Mata Hari's Last Dance

by Michelle Moran

  Loved and were loved, and now we lie

  In Flanders fields.

  Take up our quarrel with the foe:

  To you from failing hands we throw

  The torch; be yours to hold it high.

  If ye break faith with us who die

  We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

  In Flanders fields.

  For several long minutes he is at a loss for words; together we listen to one of my cellmates sob.

  “Are your parents still alive?” he asks quietly, with embarrassment.

  “No.” I check myself. “I’m not certain. My father may be.” I tell Bowtie about him. What he would say to me when I was a child. White is a nice color, M’greet, but it’s not your color. Your color is red. Because red is passion. It’s life.

  “Do you regret your career?”

  I’ve thought about this a great deal in the Conciergerie. If I had it all to do over again, would I have taken those lessons with Mahadevi? Do I regret touring France, and Spain, and even Germany? “Not entirely.” If I had never danced, I would not know Edouard.

  “What I regret most is losing my daughter. I thought there would be time for us to reunite . . . I dreamed that we’d escape this war, that I’d bring her to live with me in New York where we would be safe.” I look him in the eye. “I’ve lived almost forty years,” I tell him, “and I’ve made enormous sums of money. A lifetime of jewels, apartments, furs. But now, in the end, what do I have left that matters? What legacy can I leave her?”

  “A lock of your hair,” he says quietly. “Your memories.”

  “Could you tell her how breathtaking Java is?”

  “Whatever you wish.”

  I tell him my best memories of that faraway place. I tell him about jungles and rare flowers and dancing with Mahadevi until the sky turned pink at dawn.

  When Sister Léonide tells us that our visit is almost over, Bowtie requests a pair of scissors and she complies without question. I cut off a long lock of hair. I fold it into the envelope and give it to him. A gift for my daughter.

  * * *

  “Mama, Mama, wake up!”

  “Oh, Non, liefste, it’s too early—”

  “No, Mama. Something’s wrong!”

  I’m jolted awake. Someone is shaking my shoulder. My God, it’s Bouchardon. It’s happening. It’s real.

  “Get dressed,” he says.

  Immediately I feel like I’m going to be sick.

  He leaves my cell and his footsteps disappear down the hall. The other women are staring at me, their eyes haunted. One day he will come for them as well.

  They watch me dress. A black hat, a black skirt, and a long dark blouse. Sister Léonide arrives and she walks me to the last car I will ever ride in. The drive to Château de Vincennes is a heartbeat. A group of reporters and military officers are already waiting for me. Bowtie is among them. And now I see Edouard.

  Many have gathered to witness my death, yet as I walk to the field behind the château all is silent. Then I hear Edouard shouting my name and I run.

  I embrace him until my guards force us to part.

  They escort me to a wooden stake in the ground. As they tie my hands I feel as if I’m watching myself from a distance. I am offered a blindfold, but I refuse. I can hear Edouard weeping. I want to be strong for him. I want him to be the last person I see on this earth.

  Twelve men take a stance across from me. They aim their rifles at my chest. I look one last time at Edouard. I remember him as he was on the day we met, tossing that rose out of his car. I conjure the day in the museum when he posed like the statue of Charles V. I appreciate for the final time how hard he labored to deliver Non home to me. I will miss him.

  God, how I will miss him.

  Epilogue

  Customers are trying on coats, asking questions about the furs, demanding different cuts. The woman wearing the expensive rings—who’s already been here six times this week—is demanding another cup of tea, sinking back into one of the soft leather couches, expecting the staff to fetch her refreshments.

  “More biscuits, madam?” Of course.

  “More tea?” Yes, and be certain it’s hot this time.

  It’s unlikely that Ring Woman will buy anything from Joossens today; still, the biscuits and tea have to be produced. The shop girl is on her way to refill the woman’s cup for a fourth time when she sees him, standing near the winter hats.

