The Spy

·

The lines from these newspaper clippings seem like pieces of a broken teacup, telling the story of a life I no longer remember. As soon as I get out of here, I will have the clippings bound in leather, each page with a gold frame. They shall be my bequest to my daughter, as all my money was confiscated. When we are reunited, I will tell her about the Folies Bergère, the dream of every woman who has ever wished to dance before an audience. I will tell her how beautiful Madrid de los Austrias is, as are the streets of Berlin, the palaces in Monte Carlo. We will tour the Trocadéro and the Cercle Royal, and we will go to Maxim’s, Rumpelmeyer’s, and all the other restaurants that will rejoice at the return of their most famous customer.

Together, we will go to Italy and delight to see that damned Diaghilev on the verge of bankruptcy. I will show her La Scala in Milan and say proudly:

“Here is where I danced Bacchus and Gambrinus by Marceno.”

I am sure that what I am going through now will only add to my reputation; who wouldn’t want to be seen as a femme fatale, an alleged “spy” full of secrets? Everyone flirts with danger, so long as that danger does not really exist.

Perhaps she will ask me:

“And what about my mother, Margaretha MacLeod?”

And I will reply:

“I do not know who that woman is. All my life I’ve thought and acted like Mata Hari, the woman who has been and always will be the fascination of men and the envy of women. Ever since I left Holland, I’ve lost all sense of distance and danger—neither scares me. I arrived in Paris with no money and no proper wardrobe, and just look at how I’ve moved up. I hope the same happens to you.”

And I will talk about my dances—thankfully, I have pictures showing most of the movements and costumes. Contrary to what the critics who never understood me said, when I was onstage I simply forgot about the woman I was and offered everything to God. That is why I was able to undress so easily. At that moment, I was nothing, not even my body. I was just movements communing with the universe.

I will always be grateful to Monsieur Guimet. He gave me my first chance to perform, at his private museum, and in very expensive clothes he had imported from Asia for his personal collection, although it did cost me half an hour of sex and very little pleasure. I danced for an audience of three hundred people, including journalists, celebrities, and at least two ambassadors—one from Japan and one from Germany. Two days later, it was all the papers could talk about, this exotic woman who had been born in a remote corner of the Dutch empire and brought the “religiousness” and “disinhibition” of people from distant lands.

The museum stage had been decorated with a statue of Shiva—the Hindu god of creation and destruction. Candles burned in aromatic oils and the music left everyone in a kind of trance, except me—after having carefully examined the clothes I’d been entrusted, I knew exactly what I planned to do. It was now or never, a single moment in my heretofore miserable life, one where I was always asking for favors in exchange for sex. I was used to it by then, but it is one thing to get used to something, another to be satisfied. Money was not enough. I wanted more!

When I started dancing, I knew I needed to do something that only the dancers in cabarets did, without bothering to give any meaning to it. I was in a respectable place, with an audience who was eager for new things but lacked the courage to visit the certain kinds of places where they might be seen.

The clothing was formed of veils layered one on top of the other. I removed the first one and no one seemed to pay much notice. But when I removed the second, then the third, people began to exchange glances. By the fifth veil, the audience was totally focused on what I was doing, caring little about the dance but wondering how far I would go. Even the women, whose eyes I met now and then between movements, did not seem shocked or angry; it must have excited them as much as it did the men. I knew that were I in my country, I would be sent to prison immediately, but France was an example of equality and freedom.

When I got to the sixth veil, I went over to the Shiva statue, simulated an orgasm, and cast myself to the ground while removing the seventh and final veil.

For a few moments I did not hear a single sound from the audience—from where I was lying, I could not see anyone, and they seemed petrified or horrified. Then came the first “Bravo,” spoken by a female voice, and soon the whole room rose for a standing ovation. I got up with one arm covering my breasts and the other extended to cover my sex. I bowed my head in appreciation and walked off the stage to where I had strategically left a silk robe. I returned, continued to give thanks for the unceasing applause, and decided it was better to leave and not come back. This was part of the mystery.

I noticed, however, that one person did not applaud, only smiled. Madame Guimet.

·

Two invitations arrived the next morning. One was from a Madame Kireyevsky, asking if I might repeat the same dance performance at a charity ball to raise funds for wounded Russian soldiers, and the other from Madame Guimet, who invited me for a walk along the banks of the Seine.

The newsstands were not yet plastered in postcards of my face, and there were no cigarettes, cigars, or bath lotions with my name. I was still an illustrious unknown, but I had made the most important step; each member of the audience had left enthralled, and this would be the best publicity I could ask for.

“It’s a good thing that people are ignorant,” Madame Guimet said, “because nothing you performed belongs to any Eastern tradition. You must have hatched each step as the evening wore on.”

I froze, and wondered if her next comment would be about the fact I had spent the night—one simple, single, unpleasant night—with her husband.

“The only ones who would know that, however, are those deathly boring anthropologists who learn everything from books; they’ll never be able to give you away.”

“But I…”

“Yes, I believe you went to Java and you know the local customs, and perhaps you were the lover or wife of some officer in your army. Like all young women, you dreamed of one day making it big in Paris; that’s why you ran away at the first opportunity and came here.”

We kept walking, now in silence. I could go on lying—I’d done it my entire life, and I could lie about anything, except for what Madame Guimet already knew. Better to wait and see where this conversation was going.

“I have some advice for you,” said Madame Guimet, when we started across the bridge that led to the gigantic metal tower.

