At home, MacLeod was furious. How could you have taken
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the children to the sea where the current is so strong! he said, and he grabbed his pipe off the table and chewed on it instead of lighting it and smoking it. I explained to him that we did not go into the water and that no one wore the color green.
What on earth are you talking about? he said.
Green, no one wore it, I said. The goddess of the southern seas would not have been tempted by them even if they had been in the water, they would not have drowned. I was careful, I said. I would never let anything happen to my children. Never, I repeated.
MacLeod did not say anything. He stuffed his pipe with tobacco and lit it and smoked. You’re dumber than a child, he said. You believe what the islanders tell you, and you’re a grown woman. Are you mad? he said.
Of course I believe the islanders, I said. It’s their island, I said.
They’ve learned to live on it.
Don’t you see, that’s why I’m here, that’s why the Dutch are here, because the islanders live on their island like stupid children. They have no idea how rich their island is. They don’t even know how to control it. Without us they wouldn’t have these large-scale coffee plantations or rice fields or spice markets.
Don’t you even know why I’m here? he said.
I shook my head. I did not know why we were there. I looked down at my hands and the tops of my feet, which were brown from my day at the shore, and then I sat on the balcony, where a warm perfumed breeze flapped back the hem of my sarong and the warm breeze smelled of lotus, and I knew it was the goddess of the southern seas calling to me from her underwater realm.
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A C H I L D I S H H E A RT
SHE TOLD the doctor that her heart was skipping. She laughed when she said it, because it sounded like such a youthful thing, a childish thing, and not a thing to do with poor health. Her heart skipping down a street. This time she lowered her gown to her shoulders, so he could listen to her heart. The gas flame in the cell was not bright enough for him. Sister Leonide held a lantern up so he could see better. You are in very good health, he said.
But I’m not, she said. Tell him, Sister, how I worry all the time, how I can’t eat my food, how I pace the floor, and how my hair is falling out.
Her hair is falling out, Sister Leonide said, and she brought the lantern to her pillow to show the doctor the black-and-gray S-shaped hairs.
The doctor examined the hairs. He examined her head. He stood above her while she sat on the bed and with his pocketknife he lifted the hairs at her crown. Then he stood in front of her and she looked into his blue eyes while he looked at her temples and her hairline.
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Yes, you are losing your hair. This is not uncommon for a woman your age. How old are you again?
Forty-two.
Yes, you are losing your hair. He folded his pocketknife back up.
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T H E H E AT
AT FIRST I thought I would make friends with the heat. MacLeod and the other officers’ wives who had been stationed on the island longer than I had been all said that the heat was what drove them insane. The rain they hated, but it was the heat that made them dream of their homeland and when they were too hot to dream of their own homeland, they dreamed of other people’s homelands, and when it was too hot for that, they dreamed of hell and in their dreams it was cooler than Java. My plan was to receive it like a good friend who had come for a long visit.
I even cleaned my house for it. I had new eyelet linen put on all the beds, for the eyelets sounded as if they’d be cool, letting air pass through their holes. I shopped for it. I had cotton shorts made for Norman, and for Non I had small seersucker sundresses made in mint green and slate blue, which would not soak in the heat as much as dark colors would.
When the first days of it came, I greeted it every morning as it streamed in through my window and felt like a branding iron on my bare leg. But like a big dog that panted at my side, the heat did more than follow me. That would have meant I could somehow get in front of it. Instead it mirrored my every move, as if the big panting dog were a well-trained dog, a dog so well 8 0
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trained that it would not leave my side and at times pressed all of its weight into me, leaning on me, making me lose my balance, making me walk into walls and fall down stairs.
I SAW more of MacLeod in the heat. Perhaps the brothel was just too hot and the whores smelled as if they were rotting. At night he slept with his arms akimbo in our bed and in his sleep a hand or an arm of his twitching in a dream would touch me and awaken me. I woke thinking he wanted something from me, there was something he had to tell me, but then I would realize he was fast asleep and there was nothing he had to tell me anyway, just as there was nothing to tell me when we were awake during the day.
I ate in the middle of the night because it was cooler then. I feasted on passion fruit and jackfruit and mango and jamblang and pineapple and rambutan. I ate naked sitting on the balcony (it was too hot for even a sarong), and I listened to the insects thrum while I reached for a plate of all the fruits cut up on a table beside me. Their juices dripped down my chin, onto my breasts, and onto my belly.
Two or three times, when I was on the balcony late at night, I heard a great big crashing from the trees and then a large thud. It was a gibbon, falling out of its tree in its sleep. It was comical to see the gibbon stand unbalanced after the fall, shaking its head, and I would laugh out loud and the gibbon would turn and send a hurt look in my direction and MacLeod would mumble in his sleep and spread his arms and legs even farther out on the eyelet linen so that even if I did want to go back to bed, there would be no room for me.