  “Jeanne MacLeod?” he asks, startling her. He is wearing a green bow tie. It should look ridiculous, but he wears it with style—he looks to be twenty, maybe twenty-five.

  She tries to place him. A friend of her father’s? A previous customer? He holds out his hand and she shakes it.

  “Ancel Dupond. I was a friend of your mother’s.”

  She nearly drops the teacup and saucer she’s holding. She inspects the man more closely. There are fine lines around his eyes. Now, as she studies him, she decides he’s closer to thirty-five. She realizes the implication of his words. “Was? Why do you say was?”

  “I’m sorry. You don’t know?” He takes the teacup from her as it begins to rattle in its saucer. He guides her to a couch. He sets the china on a table and asks, “You’re Jeanne Louise MacLeod, am I right?”

  “My mother called me Non. That’s what I prefer to be called.”

  “Is there somewhere we can go to talk?”

  “Miss,” her customer calls, waving bejeweled fingers. “I’m still waiting for hot tea.”

  “It’s right there,” Non says. “Feel free to get up and pour it.” She turns to her mother’s friend. “Why don’t we go across the street?” She retrieves her coat from the back room and puts on her hat. When she leaves Joossens with Ancel Dupond, she has no intention of returning.

  As they make their way to the coffeehouse, Ancel recognizes Mata Hari in the girl: the same dark beauty and a similar willfulness, too. He wonders how this girl’s father has managed to control her.

  In the bright light of the coffeehouse Ancel orders coffee for both of them and waits for the girl to ask questions. He has some of his own. What was it like to be raised by a man who didn’t want you? Were you aware of how badly your mother yearned for you?

  “My mother is dead?” Non asks.

  “Yes. I’m very sorry.” Ancel reaches into his bag and retrieves an article. It’s not one he wrote, but it’s a kind and melancholic piece that describes the trial and Mata Hari’s execution. He feels uncomfortable watching Non while she reads it, so he stares across the coffeehouse at a pair of women laughing together over their porcelain cups. There can be such joy in the world, he thinks. And so much sorrow. When he looks back, Non’s eyes are red. She’s so young. Sixteen? Seventeen? Mata Hari told him her age but he can’t remember and it would be rude, now, to ask.

  “This is so terrible,” she whispers, trying not to cry. “Why didn’t anyone tell me? I’ve been working. I was saving money to visit Paris and find her.”

  “I’m very sorry.” All he can offer her are words. He takes out a folder. Inside is everything he’s ever written about Mata Hari. His article covering her debut at Guimet’s library, her triumph at the Kursaal, the lies he published about her time in Berlin.

  He pushes it toward Non.

  “What is this?”

  He hopes he isn’t making a mistake. But this was what Mata Hari had wanted. “Your mother’s press,” he says. “Whatever your father’s told you about her, she loved you deeply.”

  “How do you know?” There’s an edge in her voice. She mistrusts her mother, but at the same time she’s looking for reasons to love her.

  “Because I was one of the last people to see her.”

  A woman arrives with their coffee but Non doesn’t drink. She stares at the steam rising into the air, visible and then gone forever. “My father never told
me she was in prison,” she says flatly.

  “For a long time, very few people knew.” Though surely, Rudolph MacLeod was one of them.

  “You knew.”

  “I’m a reporter for Le Figaro. It was my job to know.”

  “Was she mistreated?”

  “No.” He tells the lie without hesitation.

  “I’m glad to know that.”

  “She was innocent, in my opinion.”

  “Then . . . why?” Non’s voice begins to rise. “Why did they execute her?”

  “Publicity. During war, sacrifices are made.” Ancel knows how bitter he sounds. “The story of a femme fatale betraying France could only end in death.” His guilt is gnawing at him: Without Mata Hari he wouldn’t have a large office overlooking the Seine. Without him, the sensation that was Mata Hari might never have existed. Fueled by his articles, France had built her up and then tore her down.

  Non doesn’t open the folder. “Do you know why she abandoned me?” she asks.

