Signed, Mata Hari

by Yannick Murphy

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  S H E I S

  ANNA L INTJENS went and pawned the emerald ring. The dealer held his eyepiece so long to his eye and fingered the ring in his hand, looking at it so long that Anna Lintjens was beginning to worry that it was fake. Finally, he put down his eyepiece and handed Anna Lintjens more money than she had ever held in her hand at one time. The small purse she had strung to the waist of her dress was not large enough for the roll of guilders so at first she carried them, but then she feared a robber might catch sight of her holding them so she turned into a doorway and stuffed them down into one cup of her brassiere.

  While preparing for her journey, packing dresses and petti-coats into a trunk, there was a knock at the door. She went to the window and looked down at the stoop and there was Non, her wavy black hair spread over her shoulders and holding a satchel of books and a Mata Hari biscuit tin.

  The biscuit tin’s thin layer of paint was fading and the silver of the metal was showing through beneath the painted hair of Mata Hari and her hair looked more silver than brown. Anna Lintjens invited her in, and Non, who had never been in her mother’s house, walked up to the paintings on the walls of the living room 2 4 9

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  and touched their frames and she touched the back of the sofa and she even touched the handle of the fireplace poker.

  Anna Lintjens asked if her father knew she had come here, and Non answered that her father didn’t live in The Hague any longer and that no, her aunt Louise didn’t know she had decided to come and finally visit her mother.

  Anna Lintjens took the girl upstairs and showed her Mata Hari’s room and she pulled out Mata Hari’s album and Non took it to the bed and together they sat and looked through it and Non kept saying how beautiful her mother had been and Anna Lintjens would correct her verb tense, saying, Is, how beautiful she is.

  Anna Lintjens took down some of Mata Hari’s costumes

  from her closet and laid them on the bed to show Non, and Non asked if Anna Lintjens thought it would be all right if she tried on one of the costumes, if she thought that her mother would mind, and Anna Lintjens was sure Mata Hari wouldn’t mind, and she left the girl alone for a while, for a long time actually, because Anna Lintjens had fallen asleep in the chair in the living room and when she woke she looked at the clock and realized she would never have time to call for a cab and catch that day’s train headed to Paris so she would have to wait until the next day. She went and peeked through a crack in Mata Hari’s door. Non was wearing one of Mata Hari’s gold breastplates and her silk skirts and a veil over her head and she was dancing around the room and singing a song in a language Anna Lintjens didn’t know but she guessed must have been Malay and she watched for a while.

  The dancing was beautiful, and even though Anna Lintjens had never seen Mata Hari dance a performance, she felt she 2 5 0

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  could say that now she had, because she imagined it to be as beautiful a dance as her daughter, Non, had danced.

  Before Non left, Anna Lintjens gave Non a gift. She dug through Mata Hari’s huge jewelry box and found a gold-plated watch and put it on Non’s wrist and said she knew that Mata Hari would want her to have it. You’ll have to take it off when you see your aunt Louise, of course, Anna Lintjens warned her, or else she’ll take it from you and make sure you never come here again.

  Can I come again? asked Non. And Anna Lintjens answered yes by giving the girl a kiss on the cheek and smelling at the same time the fragrance of mimosa that the girl must have taken off Mata Hari’s shelf and dabbed behind her ears.

  I hope that next time I come, my mother is here, Non said, and Anna Lintjens said, I hope so too, and she was about to close the door on the girl when Non turned around and looked at Anna Lintjen’s head, and said, You’ve got pins in your bun, you know.

  Ah, so I have, Anna Lintjens said, and pushed them deeper down into her hair bun so that they could not be seen.

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  I N A C LO U D

  VADIME M ASLOFF PLAYED a harmonica in the trench, but he wasn’t very good at it, and another soldier grabbed it from him and threw it up and out of the trench, where he could hear it being shot at. He hadn’t lost sight in both his eyes and in fact had re-gained his sight in the eye that had originally been damaged by the shelling and he was back in the trench again, cuddling with the rats at night and staring up at the sky in the day, reading shapes into clouds, swearing to himself that he saw Mata Hari floating by, her arms cumulus striations, spread out as if to embrace him.

  He did not believe she had been spying, and when he received the letters warning him not to have relations with her, asking him for a deposition, he did what he thought was best and wrote that the relationship meant very little to him. He hoped that they wouldn’t arrest him and think he was a spy too, because he wanted to be there when Mata Hari was set free.

  He would wait for her forever, he thought while he took off his wool papakha from his head and examined it, seeing how it was balding in places, the rats at night in his sleep biting out bits of it, thinking its warm fibers ideal for building a nest for their young. He sighed, he tried fishing for his harmonica by tying a 2 5 2

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  string to the carved handle of his sharp-bladed bebout and dragging it across the surface of the ground up above.

  What he dragged into the trench was dirt, a dud of a stick grenade, and a few good-size field rocks that fell on his head, but no harmonica. Damn you, Ivan, he said to the other soldier, who had thrown his harmonica out and who was now lying on his back, watching the clouds. Vadime squatted next to Ivan and pointed to the cloud with the arms held out for an embrace and said up there was his girlfriend, his wife-to-be, and Ivan said, Don’t be ridiculous, that’s my mother and sister up there throwing me down kisses.