I slept during the heat of the day in a hammock. Norman 8 1
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would rock me to sleep in it. Close your eyes, Mama Hari, you take a nap now, he would say. Sometimes Non would sleep beside me in the hammock, curled in the crook of my arm, but when I would awaken she was gone. MacLeod had taken her out, afraid that the hammock would flip in our sleep and she’d be hurt. I always woke from my naps in the hot afternoon feeling that I had a hangover and I had to think back to what I had been doing before the nap. Had I been to a party? Did I drink too much wine?
But I had not been to a party. I simply had been awake all night feasting on fruit and listening for gibbons falling out of trees.
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TA K I N G T H E WAT E R S
THERE WAS a coal furnace in Bouchardon’s office, which was why she grew to look forward to her meetings with him. She leaned back in the chair, not feeling the need to hunch forward the way she did in her cell where the cold made her feel as if she should withdraw and fold her body around herself to keep her center warm. In Bouchardon’s office she set her shoulders back and opened herself up to the heat. She talked for as long as she could, because she wanted to stay as warm as she could for as long as possible. She reminded herself that what she said would have to serve her well, to save her life, but at times she forgot, at times the warmth of the furnace was all she thought about.
I have messages, Bouchardon said. He never showed them to her. He kept them in a folder. Sometimes he would read from them. They were all from the Germans. They were intercepted from the Eiffel Tower.
After the 1889 Paris Exhibition, the French wanted to take the thing down. It was horrible, they said. It was hideous, they said.
Mon Dieu, they said. But, they soon learned, it was the highest point in all of Paris and it was ideal for intercepting radio-wired messages.
She did not know how transmissions worked. It was hard for 8 3
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Bouchardon read out loud a portion of one of the messages.
Agent H21 of the Intelligence Centralization section of Cologne has arrived here in Spain. She has pretended to accept offers from the French Intelligence services and to carry out trial trips in Belgium for them.
You are Agent H21! Bouchardon said. You are a German
spy! You sought out Captain Ladoux of the French Intelligence so that you could pretend to work for him, when really you were employed by Von Kalle, a German officer who sent you five thousand francs for your services, and then you met with him in Spain to supply him with very complete information on a number of political, diplomatic, and military subjects. Agent H21, that is you!
I did not seek out Ladoux to be a spy, I sought him out to secure a pass to go to Vittel, to take the waters. Only to take the waters.
Ladoux said you wanted the pass to go into the war zone to see your Russian lover, Vadime.
Yes, yes, that was the real reason. But I first went to Ladoux for a pass to Vittel for the waters, that’s what I told him. Then later, yes, the truth was I wanted to see Vadime!
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You have a great deal of difficulty with the truth, don’t you, Agent H21?
Yes, no, I am not Agent H21! It’s just that it’s so hot in here!
It’s so hot, compared to my cell, who can think in this heat?
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M U D F R O M T H E R I V E R
IT WAS WHEN the nights started getting cooler that it happened.
MacLeod was asleep on the couch and I was sleeping in my bed.
I was dreaming that Prince Rama was my lover and that he had come with his army of monkeys to save me from the evil Ravana.
In the dream, the monkeys were screaming as they swooped down through the trees and landed on Ravana’s back, attacking him. But then the screams changed. They sounded like my children and I woke up from the dream.
I was annoyed to wake up, I wanted Prince Rama to finish rescuing me, I wanted to go with him to live in the palace. But my children’s screams were real.
Running to their room, I collided with MacLeod, our shoulders hitting each other’s in the hallway. It was the first time in a long time that we had touched. When I opened the door to Norman and Non’s room I thought for a second that they were re-creating some kind of drama. This was a play Norman had watched or been told about by Kidul and the black vomit pouring out their mouths was a stage prop, some sort of black paint they had mixed with spice paste and powders in the kitchen. I was angry with them right away. How could they play like this in the middle of the night when they were supposed to be asleep, 8 6
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and where was Kidul anyway? She should have been there to quiet them down and keep them from waking their father.
It was the smell of the vomit that stopped me for a second so that I stood still in the doorway. It was putrid. It came from deep inside them and then it spouted from their mouths and spilled down their dressing gowns as black as the mud from the river.
MacLeod stood still in the doorway too, it took us a few seconds to figure out that they were sick, and then we both ran to them.
I ran to Norman and he ran to Non. They writhed with pain in our arms. What happened? I yelled to Norman. But he could not answer. His back would arch and then seconds later he would double over, all the while moving from side to side, reminding me of the way he would roll from side to side when he was angry at me and beat at me with his little fists and I would try to hold him still until his tantrum was over.
Both Non and Norman were screaming and wailing loudly. I called out to MacLeod above their voices as if I were calling out to him above the noise of a raging storm. Get the doctor! I yelled, and then MacLeod called out loudly to me, You go!
