Mata Hari's Last Dance (4 page)

“Wives want to see me perform?”

This makes him laugh. “I highly doubt it. You will be dancing for Comtesse de Loynes.” He waits several moments before realizing I haven't heard of her. “Her literary salon is the most famous in Paris. She is in her sixties now; in her youth she had love affairs with half a dozen famous men, but she's not truly interested in the male of the species. If your desire is to gain social prominence and recognition, Jeanne de Loynes can offer both to you on a platter. Her connections in this city are unsurpassed.”

I think of the reporters who followed us to the Rothschilds': What would they write if they knew I was engaged to perform nude for a group of women? They'd be trampling bushes to cover the story. “Is it already confirmed?”

“Awaiting your approval.”

“Yes,” I say swiftly. “Of course. Tell her yes.”

Chapter 5

Glistens Like Water

S
o this is the famous Mata Hari,” Comtesse de Loynes says a few days later.

I have become an “overnight” sensation.
Le Petit Parisien
declares that I'm “the best-kept secret in France.”
Le Figaro
calls my performance for the Rothschilds “astounding.”

“Comtesse, it is a pleasure to meet you.” I hold out my hand so she can see the rings Guimet has gifted me and she squeezes my fingers, inspecting each one. Nothing about the Comtesse de Loynes is what I imagined. I had thought she would be tall and sophisticated—an older version of Edouard's smoking blonde. But she's petite and a bit plump, with a head of unruly still-brown curls. She reminds me of the American actress, Maude Fealy.

“Please, have a seat.”

She indicates a silk chair patterned with flowers. If the parlor reflects the house, her entire home is decorated in purples and mauves. The impact is slightly disconcerting. She may be famous for her salon, but I doubt she has ever been praised for her taste in décor.

“And please.” She leans forward. “Call me Jeanne.”

Immediately, the image of another Jeanne forms in my mind. But I refuse to allow it to come into focus; I simply won't allow myself to dwell on her. Not here. I focus on the heart-shaped face of the woman in front of me instead. “Jeanne,” I repeat, giving her name a Malaysian lilt, and her hands go to the pearls around her neck, drawing attention to her face. It thrills men to hear their names spoken with an accent. Now I know it thrills her, too.

“You don't look like Isadora Duncan,” she says. “If you don't mind my saying.”

Yes, Isadora. The Dancing Nun. “My lawyer,” I say, brushing Isadora aside, “has told me you desire a sensual performance, a piece that is provocative.”

“Yes.” She moves closer to me. “I read in
Le Figaro
that the most sacred festivals”—her voice is a whisper—“involve a snake.”

I actually feel the color draining from my face. After I danced for the Rothschilds, Bowtie followed me all around town; I didn't notice him until he finally cornered me with Edouard as we were dining at Maxim's. I made up all manner of things to impress him. What else did I tell that man?

“If I arrange for such a creature, will you perform that dance?”

A servant lowers a platter of tea and sandwiches onto the settee between us.

“I . . .” I have never been near a snake, let alone danced with one. “I will have to consider this request.”

“I understand. The dance is sacred. In ordinary circumstances it would be viewed in a temple.” She indicates that the servant should pour the tea. “But as we do not have a temple . . .”

She has mistaken my reluctance for piety. I'm about to decline, to impress upon her the strict religious nature of a snake dance, when I recall how furiously Bowtie was scribbling. If he were to write about Mata Hari dancing with a living snake in Madame de Loynes's
famous salon in front of an audience composed exclusively of “certain” women . . .

“Please,” Jeanne says. She is actually begging.

I take her hand. “For you—and only you—I will do it.”

All throughout India men charm snakes. It can't be that difficult to dance with one.

*    *    *

I inform Edouard that my new dance requires extra time to rehearse and he has given me seven days. But I still have not solved the problem of working with a snake. It has started to rain and the cream-colored walls of my apartment feel as if they are closing in on me whenever I think of reptiles. What am I going to do? My thoughts turn to the purse with the hundred francs. Perhaps I should visit the Champs-Élysées? I can shop, distract myself. I desperately need a new pair of gloves and also some boots for the winter. I look out the widow to judge how hard it is raining when the sound of the phone startles me from my daydreams. I hurry to answer it, feeling like an actress in a fancy movie. It is such a luxury to have a phone.

Guimet wishes to see me.

