by Paulo Coelho
Madame Guimet kept her eyes fixed on the newly planted grass at the center of the garden. She pretended she was just "tolerating" my words, but I knew I had opened an old wound that would begin to bleed again. After some time, she stood up and suggested we go back--her servants were likely already preparing dinner. An artist of growing fame and importance wanted to visit her husband's museum with his friends, and the evening would end with a visit to the artist's gallery, where he intended to show her some paintings.
"Of course, his intention is to try to sell me something, whereas my intention is to meet new and different people, to get outside a world that is beginning to bore me."
We strolled leisurely. Before crossing the bridge near the Trocadero again, she asked me if I'd like to join them. I said yes, but that I'd left my evening gown at the hotel and might not be dressed appropriately for the occasion.
In truth, I did not have an evening gown that even came close to the elegance and beauty of the dresses we'd seen women wearing for a "stroll in the park." And the "hotel" was just a figure of speech for the boardinghouse I'd been living at for two months, the only one that allowed me to take "guests" to my bedroom.
But women are able to understand one another without exchanging a word.
"I can lend you a dress for tonight, if you like. I have more than I can ever wear."
I accepted her offer with a smile, and we headed back to her house.
When we don't know where life is taking us, we are never lost.
"This is Pablo Picasso, the artist I was telling you about."
From the moment we were introduced, Picasso forgot about the rest of the guests and spent the entire evening trying to strike up a conversation with me. He spoke of my beauty, asked me to pose for him, and said I needed to go with him to Malaga, if only to get a week away from the madness of Paris. He had one objective, and he didn't need to tell me what it was: to get me into his bed.
I was extremely embarrassed by that ugly, wide-eyed, impolite man who fancied himself the greatest of the greats. His friends were much more interesting, including an Italian man, Amedeo Modigliani, who seemed more noble, more elegant, and who at no point tried to force any conversation. Every time Pablo finished one of his interminable and incomprehensible lectures about the revolutions taking place in art, I turned to Modigliani. This seemed to infuriate Picasso.
"What do you do?" asked Amedeo.
I explained that I was devoted to the sacred dances of the tribes of Java. While he seemed to not quite understand, he politely began to talk about the importance of the eyes in dance. He was fascinated by eyes, and when he happened to go to the theater, he paid little attention to the movements of the bodies and instead concentrated on what the eyes were trying to say.
"I hope that happens in the sacred dances of Java--I know nothing about them. I know only that, in the East, they are able to keep their bodies completely still and concentrate the full force of what they want to say in the eyes."
As I did not know the answer, I merely bobbed my head, an enigmatic gesture that might mean yes or no depending on how he interpreted it. Picasso interrupted the conversation the whole time with his theories, but Amedeo, elegant and polite, knew to wait his turn and return to the subject.
"Can I give you some advice?" he asked, when the dinner was drawing to a close and everyone was preparing to go to Picasso's studio. I nodded yes.
"Know what you want and try to go beyond your own expectations. Improve your dancing, practice a lot, and set a very high goal, one that will be difficult to achieve. Because that is an artist's mission: to go beyond one's limits. An artist who desires very little and achieves it has failed in life."
The Spaniard's studio was not far away, so we all went on foot. Some things dazzled me, and others I simply detested. But isn't that the human condition? Going from one extreme to another, without stopping in the middle? To tease him, I stopped in front of one painting and asked why he insisted on complicating things.
"It took me four years to learn how to paint like a Renaissance master and my entire life to go back to drawing like a child. There's the real secret: children's drawings. What you're seeing may seem childish, but it represents what's most important in art."
His answer was brilliant, but I could no longer go back in time and change my mind about him. By then, Modigliani had already left, Madame Guimet was showing visible signs of exhaustion despite maintaining her composure, and Picasso was distracted by his girlfriend Fernande's jealousy.
I said it was getting late for all of us, and each went on his way. I never ran into Pablo or Amedeo again. I heard that Fernande decided to leave Pablo, but I was not told the exact reason. I saw her only once more, a few years later, when she was working as a clerk in an antiques shop. She did not recognize me, I pretended I did not recognize her, and she also disappeared from my life.
The years that followed weren't many, but when I think back today, they seem endless--I looked only toward the sunshine and forgot the storms. I let myself be dazzled by the beauty of the roses but paid no attention to the thorns. The lawyer who halfheartedly defended me in court was one of my many lovers. So Mr. Edouard Clunet, should things go exactly as you planned and I end up before a firing squad, you may rip out this page from the notebook and throw it away. Unfortunately, I have no one else in whom to confide. We all know I won't be killed because of this stupid allegation of espionage, but because I decided to be who I always dreamed. And the price of a dream is always high.
Strip-tease had been around--and allowed by law--since the end of last century, but it had always been considered a mere display of flesh. I transformed that grotesque spectacle into art. When they began to ban strip-tease, I was able to continue with my shows, which were still legal. They were far from the vulgarity of other women who undressed in public. Among those who attended my performances were composers like Puccini and Massenet, ambassadors like Von Klunt and Antonio Gouvea, and magnates like baron de Rothschild and Gaston Menier. As I write these words, it pains me to think that they are not doing anything to obtain my freedom. After all, isn't the wrongly accused Captain Dreyfus back from Devil's Island?