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  N E V E R S U R E

  THE JOURNEY FROM Holland to France, Anna Lintjens thought, was taking longer than she thought it would, even though the train sped past scenery so quickly she was not sure what she saw.

  Was it trees? Was it houses? A field of cows? If one can never be sure of what one sees when traveling, she thought to herself, then what is the point of the journey?

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  B L A N K E T S

  IT WAS a cold morning and Mata Hari slept with her head under the covers, breathing her own exhaled air just to keep warm. The cold was again fingering its way through the spaces between the stones of the wall of her cell.

  Sister Leonide came as usual with her cup of coffee, and Mata Hari sat on her cot with her wool blanket draped over her shoulders while she drank it.

  Mata Hari’s reflection in the coffee made her face look swollen and she told Sister Leonide that the kitchen was really getting worse, that it wasn’t serving coffee that was coffee any longer, but something with brown grease, leavings from something fried in a pan, scraped into hot water, and stirred quite possibly, she said. The kitchen can kill you, did you know that? Mata Hari said, and Sister Leonide nodded, even though she did not know what Mata Hari was talking about, but she thought it best not to disagree with Mata Hari and to try and be as understanding as possible, because Mata Hari, who did not know it, would be shot the next morning.

  But this is still probably better than what poor Vadime is drinking in the trenches, Mata Hari said, and then Sister Leonide nodded and thought to remind herself after the lights went out 2 5 5

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  that night to cover the corridors leading to the cells with blankets so the sound of the men who came to take the prisoner to the firing squad stomping through in their shiny black shoes would not be so loud. Sister Leonide knew the men would come through as noisily as possible, so the prisoner would already be awake when they
arrived at the prisoner’s cell, and she always thought how rude it was to startle a fast-asleep prisoner that way in the predawn hours when she did not know that today was the day she would die.

  That was the law, not to let a prisoner know the date of his or her execution. Sister Leonide wasn’t sure why, maybe because it made the prisoner easier to handle and take out of the cell if she was taken by surprise or maybe it was because it was considered cruel to live out your last days knowing you had an appointment with death.

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  ST R A I G H T TO B E D

  ANNA L INTJENS arrived late at the hotel in Paris. She had missed the dinner served downstairs and decided she would just go straight to bed. She would rise early in the morning and go and exchange the roll of guilders she received from the pawnbroker for francs. Afterward she would get in a taxicab and ask the driver to take her to the prison of Saint-Lazare.

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  T H E D O U B L E D O S E

  OUTSIDE, A FRONT had come through and the air was heavy with mist and it amplified the sounds inside the prison.

  She told Sister Leonide she thought she could hear Charles, the guard, swallowing at the end of the corridor. She thought she could also hear the voices of other women in the prison. Was a prostitute crying? A baby killer laughing? An adulteress singing? A spy screaming? She closed her eyes and spoke. Let me tell you about the day I walked across the sea to Ameland and back.

  I felt the small sand crabs beneath my bare feet. I waved to the seals sunning themselves on sand flats. The hen pen and gutweed clung to my ankles. A black-headed gull flew in one direction, while in another direction flew a barnacle goose, sounding out his call. I turned and looked behind me and there was the great gray wall of the tide and I realized for the first time that it looked more like a rain-filled cloud rolling in close to the ground. Then she opened her eyes and grabbed Sister Leonide’s hands, and she said, Maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t the tide coming in after all and that I have been wrong all these years. Maybe it was just a cloud, and like a cloud encountered on the trail of a high mountaintop, a person can pass through it and come out the other side, still standing, still alive.

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  Later Dr. Bizard came by to see how she was doing.

  I haven’t seen you for a while, doctor, she said. To what do I owe the pleasure?

  He shrugged his shoulders and the sound receiver of his stethoscope reflected the light from the gas lamp onto the floor and then onto the wall and then onto the floor again.

  I’ve got something for you, he said. But, shh, keep it quiet.

  From one trouser pocket he pulled a leather-covered flask. From his other pocket he pulled out his handkerchief, and wrapped inside were two shot glasses.

  He had been working in the garden again, and the nails of his fingers were packed with soil as he poured the drinks, saying it was Russian vodka. When she took the shot glass from him, she wrapped her hand around his and brought his hand to her nose, saying it had been too long since she had smelled the earth.

  SISTER L EONIDE was waiting for Dr. Bizard to leave Mata Hari’s cell. When she saw him walk down the corridor past the guard’s desk, she asked if Mata Hari was asleep yet. She knew he had been planning to give her a double dose of chloral that night, so that her last night of sleep would be a good one.

  She’s sound asleep, he said to Sister Leonide, and so Sister Leonide began to spread the wool blankets in the corridor leading to Mata Hari’s cell and even before she was finished laying all the blankets, curious rats had come out and the breeze created by the blankets floating up in the air and then coming down on the stone floor made the rats shut their eyes, and lay back their ears, in anticipation for whatever blow might come their way.

