Signed, Mata Hari

by Yannick Murphy

  There were no tricks within the folds of her habit, no convinc-ing Scripture in her worn leather Bible that could set the woman free. All that she could think of to tell her was that Bouchardon was a smart man, a very smart man, and that he would know if Mata Hari were withholding anything. Are you keeping information from him? Sister Leonide asked.

  There are some things he won’t understand and so I cannot tell him, Mata Hari said. If I let certain words come from my mouth, they will act like a boomerang, only not made of ivory or wood, but made of sharpened metal blades, and the words will come back for me, straight for my throat. I’m afraid my own 1 2 8

  S I G N E D , M

  ... A T A H A R I

  words will kill me, you see, dear Sister. I dare not tell. You understand, don’t you?

  Sister Leonide shook her head and then smiled. God bless you, she said before she left.

  I didn’t sneeze. Stop smiling your nun’s smile. Give me the cleaning lady’s smile instead, said Mata Hari.

  1 2 9

  ...

  B OT H M OT H E R A N D FAT H E R

  THE NEXT MORNING, Dr. VanVoort and I took a walk together in the coffee field, passing leaves freshly torn whose wet fibers stained our clothes with green streaks. We walked to the edge of the field where the forest began and found bowls of rice that the workers had left as gifts for the evil spirits that had brought the wind so that they would not bring it again. Then we picked up the woven baskets for collecting the coffee cherries, which were lying on their sides in the coffee rows, and we were stacking them when a worker came with a note that he handed to Dr. VanVoort, who handed it to me. It was from Non, a get-well card, a pencil drawing of what seemed to be an endless swirl of concentric circles that I stared at for a while and then held tightly high above the staining leaves of the plants until I got back to the room I was staying in and I hung it on the wall with a pin I had found from a sewing box in a drawer by my bed.

  While Dr. VanVoort threaded dry leaves through the thatch roof that had come loose in the wind, I sat in a chair out in the field and drew a sketch for Non of what was around me. I sketched the hillside and the coffee plants and the hut. When Dr.

  VanVoort came and looked over my shoulder, he asked, Where am I in the picture? And I told him that if MacLeod were to see 1 3 0

  S I G N E D , M

  ... A T A H A R I

  him in the picture, he might put two and two together and that was a four I did not want to have to explain. If MacLeod found out about Dr. VanVoort, he might never let me see Non again.

  He might think that because we had only one child left that he could take care of Non by himself. Wouldn’t it be easy, he might say to himself, being both mother and father?

  1 3 1

  ...

  K N E E - D E E P I N W I N D C H I L L

  DR. V ANV OORT THOUGHT of ways to keep her at the plantation.

  Standard incubation was three weeks. He had only a few days left with her. Lie down, he told her. She lay facedown and he felt along her spine and applied pressure to her left and right kidneys, searching for a swollen spleen or organ, any excuse to keep her by his side a little bit longer. But her spleen was not swollen and neither were her kidneys, and examining her and feeling her soft flesh and the curve of her thin waist as it widened to the bones of her hips only made him excited and he turned her over and lay down next to her on his side and started an examination he said she had to endure with her eyes closed. So she did and he slid his hand to her groin and let his thumb find her third eye while his fingers reached deep inside her so that when he was ready to enter her she was so wet that his penis slipped in easily and her orgasm came quickly and then his followed. Afterward he stayed inside her until his penis was once again erect and this time he moved slowly, keeping a rhythm he felt he could keep up forever and that he did keep up even long after he had heard the voices of the workers calling down the rows of the coffee plants to one another, telling one another it was time to stop work and go home.

  1 3 2

  S I G N E D , M

  ... A T A H A R I

  It was a night neither of them slept. They stayed in each other’s arms and watched the moon out the window and the ghost birds flying by, blocking out and then letting in the light of the moon, and Dr. VanVoort talked about what they would do, what could they do? And she smoked another one of his cigarettes and said they were a good bad habit to have and he told her he wished she would work with him on a plan and she told him there was no plan. She didn’t like plans, she told him, they reminded her of promises, of things that could never be kept. Plans are too often wrecked or foiled, she said. And that being married to MacLeod meant there could be no plans except the plan to stay alive, and that was a feat in itself.