Many will say: But he was innocent! Yes, and so am I. There is zero concrete evidence against me, beyond what I myself encouraged in order to boost my own importance after I decided to stop dancing (despite being an excellent dancer). If I hadn't, I wouldn't have been represented by the most important agent of the time, Mr. Astruc, who represented the greatest celebrities of the time.
Astruc nearly arranged for me to dance with Nijinsky at La Scala. But the ballet dancer's agent--and lover--regarded me as a difficult, temperamental, and intolerable person. With a smile on his face, he insisted that I present my art all on my own, without support from the Italian press or the theater's own directors. And with that, part of my soul died. I knew I was getting older and soon would no longer have the same flexibility and lightness. And serious newspapers, which had praised me so much in the beginning, were turning against me.
And my imitators? Posters sprang up on every corner saying things like "the successor to Mata Hari." All they did was shake their bodies grotesquely and take off their clothes without artfulness or inspiration.
I cannot complain about Astruc, although at this point the last thing he likely wants is to see his name associated with mine. He appeared a few days after the series of benefit shows for wounded Russian soldiers. I sincerely doubted that all the money, raised by selling tables for princely sums, would find its way to the Pacific battlefields where the czar's men were taking a beating from the Japanese. Still, they were my first performances after the Guimet Museum, and everyone was pleased with the result. I was able to get more people interested in my work, Madame Kireyevsky filled her coffers and mine, the aristocrats felt as though they were contributing to a good cause, and everyone, absolutely everyone, had the opportunity to see a beautiful naked woman without the slightest twinge of shame.
Astruc helpe
d me find a hotel worthy of my rising fame and negotiated contracts throughout Paris. He got me a show at the Olympia, the most important concert hall of the time. The son of a Belgian rabbi, Astruc bet everything he had on total unknowns, and today they are icons, such as Caruso and Rubinstein. He took me out to see the world at just the right moment. Thanks to him, I changed the way I conducted myself, I began to earn more money than I ever before imagined, I performed in the city's major concert halls, and I could finally indulge in a luxury I appreciated more than anything else in the world: fashion.
I don't know how much I spent, because Astruc told me it was in poor taste to ask the price.
"Pick out whatever you like and have it sent to your hotel--I'll take care of the rest."
Now, as I write this, I'm beginning to wonder: Did he keep part of the money?
But I cannot think like that. I cannot keep this bitterness in my heart, because if I do get out of here--and that is what I expect to happen, because it is simply impossible to be abandoned by everyone--I will have just turned forty-one and want to have the right to be happy. I gained a lot of weight and can hardly go back to dancing, but the world has so much more than that.
I prefer to think of Astruc as the man who dared risk his entire fortune to build a theater and open with The Rite of Spring. It was by an unknown Russian composer whose name I still cannot remember, and starred that idiot Nijinsky, who imitated the masturbation scene from my first performance in Paris.
I prefer to remember Astruc as the man who once invited me to take the train and go to Normandy, because the day before we had both spoken, with nostalgia, of going too long without seeing the sea. We had been working together almost five years.
We sat there on the beach, neither of us saying much until I took a page from the newspaper in my bag and handed it to him.
"The Decadent Mata Hari: Lots of Exhibitionism but Little Talent," read the title of the article.
"It was published today," I said.
As he read, I got up, walked to the water's edge, and picked up some stones.
"Contrary to what you might think, I'm sick and tired. I've gotten away from my dreams and I'm not the person I imagined I'd be--not by far."
"What do you mean?" asked Astruc, surprised. "I only represent the greatest artists, and you are one of them! One simple review from someone who has nothing better to write is enough to leave you so beside yourself?"
"No, but it's the first thing I've read about myself in a long time. I'm disappearing from the theaters and the press. People see me as nothing more than a whore who strips naked in public under an artistic pretense."
Astruc got up and walked over to me. He also picked up a few stones from the beach and threw one into the water, far from the surf.
"I don't represent prostitutes--that would end my career. It's true that I've had to explain to one or two of my clients why I had a Mata Hari poster in my office. And you know what I said? That what you do is a retelling of a Sumerian myth in which the goddess Inanna goes to the forbidden world. She must pass through seven gates; at each, there waits a guardian, and, to pay her passage, she removes an article of clothing. A great English writer, who was exiled to Paris and died alone and destitute, wrote a play that will one day become a classic. It tells the story of how Herod got the head of John the Baptist."
"Salome! Where is that play?"
My spirits began to lift.
"I don't have the rights. And I can no longer meet with its author, Oscar Wilde, unless I go to the cemetery to summon his ghost. It's too late."
Again my frustration and misery returned, as did the idea that soon I would be old, ugly, and poor. I was over thirty--a pivotal age. I took a stone and threw it harder than Astruc had.
"Go far away, stone, and carry my past with you. All my shame, all my guilt, and all the mistakes I've made."
Astruc threw his stone and explained that I had made no mistakes. I had exercised my power of choice. I didn't listen to him, and threw another.
