Femme Fatale

by Pat Shipman

  More than ever I am longing for Holland. Good lord, what a lot of problems and sadness in my life. And why all this?

  How could one be worried about a rank and a name when one is so deeply unhappy? Don’t think that I have a good time with such an old, severe man who does nothing other than watching me, punishing me and telling me one hundred times a day that I am inferior to him, that I should be happy with his name and good family—family who do not even look at me and behave as if I don’t exist.

  I really have no life. He has all the money in his hands, pays for the milk and the meat and only gives me what is needed for the market (a maximum of 50 cents per day). And if I want to buy needles or thread, then I have to beg him for 10 cents. He doesn’t give me clothes because he is afraid that I will look too good. Oh I can’t really bear it. And if then you see all these young lieutenants around me, who are always so amorous—then it is very difficult to behave so that he can’t reproach me. Thus the Indies is a typical country; isn’t Holland the same?

  This morning he was looking again for a brawl, so he thumps into me and last week he hit me with his cat-o’-nine-tails, because he thought that I had painted myself; it wasn’t true my lips are always that red.

  It is impossible to stand this situation any longer. In a moment I will go to his office and I will propose to him that we get a divorce. I will study theater in Amsterdam, and I may become something, but this I don’t want any more.

  Goodbye, dear parents! Maybe it is better for Norman that he is resting in his grave and does not know what he has been saved from. I do not know one happy person that I would wish this fate on.

  Rudolf was disheartened, grieving, and enraged by the injustices of life. He wrote long letters to a cousin and to his sister in Amsterdam, and kept copies for some reason; they were full of complaints and anguish. He had lost his taste for the military life and wanted only to hang on long enough to earn his pension.

  He was convinced that General Reisz, his predecessor in the Medan garrison and his superior officer, would never promote him to lieutenant colonel and thus he might as well resign. Life with Gretha was insufferable. He accused her of squandering money on every worthless trifle offered by passing merchants and of complaining endlessly. Only little Non was a comfort to Rudolf, but he worried neurotically about her health and moral character under the influence of her mother:

  It is absolutely essential to remove her from the infectious influence of the filthy nature of her mother, without whom she would lose nothing…. My little girl will become fatally ill if she stays another six months in the clutches of this woman…. If I were alone I could occupy myself with her education and if I lived long enough, I would be content, but always I am afraid to leave her alone [with Gretha] for a single day; then, God knows, she would be entirely in the hands of her mother, for then— kassian [an Indies expression meaning “alas” or “pity”] and a million times kassian for her and our name.

  Non MacLeod, here about four years old, was poisoned at the same time as Norman but recovered. She died suddenly at age twenty-one, shortly before she was to leave for Indonesia to be a schoolteacher. (The Mata Hari Foundation/Fries Museum)

  Rudolf damned his wife over and over, labeling her “a scum of the lowest kind…a woman without heart, without love of anyone, who cares nothing for anything and who never thinks of my love of the little boy and doesn’t speak of him ever.”

  As always, Gretha was interested in officers and they were interested in her. Jealousy was a potent weapon with which to punish her husband, who—she hinted in her letters—was sometimes impotent. MacLeod wrote that he caught her with a young second lieutenant named “J. v. D.” The encounter provoked a violent scene, following which he forbade her to go to a ball in a low-cut gown. In fury, he even offered Gretha her freedom: a divorce. She refused, saying she would not give up her widow’s pension when he died. She threatened to flaunt her lovers publicly and blacken his precious name. He admitted in his letter that he was so intensely jealous that he wanted to kill her.

  He continued the letter with the mundane grievance that he had been transferred so many times he was going broke. He never accepted that the frequent transfers that marred his career might have been the consequence of his own actions or that the responsibility for his perpetual indebtedness, both before and after his marriage, was related to his extravagant living, drinking, and gambling. His tone ranged from bitter anger to near-suicidal despair.

