Mata Hari's Last Dance(43)
“Hard day?” I ask, taken aback.
He hands me a newspaper clipping without a word. April 19, 1913:
MOTOR-CAR IN THE SEINE. MME. ISADORA DUNCAN'S TWO CHILDREN DROWNED
I glance up, flustered, and he motions for me to read on.
Yesterday, a little after three o’clock, the car carrying Isadora Duncan’s nurse and her two children plunged into the river. Passersby tried to dive into the water but the car was beyond anybody’s reach. On hearing the news, Isadora Duncan fainted. The children’s chauffeur has been arrested for culpable homicide.
“This is horrible,” I whisper. “Why are you showing me this?”
“I know you failed to get your daughter back,” he says to me, and I feel the sentence like a blow. “I’m a reporter. It’s my job to know these things. What I’m trying to say is, you still have hope—”
“I thought,” I say, cutting him off, “that you wanted some gossip.” I am fighting to keep my composure. “Ask me about Tristan and Isolde.”
“Pay attention, Mata Hari. Isadora’s children are gone. They are dead. Your daughter is still alive. If she’s alive, there’s still hope.” He takes the clipping back and tucks it into his vest pocket. “We’ve known each other now for how many years?”
I can’t be bothered with this. I don’t know. Seven years? Eight? What does he know about my daughter and hope? I have done my best to let Non go. I have stretched my imagination to the limits fashioning a life for her in which she is happy living with her father. A day after Anna’s botched rescue attempt, a telegram arrived at Edouard’s office. It said: Your daughter is dead to you. Do not try again. Still, I begged Edouard to send his men back, to arrange another attempt. I was nearly out of my mind with grief. I spent days drinking; I went to the south of France and visited every dance club on the Riviera. I took in the sights without seeing them, drank and danced all night, and then repeated it all the next day. Eventually, I accepted the truth. I had put Non in danger. The only way for me to keep my little girl safe was to leave her alone.
“I don’t believe I know you at all,” I say coldly. Then I go inside the hotel and straight to the bar. I order myself a gin and tonic.
The next morning, it’s the first drink I have when I wake.
Chapter 14
A Good Deal of Money to be Made
For weeks and weeks I drink to excess, shop to excess, and rehearse until my dancers fall asleep on their feet. I do this until one day I’m so sick of my life I decide to stay in bed and never leave. I draw the curtains and lock the front door. I unplug the phone and turn off the lights. I stay like this for three days. On the third night I dream of the cavalry officer I spent time with during my first visit to Berlin: Alfred Kiepert.
When I awaken, I am curious: Is he still married? Is he still tall and handsome in his military uniform? Is he still enthralled with me?
I rise and dress. Beyond my desire to see Alfred blooms an awareness that the manager at the Deutsches must be frantic and wondering where I’ve been. Soon they’ll be beating down my door. Then they’ll send Edouard. Even though I miss him desperately, I don’t want to see him. Not yet. We haven’t spoken in a month.
I put on my favorite red gown and a black hat with a short veil that I bought in Paris. The dress feels snug: a consequence of indulging in alcohol. I put on one of the many bracelets that Alfred gifted to me—a gold dragon with beautiful ruby eyes. Then I go to the lobby and ask the concierge to look up his address.
He’s still married, handsome, and wonderful.
“You don’t ever change, do you, Mata Hari?”
I lay my cheek on his naked chest, wanting to believe that his compliment is true.
“What is it like not to have a care in the world?” he asks. “No demanding husband, no needy children?”
I laugh as if he’s said something funny. But for a moment I find it difficult to speak. If I was honest, I’d tell him, “I have too many cares. That’s why I’m with you.” Instead, I make some silly remark about never being tethered down.
Later though, I can’t shake off his question. I go back to my apartment and sit on my small balcony, watching the people go by. Men hurrying to the office. Women pushing prams with other women, laughing over something their babies did at home. So that’s how I appear to all of these men. As a lighthearted diversion without any worries at all. A pretty dancing girl with a smile permanently etched on her face like one of the apsaras carved into the temples. I think of all the people in my life who know the truth, but all of them are gone. Even Edouard.
*
Six months somehow disappear and Edouard and I remain strangers. I know that he is still in Berlin, living in an apartment on Unter den Linden, because I see him one morning while I’m shopping for fruits and vegetables at the B?ckerei.
I catch his eye. He nods.
But we don’t speak to each other.
*
The following Sunday as I am strolling with Alfred I spy Edouard window shopping with a woman. He doesn’t see me and I watch them until they are out of sight. For days I can’t get their image out of my head. How she gazed up at him with her big blue eyes, how his arm touched the pearl buttons on her waist as he gently steered her from shop to shop. I was the one who told him to leave, but my heart aches when Kiepert presents me with a pendant shaped like a dragon, because I realize I want to feel Edouard’s arm on my waist, and instead I only feel gold, heavy around my neck.