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  A N E C E S S A RY B R E E Z E

  AGAIN, THE MONEY Anna Lintjens held in her hand was a thick wad of bills, but this time in francs, not guilders, and again she put the money into the cup of her brassiere, where, when the horse-drawn cab trotted on the cobblestones, the bills rubbed back and forth on her breast. She was hot, even though it was a cold morning, and she wondered if when she presented her roll of francs to the guard the roll would be wet with her sweat and would that sour the plan? She lifted the neckline of her dress up and down a few times, trying to send a breeze through to keep the bills dry.

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  T H E DAY O F E X P I AT I O N

  CHARLES DIDN’T LIKE the size of his Adam’s apple. It made it difficult to shave and often the blade nicked him, as it did the morning Mata Hari’s execution was scheduled. He was holding a handkerchief to the bleeding cut throughout his morning coffee, and even after he had dressed in his uniform and sat at his post in the corridor, he still held the handkerchief close to his Adam’s apple and wondered if the bleeding would stop by the time Bouchardon and his men came to get the prisoner. It didn’t.

  The men came and said good morning to him, and while he led the way with his keys hanging from his belt he still held the handkerchief to his Adam’s apple, and he cursed the nun, because walking on the woolen blankets was slippery and he was not sure of his footing and would have liked to have been able, in case he fell, to have both hands free and not one occupied with a cut on his throat.

  Ahead of them went another guard, who, with a long wax

  taper, lit the gas lamps that lined the corridor and when he did, the rats, sleeping under the blankets, scurried off, their forms seen under the wool, just small, dark, moving humps one had to be careful not to trip over.

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  Mata Hari was sound asleep. She did not hear the men coming. The double dose of chloral that Dr. Bizard had given her was very effective. It was Sister Leonide who had to shake her awake. When she sat up she saw Bouchardon and the men standing in her cell, and before she could say anything Bouchardon spoke.

  Have courage, he said, the time for your expiation has come.

  She leaned on the metal rail at the end of her cot and stood up. Sister Leonide hugged her and began to cry and Mata Hari made Sister Leonide step back so she could see her face and she held Sister Leonide’s arms and said, Don’t worry, Sister, I shall know how to die.

  May I wear a corset? she asked Dr. Bizard, who was also in the room, and he nodded his head.

  She began to get dressed. She put one foot on her thin mattress and began to roll her silk stockings up her ankles and her long dancer’s legs. Sister Leonide didn’t want the others to see her bare legs and so she stood between Mata Hari and the men and Mata Hari smiled and told Sister Leonide, Now is not the time to be prudish.

  A trunk with the clothes that she had with her at the time of her arrest had been returned to her. From it she pulled out a pearl gray dress and a felt tricorn hat and shoes that buttoned up to her ankles.

  When she was completely dressed she asked what the weather was like outside.

  Charles answered her and said it was misty and cold and she nodded her head at that, and said, Good, it really will be like walking through a cloud then and she threw her blue wool coat over her shoulders like a cape.

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  Walking down the gaslit corridor, over the woolen blankets, Charles finally took away his handkerchief from his Adam’s apple and put it in his pocket and went to take Mata Hari’s arm, but she brushed him away and instead she took the arm of Sister Leonide.

  Downstairs, before they left the building and the bolt was lifted to the door of the prison, she asked for a pen and some paper.

  She wrote to Non.

  Dear Non,

  I have never told you the story of the woman who

  cheated death. It is a good story, my dear Non, and I want to tell it to you now.

  There once was a wo
man who committed a terrible

  crime. She lived many years not remembering she had committed the crime. Then one day she was sent to prison and sent to die, and it was then that she remembered her crime. She was made to stand in front of a firing squad, but even after all the shots were fired, she was not gone.

  She had realized that death is not the end, it is just a cloud one walks through, and that when she walked out through the other side of the cloud, she would still be there and she would see everyone again, especially her daughter, whom she had always loved and whom she never had the chance to tell that she was sorry that she had committed the crime. Before she was shot, though, she wanted her daughter to know of her love for her and she wanted to ask the daughter for forgiveness and so she wrote a letter telling her these things, and telling her daughter to watch 2 6 3

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  for her, for one day she would return and they would be together again.

  When Mata Hari was finished, she sealed the letter. Clunet had arrived at the door of the prison to join her and her escorts on their way to the Caponnière, the field at the Palace of Vincennes, where Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette spent their last night.

  Please make sure Non gets this, she said to Clunet, and she was about to hand it to him when she thought better of it, seeing how his hands were all wet from the tears he was continually wiping from his eyes, and instead she opened up his jacket and slipped it into his breast pocket. As she did so, he kept saying that he was sorry, that he had tried to get her a pardon. He had tried, he said, and this time she noticed that even his nose seemed to be crying, as clear fluid ran from it and hung in a watery bead at the tip.

  The cars they were in drove across the bumpy field of the Caponnière, where at one end was a stake, a limb of a young tree, stuck into the ground. The cars stopped and Mata Hari got out first. Then she turned and helped Sister Leonide out of the car.