  “She was afraid of your father. Afraid that he would kill you if she came for you.”

  “She tried to take me once,” the girl whispers. “She didn’t succeed. When we got home, my father beat me so badly I wasn’t able to walk for two months.”

  Ancel doesn’t know what to say.

  “I live with him. If he knew the two of us were meeting here, he would kill me. But don’t worry. I won’t give him that chance.”

  If there was any doubt, Ancel is now certain this is Mata Hari’s daughter. “She left you this,” he says, reaching into his coat pocket and handing her a locket. It’s silver, and he had Non’s initials engraved on the front. He purchased it the day Mata Hari clipped off a lock of her hair and handed it to him through the prison bars. He wanted to create a nicer presentation than hair wrapped in paper.

  Non is weeping now, clasping the locket to her chest. Other customers have started to stare; Ancel wonders what this scene looks like to them. Non opens the locket and sees her mother’s hair. “It’s unfair,” she manages to say.

  It is. Ancel can’t spin the story any other way. He watches as she fastens the locket around her neck and he thinks of how similar mother and daughter are in their body language. Were.

  “You quit your job,” he observes. “What will your father say?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t care. He won’t be able to find me where I’m going.”

  * * *

  She stands at the rails of the ship Outlandia and closes her eyes, imagining the warmth of Java. No one on this ship knows who she is. She had been afraid that her father was having her followed, but now, with the sea air to clear her head, she can think better.

  She is finally free. At last.

  She has memorized every article given to her by the journalist from Le Figaro. She has weeks, possibly even months, before her money runs out and she has to find employment. Until that happens, she will visit the cities where her mother once lived and meet the women her mother once knew. She plans to fit together the broken pieces of her childhood, putting faces to the names that echo in her mind: Norman, Laksari, Mahadevi. And, of course, the most important name of all: Mata Hari.

  After so many years, finally, she is going home.

  Author's Note

  On October 15, just before dawn, Captain Bouchardon woke Mata Hari from her sleep and ordered her to dress. She was given several minutes to compose herself, then driven from the Conciergerie to the Château de Vincennes where reporters and military officers were waiting. Among those present was Edouard Clunet. Witnesses said that as they embraced for the last time, Edouard became hysterical.

  At 5:45 a.m., Mata Hari was taken behind the château and tied to a wooden stake that had been placed in the ground. Twelve men aimed rifles at her chest. She nodded her head when she was ready and, at 6:00 a.m., the twelve men fired. Only three of the trained riflemen hit their mark, but one of the bullets pierced her heart. Mata Hari died at 6:06. She had refused a blindfold. When the execution was over, no one was allowed to claim her body. In accordance with tradition, an officer emptied his pistol into Mata Hari’s ear. Afterward, her body was brought to the University of Paris for medical research and experimentation.

  Mata Hari’s daughter, Jeanne Louise MacLeod, did sail to Java a few weeks shy of her twenty-first birthday. Shockingly, she died while en route, and her cause of death is uncertain. Her early passing guaranteed that she would never learn the truth about her mother’s arrest.

  Many more years would pass before the world would learn that Arnold Kalle had sent his “secret” messages from Madrid to Berlin in a code that the British had already cracked. Recognizing Mata Hari for what she was—a very amateur spy working for France—Arnold Kalle neatly orchestrated her downfall. He sent a series of telegrams to Berlin written in this broken code, fully anticipating that the British would share the contents with their French allies, and that France would then indict Mata Hari.

  If the French knew that Mata Hari was set up, they weren’t interested in seeing the truth revealed. In 1917, there was one thing the Germans and French agreed upon: Mata Hari was most valuable dead. Germany likely resented the hoodwinking of Consul Cramer; seeing Mata Hari killed by the French would have been a victory. France was in dire fear of losing the war and desperate to convince her citizens that the government could swiftly destroy all enemies. Mata Hari’s sensational execution answered the same need that the deaths of three hundred other French “spies” accomplished: The wartime propaganda machine was fed.

