for me in the lobby.”

  I look up and notice Edouard’s face. It’s serious. He sits down across from my dressing table and I realize that he’s holding something. “M’greet, I want you to be calm.”

  Immediately, all calmness drains away. “Has something happened to Non? Has something happened to my daughter?”

  He holds up the book he’s carrying and I’m shocked. There’s a photo of me on the jacket. I am nine years old, dressed in a ridiculously expensive outfit my father had indulged me with. I remember the moment it was taken clearly: I was standing in front of Leeuwarden’s fountain, imagining I was a queen. It was summer and the air was heavy with jasmine blossoms.

  “Who found that photo?” I reach for the book but he pulls it back.

  “This book is going to make you very, very angry,” he warns me. “It’s a biography,” he says. “Of you. Written by your father.”

  Rage, white-hot, burns through my body. “You aren’t serious!” But he hands me the book and as I begin flipping through the pages I know that he is. “And what does he write about?” I demand, scanning the pages. “Does he apologize for abandoning me? For leaving my mother to die in Leeuwarden?”

  Edouard moves toward the door. “I’m sorry. I wanted you to hear about this from me, not read about it in the papers. I believe your friend ‘Bowtie’ is penning something about it.”

  As soon as he closes the door I start reading. The Life of Mata Hari: A Biography of My Daughter and My Grievances Against Her Former Husband. Page after page details my father’s flair for business, his former collection of art, his overall greatness that inevitably produced a person like me. In every chapter my father is the hero. I am a caricature and Rudolph is unrecognizable. My brothers are barely mentioned. And in my father’s version of our life, my mother never existed.

  * * *

  The next morning Bowtie finds me in the Ritz taking my coffee in a shady little nook far removed from everyone else. The man has the homing abilities of a pigeon. He makes for my table and I wish to God he would make a right turn and perch with someone else. But I know why he’s here. I might as well get it over with.

  “Mata Hari!” His sandy hair is slicked back beneath his fedora. There’s no Press card tucked inside the band today. He takes a seat and snaps for the waiter.

  “Good morning,” I tell him. I hope it’s obvious from my voice that I don’t mean it.

  “It’s always a good morning, Mata Hari. If you’re walking and breathing, it’s good.” The waiter arrives and he orders a coffee. “Another?” he asks me.

  “No.”

  “You just opened a new show. No rehearsals today?”

  “Not until next week.”

  He nods. Then the coffee arrives and he’s all business. “So.” He takes a sip. “Is it true? Everything your father wrote about you?”

  I don’t have it in me to play the fool. “Of course not. It’s trash.”

  “Doesn’t matter, though, does it? Thousands of people will read his book. They’ll read it and they’ll be shocked.” He straightens his bow tie; today it’s deep magenta. “Is there anything you’d like to tell them? I’m offering you the chance.”

  There is tenderness in his voice. He’s waiting for me to speak, his boyish face tilted to the side. He’s exceedingly good-looking. I’m sure he has his pick of women wherever he goes. Or perhaps men. “Yes, there’s something I’d like to say.”

  He takes a pen from behind his ear and sits forward, ready to write.

  “Tell them that my father is—”

  “Delusional?” he offers. “That you were born in India, not Caminghastate?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what about your husband? Is any of that true?”

  “I’d rather not speak about it.”

  “But you do have a daughter?”

  “I can’t talk—” My voice breaks. If Rudolph reads my father’s horrible book, what will he do to Non? Will he take his rage out on her? Tears trail down my cheeks and I feel myself shaking. Bowtie offers me his handkerchief. I press it against my eyes. “Please,” I say. “She’s only a little girl. If my ex-husband reads this book—”

  “Are you afraid of him?”

  “Yes.”

  He shuts his notepad immediately. “Thank you,” he says. He stands, leaving his coffee unfinished.

  The next day in Le Figaro I am the headline again: BETRAYED: JEALOUS AND DELUSIONAL FATHER WRITES FALSE BIOGRAPHY OF THE FAMOUS MATA HARI.

  I am so grateful to Bowtie I could kiss him.

  If only Rudolph reads this article and not my father’s book.

  * * *

  “An orchid among buttercups.”

  His voice is just as I remember it. I turn from my dressing table and there he is. After pruning the garden of my life, up pops a weed.

  “M’greet,” my father says. “My God, look at you!”

  He rushes to me, clasping me in his arms, holding me as if we’ve been apart for too long. He is such a convincing performer I find myself thinking, Has he finally come to apologize?

  Then he steps back and makes an imaginary toast. “To your success, Margaretha.” He leans forward, hat in his hand. It is expensive, a Wolthausen. I can smell alcohol on him. There is a knock on the door.

  “Come in,” I call automatically, my eyes fixed on the man who deserted me.

  “M’greet, I—”

  It’s Edouard. Thank God.

  My father bounds over to him, extending his hand. “Adam Zelle,” he says. “Margaretha’s father. You must be her director. My M’greet, the star. Did she tell you she was born in Camingha
state?”

  “Papa,” I whisper.

  “The world deserves to know! That’s why I’ve written a book about you.”

  I could kill him.

  My father looks between me and Edouard, sensing tension. “Don’t you think I deserve a little of the success I helped you achieve?” he asks, belligerence creeping into his voice. He makes his way over to a table and picks through some crackers and cheese.

  I’ve had enough. I don’t remember my wedding ceremony beyond recalling that it was short, hot, and full of people I didn’t know. But I do remember the banquet we held afterward, at the Café Americain. My father and a dozen of his friends were there, all men from the bottle factory dressed in suits that had fit them better twenty years earlier. It didn’t surprise me that he would miss the ceremony and bring his own guests for the food, but I was ashamed that Rudolph’s family had to witness it. I saw myself through their eyes, a harlot in yellow, a girl who answers ads in newspapers. They didn’t know the beautiful house my family once owned, the servants we’d hired, the fountains that had trickled musically on our lawns. They didn’t know the man my father once was. They only saw poverty masquerading as wealth, marrying into it, and I couldn’t blame them for hating me.

  I stand swiftly. “Edouard, please. Get him out of here.”

  I hear them on the stairs, in the street—my father, my knight in shining armor, reduced now to a little man making a scene.

  * * *

  The next night the owner of the Odéon is in the doorway of my dressing room, his mouth tight. “You will encore.”

  “I will not!” I fling my brush across the room, watch it smack into the wall with a satisfying thud. “I encored twice yesterday and three times the day before. I’m done tonight. I’m done for every other night. No more encores.” I grab my cloak and slam the door behind me. In the cold December street, I can still hear the crowd in the theater, chanting Mata Hari! Mata Hari!