  One has nothing to look at but the mountains, and at night it is incredibly quiet, with only here and there a badly functioning lantern spreading an uncertain twilight at the crossroads. Someone who would have the pen to describe the situations in the nearby kampongs would give a picture of a “bête humaine” [human beast] that is totally different from the one [writer Émile] Zola has given us. Tonight we have another invasion of butterflies, plus flying ants and termites, and millions of little insects that drive one crazy….

  [Here there is] deathly monotony…. Sundays here are absolutely miserable and people who have suicidal tendency could easily put it into practice on a day like that.

  In March of 1900 Gretha came down with typhoid and was treated by the medical officer for that part of Preanger regency, Dr. Roelfsema. Finally, he prescribed a retreat to the cooler temperatures of a coffee plantation in the hills, where she could be nursed and looked after. She probably went to Kemloko to convalesce. Having some familiarity with the MacLeod family situation, Roelfsema may also have thought she would regain her strength more rapidly away from Rudolf’s hostility.

  After the publication of Charles Heymans’s 1936 The Real Mata Hari: Courtesan and Spy, which was highly critical of Mata Hari, Roelfsema wrote a letter to the prominent Dutch newspaper General Trade Sheet (Algemeen Handelsblad) about the woman that he had known in Java before she became Mata Hari.

  As a friend of the truth…I simply want to give the impression I have gotten as an impartial observer of this married couple and also of their understanding during their marriage…. During this time I associated a great deal with the family MacLeod and also visited them several times as physician and for that reason I think I am able to judge the truth about who is responsible for the tragedy in this marriage….

  During the year and a half I used to know the MacLeod family, the conduct of Mrs. MacLeod was absolutely correct, notwithstanding the many rude insults she had to endure in public from her husband. I often used to wonder whether Margaretha Zelle might not have grown into a good wife and mother if her husband had been a more equable and sensible man. Her marriage to the uneven-tempered and excitable MacLeod was doomed to failure.

  I do not want to mention all the painful scenes, which were provoked by the husband, for I would have to go into too many details.

  Rudolf’s view of Gretha’s typhoid, as expressed in a letter to his cousin on May 31, was harsh and unsympathetic:

  Two and a half months ago Griet got an attack of typhoid fever and her condition got constantly worse. All the care for the little girl fell on me, and the whole situation was one of endless misery. Ten days ago Griet was finally able to travel and she is now on the coffee plantation…near Ulingie to regain her health. You can understand that her illness was an expensive business when I tell you that we needed five bottles of milk a day at 30 cents each…and now again that trip to Ulingie. I have kept the little girl here. She is a lovely child, but she reminds me constantly of my lost darling.

  That Rudolf demanded sympathy for having to care for his daughter—assisted of course by a full household staff, including a babu and cook—reveals both the depth of his continued fear for Non’s health and the eternal vigilance that he felt was required to stave off catastrophe. It is an ugly truth that Rudolf earned roughly 700 to 800 guilders a month and yet begrudged his deathly ill wife a daily expenditure of 1.5 guilders for milk. His complaints reveal the strength of his hatred for his wife and the extent of his indebtedness. He continued his letter: “My dear cousin, the loss
of that wonderful little boy has cracked something inside of me which will always remain there. The boy loved military music, especially the Monte Carlo march, and every time they play that here I get a pain in my eyes and my chest.”

  Their house in Banjoe Biroe was near Fort Willem I. Rudolf complained about the immoral atmosphere, with all the officers living nearby with their nyais. Perhaps he was too often reminded of his own faults.

  On July 29 he wrote his sister that it was almost payday.

  Merciful God, after tomorrow, payday, for I have not a cent; unhappily, as soon as the money comes in, it is necessary that I send it out [to repay debts] and voilà! so begins the whirlpool of another month….

  With Multatuli [a well-known Dutch colonial writer who was in the civil service], I can cry out: “A little poetry, my God, that I do not perish from disgust because of all the disgusting things in my environment.”