I asked if we could sit. It was difficult for me to concentrate as we walked among the crowds of people. She agreed, and we found a bench on the Champ de Mars. Some men, serious and pensive, tossed metal balls and tried to hit a piece of wood; the scene was ludicrous to me.

“I spoke with some friends who attended your performance, and I know that tomorrow the newspapers will have you up on a pedestal. But don’t worry about me; I won’t say a word to anyone about your ‘oriental dance.’ ”

I continued listening. I couldn’t argue about anything.

“My first piece of advice is the hardest, and it has nothing to do with your performance. Never fall in love. Love is a poison. Once you fall in love, you lose control over your life—your heart and mind belong to someone else. Your existence is threatened. You start to do everything to hold on to your loved one and lose all sense of danger. Love, that inexplicable and dangerous thing, sweeps everything you are from the face of the earth and, in its place, leaves only what your beloved wants you to be.”

I remembered the look in the eyes of Andreas’s wife before she shot herself. Love kills suddenly, leaving no evidence of the crime.

A boy went up to a pushcart to buy ice cream. Madame Guimet used that to launch into her second piece of advice.

“People say life is not that complicated, but life is very complicated. What’s simple is wanting an ice cream, a doll, or to win a game of pétanque like those men over there—fathers, with responsibilities, sweating and suffering as they try to get a stupid metal ball to hit a little piece of wood. Simple is wanting to be famous, but staying that way for more than a month or a year, especially when that fame is linked to one’s body, is what is hard. Simple is wanting a man with all your heart, but that becomes impossible and complicated when that man is married with children and wouldn’t leave his family for anything in this world.”

She took a long pause. Her eyes filled with tears, and I realized she was speaking from experience.

It was my turn to talk. In a single breath I told her that yes, I had lied; I wasn’t born, nor had I been raised, in the Dutch East Indies, but I knew the place well, not to mention the suffering of the women who went there in search of independence and excitement but found only loneliness and boredom. As faithfully as possible, I tried to reproduce Andreas’s wife’s final conversation with her husband, seeking to comfort Madame Guimet without revealing I knew she was talking about herself in all the advice she gave me.

“Everything in this world has two sides. People who were abandoned by the cruel god called love are also culpable, because they look into the past and wonder why they made so many plans for the future. But if they searched their memories even more, they would remember the day the seed was planted, and how they tended it, fertilized it, and let it grow until it became a tree that could never be uprooted.”

Instinctively, my hand went to the place in my bag where I kept the seeds my mother gave me before she died. I always carried them with me.

“When a woman or a man is abandoned by the person they love, they are focused on their own pain. No one stops to wonder what is happening to the other person. Might they also be suffering, having left behind their own heart to stay with their families because of society? Every night they must lie in their beds, unable to sleep, confused and lost, wondering if they made the wrong decision. Other times, they feel certain it was their duty to protect their families and children. But time is not on their side; the more the moment of separation grows distant, the more their memories are purified of the difficult moments and turn into a longing for that paradise lost.

“The other person can no longer help himself. He becomes distant, he seems distracted during the week, and on Saturdays and Sundays he comes to the Champ de Mars to play ball with his friends. His son enjoys an ice cream, and his wife watches as the elegant dresses parade before her, a sad look in her eye. There’s no wind strong enough to make the boat change direction; it stays in the harbor, venturing only among still waters. Everyone suffers; those who leave, those who stay, and their families and children. But no one can do anything.”

Madame Guimet kept her eyes fixed on the newly planted grass at the center of the garden. She pretended she was just “tolerating” my words, but I knew I had opened an old wound that would begin to bleed again. After some time, she stood up and suggested we go back—her servants were likely already preparing dinner. An artist of growing fame and importance wanted to visit her husband’s museum with his friends, and the evening would end with a visit to the artist’s gallery, where he intended to show her some paintings.

“Of course, his intention is to try to sell me something, whereas my intention is to meet new and different people, to get outside a world that is beginning to bore me.”

We strolled leisurely. Before crossing the bridge near the Trocadéro again, she asked me if I’d like to join them. I said yes, but that I’d left my evening gown at the hotel and might not be dressed appropriately for the occasion.

In truth, I did not have an evening gown that even came close to the elegance and beauty of the dresses we’d seen women wearing for a “stroll in the park.” And the “hotel” was just a figure of speech for the boardinghouse I’d been living at for two months, the only one that allowed me to take “guests” to my bedroom.

But women are able to understand one another without exchanging a word.

“I can lend you a dress for tonight, if you like. I have more than I can ever wear.”

I accepted her offer with a smile, and we headed back to her house.

When we don’t know where life is taking us, we are never lost.

·

“This is Pablo Picasso, the artist I was telling you about.”

From the moment we were introduced, Picasso forgot about the rest of the guests and spent the entire evening trying to strike up a conversation with me. He spoke of my beauty, asked me to pose for him, and said I needed to go with him to Málaga, if only to get a week away from the madness of Paris. He had one objective, and he didn’t need to tell me what it was: to get me into his bed.

I was extremely embarrassed by that ugly, wide-eyed, impolite man who fancied himself the greatest of the greats. His friends were much more interesting, including an Italian man, Amedeo Modigliani, who seemed more noble, more elegant, and who at no point tried to force any conversation. Every time Pablo finished one of his interminable and incomprehensible lectures about the revolutions taking place in art, I turned to Modigliani. This seemed to infuriate Picasso.

