Signed, Mata Hari

by Yannick Murphy

  Make yourself comfortable, she said. He patted a spot beside him on the cot, he wanted her to sit down next to him. Instead 1 1 6

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  she walked to the wall and leaned against it, wondering whose voices she could hear now.

  Clunet said that she had received letters from the Hotel Vigo.

  She owed them 2,000 pesetas. They wanted, por favor, to be paid.

  The Hotel Vigo, she said. Clunet nodded, it made more water pour from his eyes. Don’t do that, she said. Also, there was a bill for a frock whose pocket was repaired and never picked up from the tailor’s on rue Balzac. There was a letter from her maid, Anna Lintjens. Bouchardon had already opened it up. It said that Van der Capellen, one of her lovers, had come by the house, asking when she would return from Paris. He missed her and was very sad that he had not heard from her. Anna also said the roof was leaking and that she had had to place pots of water here and there to collect the drops that made a tinny racket in a down-pour. Did she want her to call the roofer? Already her horsehair mattress had become soaked, and the house, Anna said, smelled somewhat like a stable. Also, the oven seems to be broken. It doesn’t get hot enough, but stays a low temperature. She baked a blueberry pie and it took six hours to cook, but it was good, she added, the blueberries being in season.

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  A D E E R I N T H E WO O D S

  DR. V ANV OORT BROUGHT in the nasi goreng for her when she woke, but her fever had come back and she could not eat it. She sipped some water and then she grabbed at her belly, saying that it ached.

  At one point in the day she yelled for Norman to come to her.

  Dr. VanVoort could hear her yells for her son as he talked to a worker by the base of the hill picking coffee beans. He stopped talking to the worker and ran back to the house. She was standing in the guest room and tears were streaming down her cheeks and she was saying that Norman was dead and then she tried to go out the door and down the hall. Dr. VanVoort put her back in the bed and lay her down and from a dish beside her bed filled with water he wet a cloth and dabbed at her forehead and her chest where the red spots were beginning to fade. He slept beside her that night in the guest bed, wanting to be there if she woke up and tried to leave the house again.

  In the middle of the night she woke him up by grabbing onto his thigh. He turned to her, but she was not awake. Her eyes were closed and it looked as though she were dreaming. Nonetheless, her hand so close to his penis excited him so much that he ejacu-lated. He cursed himself afterward. His pants were wet now. He 1 1 8

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  went to his room to change them. When he came back, she was gone. For a while he just stared at the bed, not believing she was gone. Then he ran through his house calling for her. When he listened for her, all that he could hear was a cricket that had come into the house and was somewhere in the living room. He went outside, still calling her name, and then he saw her in the coffee field. The moon was full and she was dancing for it. He was sure that was what she was doing. He was never able to explain it any other way.

  She wore her dressing gown while she danced, but then she started to lift it. She lifted it above her waist and her shoulders and finally above her head and then she let the dressing gown go where it landed at rest on the top leaves of the plants. The way she moved looked to Dr. VanVoort as if there was an invisible cord dangling from the moon and that she was writhing up and twirling around it, trying to ascend it so she could be with the moon. Her dark hair was loose and wave-filled and it hung down to her rear, like a black waterfall. Then she collapsed. She fell and he ran to her and he carried her back to the house and put her back in her bed. He left the dressing gown outside, supported by the leaves of the coffee plants, where it lay as though the form of her body were still inside it.

  Her pulse was steady and her fever had abated, but she was weak from lack of food and that, he determined, was the cause of her collapse. He went to his kitchen and cooked for her. He made her soup and, even though she was asleep when he walked into the room with it, he woke her up to drink it.

  What were you doing out there? he asked while she sat propped up on pillows and he brought the spoon to her mouth. But she did not even remember that she had left the room and said that 1 1 9

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  her dreams were all of Norman, telling her he was happy where he was.

  He told her he wished he had a camera because he would have taken a picture of how beautiful she looked while she was dancing. She said she was glad it hadn’t happened at her house, because out in the garden MacLeod might have mistaken her at night for a gibbon and shot her.

  Drink, he said, and he made her finish the soup.

  While standing out in the field the next day he noticed that the wind had changed and he wondered what it meant. A worker told him it was the spirits in the forest blowing breaths their way because they had planted too close to where they lived. Dr.

  VanVoort’s blond hair lifted in the wind and his gabardine shirt collar lifted also and came up high above his neck to just under his chin. The leaves of the coffee plants shuddered and shook.

  In his house, the thatch on the roof rustled loudly as if a pack of rats were nesting in it and the glassless windows let in a ter-rific breeze that knocked over the light rattan chair in the guest room and made the bamboo door bang open and shut, open and shut.

  When he walked into her room she was righting the chair. He did not say anything but went straight to the glassless window to bring the woven shutter down and fasten it with a hook. The room was now dark and at first he could not make out anything at all. He blinked his eyes. When he could see, he saw her walking toward him and then she put her hand to his collar and smoothed it down so it lay flat, the way it was meant to. Then she said she was up to some nasi goreng, and the soup he had made was fine, but now she needed something more. She said he’d have to forgive her because she didn’t want to go into the kitchen and she 1 2 0

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  explained what she meant when she said she thought the kitchen could kill you. He let the workers go early. The wind was knocking over the woven baskets that held the coffee beans anyway.

