Mata Hari's Last Dance(7)
“She will honor us with the dance of the devadasis, a sacred art belonging to the Hindu god Shiva. In doing so, she will bless this library. I present to you the dancer, Mata Hari.”
I enter the room and the music crescendos.
Two hundred pairs of eyes turn toward me.
“My dance is a sacred poem,” I begin, as the orchestra plays a slow rhythm. I am offering them the precise speech Mahadevi fabricated in Java, a Dutch colony worlds away from this exclusive gathering. I have memorized it faithfully, to the letter. I spread my arms. “Each movement is a word and every word is underlined by music.” I pause; la gratin listens, spellbound. “The temple in which I dance can be vague or faithfully reproduced as it is here tonight. For I am the temple. All true temple dancers are religious in nature and all explain, in gestures and poses, the rules of the sacred texts.”
I begin to move my hips. “One translates the divine attributes of Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva—creation, fecundity, destruction. This is the dance I dance tonight. The dance of destruction as it leads to creation.”
The room is mesmerized as I translate the speech into English, Dutch, German, then Javanese. By the end, no one understands what I’m saying, but I see that they are enraptured with the foreignness of my words, hypnotized by my movements.
The music changes, becomes a slow sensuous beat. I close my eyes and free the knots that hold the veils of my skirt in place, letting them drift, like petals, to the ground.
The hypnotic sounds of the flutes rise and yet I hear the audience gasp as one.
I kneel before Shiva; all that clothes me now are the silver arcs on my breasts and the silver band across my thighs. The wives in the audience are wide-eyed. I imagine the husbands are wishing for looser trousers.
The music becomes deeper, more urgent. I crouch, exposing myself to the men in the front row. Quick as a flash I lift my arms and offer myself to the audience in seductive, orgasmic waves. The men sit forward. The women lean back.
I fall on my knees before the statue of Shiva and arch my back in ecstasy.
As the music climaxes, Guimet is the first to leap to his feet, applauding.
*
“Excuse me,” Edouard interrupts my conversation, cupping my elbow and guiding me toward a secluded spot. The entire library is abuzz. I overhear the words “brilliant” and “incomparable.” The line of people waiting to talk with Guimet will easily take several hours to get through. I look over my shoulder at the handsome young officer I’ve been pulled away from and wink at him, promising my return. Is anything more attractive than a man in uniform?
“Did you say a woman taught you to dance like that?” Edouard asks the moment we are alone. “Mona Devi?”
“Mahadevi,” I say, irritated that he’s mangled her name. “She danced at the elegant parties I attended in Java. She wore silver bangles and sheer yellow veils. She owned rubies and sapphires as big as my thumb.” I leave out other details: that I was the hostess of those parties, not a guest. And that my husband forbade me to learn the magic of her dances. That she promised me “with every new sun comes new chances, a new day to reinvent yourself.” That she was the first to call me Mata Hari, “Eye of the Dawn.”
“Who is that man I was talking to?”
“In the uniform? No one.”
“He has to be someone.”
“An Italian officer, judging from his costume.”
“Ah. A poor mortal like yourself.”
Edouard looks genuinely astonished. “Are you quoting Petrarch’s Lives?”
“My father read it to me. When I was a child, he’d quiz me on the names of the ancient Romans. Greeks as well. The gods they worshipped, the temples they built.” Sometimes, instead of reading, he would tell stories from his childhood. How, when he was a boy, he was asked to pose as King William’s horse guard in a portrait painted for the Royal Gallery.
Guimet laughs loudly at something one of his guests has said. Edouard’s hand drops from my elbow. “He was impressed with you tonight.” He pauses. “And I’m sure last night as well.”
I don’t deny it. We are both adults. He said he wants no secrets between us.
“I’m going to find you a better place to live. To maintain his belief in you, you’ll need an apartment that he can visit.”
I am a child in an instant. “Can I have a bathroom, and running water, and a balcony that looks out over the city?”
“All of that and more. But first, I believe I have secured another engagement for you. Have you heard of the Rothschilds?”
Have I heard of them? Of course I have. They’re as rich as kings.
Chapter 3
Everything I Hoped For
Close your eyes and I’ll transport you to a temple called Borobudur,” I whisper in Guimet’s ear as we lounge in his bed and listen to the rain. I’ve convinced him that I conceived my sacred dances at this sanctuary and offered them to the faithful, but this isn’t true. I did visit the holy place once, on a morning as warm and fragrant as this March morning is damp and chill. Sofie, my only friend and the wife of one of my husband’s subordinates, arranged the outing. We made the trip without the men, accompanied by my servant, an Indian woman named Laksari.
Guimet closes his eyes and I paint him a picture with words. Gone is the mahogany four-poster bed. Now, we are traveling in a rickety andong. I am pressed between Laksari and Sofie. We pass by roadside stalls where the scents of fresh fruit and cardamom waft heavily in the air. Bananas hang in bunches from the tops of bamboo huts and signs promise Freshly Picked and Ripe—I know this because Laksari is translating as we pass them by. There is absolutely nothing of Leeuwarden here. In Yogyakarta one can see reflections of The Netherlands in the way the officers’ wives dress, in the foods offered in the market—but this is a world of its own. We pass through a river valley with thatched-roofed houses on stilts. The houses climb up the tiered slopes and sweep down into rice paddies.