“What do you do?” asked Amedeo.

I explained that I was devoted to the sacred dances of the tribes of Java. While he seemed to not quite understand, he politely began to talk about the importance of the eyes in dance. He was fascinated by eyes, and when he happened to go to the theater, he paid little attention to the movements of the bodies and instead concentrated on what the eyes were trying to say.

“I hope that happens in the sacred dances of Java—I know nothing about them. I know only that, in the East, they are able to keep their bodies completely still and concentrate the full force of what they want to say in the eyes.”

As I did not know the answer, I merely bobbed my head, an enigmatic gesture that might mean yes or no depending on how he interpreted it. Picasso interrupted the conversation the whole time with his theories, but Amedeo, elegant and polite, knew to wait his turn and return to the subject.

“Can I give you some advice?” he asked, when the dinner was drawing to a close and everyone was preparing to go to Picasso’s studio. I nodded yes.

“Know what you want and try to go beyond your own expectations. Improve your dancing, practice a lot, and set a very high goal, one that will be difficult to achieve. Because that is an artist’s mission: to go beyond one’s limits. An artist who desires very little and achieves it has failed in life.”

The Spaniard’s studio was not far away, so we all went on foot. Some things dazzled me, and others I simply detested. But isn’t that the human condition? Going from one extreme to another, without stopping in the middle? To tease him, I stopped in front of one painting and asked why he insisted on complicating things.

“It took me four years to learn how to paint like a Renaissance master and my entire life to go back to drawing like a child. There’s the real secret: children’s drawings. What you’re seeing may seem childish, but it represents what’s most important in art.”

His answer was brilliant, but I could no longer go back in time and change my mind about him. By then, Modigliani had already left, Madame Guimet was showing visible signs of exhaustion despite maintaining her composure, and Picasso was distracted by his girlfriend Fernande’s jealousy.

I said it was getting late for all of us, and each went on his way. I never ran into Pablo or Amedeo again. I heard that Fernande decided to leave Pablo, but I was not told the exact reason. I saw her only once more, a few years later, when she was working as a clerk in an antiques shop. She did not recognize me, I pretended I did not recognize her, and she also disappeared from my life.

·

The years that followed weren’t many, but when I think back today, they seem endless—I looked only toward the sunshine and forgot the storms. I let myself be dazzled by the beauty of the roses but paid no attention to the thorns. The lawyer who halfheartedly defended me in court was one of my many lovers. So Mr. Edouard Clunet, should things go exactly as you planned and I end up before a firing squad, you may rip out this page from the notebook and throw it away. Unfortunately, I have no one else in whom to confide. We all know I won’t be killed because of this stupid allegation of espionage, but because I decided to be who I always dreamed. And the price of a dream is always high.

Strip-tease had been around—and allowed by law—since the end of last century, but it had always been considered a mere display of flesh. I transformed that grotesque spectacle into art. When they began to ban strip-tease, I was able to continue with my shows, which were still legal. They were far from the vulgarity of other women who undressed in public. Among those who attended my performances were composers like Puccini and Massenet, ambassadors like Von Klunt and Antonio Gouvea, and magnates like baron de Rothschild and Gaston Menier. As I write these words, it pains me to think that they are not doing anything to obtain my freedom. After all, isn’t the wrongly accused Captain Dreyfus back from Devil’s Island?

Many will say: But he was innocent! Yes, and so am I. There is zero concrete evidence against me, beyond what I myself encouraged in order to boost my own importance after I decided to stop dancing (despite being an excellent dancer). If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have been represented by the most important agent of the time, Mr. Astruc, who represented the greatest celebrities of the time.

Astruc nearly arranged for me to dance with Nijinsky at La Scala. But the ballet dancer’s agent—and lover—regarded me as a difficult, temperamental, and intolerable person. With a smile on his face, he insisted that I present my art all on my own, without support from the Italian press or the theater’s own directors. And with that, part of my soul died. I knew I was getting older and soon would no longer have the same flexibility and lightness. And serious newspapers, which had praised me so much in the beginning, were turning against me.

And my imitators? Posters sprang up on every corner saying things like “the successor to Mata Hari.” All they did was shake their bodies grotesquely and take off their clothes without artfulness or inspiration.

I cannot complain about Astruc, although at this point the last thing he likely wants is to see his name associated with mine. He appeared a few days after the series of benefit shows for wounded Russian soldiers. I sincerely doubted that all the money, raised by selling tables for princely sums, would find its way to the Pacific battlefields where the czar’s men were taking a beating from the Japanese. Still, they were my first performances after the Guimet Museum, and everyone was pleased with the result. I was able to get more people interested in my work, Madame Kireyevsky filled her coffers and mine, the aristocrats felt as though they were contributing to a good cause, and everyone, absolutely everyone, had the opportunity to see a beautiful naked woman without the slightest twinge of shame.

Astruc helped me find a hotel worthy of my rising fame and negotiated contracts throughout Paris. He got me a show at the Olympia, the most important concert hall of the time. The son of a Belgian rabbi, Astruc bet everything he had on total unknowns, and today they are icons, such as Caruso and Rubinstein. He took me out to see the world at just the right moment. Thanks to him, I changed the way I conducted myself, I began to earn more money than I ever before imagined, I performed in the city’s major concert halls, and I could finally indulge in a luxury I appreciated more than anything else in the world: fashion.

I don’t know how much I spent, because Astruc told me it was in poor taste to ask the price.

