Mata Hari's Last Dance(3)

“No matter. I’ll loan you jewels to wear,” he says. There is a piece of paper on his desk. He pushes it toward me.

“What is this?”

“Our agreement.”

I consider it carefully. “This is a partnership?”

“Yes. I found you, M’greet.”

“Then you’re my lawyer?”

“And your agent. As soon as you sign.”

*

That evening, in my apartment in Montmartre, I lay my best sarong on the cheap brown comforter that covers my bed. Red silk trimmed with embroidered leaves of gold. I trace a finger across the cloth and in the ripples of the fabric I can see my father sitting like a bronzed sentinel by the fire, his black hair tinged gold by the orange flames. I climb into his lap and rest my head against his shoulder. He’s staring out our parlor window at the canals. It’s snowing and the houses along the water have disappeared like painted women beneath white veils. “I hate snow,” I whisper into his beard. He smells of fresh wood and rain.

“Why? It wipes everything clean. Makes it fresh, new.”

We both look outside at the color of nothingness. “But white is plain,” I tell him.

“Plain can be nice. But you’re right. White is not your color, M’greet.”

I like it when my father reveals things about me. I bury my head in his neck. “What is my color?” I don’t have white-gold hair like my mother or Dutch-blue eyes like my brothers.

“Red.” My father pauses. “Because red is passion. It’s life.”

Passion, I think as I dress. I stand in front of the mirror in the color my father envisioned for me and I know my papa was right. I am striking; unusually tall for a woman and in the sun my skin bronzes to cinnamon. When I was a girl, my dark eyes and hair made people whisper that my mother had taken a Jewish lover. “An orchid among buttercups,” my father called me. Tonight, my dark hair is pulled back from my face. The deep red of my lips matches my sarong. I move my arms and my hips into different poses and the silk reflects the room’s light like water.

There’s a knock at the door and I am startled. I had planned to meet him outside my building. Yet here he is, early. I open the door and before I invite him inside, Edouard Clunet welcomes himself into my apartment. If he’s shocked by the silk scarves I’ve hung to cover the shabbiness of the walls or the aroma of the urine-scented halls that my incense can’t hide, his expression doesn’t betray him.

“Your costume is excellent,” he says. He produces a box and opens the lid. “I want you to wear these,” he says. I count six bangles—all gold—and a heavy necklace encrusted with rubies.

I catch his eye. “Are these—”

“Most certainly real. He’s the greatest collector of Asian art in the world. I can’t have you meet him wearing inauthentic jewels.”

I tease the bangles over my wrists and he clasps the rubies around my neck. We both look at me in the mirror; my image is regal.

“If you can charm him this evening, M’greet, your entire life will change.”

*

I imagined Guimet as old, thin, eccentric. But the man who stands in the finest parlor I’ve ever had the pleasure to be invited to is taller than Clunet, bearded, distinguished looking. In the light of the crystal chandeliers his hair is silvered, but beneath his tailored suit, his shoulders appear to be broad and strong.

“émile Guimet, it is my privilege to acquaint you with Paris’s next sensation.” Clunet makes a sweeping gesture toward me. “May I introduce Mata Hari, the Star of the East.”

Guimet inspects me from head to toe, then we meet each other’s eyes. I know he is calculating the worth of my jewels, the quality of my sarong. “Please, have a seat.” He gestures to some silk-covered chairs. I sit slowly, crossing my legs so that the sarong rises along my thigh.

He nods for Clunet to take a seat, and then sits himself. “Edouard tells me you were born on the altar of Kanda Swany,” he says.

“It’s true,” I say softly, lilting my vowels. “My mother gave her life to the temple. She died on the very day I was born. The priests of Kanda Swany adopted me. My name means ‘Eye of the Dawn’ and from the earliest days of my life I was raised in the hall of the pagoda of Shiva, trained to follow in my mother’s footsteps through the holy rites of the dance.”

“Yet your accent—I do not recognize it. You do not sound like someone from India.”

I touch his arm. “I have lived all over the world and speak many languages,” I say, as if confiding a great secret. “My favorite tongue is French. Vous avez une belle maison,” I compliment him, then steer us on to another topic. “I have been told you are curious about the sacred arts of my people. The secrets of Borobudur, Kelir, Brahma.” I drop the names like small pearls for his delight.

“Tell me about Borobudur,” he says.

“What would you like to know?”

“The temple. Is it Buddhist or Hindu?”

He is hoping to trick me. “No one knows. The men who built the temple were followers of Buddha. If you journey clockwise through the five levels of the pyramid, you will witness the life story of Buddha unfold.” I hold my hands before me, as if weighing the weight of a pear against an apple. “Yet the inscriptions on the temple walls suggest Hinduism. There is mystery in the temple.” He looks at my hands. Perhaps they don’t look like the hands of a temple dancer. I quickly drop them to my lap.