  Dr. VanVoort said he’d be willing to give it all up, and he waved toward the window, meaning his successful coffee plantation, and he said he would take her back to Holland on the next boat out. She pictured herself knee-deep in windchill, muffled and gloved and shod with skates, sailing on ice down the canals with the doctor, red-nosed at her side.

  She told him they had to be thankful for the time they had together.

  Tripe, that’s just tripe, he said, you’ll make me colic if you keep talking rot like that, and he got up from the bed and went to the window, but a moment later he came back to her in bed and put his face close to hers and smelled the rosewater she had used earlier to rinse through her hair.

  1 3 3

  ...

  A K N O C K AT T H E D O O R

  IF YOU DON’T want to become a spy, you can go to the consul of the country you don’t want to spy for and tell him, I would like to become a spy. This will result in a brush-off and find you quite possibly on the next scheduled embarkation without any further fanfare back to your native country. But if you are indeed inclined to become a spy, you can tell the government representative of the country that wants you to spy for it and that has sought you out in the dark of the night, knocked on your door, and made you receive him in your see-through dressing gown and silk kimono, that you will spy. But if the representative gives you money and a number of vials with secret inks, you must, the next day, pour the liquid contents of the vials into the slow-moving green water beneath you as you stand on a bridge over a canal. After all, the country the representative is from once held for inspection your traveling trunks on a train from the Swiss Alps to France and lost them and they were filled with ankle-length furs made from beaver and mink and worth more than all the money you made for ten years dancing in breastplates and tights and sporting a veil.

  Lucky for you, they were gifts from men whose wallets were fat and matched their waistbands and whose belts were so long that when pulled from their loops resembled in length some of the 1 3 4

  S I G N E D , M

  ... A T A H A R I

  pythons you had seen in the jungles of Java. At least you could say to yourself, when you kept that certain country’s money that it paid you for your services as a spy, that the score was now even for the furs that they detained and that you haven’t had the chance to wrap around your shoulders or feel softly brushing against your ankles since.

  1 3 5

  ...

  A R E M A R K A B L E R E COV E RY

  DR. V ANV OORT SLEPT IN the next morning, and when he awoke she was gone. He went out to the field, searching for her, but she was not there as she had been the last time when he watched her dance for the moon. This time it was only the workers who stood in the field, hunched over with cloths wrapped around their heads to soak up their sweat and their backs curved in the shape of cup handles as they picked the cherry clusters from the vine.

  He called for her and workers looked up and held their hands above their eyes so they could see him in the bright sunlight. He was walking in and out of the hut, still calling her name, and then he walked a few steps in the direction of the forest, and then stopped and turned, and walked a few steps down the road and then stopped when
a worker, still with his back stooped from picking cherry clusters, came to him to tell him that he saw Mata Hari leaving at sunrise. At first it was so misty that the worker did not know who it was. He thought it was the spirit of the forest come to shroud him in his hoary arms and carry him away, but then he realized it was she when she said, Selamat pagi, and so he replied good morning back to her as well before she disappeared down the road.

  You let her go? asked Dr. VanVoort, and the worker, with 1 3 6

  S I G N E D , M

  ... A T A H A R I

  his head down, nodded, and Dr. VanVoort yelled and told the worker how dangerous that was, just to let a patient get up and go when her illness could easily take a turn for the worse, and Dr.

  VanVoort, while he was yelling, knew that he was yelling because he was angry that she had left him and that clinically she had made a full and remarkable recovery.

  1 3 7

  ...