  At the end of July, Rudolf sent Gretha to Semarang to visit friends. He enjoyed being separated from her for two days and the unaccustomed peace and quiet, with no fighting or screaming at the servants. He wrote Louise: “After tomorrow, she returns here, to my great regret…. That good God should deliver me from this creature! I hope that with all my heart. Amen!”

  But there was no deliverance from their desperation and wretchedness.

  On October 2, 1900, Rudolf was granted a discharge from military service “because of the fulfilled period of service, [an] honorable [discharge], and with maintenance of the right of a pension.” On November 14 it was ruled that he was entitled to a pension of 2,800 guilders annually, a staggering decrease in income from the 8,400–9,600 guilders he had been earning. He may not have told Gretha the true amount of his pension. In at least one letter she wrote, she referred to it as 2,400 guilders, although the exact amount was of great concern to both of them.

  They moved to the village of Sindanglaja, on the side of the volcano known as Gede, between Buitzenborg (now Bogor) and Bandung. A health resort had been set up in the village between 1850 and 1860 because of its mineral spring, altitude, and cooler climate. Living was inexpensive in Sindanglaja, and the scenery was beautiful. Like many ex-military men, Rudolf hoped to recover financial solvency by staying on in Java and living cheaply.

  Gretha complained in letters to her father and stepmother that she was isolated from any sort of life, that there were few Europeans living nearby, and she was terribly unhappy. The state of the MacLeods’ marriage was appalling, with open hostility and biting hatred on both sides. It was in Sindanglaja that Dr. Roelfsema, the family’s physician, witnessed two revealing incidents.

  In an interview with Sam Waagenaar in 1932, Roelfsema recounted being in the MacLeod home in Sindanglaja along with the top civil servant, the resident of the regency, and his wife. The conversation turned to Paris, perhaps because of the remarkable Paris Exposition of 1900, which attracted a great deal of press attention and, ultimately, more than fifty million visitors. To colonials isolated in a small village in the Dutch East Indies, the grand buildings, the amazing mechanical and technical exhibits, the glamorous Art Nouveau fashions and furnishings, must have seemed the epitome of chic and cosmopolitan taste. Perhaps the conversation recalled memories of the exposition in Amsterdam that Rudolf and Gretha had attended in the year of their marriage—an exposition organized by Mr. Calisch, to whom they still owed three thousand guilders. As the conversation continued, Rudolf grew more and more agitated and finally shouted at Gretha, “What the hell! If you want that much to go to Paris, why don’t you just go and leave me alone!” Their guests were shocked.

  After Rudolf’s retirement in 1900, he settled his family in this remote village. Margaretha wrote to her father that Rudolf “has me…‘packed away’—in Sindanglaja, a little town where there is not one European soul. Horrible! I never speak with anybody! It is like being dead! But in the name of God, where can I go and what can I do!” (Author’s collection)

  Dr. Roelfsema also overheard an exchange between Gretha and Rudolf at a large party given by the native governor of the district for all of the most important Europeans in the area. Gretha and her partner danced close to Rudolf, who was sitting and talking with friends. “Hello, darling,” Gretha said, a seemingly innocent remark, yet one that insured Rudolf would notice she was dancing with another man. “You can go to hell, bitch,” Rudolf replied. They had fallen so far that they were not even maintaining a pretense of civility in public.

  Roelfsema also told Waagenaar that Rudolf used to stop at his house on the way to the post office so that he could open and read Gretha’s outgoing letters, an act Roelfsema regarded as inexcusably dishonest and ungentlemanly.

  The MacLeod marriage had gone from very bad to much worse.

  7

  Death of a Marriage

  AFTER SEVEN MONTHS IN SINDANGLAJA, Gretha found her life and marriage no longer bearable. She wrote to her mother-in-law:

  Ah, the Indies is a dirty country, I would much rather be in Holland…. Each night, before I go to bed, I pray to God that this could happen soon, because I will never have a life here. John, it is true, has been retired since September 1900, but for the last year they have held back his pension. If you want to know, he is a bad financial manager.