*    *    *

I watch from my window as the chauffeur opens the car door. As always, Guimet is impeccably dressed. Today he wears a long black coat against the rain and an expensive fedora. When he arrives at my door, I greet him with kisses and notice that he is wearing a new wristwatch.

“My God, I've missed you,” he mumbles into my hair. And then he says, “I hear you are dancing for Jeanne de Loynes next week.”

If my marriage to Rudolph MacLeod taught me nothing else, it schooled me in the ability to recognize jealousy in an innocent comment, to interpret a tone. When Rudolph asked, “Where have you
been?” it always meant trouble. I could hear the tenseness in his voice as he sat at the table without his paper or drink, staring at the wall, waiting for me.

“I said, where have you been?”

“At the market,”
I hurry my words. “At the market—”

“I told you not to go there anymore, goddamn it!” He pulls his arm back and hits me. “
You think you can defy me? You think I don't see the way you look at the men I command?”

“Yes. The performance is for a small group,” I say, forcing myself back to the present, ignoring the tense quality of his voice by imagining the Buddhas of Borobudur calmly meditating their way to Nirvana. “The gathering is for women only.”

“Jeanne will want you for herself, you know. Once she meets you.”

I did not realize Guimet was the type of man to be jealous of a woman. “A woman will woo me away from you?” I tease. I don't like this ugly aspect of his personality.

“She's no longer a beauty but she can still be very convincing.”

I want to ask if she has ever “convinced” him, but decide to distract him instead. “It's only a dance,” I say. I lead him to my bedroom and we make love. Afterward, he isn't angry. But he's not happy, either, and he doesn't offer to take me to dinner.

I spend the night alone, feeling anxious. I am unable to sleep for the longest time, and when I finally do, my dreams take me to my darkest times in Java.

*    *    *

I'm in no mood to rehearse the following day. It is a clear day and I wander the boutiques along the Champs-Élysées with the money Edouard left for me. I can hear his voice in my head, scolding me. “Only for important expenses!” But today everything feels tremendously important: the hand-painted silk scarf in aquamarine, the
stunning citrine ring and matching necklace, the bronze incense burner I discover in a shop run by an Egyptian man and his son. Nothing could feel better than this. Then I see a young girl begging outside of an expensive clothing shop and all of my happiness turns to dust. The girl has dark hair and wide dark eyes. Her arms look thin. She holds out her cupped hands and I tell her to wait while I go inside. When I come out, I wrap a new cashmere shawl around her shoulders. She begins to cry. “Thank you, madam. Thank you,” she keeps saying.

“It's nothing, little one,” I tell her. “Where are your parents?”

“Maman is gone.” Meaning dead. “Papa is working.”

“What does he do?”

She shakes her head. “I don't know.”

I buy her a warm baguette and several slices of meat. When I return home, my purse is empty, but Guimet has completely vanished from my thoughts.

*    *    *

Comtesse de Loynes phones to tell me that the snake has arrived. Edouard is sitting across from me, looking completely at home in one of a pair of aubergine chairs he bought for my apartment. As soon as I click the receiver back into place, he wants to know why the wealthiest woman in France is calling me at home.

“Why isn't she calling me at my office?”

“Perhaps because you're not there,” I offer. He doesn't find my answer humorous. I can see by the look on his face that he is concerned. “Don't look so grumpy,” I say. “I've planned a surprise.” Or a disaster.

He fixes me with his eyes. “I don't like surprises.”

*    *    *

“Mata Hari!” Jeanne moves swiftly down the steps and kisses both of my cheeks. We walk arm in arm into her foyer, and for the second time in a week I am surprised by how little taste she possesses for furniture. The mirrors are ridiculously ostentatious. Her ornate chairs must have started life in Versailles; they look too complicated to sit on. She leads me into the foyer where the walls are frescoed with pasture scenes. Waiting for me is a man standing next to a crate. I smell straw and hear rustling. If I live to be a hundred, I vow silently, I will never boast about snake handling again.

“Mata Hari, this is Ishan,” Jeanne says. “He comes to us all the way from Bombay, not so far from where you were born, I believe?”

His face registers surprise; I hold his eyes and he keeps his silence.

“I know you must be eager to begin your rehearsal,” Jeanne continues, “so I'll leave you two alone.” She shuts the door and the expectation on her face is almost embarrassing to witness. She should learn to better conceal her emotions.