“Pick out whatever you like and have it sent to your hotel—I’ll take care of the rest.”

Now, as I write this, I’m beginning to wonder: Did he keep part of the money?

But I cannot think like that. I cannot keep this bitterness in my heart, because if I do get out of here—and that is what I expect to happen, because it is simply impossible to be abandoned by everyone—I will have just turned forty-one and want to have the right to be happy. I gained a lot of weight and can hardly go back to dancing, but the world has so much more than that.

I prefer to think of Astruc as the man who dared risk his entire fortune to build a theater and open with The Rite of Spring. It was by an unknown Russian composer whose name I still cannot remember, and starred that idiot Nijinsky, who imitated the masturbation scene from my first performance in Paris.

I prefer to remember Astruc as the man who once invited me to take the train and go to Normandy, because the day before we had both spoken, with nostalgia, of going too long without seeing the sea. We had been working together almost five years.

We sat there on the beach, neither of us saying much until I took a page from the newspaper in my bag and handed it to him.

“The Decadent Mata Hari: Lots of Exhibitionism but Little Talent,” read the title of the article.

“It was published today,” I said.

As he read, I got up, walked to the water’s edge, and picked up some stones.

“Contrary to what you might think, I’m sick and tired. I’ve gotten away from my dreams and I’m not the person I imagined I’d be—not by far.”

“What do you mean?” asked Astruc, surprised. “I only represent the greatest artists, and you are one of them! One simple review from someone who has nothing better to write is enough to leave you so beside yourself?”

“No, but it’s the first thing I’ve read about myself in a long time. I’m disappearing from the theaters and the press. People see me as nothing more than a whore who strips naked in public under an artistic pretense.”

Astruc got up and walked over to me. He also picked up a few stones from the beach and threw one into the water, far from the surf.

“I don’t represent prostitutes—that would end my career. It’s true that I’ve had to explain to one or two of my clients why I had a Mata Hari poster in my office. And you know what I said? That what you do is a retelling of a Sumerian myth in which the goddess Inanna goes to the forbidden world. She must pass through seven gates; at each, there waits a guardian, and, to pay her passage, she removes an article of clothing. A great English writer, who was exiled to Paris and died alone and destitute, wrote a play that will one day become a classic. It tells the story of how Herod got the head of John the Baptist.”

“Salome! Where is that play?”

My spirits began to lift.

“I don’t have the rights. And I can no longer meet with its author, Oscar Wilde, unless I go to the cemetery to summon his ghost. It’s too late.”

Again my frustration and misery returned, as did the idea that soon I would be old, ugly, and poor. I was over thirty—a pivotal age. I took a stone and threw it harder than Astruc had.

“Go far away, stone, and carry my past with you. All my shame, all my guilt, and all the mistakes I’ve made.”

Astruc threw his stone and explained that I had made no mistakes. I had exercised my power of choice. I didn’t listen to him, and threw another.

“And this one is for the abuse suffered by my body and soul since my first, terrible sexual experience. And now, when I lie with rich men, performing acts that leave me drowning in tears. All this for influence, money, gowns…things that are growing old. I am tormented by self-created nightmares.”

“But aren’t you happy?” asked an increasingly surprised Astruc. After all, we had decided to spend a pleasant afternoon on the beach.

With ever-increasing rage, I kept throwing stones, becoming more and more surprised at myself. Tomorrow no longer looked like tomorrow, and the present was no longer the present, just a pit I dug deeper with every step. People walked on either side of me, while children played, seagulls made odd movements in the sky, and the waves rolled in more calmly than I imagined.

“It’s because I dream of being accepted and respected, though I don’t owe anything to anyone. Why do I need that? I waste my time on worries, regrets, and darkness—a darkness that only enslaves me, chaining me to a rock where I’m served up as food for birds of prey, a rock that I can no longer leave.”

I couldn’t cry. The stones disappeared into the water, sinking alongside one another as if they could perhaps reconstruct Margaretha Zelle beneath the surface. But I did not want to be her again, that woman who looked into the eyes of Andreas’s wife and understood. The one who told me that our lives are planned out down to the minutest details: You are born, go to school, and attend university in search of a husband. You get married—even if he is the worst man in the world—just so that others can’t say no one wants you. You have children, grow old, and spend the end of your days watching passersby from a chair on the sidewalk, pretending to know everything about life yet unable to silence the voice in your heart that says: “You could try something else.”

A gull approached us, shrieked, and walked away again. It came so close that Astruc put his arm over his eyes to protect himself. That shriek brought me back to reality; I was once again a famous woman, confident in her beauty.

“I want to stop. I cannot continue this life. How much longer can I work as an actress and dancer?”

He was honest in his reply:

“Perhaps another five years or so.”

“Then let’s end things here.”

Astruc took my hand.

“We can’t! There are still contracts to fulfill, and I will be fined if we don’t fulfill them. What’s more, you need to earn a living. You don’t want to end your days in that filthy boardinghouse where I found you, do you?”

“We will finish the contracts. You have been good to me, and I won’t make you pay for my delusions of grandeur or baseness. But don’t worry; I know how I’ll keep making a living.”

And without giving it much thought, I began to tell him about my life—something that I had kept to myself up until then because it was all just one lie after another. As I spoke, tears began to stream down my face. Astruc asked if I was okay, but I continued to tell him everything and he said nothing, just sat there listening to me in silence.