  S I N DA N G L A J A

  WHEN I WALKED into my home, MacLeod wasn’t there, and Hijau, because she was stooped and could not lift her head up, had to study my feet for a moment before recognizing me. Non, though, ran into my arms and asked if I had received her card and I told her that I brought it back with me and that I would keep it forever and ever because it reminded me of the water spouts that would sometimes form over the sea. There was a moment when my eyes searched the room and my ears were listening for the signs of Norman and that maybe, really, my illness was a long sort of dream and that Norman’s death was a part of that dream. But he did not come running out to see me or show me a new wayang kulit puppet of his, and so I went into their room and the faint smell of their putrid vomit from when they had been poisoned still seemed to linger, held in secret places, in the bamboo window shades where spaces could be seen between the lengths of wood where natural knots prevented tight seals and daylight hovered there. Or it lurked in a mirror’s carved frame, wooden roses holding the smell in buds or stored beneath the raised mahogany lips of fluted petals and leaves on climbing vines. The truth rushed back at me with the smell, and I staggered and Hijau had me lean on her and I wondered if all her 1 3 8

  S I G N E D , M

  ... A T A H A R I

  strength was somehow stored in that hump on her back, because she was able to lead me to my room, bearing most of my weight, and she lay me on the bed and lifted my feet and placed a pillow under my knees.

  When MacLeod did come home he stood below the balcony

  and yelled up to me, asking if whatever the hell illness I had was still catching and I told him of course not and he nodded and then he came in through the front door.

  While you were gone, I retired. I no longer work, he said when he came up the stairs.

  Retired? I thought. How awful. If MacLeod were retired, then wouldn’t I, in effect, be retired too?

  MacLeod went on, There’s a house in Sindanglaja, high up in the hills. The damn heat will leave me alone there and it’s cheap, cheaper than this place. I’ll hire a tutor for Non, she won’t lack for anything.

  But I would lack for things for myself, I thought. I would lack for people my own age to talk with. I would lack for things to do.

  Sindanglaja was far away from anything. It was far away from the sea and far away from Dr. VanVoort and that, I thought, might be a good thing, but still, a part of me wanted to be close to him.

  I liked how he would talk about going back to Europe and taking me with him. Maybe what I liked most was when he talked about Europe and I imagined myself there, walking the streets crowded with people and quickening my step, changing from my slow step here, where you had to walk carefully, there were roots of trees carpeting the forest floor, there was the heat you had to listen to, it was always hanging above your head, telling you to slow down, but not in Europe. In Europe, I imagined, there was nothing to trip you on the smooth sidewalk, polished by people, 1 3 9

  Y a n n i c k

  ... M u r p h y

  the weight of them making smooth the stone beneath their heels.

  The heat did not hang close to your ear there, but instead there were winds off rivers, blowing by, hurrying you along.

  The move to Sindanglaja had already been organized by

  MacLeod before he had even told me he was thinking of going there. The next morning movers came to our house and took our furniture. They were not going to move it to the new house in Sindanglaja, that would have been too expensive. MacLeod had already sold the furniture and the movers had come to deliver it to the new owners. I watched them take Norman’s small bed from the children’s room, and even a box of his toys had been sold. Sticking out of the box was one of his wayang kulit puppets, its head bent backward unnaturally as if its wooden throat had been slit and it was now facing up to the sky. I grabbed it from the box. It was the one thing I wanted to keep that belonged to my boy.

  1 4 0

  ...

  S E A S H E L L A I R

  THE M ATA H ARI CIGARETTE was advertised as the newest Indian cigarette, satisfying to the most refined taste and made from the best Sumatran and choice Turkish tobacco. One guilder bought a package of one hundred cigarettes.

  Dr. Bizard brought a package to her cell. On the package was a dancer who was dressed in a veil, the way Mata Hari dressed for her performances. She offered a cigarette to Dr. Bizard and he lit it and also a cigarette for her from the flame coming from the gaslight. He kept his cigarette hanging from the corner of his lip as he held his stethoscope to her chest, and she shrank back, the metal sound receiver was that cold. The weather had grown bitter. Dr. Bizard apologized. He pulled back the stethoscope and brought it inside his jacket and held it in the pit of his arm beneath his shirt in order to warm it up. After a moment, he said, There, that should do it, and he put the sound receiver back on her chest. Better now? he said.