"And this one is for the abuse suffered by my body and soul since my first, terrible sexual experience. And now, when I lie with rich men, performing acts that leave me drowning in tears. All this for influence, money, gowns...things that are growing old. I am tormented by self-created nightmares."
"But aren't you happy?" asked an increasingly surprised Astruc. After all, we had decided to spend a pleasant afternoon on the beach.
With ever-increasing rage, I kept throwing stones, becoming more and more surprised at myself. Tomorrow no longer looked like tomorrow, and the present was no longer the present, just a pit I dug deeper with every step. People walked on either side of me, while children played, seagulls made odd movements in the sky, and the waves rolled in more calmly than I imagined.
"It's because I dream of being accepted and respected, though I don't owe anything to anyone. Why do I need that? I waste my time on worries, regrets, and darkness--a darkness that only enslaves me, chaining me to a rock where I'm served up as food for birds of prey, a rock that I can no longer leave."
I couldn't cry. The stones disappeared into the water, sinking alongside one another as if they could perhaps reconstruct Margaretha Zelle beneath the surface. But I did not want to be her again, that woman who looked into the eyes of Andreas's wife and understood. The one who told me that our lives are planned out down to the minutest details: You are born, go to school, and attend university in search of a husband. You get married--even if he is the worst man in the world--just so that others can't say no one wants you. You have children, grow old, and spend the end of your days watching passersby from a chair on the sidewalk, pretending to know everything about life yet unable to silence the voice in your heart that says: "You could try something else."
A gull approached us, shrieked, and walked away again. It came so close that Astruc put his arm over his eyes to protect himself. That shriek brought me back to reality; I was once again a famous woman, confident in her beauty.
"I want to stop. I cannot continue this life. How much longer can I work as an actress and dancer?"
He was honest in his reply:
"Perhaps another five years or so."
"Then let's end things here."
Astruc took my hand.
"We can't! There are still contracts to fulfill, and I will be fined if we don't fulfill them. What's more, you need to earn a living. You don't want to end your days in that filthy boardinghouse where I found you, do you?"
"We will finish the contracts. You have been good to me, and I won't make you pay for my delusions of grandeur or baseness. But don't worry; I know how I'll keep making a living."
And without giving it much thought, I began to tell him about my life--something that I had kept to myself up until then because it was all just one lie after another. As I spoke, tears began to stream down my face. Astruc asked if I was okay, but I continued to tell him everything and he said nothing, just sat there listening to me in silence.
In finally accepting that I was not at all what I'd thought, I felt I was sinking into a black pit. Suddenly, however, as I faced my wounds and scars, I began to feel stronger. My tears did not come from my eyes, but from a deeper, darker place in my heart, telling me a story that I didn't even fully understand in a voice of its own. I was on a raft, sailing through total darkness, but there, far off on the horizon, was the glow of a lighthouse that would eventually lead me to dry land if the rough seas allowed, and if it was not already too late.
I had never done that before. I thought that speaking about my wounds would only make them more real. And yet the exact opposite was taking place: My tears were healing me.
At times I punched my fists into the gravel beach and my hands bled, but I didn't even feel the pain. I was being healed. I understood why Catholics confess, even though they must know priests share the same sins, or worse. It did not matter who was listening; what mattered was leaving the wound open for the sun to purify and the rainwater to wash. That is what I was d
oing now, in front of a man with whom I had no intimacy. That was the real reason I was able to speak so freely.
After a long while, after I stopped sobbing and let the sound of the waves soothe me, Astruc took me gently by the arm. He said the last train to Paris would be departing soon and that we'd better hurry. On the way, he told me all the latest news from the art world, such as who was sleeping with whom and who had been fired from what places.
I laughed and asked for more. He was a truly wise and elegant man; he knew that my tears had drained everything out of me and buried it in the sand, where it must remain until the end of time.
"We are living through the greatest period in France's history. When did you arrive?"
"During the World's Fair; Paris was different then, more provincial, though it still thought it was the center of the world."
The afternoon sun streamed through the window of the expensive room at the Hotel Elysee Palace. We were surrounded by all the very best France could offer: champagne, absinthe, chocolate, cheese, and the scent of freshly cut flowers. Outside I could see the big tower that now bore the name of its builder, Eiffel.
He also eyed the huge iron structure.
"It wasn't built to remain after the end of the fair. I hope they move forward quickly with the plans to dismantle that monstrosity."
I could have disagreed, but he'd just submit more arguments and win in the end. So I kept quiet as he spoke of his country's belle epoque. Industrial production had tripled, agriculture was now aided by machines capable of single-handedly doing the work of ten men, shops were teeming, and fashion had changed completely. This pleased me very much, as now I had an excuse to go shopping to update my wardrobe at least twice a year.
"Have you noticed that even the food tastes better?"
I had noticed, yes, and I wasn't very pleased about it, because I was starting to gain weight.
"The president told me that the number of bicycles on the streets has increased from three hundred seventy-five thousand at the end of the last century to more than three million today. Houses have running water and gas, and people can travel far and wide during their holidays. Coffee consumption has quadrupled, and people can purchase bread without having to queue in front of the bakeries."