  He brought a table into the guest room and helped bring her chair to the table as she seated herself. She handed back the fork he had set beside her plate. I won’t need one, she said, and she ate with the tips of her fingers. He was going to leave her alone to eat but she made him bring in another chair. I want to hear about your life, she said. He told her all there was to tell. Two fine parents and a younger sister and a dog who once saved their lives from a fire. He was from Holland and skated to school on the canals and was known for having learned how to read while skating and he never looked up while on the ice but always had his nose in a book. One day, yes, he did crash and it was into a doctor who became his friend and it was from him that his interest in science grew and eventually led him to medicine. Women?

  he asked in answer to her question if there was one in his life.

  Yes, he said, there was one.

  Ah, she said, so that’s why you’re here. She left you. He took a cigarette out of the pack in his shirt and offered her one. She took it and he lit it for her.

  She married another man, he said, so then I thought, I’ve never been to Indonesia.

  And there was a job, she said.

  Yes, that’s right, he said.

  And you thought maybe you could run around in a loincloth all day and have the island girls feed you grapes and who needed that bitch after all, the one who married another man.

  He smiled. You talk like your husband, he said.

  Do I? That’s too bad, she said. Maybe it’s the cigarette. I’m 1 2 1

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  not used to talking this way. But my children, I m
ean my child, isn’t here to listen to my language and I don’t think I’m offending you. If I am, let me know. Then she reached across the table and took his hand.

  Your fingers are stained red, what’s that from? she asked.

  The cherries from the coffee plants. If you spend all day soaking the cherries in water, they turn everything red. The water, your fingers, your clothes, everything, he said.

  I thought it was from a surgery you performed. I thought it was blood.

  No, I haven’t performed any surgeries lately. Everyone, right now, is remarkably well. There’s old Mrs. Dieter, who has rheumatism, but I’m afraid that will never go away. There are a few children with lice, but those are Dr. Roelfsoemme’s patients, since he’s the pediatrician. I lead a quiet life. It’s easy to forget sometimes that I even am a doctor. I can go weeks at a time without having a patient call on me. Knock on wood, he said, and he knocked on a rickety leg of the bamboo table and the table rocked back and forth.

  Outside the wind was so strong and the thatch in the roof rustled and shook so much that they both looked up thinking that at any moment the roof would come off and sail out over the coffee plantation. The house had gaps in the walls where the thatch did not completely cover the frame and the wind blew through the gaps and made her shiver.

  She climbed back into bed and he brought the cover to just below her chin and then she reached out and put her hands on his shoulders and they looked at each other and he told her how he had come dangerously close to making love to her while she was deathly ill.

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  I’m better now, is that a problem? she asked. His answer was his kiss. He smelled to her of his Javanese coffee and his French cigarettes and English gin and sea salt and a day at the beach and she remembered what her godfather had said long ago, that children had the sun in their hair, and it was true with this man, she thought. The sun was in his hair, groups of strands were like rays of light. They shimmered and she expected them to feel warm when she ran her hands through them. His eyes were soft brown, the same soft brown as the hide of a deer, she thought, and that’s how he seemed, like a deer you were lucky to catch sight of in the woods, but once you moved closer to see, the deer was off, having bolted and running past trees so quickly you could see only the blur of where he once was.

  She took off his shirt and saw that his chest was the same brown as his eyes. Later, when he entered her, every thrust he made inside of her she rose up to meet. She felt that the thrust of his hips and his penis were like the steady tumblings of ocean waves, they came one after the other while he pushed and poured himself into her. Outside the wind tore and shredded the leaves of the coffee plants, knocking off clusters of cherries from the vines, and empty woven baskets barreled through the rows and the tall yellow grass flattened as if a hand were pressing it down.

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  I N N E E D O F A P I L L

  SHE SMELLED FISH in the prison cell’s woolen blanket. She shook it out, the wool a muddy color, its ends grazing the stone floor, but the smell was still there. This is my own smell then that I am smelling, she thought to herself.

  It was dark and the gaslight flame was off and there was only moonlight from some sliver of a moon that was so thin it looked more like a curved needle and not anything related to a heavenly body. She wanted the doctor. Dr. Bizard! she yelled. The guard down the corridor came to see her. Charles, she said, How did it happen, your Adam’s apple? I mean.

  The doctor’s asleep, everyone’s asleep, he said.

  I am not asleep. I can’t sleep, she said. Charles shrugged. He swallowed, the tomahawk in his throat moved up and down.

  Then he said, Did you really dance in the nude?

  I’m not going to dance for you, Charles, she said. Go back to sleep, she said. He walked away. She went back under the woolen blanket and pulled it over her head to keep out the sliver of light from the moon.

  Dr. Bizard came in the morning.

  Where’s my radish? she said.

