Mata Hari's Last Dance(33)

*

The next morning Bowtie finds me in the Ritz taking my coffee in a shady little nook far removed from everyone else. The man has the homing abilities of a pigeon. He makes for my table and I wish to God he would make a right turn and perch with someone else. But I know why he’s here. I might as well get it over with.

“Mata Hari!” His sandy hair is slicked back beneath his fedora. There’s no Press card tucked inside the band today. He takes a seat and snaps for the waiter.

“Good morning,” I tell him. I hope it’s obvious from my voice that I don’t mean it.

“It’s always a good morning, Mata Hari. If you’re walking and breathing, it’s good.” The waiter arrives and he orders a coffee. “Another?” he asks me.

“No.”

“You just opened a new show. No rehearsals today?”

“Not until next week.”

He nods. Then the coffee arrives and he’s all business. “So.” He takes a sip. “Is it true? Everything your father wrote about you?”

I don’t have it in me to play the fool. “Of course not. It’s trash.”

“Doesn’t matter, though, does it? Thousands of people will read his book. They’ll read it and they’ll be shocked.” He straightens his bow tie; today it’s deep magenta. “Is there anything you’d like to tell them? I’m offering you the chance.”

There is tenderness in his voice. He’s waiting for me to speak, his boyish face tilted to the side. He’s exceedingly good-looking. I’m sure he has his pick of women wherever he goes. Or perhaps men. “Yes, there’s something I’d like to say.”

He takes a pen from behind his ear and sits forward, ready to write.

“Tell them that my father is—”

“Delusional?” he offers. “That you were born in India, not Caminghastate?”

“Yes.”

“And what about your husband? Is any of that true?”

“I’d rather not speak about it.”

“But you do have a daughter?”

“I can’t talk—” My voice breaks. If Rudolph reads my father’s horrible book, what will he do to Non? Will he take his rage out on her? Tears trail down my cheeks and I feel myself shaking. Bowtie offers me his handkerchief. I press it against my eyes. “Please,” I say. “She’s only a little girl. If my ex-husband reads this book—”

“Are you afraid of him?”

“Yes.”

He shuts his notepad immediately. “Thank you,” he says. He stands, leaving his coffee unfinished.

The next day in Le Figaro I am the headline again: BETRAYED: JEALOUS AND DELUSIONAL FATHER WRITES FALSE BIOGRAPHY OF THE FAMOUS MATA HARI.

I am so grateful to Bowtie I could kiss him.

If only Rudolph reads this article and not my father’s book.

*

“An orchid among buttercups.”

His voice is just as I remember it. I turn from my dressing table and there he is. After pruning the garden of my life, up pops a weed.

“M’greet,” my father says. “My God, look at you!”

He rushes to me, clasping me in his arms, holding me as if we’ve been apart for too long. He is such a convincing performer I find myself thinking, Has he finally come to apologize?

Then he steps back and makes an imaginary toast. “To your success, Margaretha.” He leans forward, hat in his hand. It is expensive, a Wolthausen. I can smell alcohol on him. There is a knock on the door.

“Come in,” I call automatically, my eyes fixed on the man who deserted me.

“M’greet, I—”

It’s Edouard. Thank God.

My father bounds over to him, extending his hand. “Adam Zelle,” he says. “Margaretha’s father. You must be her director. My M’greet, the star. Did she tell you she was born in Caminghastate?”

“Papa,” I whisper.

“The world deserves to know! That’s why I’ve written a book about you.”

I could kill him.

My father looks between me and Edouard, sensing tension. “Don’t you think I deserve a little of the success I helped you achieve?” he asks, belligerence creeping into his voice. He makes his way over to a table and picks through some crackers and cheese.

I’ve had enough. I don’t remember my wedding ceremony beyond recalling that it was short, hot, and full of people I didn’t know. But I do remember the banquet we held afterward, at the Café Americain. My father and a dozen of his friends were there, all men from the bottle factory dressed in suits that had fit them better twenty years earlier. It didn’t surprise me that he would miss the ceremony and bring his own guests for the food, but I was ashamed that Rudolph’s family had to witness it. I saw myself through their eyes, a harlot in yellow, a girl who answers ads in newspapers. They didn’t know the beautiful house my family once owned, the servants we’d hired, the fountains that had trickled musically on our lawns. They didn’t know the man my father once was. They only saw poverty masquerading as wealth, marrying into it, and I couldn’t blame them for hating me.

I stand swiftly. “Edouard, please. Get him out of here.”

I hear them on the stairs, in the street—my father, my knight in shining armor, reduced now to a little man making a scene.