  What can I do? You understand, he could send me alone to Holland, for I have my passage paid. But where am I to go? My parents are dead, and I have nowhere to go. I find this terrible, but I have nothing. You understand it is difficult for me to seek a place as a lady’s companion in order to go to Holland at any price [without shaming the whole family].

  Gretha’s father was not yet dead, though she said he was. If her passage was indeed paid, this indicates that her marriage to Rudolf had been approved by the military, but this too may have been a convenient lie. In any case, Rudolf’s mother did not pick up on the hint and offer living accommodations for her in the Netherlands. Rudolf’s insolvency was not a new phenomenon and probably the entire family was tired of paying off his debts.

  On May 27, 1901, Gretha wrote to her father, claiming that Rudolf was making her life a living hell. She said she feared for her life at his hands.

  Adam Zelle was by nature litigious and always resentful of his son-in-law’s high-handed ways; he sprang into action. As his daughter said in an interview with G. H. Priem many years later, “As far as I can remember, my father was always at odds with the whole world, on one side too good, on the other side too bad, someone who can’t keep to the middle [has no moderation]…. This doesn’t remove the fact that he remains my father and that, whatever in which objective way I judge him, I am grateful to him, because he was always ready to move heaven and earth, when I cried out in distress.”

  She counted on her father’s response to her letters, and respond he did. He wrote a letter on June 28, 1901, and sent it to his daughter via the Office of Justice in Batavia, asking them to deliver the letter and to make sure his daughter was safe from her husband’s violent rage. He now called her Gretha, not Griet as Rudolf did.

  I have received your letter of 27 May—I have, being your father, taken immediate measures. To give you a certain security I have written to the Honorable Officer of Justice of Batavia who will, I trust, help you. You will have to ask for a separation subsidiair [a legal separation with financial support] from table and bed. An attorney will have to ask this of the court and then they will care for you and avoid offenses and mistreatments and your husband will be forced to provide for you, which [amount] possibly will be withheld from his pension. You will have to have two witnesses who can attest to the mistreatment and the offenses.

  Please keep your courage strong; you see your father jumps in immediately to help you as no other will do. So dear Gretha, angel of my life, have courage, be wise and pious; always be careful that your life is irreproachable and then everything will go well; at the same time, be very wary and prudent; take care about everything so that no one can do wrong to you or your child. Then come as soon as possible back to your father
.

  This letter was put into a sealed envelope and enclosed with a letter to the officer of justice in Batavia, which read:

  Honorable sir!

  Enclosed is a letter dated 27 May which I have received from Margaretha Geertruida Zelle, married to the gentleman Rudolf MacLeod, a pensioned major of the infantry of the KNIL in Sindanglaja.

  She has repeatedly complained of ill treatment by her husband and now I don’t know anything better to do than to advise her to divorce or at least to ask for a separation. But if I send a letter to her address, her husband will receive it and destroy it or ill treat my daughter even more. I do not know what the results will be if he reads the letter.

  Therefore, Honorable Sir, I direct myself as a last resort to you, begging that if possible one of your underlings could hand this letter personally to my daughter and also find a lawyer for her. At the same time I also beg you to take the necessary steps to avoid any ill treatment by Major MacLeod so my daughter will be protected against future abuse.

  Gretha received the letter from her father after the usual time lag of a month, but in the meantime things had deteriorated rapidly. Rudolf had become very brutal and violent. He struck her more often with the cat-o’-nine-tails and threatened to shoot her, holding a loaded gun and taunting her by saying he could shoot her and no one would know. She was terribly alone and afraid. She believed some of the other Europeans were aware of his treatment of her but were too concerned with white status to speak out on her behalf. In those years, there was a real abhorrence of impoverished and badly behaved Europeans, which fed on a deep fear of the loss of European prestige and supremacy over the native population.