In finally accepting that I was not at all what I’d thought, I felt I was sinking into a black pit. Suddenly, however, as I faced my wounds and scars, I began to feel stronger. My tears did not come from my eyes, but from a deeper, darker place in my heart, telling me a story that I didn’t even fully understand in a voice of its own. I was on a raft, sailing through total darkness, but there, far off on the horizon, was the glow of a lighthouse that would eventually lead me to dry land if the rough seas allowed, and if it was not already too late.

I had never done that before. I thought that speaking about my wounds would only make them more real. And yet the exact opposite was taking place: My tears were healing me.

At times I punched my fists into the gravel beach and my hands bled, but I didn’t even feel the pain. I was being healed. I understood why Catholics confess, even though they must know priests share the same sins, or worse. It did not matter who was listening; what mattered was leaving the wound open for the sun to purify and the rainwater to wash. That is what I was doing now, in front of a man with whom I had no intimacy. That was the real reason I was able to speak so freely.

After a long while, after I stopped sobbing and let the sound of the waves soothe me, Astruc took me gently by the arm. He said the last train to Paris would be departing soon and that we’d better hurry. On the way, he told me all the latest news from the art world, such as who was sleeping with whom and who had been fired from what places.

I laughed and asked for more. He was a truly wise and elegant man; he knew that my tears had drained everything out of me and buried it in the sand, where it must remain until the end of time.

·

“We are living through the greatest period in France’s history. When did you arrive?”

“During the World’s Fair; Paris was different then, more provincial, though it still thought it was the center of the world.”

The afternoon sun streamed through the window of the expensive room at the Hotel Élysée Palace. We were surrounded by all the very best France could offer: champagne, absinthe, chocolate, cheese, and the scent of freshly cut flowers. Outside I could see the big tower that now bore the name of its builder, Eiffel.

He also eyed the huge iron structure.

“It wasn’t built to remain after the end of the fair. I hope they move forward quickly with the plans to dismantle that monstrosity.”

I could have disagreed, but he’d just submit more arguments and win in the end. So I kept quiet as he spoke of his country’s belle époque. Industrial production had tripled, agriculture was now aided by machines capable of single-handedly doing the work of ten men, shops were teeming, and fashion had changed completely. This pleased me very much, as now I had an excuse to go shopping to update my wardrobe at least twice a year.

“Have you noticed that even the food tastes better?”

I had noticed, yes, and I wasn’t very pleased about it, because I was starting to gain weight.

“The president told me that the number of bicycles on the streets has increased from three hundred seventy-five thousand at the end of the last century to more than three million today. Houses have running water and gas, and people can travel far and wide during their holidays. Coffee consumption has quadrupled, and people can purchase bread without having to queue in front of the bakeries.”

Why was he giving this lecture? It was time to yawn and return to playing the “dumb woman.”

Adolphe Messimy—former minister of war and now a deputy in the National Assembly—rose from the bed and began to put on his clothes with all his medals and awards. He had a meeting with his old battalion and could not go dressed as a simple civilian.

“Though we loathe the English, they are right about one thing: It’s more discreet to go to war in those horrible brown uniforms. We, on the other hand, feel we must die with elegance, in red trousers and caps that just scream to the enemy: ‘Hey, point your rifles and cannons over here! Can’t you see us?’ ”

He laughed at his own joke. I also laughed to please him, and then began to get dressed. I had long since lost any illusion of being loved for who I was and now accepted, with a clean conscience, flowers, flattery, and money that fed my ego and my false identity. For certain, I’d go to my grave one day without ever knowing love, but what difference did it make? For me, love and power were the same thing.

However, I wasn’t foolish enough to let others realize that. I approached Messimy and gave him a loud peck on his cheek, half of which was covered by whiskers similar to those of my ill-fated husband.

He put a fat envelope with a thousand francs on the table.

“Don’t misunderstand me, Mademoiselle. Given that I was just speaking of the country’s progress, I believe it’s time to help the consumer. I’m an officer who earns a lot and spends little. So I need to contribute something, stimulate consumption.”

Again, he laughed at his own joke. He sincerely believed that I loved those medals and his close relationship to the president, whom he made a point to mention every time we met.

If he realized it was all fake, that—for me—love obeyed no rules, perhaps he would pull away and later punish me. He wasn’t there just for the sex, but to feel wanted, as a woman’s passion could truly arouse the feeling that he was capable of anything.

Yes, love and power were the same thing—and not just for me.

He left and I got dressed leisurely. My next encounter was late at night, outside Paris. I would stop by the hotel, put on my best dress, and go to Neuilly, where my most faithful lover had bought a villa in my name. I thought of also asking him for a car and driver, but figured he would be suspicious.

Of course, I could have been more—shall we say—demanding of him. He was married, a banker with a fine reputation, and the newspapers would have had a ball if I insinuated anything in public. Now they were only interested in my “famous lovers,” completely forgetting the extensive body of work I had struggled so hard to create.

During my trial, I heard that someone had been there in the hotel lobby, pretending to read a newspaper but actually watching my every move. As soon as I’d go out, he would rise from his seat and discreetly follow me.

I strolled down the boulevards of the most beautiful city in the world. I saw the overflowing cafés and the increasingly well-dressed people walking from one place to another. As I heard violin music issuing from the doors and windows of the most sophisticated places, I thought how life had been good to me after all. There was no need for blackmail, all I had to do was know how to manage the gifts I’d received and I could grow old in peace. Besides, if I said a word about a single man with whom I’d slept, the others would flee my company for fear of also being blackmailed and exposed.