No, you! You’re faster! I yelled. And then he let go of Non and he ran out of the room. Before he left I caught sight of him and Non’s black putrid vomit covering the front of his cotton shirt and I wondered how long it would take the doctor to realize that it wasn’t because MacLeod was sick and drunk that he had come to his house.
I picked up Norman and brought him to Non’s bed so I could hold them both close. Their heads knocked into each other as they tossed and clutched at their bellies in pain. Their hair was covered with vomit and it hung in long strings from their mouths, which I wiped with my gown. Non was burning up, and she was 8 7
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trying to talk, but I couldn’t understand what she was saying. It was because she was so small, and her mouth was so small, that I couldn’t understand her words. It was the way it was with all children, I thought, it’s not that she’s so sick that I can’t understand her, I reasoned. Kidul! I yelled. Kidul, come here! But Kidul did not come.
For a second, they were both quiet. Non stopped her feverish talking, and Norman stopped writhing. I could even hear the steady drone of the insects buzzing outside their window. But then Non started again, her vomiting came again and again and she convulsed and I watched how her back, racked with shudders, moved as if some sort of sea monster were coursing through her and in my mind I willed it to come out. I held Norman in my arms. His forehead was cool and he was not vomiting and he was not writhing any longer. I was so relieved. It’s passed, I thought, and it was nice to hold him close without his back arching, without feeling his body convulsing.
Dr. Roelfsoemme came rushing into the room wearing bed-
room slippers, which I noticed had leaves and grass sticking out from their bottoms from the run to our house. Look, I said to Norman, Dr. Roelfsoemme forgot to put on his shoes! Silly doctor, I said, and I rocked Norman back and forth in my arms.
I need to examine him, you need to let him go, Dr. Roelfsoemme said. I shook my head, and then MacLeod yelled at me.
Let him go! he yelled. But while MacLeod was yelling, Dr.
Roelfsoemme was feeling the pulse at Norman’s wrist and when he was done, he turned, and said to MacLeod, It’s all right, she doesn’t have to let him go.
Then Dr. Roelfsoemme went to Non and he started to treat her while she still writhed and cried and he told me to take Norman 8 8
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into the living room and to put him on the couch. I put him on the couch and I lay down next to him and I covered him with my arm and I fell asleep.
When I woke up the heat of the day was coming on and there was a fly buzzing by Norman’s head and it would land on his mouth and then on his nostril and I would shoo it away. MacLeod came with a sheet and he told me to get up. I thought how it was probably too hot now for a sheet, that Norman wouldn’t get cold with the sun coming on strong, but I got up anyway, and then MacLeod covered all of Norman with the sheet, even his head, and I could see how my boy’s face looked like the face of a statue carved in marble, I could see the shape of his nose and the curve of his lip and the angle of his chin through the sheet.
I went to see Non, and Dr. Roelfsoemme was still with her and he was pressing damp towels to her forehead, even though she was sleeping.
She will live, Dr. Roelfsoemme said, and then he said, Do you know who did this?
The goddess of the southern seas? Ravana? The ogre? I shook my head.
What about the servants? Where are they? Dr. Roelfsoemme said.
I walked through the house, calling out to Kidul, calling out to T
ekul. I looked under the stairs for Tekul, was he still tapping his hammer on the bamboo steps? I looked in the kitchen for Kidul, was she at the stove frying the nasi goreng? I wished Norman were with me so he could join me in my search. We could hold hands and he would say, Come out, come out, wherever you are!
as I looked behind doors and walked the paths in the garden.
I didn’t find Kidul. She found me. Her hair was long and loose 8 9
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and tangled. She was standing at the edge of the garden, where the forest began. She would not come any closer to me. Her face was wet, and I thought for a moment how maybe it was raining in the forest even if it was dry in the garden and I was afraid that maybe I had misunderstood the islanders and that the monsoon season came twice a year instead of just once. But it was not rain on her face, it was her tears. She had come even though Tekul had told her not to. She had come to tell the truth, that she had mixed the black poison and fed it to Non and Norman with a teaspoon of gula in their tea.
Mengerti? she said.
No, saya tidak mengerti, I said. I don’t understand. You poisoned them? I said.
Ja, she said. And then I pieced together what I thought must have happened. Maybe MacLeod had forced himself on her, and this was his punishment.
I reached out to touch Kidul, but she ran away back through the forest. I never saw her again and I never wanted to see her again.
MacLeod lifted Norman up in his arms and took him out of the house. I watched him walk with Norman down the road, the white sheet trailing in the dirt like a wedding train and MacLeod looked as if he were carrying a cherished new bride across the threshold of their home. It was then that I fell where I was standing, as if the big panting dog from the season of heat was back and knocked me down flat.
I HAVE WALKED across the sea. Constant tides left mud on the flats that were awash with the perfume of violet-headed sea lavender.
Signed, Mata Hari Page 6