  If Mata Hari did “pray for a quick end to this war” in the hope of saving herself, her prayers were answered too late. The truce that halted fighting went into effect at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918. Today, that day is commemorated in the United States as Veterans Day.

  Even so many years after Mata Hari’s death, fact and fiction are still hard to separate. Much of her success can be attributed to her ability to fabricate—like her father, she was an extraordinary teller of tall tales. The stories she fed to the public were often aggrandized and the result is that the exact truth of her life is nearly impossible to prove. And as time has passed, her legend has only grown. Today, the fantasy of Mata Hari has more substance than the reality of Margaretha Zelle. I believe the girl from Leeuwarden would want it no other way.

  TOUCHSTONE READING GROUP GUIDE

  Mata Hari's Last Dance

  Michelle Moran

  In the glow of prewar Paris, Mata Hari seems to have everything: a successful career as an exotic dancer, scores of rich lovers, her own apartment, and the attention of the elite European art clique. But as a world war dawns, Europe begins to change—and so does life for Mata Hari. In the midst of this changing world, Mata Hari must learn to navigate growing tensions between rival superpowers Germany and France, as well as her own personal battle for her estranged daughter, Non. Despite all her efforts, Mata Hari fails to win back her daughter and her old way of life. In the end she finds herself poor, alone, and sentenced to death for a crime she swore she never committed. At once tragic and beautiful, Mata Hari’s Last Dance chronicles the line between fact and fiction, creation and destruction, and life and death.

  For Discussion

  1.Mata Hari’s Last Dance opens with a newspaper article detailing Mata Hari’s death by French firing squad—an article that claims she was not only guilty but “one of the most dangerous of the Kaiser’s agents in France and England”. Discuss how this article compares to the story that the character Mata Hari tells us. Is there any overlap? In general, why do you think the author chose to use so many newspaper articles throughout the novel? Do the articles give us a different perspective? How so?

  2.Mata Hari describes her small, run-down apartment as a place where “the carpets stink of urine and mold” and the landlord is “a man who beats his wife”. Would you describe Mata Hari as a str
ong female character? Is she a feminist? Do you attribute her ability to lift herself out of poverty as an indication of her strength?

  3.Discuss the relationship between Edouard Clunet and Mata Hari. Would you call their relationship odd? Unrequited? Problematic? Do you think the two are truly in love with each other? Why or why not?

  4.The snake handler tells Mata Hari not to be afraid of the snake, but to “Treat her well . . . and she will never harm you”. Is the snake a symbol of the main character? Both Mata Hari and the snake are exotic, dangerous, and arguably misunderstood. In the end, do you believe Mata Hari is as harmless as the snake? Why or why not?

  5.What do you think is Mata Hari’s goal? Does she want simply to be famous, or is it something more? Why do you think she seeks out the attention of Bowtie and the media?

  6.The famous fashion designer tells Mata, “women like us prefer to forget we had a past. Too painful. We’d rather create”. Discuss Mata Hari’s creation. What kind of creation does she make when she dances? What kind of life does her art create? What kind of image? In the process of creation, does she also do as the epigraph to the novel suggests: “This is the dance I dance tonight. The dance of destruction as it leads to creation”?

  7.Revisit the scene in which Mata Hari reveals the truth about her husband, daughter, and her deceased son (pages 93–94). Is this the first glance we get into the “real” Mata Hari? Did you believe she was removing the mask of her dancer persona in this scene? Why or why not?

  8.Bowtie tells Mata Hari “you’re good for my career”. Discuss the ways in which the characters in the novel use one another. Are any of their relationships sincere, or are they all born from opportunity? Consider Bowtie, Mata Hari, Edouard, Mata Hari’s father, and Rudolph MacLeod in your response.

  9.What is the symbolism of Mata Hari’s characterization of herself as “an orchid among buttercups”? Do you think she values herself for her distinct appearance, her distinct way of being in the world, or both?