I had plans to go to the château my banker friend had had built for his “golden years.” Poor thing; he was already old, but didn’t want to admit it. I would stay there for two or three days riding horses, and by Sunday I could be back in Paris, where I’d go straight to the Longchamp Racecourse and show all those who envied and admired me that I was an excellent horsewoman.

But why not have a nice chamomile tea before night fell? I sat outside a café while people stared at the face and body that was on various postcards scattered throughout the city. I pretended to be lost in a world of reverie, with an air of someone who had more important things to do.

Before I even had the chance to order something, a man approached and complimented my beauty. I reacted with my usual look of ennui and thanked him with a stiff smile, then turned away. But the man did not move.

“A nice cup of coffee will salvage the rest of your day.”

I said nothing. He motioned to the waiter and asked him to take my order.

“A chamomile tea, please,” I said to the waiter.

The man’s French had a thick accent that could have been from Holland or Germany.

He smiled and touched the brim of his hat as if bidding farewell even though he was greeting me. He asked if I would mind if he sat there for a few minutes. I said yes, in fact I would mind. I would rather be alone.

“A woman like Mata Hari is never alone,” said the newcomer. The fact that he recognized me struck a chord that can resonate very loudly in any human being: vanity. Still, I did not invite him to sit.

“Maybe you are looking for things you haven’t yet found,” he continued. “Because after being named the best dressed in the whole city—I read that in a magazine recently—very little remains for you to conquer, isn’t that right? And suddenly, life turns into utter boredom.”

By the looks of it, he was a devoted fan; how else would he know about things that appeared only in women’s magazines? Should I give him a chance? After all, it was still far too early to go to Neuilly for my dinner with the banker.

“Are you having any luck finding something new?” he persisted.

“Of course. I rediscover myself at every turn. And that is what’s most interesting in life.”

This time, he did not ask again; he simply pulled up a chair and sat down at my table. When the waiter arrived with my tea, he ordered a large cup of coffee for himself, making a gesture that indicated: I’ll get the bill.

“France is heading for a crisis,” he continued. “And it will be very difficult to come out of this one.”

Just that afternoon, I had heard exactly the opposite. But it seems every man has an opinion on the economy, a subject that did not interest me in the least.

I decided to play his game for a bit. I parroted everything Messimy had told me about what he called la belle époque. He showed no surprise.

“I am not just talking about an economic crisis; I am speaking of a personal crisis, a crisis of values. Do you think people have already grown accustomed to the possibility of having long-distance conversations on that invention brought over by the Americans for the Paris World’s Fair? It’s now on every corner in Europe.

“For millions of years, man spoke only to what he could see. Suddenly, in just one decade, ‘seeing’ and ‘speaking’ have been separated. We think we’re used to it, yet we don’t realize the immense impact it’s had on our reflexes. Our bodies are simply not used to it.

“Frankly, the result is that, when we talk on the telephone, we enter a state that is similar to certain magical trances; we can discover other things about ourselves.”

The waiter returned with the bill. The man stopped talking until he had moved away.

“I know you must be tired of seeing these vulgar strip-tease dancers on every corner, each saying she’s the successor of the great Mata Hari. But life is like that: No one learns. The Greek philosophers…Am I boring you, Mademoiselle?”

I shook my head and he continued.

“Forget about the Greek philosophers. What they said thousands of years ago still applies today. So it’s nothing new. Actually, I would like to make you a proposition.”

Another one, I thought.

“Here they no longer treat you with the respect you deserve, so maybe you would like to perform in a place where they know you as the greatest dancer of the century? I am talking about Berlin, the city where I’m from.”

It was a tempting proposition.

“I can put you in touch with my manager—”

But the newcomer cut me off. “I’d prefer to deal directly with you. Your agent is of a race we—neither the French nor the Germans—don’t like very much.”

It was a strange business, this hatred for people just because of their religion. I saw it with the Jews, but even earlier, when I was in Java, I heard about the army massacring people just because they worshipped a faceless god and swore that their holy book had been dictated by an angel to some prophet whose name I also can’t remember. Someone had given me a copy of this book once, called the Koran. It was just to appreciate the Arabic calligraphy, but still, when my husband arrived home, he took away the gift and had me burn it.

“My partners and I will pay you a handsome sum,” the man added, revealing an intriguing amount of money. I asked how much it was in francs and was stunned by his reply. I desired to say yes immediately, but a lady of class does not act on impulse.

“There you will be recognized as you deserve. Paris is always unjust with its children, especially when they cease to be a novelty.”

He did not realize he was insulting me, even though I had been thinking that same thing while I was walking. I remembered the day on the beach with Astruc, who would not be able to participate in the agreement. However, I could do nothing that would scare off the prey.

“I’ll think about it,” I said drily.

We bid each other farewell and he told me where he was staying, saying he would await my reply until the following day, when he had to return to his city. I left the café and went straight to Astruc’s office. I confess that seeing all those posters of people just finding their fame made me feel a tremendous sadness. But I could not go back in time.

Astruc welcomed me with the same courtesy as always, as if I were his most important artist. I recounted the conversation I’d had and said that no matter what happened, he would receive his commission.

The only thing he said was: “But right now?”

I didn’t quite understand. I thought he was being slightly rude to me.

“Yes, now. I still have much, much more to do onstage.”