  It’s burning me, she answered.

  Oh, come on now, Dr. Bizard said, it’s just metal.

  It’s too hot! Mata Hari yelled, and she grabbed the rubber tube of the stethoscope and tore it away from her chest. The force with which she did it pulled one of the earpieces of the 1 4 1

  Y a n n i c k

  ... M u r p h y

  stethoscope out of Dr. Bizard’s ear and for a moment all he heard was the whooshing sound of quiet air, seashell air, he thought to himself. Ash, too, had fallen to the cot from his cigarette still in his mouth, and he brushed it off and onto the floor. He put his stethoscope back into his bag and then finished his cigarette, blowing the smoke away from her, up toward the direction of the gaslight, where it haloed the flame.

  Why don’t you dance for me again? he asked her. I think that will make you feel better, he said. There seems to be nothing in my bag that can make you feel better.

  She slid Dr. Bizard’s woolen scarf from his neck and used it as a veil to show him the veil dance. She did not stay at one end of the cell, as if that were the stage, but instead she circled around Dr. Bizard while she danced, as if, he thought, he were on the stage with her, some sort of prop, an ancient column perhaps, covered in climbing vines, hanging with huge tropical flowers, the petals ribboned with veins larger than those even on the backs of his middle-aged hands. When she was done she laughed a small laugh and said, My arms are weak, they hurt now from having so long not held them up high for longer than it takes me to run a comb through my hair.

  1 4 2

  ...

  T H E B U TC H E R B I R D

  IF YOU WANT to be a dancer, practice for hours holding your arms up high, your hands above your head. Walk that way down the street, sleep that way at night, ride your horse that way, read the paper that way, the paper, of course, spread out on a table.

  Shake your head at the terrible news printed that day: 144,000

  French killed to date. When the zeppelin ships sail overhead and drop their bombs, maintain your pose. You are a dancer.

  Simply shake your hands of the dust and plaster chips that have fallen down from the cracks newly
made in the ceiling. Try not to miss opportunities. Think about incorporating this hand-shaking movement into one of your dances. Sometimes you cannot help yourself, you admire a beautiful horse in a photograph in the paper a German general rides. Remember you must hate the Germans now.

  What makes the pigeon fly off the window ledge is not

  Bouchardon so close to it tapping on the window glass, but your laughter that fills the room. It is like a man’s laughter, it shakes the window glass, it heads up toward the ceiling, it causes a pain in the muscles of your abdomen. Call the doctor, you say, laughing even harder. Tears sit in your eyes. You stamp your foot. You are laughing so hard that the tears come loose from their pooled 1 4 3

  Y a n n i c k

  ... M u r p h y

  place in your eyes and run down your face. Charles, not sure what the stamping sound is from where he stands outside the door, opens the door to Bouchardon’s office even though Bouchardon had not asked him to come in.

  Is everything all right, sir? he asks, the tomahawk swinging itself up and down inside his throat with every word.

  Come in! you almost shriek. Join the fun. Why stand outside the door and be clueless to the merriment. Bouchardon, you say, Bouchardon thinks I went to a school for spies. Spy school! you say, laughing. Then Bouchardon nods to Charles, a motion to take you away, and Charles helps you out of the chair while you are saying, Imagine, me taking notes, learning from a teacher how to be a spy. Was there a lesson on disguises? Did I wear a fake moustache? you say, turning to ask Bouchardon, but he isn’t looking up at you, he is looking at his desk, closing your file.

  Charles, you think, is impressed. Your laughter continues down the halls. He feels as if he is escorting one of his drinking friends home from a bar late at night, rather than a woman prisoner back to her cell. There is something he notices that is different about your cell this time. Instead of seeming empty like the other women’s cells with just their cot and washbasin to fill the room, your room, he realizes, is filled by the sound of your loud laughter, reaching, he imagines, in between the cracks in the stone walls, your breath a kind of mortar, seeping through and filling the gaps with the warm exhalations of your mirth.