Mata Hari's Last Dance(38)

“Her father was there. He arrived moments after I had taken her by the hand. He began shouting for the police.”

“No!” I scream. “He’s going to kill her!”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do! I do know that! You wanted to know what happened to Norman? It was all Rudolph’s fault!”

Edouard guides me to a chair. Anna sits on the edge of the couch and I tell them the whole ugly story. I tell them that when Non was a baby and Norman was three, Rudolph was made commander of a garrison in Melan. We had two weeks to pack all our belongings and move from our home. I hoped things would be different now that Rudolph had a high-status position; he would be required to entertain society, so I wouldn’t be so isolated. In Melan, I became Lady MacLeod. Ours was the biggest house with the widest lawn and a marble fountain. Our garden parties saw more than two hundred people and soon I was so busy hosting that Rudolph hired a nurse to care for the children, a Javanese woman named Fairuza.

I hired Mahadevi and I watched her dance at my parties. I wanted to be her, to feel that free—like a child again in my father’s hat shop, where anything was possible. Rudolph would never allow me to dance in public. But she agreed to teach me in private, to show me how to make magic with my hips and hands. She watched me practice with longing. The way Rudolph never watched me.

“Close your eyes,” she instructed and I did as she told me.

We danced together wearing indigo silks, our bare feet flat on her polished floor. We danced until we were both dizzy, until my body felt as supple as the silk. She told me that you are what you believe yourself to be. She was able to look at a man and say, “He wants me for a week. No more, no less.”

“If I’d had that skill,” I tell them, “my heart would never have been broken. When she invited me to dance in public, I said yes.”

Edouard leans forward. “So you performed—”

“Yes. I danced with Mahadevi at one of the parties I hosted. I dressed in a scarlet sarong I bought at the pasar. I was exotic. An orchid among buttercups. Three hundred people dressed in chiffon and gold sat in our garden: my husband’s colleagues, his subordinates, their wives.”

I danced with Mahadevi; primitive and wild. When we were finished, Mahadevi kissed me on the lips, and our bodies melted together in the warm island moonlight to the sound of applause.

“Your husband must have been shocked,” Anna says.

“He was enraged.” He seethed as I mingled with our guests. And when we were alone, he warned me, “You will never disgrace me like that again!” I said the worst thing I could think of in Malay. “Is that right?” he asked, reaching into a drawer. What was he going to do? I heard the click of his gun just as I heard the creak of a door from upstairs.

“Norman was on the landing,” I tell them.

Edouard looks horrified.

“ ‘Go to bed!’ I said. ‘Go to bed, Norman!’ I heard little feet scamper down the hall and the click of a door. Rudolph whipped me across the face and afterward, all I could recall was his heavy weight on top of me and the smell of alcohol on his breath. I went to Mahadevi the next day, a veil over my face to hide my blackened eye and bruised cheek. ‘Give me something that will keep him away from me,’ I begged. She gave me cajeput oil. ‘Smear this between your legs and he will never bother you again.’ The next time he tried to take me his prick was covered with small red blotches. I told him, ‘My body has turned against you.’ ”

Tears begin leaking from the corners of my eyes, remembering what happened next. Edouard reaches out and takes my hand. I try to catch my breath.

“It was the middle of the night,” I tell them. “I went to Norman’s crib. He was sleeping. I caressed his cheek. He was three years old. I looked at Non, all curled up and warm. I slipped one finger into her palm. Her little hand closed around it. I shut my eyes and sang softly, a nursery rhyme my mother sang to me when I was a child. Then I heard the screams. They were Fairuza’s.”

Edouard and Anna glance at each other.

“She was in the kitchen with Rudolph. He . . . my husband was violating her. The household came awake. I could hear doors opening along the corridors. I grabbed Rudolph’s arm and pulled him off of her. I steeled myself, waiting for him to hit me. But he was too drunk. He collapsed on the floor. The servants stepped around him and waited to see what Fairuza would do. There was blood on her legs, bruises on her arms. She was hysterical.”

“What did she do?”

“Nothing. We put her to bed in her room. We left him on the floor. The next morning Rudolph awoke and he found himself lying half-naked exactly where he fell. It was ten in the morning and already hot. He was late for work. I expected a terrible fight. But there was nothing. I crept downstairs after he was gone and wondered where Fairuza was; had she gotten up early and gone home to her family, or to the police?

“I had no idea who was in my own house.

“ ‘Is she still here?’ I asked Laksari.

“Laksari brought me into the parlor. Her voice was low. ‘She is devastated, ma’am.’ She spoke in Malay. ‘She will not go to the police. It is bad luck for a woman to say she has been . . . she will leave the house tonight. After she has packed and said goodbye to the children.’

“ ‘I should see her,’ I said. ‘I should pay her.’