He nodded in agreement, wished me happiness, and said he didn’t need his commission, suggesting that perhaps it was time I start saving my money and stop spending so much on clothes.

I agreed and left. I thought he must still be shaken by what a failure the debut of his theater had been. He must have been on the verge of ruin. Of course, putting on something like Rite of Spring, and with a plagiarist like Nijinsky in the lead role, was just asking for the crosswinds to smash one’s ship.

The next day I contacted the foreigner and said I accepted his offer, but not before making a series of absurd demands that I was ready to forgo. But to my surprise, he merely called me extravagant and said he agreed to everything, because true artists are like that.

·

Who was the Mata Hari who embarked that rainy day from one of the city’s many train stations? She didn’t know what her next step was, or what her destination held in store, only trusted that she was going to a country where the language was similar to her own, and so she would never get lost.

How old was I? Twenty? Twenty-one? I couldn’t have been older than twenty-two, though the passport I was carrying with me said I was born on August 7, 1876. As the train made its way to Berlin, the newspaper showed the date July 11, 1914. But I did not want to do the math; I was more interested in what had happened two weeks earlier. The cruel attack in Sarajevo, where Archduke Ferdinand lost his life along with his elegant wife, her only guilt being that she was by his side when a crazy anarchist fired the shots.

In any event, I felt completely different from all the other women in that car. I was an exotic bird traversing an earth ravaged by humanity’s poverty of spirit. I was a swan among ducks who refused to grow up, fearing the unknown. I looked at the couples around me and felt completely vulnerable; many men were around me, but there I was, alone, with no one to hold my hand. True, I had turned down many proposals; I had had my experience with that—suffering for someone undeserving and selling my body for the supposed security of a home—in this life and didn’t intend to repeat it.

The man next to me, Franz Olav, seemed worried as he looked out the window. I asked what the matter was, but he didn’t answer; now that I was under his control, he no longer had to answer anything. All I had to do was dance and dance, even if I was no longer as flexible as I was before. But with a little practice, and thanks to my passion for riding horses, surely I would be ready in time for the premiere. France no longer interested me; it had sucked the very best from me and cast me aside, preferring Russian artists or those born in places like Portugal, Norway, Spain, who repeated the same trick I had used when I arrived. Show them something exotic from your homeland, and the French, always eager for something new, will certainly believe it.

Merely for a short time, but they will believe just the same.

As the train rumbled into Germany, I saw soldiers marching toward the western border. There were battalions and more battalions, gigantic machine guns, and cannons pulled by horses.

Again I tried to make conversation: “What is going on?”

But all I got was a cryptic reply:

“Whatever is going on, I want to know that we can count on your help. Artists are very important at this moment.”

He couldn’t have been talking about the war, as nothing had been published about it yet—the French papers were much more worried with reporting the latest salon gossip or complaining about some chef who had just lost a government medal. Though our countries hated each other, this was normal.

When a country becomes the most important in the world, there is always a price to pay. England had an empire on which the sun never set, but ask anyone which city they would rather see, London or Paris. I have no doubt the answer would be the city crossed by the River Seine, with its churches, boutiques, theaters, painters, musicians, and—for those a bit more daring—world-famous cabarets like the Folies Bergère, Moulin Rouge, Lido.

You had only to consider what was more important: a tower with a dull clock and a king who never appeared in public or a gigantic steel structure that was the largest vertical tower in the world and which was becoming well known across Europe by the name of its creator, Gustave Eiffel. Or what about the monumental Arc de Triomphe, or the Champs-Élysées, which offered up all the best things money could buy? England also hated France with all its might, but this was no reason for it to prepare its warships.

However, as the train traversed German soil, troops and more troops headed west. I urged Franz again, and received the same cryptic answer.

“I’m ready to help,” I said. “But how can I, if I don’t even know what this is about?”

For the first time he unglued his eyes from the window and turned to me.

“I don’t know. I was hired to bring you to Berlin, to make you dance for our aristocracy, and then one day—I don’t have the exact date—go to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It was one of your admirers there who gave me the money to hire you, though you’re one of the most expensive artists I’ve ever met. I hope the risk pays off.”

·

Before I bring this chapter of my life to a close, my dearest, detested Mr. Clunet, I would like to speak a bit more about myself, because that was why I began writing these pages, which have turned into a record where, in many parts, my memory may have betrayed me.

Do you really think—in your heart—that if they were to choose someone to spy for Germany, France, or even Russia, they would choose someone who was constantly watched by the public? Does that not seem utterly ridiculous to you?

When I took that train to Berlin, I thought I had left my past behind. With each kilometer, I moved farther away from everything I had experienced, even the good memories like the discovery of what I was capable of doing onstage and off and the moments in which every street and every party in Paris were a great novelty. Now I understand that I cannot run from myself. In 1914, instead of returning to Holland, it would have been very easy to change my name again, find someone to take care of what was left of my soul, and go to one of the many places in this world where my face was unknown to start anew.

But that meant living the rest of my life split in two: as a woman who could be anything and one who was never anything, one who wouldn’t have even a single story to tell her children and grandchildren. Though at the moment I am a prisoner, my spirit remains free. While everyone is fighting a never-ending battle to see who will survive amid so much bloodshed, I don’t need to fight anymore, only wait for people I’ve never met to decide who I am. If they find me guilty, one day the truth will come out, and a mantle of shame will be draped over their heads, and that of their children, their grandchildren, their country.

I sincerely believe that the president is a man of honor.