I look at the crate. “The snake is inside?”

“You have never handled a snake before,” he says.

“No. And I'm afraid of snakes.”

He sighs. “The key is
not
to be afraid.” He reaches inside the box and lifts out a glistening creature that is much larger than I anticipated. It must be at least six feet long and it's very muscular. Its forked tongue flicks in my direction. “Touch,” he says, holding the snake out for me, one hand keeping the head firmly at a distance while the rest of the animal is winding its way around his body.

“Will it bite me? Will it
poison
me?”

“I am holding the head. And this snake constricts; there is no poison. Touch.”

I touch. The skin is dry and cool like spun silk—not at all how it appears. I run my hands along its back and I feel a small thrill. This creature is powerful and elegant—and looks so dangerous.

“I will put her around your shoulders,” he says.

“
She?
”

He drapes the python around my shoulders and smiles. “Yes.”

I hold my breath as the snake moves its heavy body around mine, hugging my limbs, sliding over my breasts. The creature's weight is somehow comforting. “She is beautiful.”

“She likes you.”

I think he must be mocking me: Can a snake truly be partial to someone? But Ishan is the picture of earnestness. I watch as the snake slides her tail between my thighs, her skin reflecting the light. “She glistens like water but feels like silk,” I observe.

Ishan's entire face glows, like a proud father. And for the next four hours he guides me, instructing me on how to hold her, where to place my hands so that she is supported, how to understand her body language.

“Treat her well,” he promises when we are finished, “and she will never harm you.”

*    *    *

Jeanne calls again, this time to tell me she has borrowed pieces from a friend's collection to transform her salon into a temple to Kama, the handsome Hindu god of desire. She calls a third time to ask if I have read the morning paper. Specifically, she wants to know what I thought of the article describing how Isadora Duncan is teaching young girls to dance and “share in her classic ideals.”

“I have a surprise for you Mata Hari,” she says, her voice full of promise. Then she says that she has hired eight girls to dance with me. “Perhaps you could come over this evening and rehearse with them?”

As soon as we disconnect I find the newspaper. I search until I find the headline.

DANCE ON THE SANDS AS IN ARCADIAN DAYS

PARIS—
At Neuilly, near Paris, in that charming “garden city,” where there are more trees than houses and where dwell more artists, musicians, painters, and sculptors than merchants, Miss Isadora Duncan, the American dancer, the priestess of Greek beauty, and her troupe of little girl pupils reside today in a pretty villa, and one can see all these young devotees of Terpsichore dancing on the sand of the shady paths or on the moss and amid the ferns of the grounds.

No picture could be more enchanting in its ideal charm and classic gracefulness than the dancing of these twelve little girls—the youngest is only 6 years old and the oldest 14—clad in light white or blue tunics, in the purest classic style, with their lasso hair held by a bandeau “a la Greeque,” bare armed and bare legged.

Several times a day Isadora Duncan teaches the little nymphs. One by one, or all together, the happy pupils learn to be graceful and yet natural.

If Jeanne has hired six-year-old children to dance with me, I will have no option but to cancel. Surely she wouldn't have, almost certainly they'll be adults, but I skim the rest of the article.

As to how Miss Duncan evolved the idea of training children in her art, the story is best told in her own words:

“I sat once, on a bright afternoon, on the sands of Noordwijk, in Holland. I saw from afar my little niece, who was ‘instinctively' dancing on the silver edge of the ocean, because the sun was bright, because the air was warm and cheering, because she felt happy to live. Noth
ing could have been more beautiful than the little barefoot girl dancing with intense joy, with the ever moving blue sea as the background.”

I stop reading. I do not want to imagine little girls dancing by the sea.

*    *    *

“Mata Hari,” Jeanne says, kissing my cheeks and ushering me inside later that evening. “You are a vision!” She leads me down a number of hallways until we are in a wide room that I have not seen before. “Here are the ladies. They are yours to command.”

I do my best to hide my relief. They are tiny creatures—girls as thin and as pale as slips. But they are not children. I picture them flitting around as light and nimble as fairies. Standing before them, I feel like an Amazon. Did I look as eager and hopeful as they do when I first arrived in Paris looking for employment? “Thank you, Jeanne,” I say. I know exactly how I'll incorporate them into my dance.