  Excuse me? he said.

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  Nothing, she said. She twirled her hair around her finger, and what it looked like she was doing was using her finger like a gun and pointing it at her head. How are your nerves? he asked. She looked to him as if she hadn’t slept, there were no fluid-filled pouches under her eyes. The gravity of sleep hadn’t been at work, she had been spared the heaviness of dreams. I need a pill, a lot of pills. I need one for sleeping and I need one for waking up and I need one to keep my food down and one to get it out of me when I visit the lavatory and I need one to stop the ache in my fingers and one to take when I’m sad and one to take when I’m happy, because at times I have been too happy and it scared Sister Leonide and made her wonder how long I could keep this up.

  Keep what up, exactly? asked Dr. Bizard. He had long felt there was something different about Mata Hari. True, like the other women prisoners, her hair was dulling, her skin becoming gray like the stone walls, as if she and all the other prisoners were chameleons, taking on the color and the texture of their surroundings. But Mata Hari was different. There was a lengthening about her. A neck that seemed longer, to reach up, to look through the bars of her window. She seemed to stand on tiptoes, ready to race down the prison corridors. Even her hands looked longer than before, her entire body reaching somehow to be free.

  Your eyes are really blue, she said. I can’t help thinking that it’s affecting your vision. Is it better or worse because of the blue?

  Also, is everything you see a little blue because of them?

  I can give you another pill to help you sleep, but that’s all, he said.

  He listened to her heart again.

  It’s really not my heart that needs listening to, she said. It’s 1 2 5

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  these walls, she said. Go listen, please. He put his stethoscope into his black bag.

  Take your pill with water, he said, and he left.

  Really, I thought I’d wash it down with a cordial, she said to him as he walked down the corridor and she had her face wedged between the bars. And he smiled, amused by her joke, as he walked away from her cell.

  SISTER L EONIDE came in and asked her if she wanted to pray again.

  No, no, no, no, I do not want to pray, she said. Sister Leonide knelt on the floor by her cot and put her elbows over the woolen blanket and clasped her hands and lowered her forehead over them and started to pray by herself. Do you smell that smell? Mata Hari asked her. Sister Leonide raised her head and looked down at her own hands. They looked more like some kind of intertwined two-handed fist to her, held that way to pound something or to beat something but not held that way to talk to God. She separated her hands and looked at Mata Hari. She liked looking at Mata Hari. She liked looking at her eyebrows. The hairs on them looked as if they had been perfectly combed, but of course they hadn’t been, and Sister Leonide wondered, just for a moment, if it was the thoughts one had that determined the pattern and the shape the eyebrows would take. Her own were crosshatched, she thought to herself, as if they were intent on tying themselves into knots, so that sitting in their places would not be a straight band of eyebrow but some balled-up thing, forever unknottable, as tightly wound as a cloth button on a Chinaman’s jacket. She’d like to help Mata Hari, she thought. There must be some way to help this woman be set free. Come, she said to Mata Hari, let’s write to your daughter.

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  With some paper and an inkpot and a pen set in front of her, Mata Hari began to write.

  Dear Non,

  Once upon a time there was a queen who had a bitter quarrel with her son. She forbade him to stay with her and cast him out to the forests. Years later they met again, but they did not recognize each other. Then they became fri
ends and eventually lovers and he asked her to marry him. When the queen learned that he was her son, she was astounded.

  She knew she could never marry him, so she set before him an impossible task. If between the next sunset and sunrise he could dam up the nearby river, so that the entire area could be turned into a lake, then she would marry him. It’s impossible, he’ll never be able to do it, she thought. But the prince had some help from the gods, and he almost finished damming up the river. When the queen learned of his progress and that she would have to marry her own son, she had the dam destroyed and flooded the plateau, where her son was then accidentally carried off in the water and drowned. That is how the summit of the Tangkuban Prahu was formed.

  Love,

  Your Mother

  Sister Leonide read the letter. Is there anything else you wanted to say besides that? she asked. Mata Hari took the letter back from Sister Leonide. PS, she wrote, Watch your feet if you go there. They can easily slip into the hidden pockets of hot, bubbling mud.

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  Bouchardon reads all the prisoners’ letters, Sister Leonide said. He will read this letter too. Write something else. Write something that will make him think you should be set free. Tell your daughter how you wish the two of you could be together again. When Bouchardon reads it he will hear how you are a woman filled with maternal love, that to keep you prisoner here is to keep you from your true nature.

  Mata Hari took up her pen again. She wrote, I know your father has forbidden me from seeing you all these years, but, right now, I would love to have you . . . Then Mata Hari crossed out what she had just written.

  What are you doing? That was perfect! Sister Leonide said.

  It wasn’t, Mata Hari said. It was wrong. I was going to say I would love to have her here with me. But here? The walls? The rats? The smell? Send it as it is. I have always wanted her to know the story of the queen and her son. Mata Hari then handed the letter to Sister Leonide.

  Sister Leonide felt that her eyebrows were as tight as knots again. She was frowning, knowing no way to save Mata Hari.