I believe that my friends, always gentle and willing to help me when I had everything, are still by my side now that I have nothing. The day has just dawned, and I can hear birds and noise from the kitchen downstairs. The rest of the prisoners are sleeping, some afraid, some resigned to their fate. I slept until the first ray of sun, and that ray of sun, though it did not enter my cell, only showed its strength in the sliver of sky I can see, brought me hope for justice.

I don’t know why life made me go through so much in so little time.

To see if I could withstand the hard times.

To see what I was made of.

To give me experience.

But there were other methods, other ways to achieve this. It did not need to drown me in the darkness of my own soul or make me cross through this forest filled with wolves and other wild animals without a single hand to guide me.

The only thing I know is that this forest, however frightening it may be, has an end, and I intend to reach its other side. I will be generous in victory and will not accuse those who lied so much about me.

Do you know what I am going to do now, before I hear the footsteps in the corridor and the arrival of my breakfast? I am going to dance. I am going to remember every musical note and move my body to the rhythm, because it shows me who I am—a free woman!

Because that’s what I always sought: freedom. I did not seek love, though it has come and gone. Because of love, I have done things, things I shouldn’t have, and traveled to places where people were lying in wait for me.

But I do not want to rush my own story; life is moving very quickly and I have struggled to keep up with it since that morning I arrived in Berlin.

·

The theater was surrounded. The show was interrupted during a moment of great concentration, when I was giving my best despite being out of practice. German soldiers took the stage and said that all performances in concert halls were canceled until further notice.

One of them read a statement aloud:

“These are the words of our kaiser: ‘We are living a dark moment in the history of our country, which is surrounded by enemies. We shall need to unsheathe our swords. I hope we may use them well and with dignity.’ ”

I couldn’t understand a thing. I went to the dressing room, slipped my robe over what little clothing I had on, and saw Franz enter the door, panting.

“You need to leave or you’ll be arrested.”

“Leave? And go where? Besides, don’t I have an appointment tomorrow morning with someone from the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs?”

“Everything is canceled,” he said, doing nothing to conceal his concern. “You’re lucky you’re a citizen of a neutral country—that’s where you should go immediately.”

I thought about everything in my life, except returning to my home country, the one place that had been so difficult to leave.

Franz took a wad of marks from his pocket and placed them in my hands.

“Forget about the six-month contract we signed with the Metropol-Theater. This was all the money I was able to scrounge from the theater safe. Leave immediately. I’ll take care of sending your clothes later, if I’m still alive. Because, unlike you, I’ve just been called up by the military.”

I understood less and less.

“The world’s gone mad,” he said, pacing.

“The death of a relative, no matter how close, is no good reason for sending people to their deaths. But the generals rule the world and they want to continue what we didn’t finish when France was shamefully defeated more than forty years ago. They think they’re still living back then and decided amongst themselves to avenge their humiliation. They want to keep France from gaining strength, and there’s every indication that with each passing day, it really is growing stronger. That’s why this is happening: Kill the snake before it becomes too strong and strangles us.”

“Are you saying we’re heading for war? Is that why so many soldiers were traveling a week ago?”

“Exactly. The game of chess has become more complicated because our rulers are bound by alliances. It’s too tiresome for me to explain. But right now, as we speak, our armies are invading Belgium, Luxembourg has already surrendered, and now they are moving toward the industrial regions of France with seven well-armed divisions. While the French were enjoying life, we were looking for a pretext. While the French were building the Eiffel Tower, our men were investing in cannons. I don’t believe all this will last very long; after some deaths on both sides, peace always wins out. But until then you’ll have to take refuge in your own country and wait for everything to calm down.”

Franz’s words surprised me; he seemed genuinely interested in my well-being. I drew near and touched his face.

“Don’t worry, everything is going to be fine.”

“It’s not going to be fine,” he replied, tossing my hand aside. “And the thing I wanted most is lost forever.”

He took the hand he had so violently brushed away.

“When I was younger, my parents made me learn piano. I always hated it, and as soon as I left home, I forgot it all, except one thing: The most beautiful melody in the world will become a monstrosity if the strings are out of tune.

“I was in Vienna, completing my mandatory military service, when we had two days of R & R. I saw a poster of a girl who, even without ever seeing her in person, immediately aroused something no man should ever feel: love at first sight. When I entered the crowded theater and bought a ticket that cost more than I earned in a whole week, I saw that everything inside me that was out of tune—my relationships with my parents, the army, my country, the world—suddenly harmonized just by watching this girl dance. It wasn’t the exotic music, or the eroticism onstage and in the audience, it was the girl.”

I knew who he was talking about, but didn’t want to interrupt.

“That girl was you. I should have told you all this earlier, but I thought there would be time. Today I am a successful theater manager, perhaps because of everything I saw that night in Vienna. Tomorrow I will report to the captain in charge of my unit. I went to Paris several times to see your shows. I saw that, no matter what you did, Mata Hari was losing ground to a bunch of people who didn’t deserve to be called ‘dancers’ or ‘artists.’ I decided to bring you to a place where people would appreciate your work; and I did all of it for love, only for love…an unrequited love, but what does that matter? What really counts is being close to the one you love; that was my goal.

“One day before I could work up the courage to approach you in Paris, an embassy official contacted me. He said you kept company with a deputy who, according to our intelligence service, would be the next minister of war.”

“But that’s all over now.”

“According to our intelligence service, he will return to the position he occupied previously. I’d met with that embassy official many times before—we used to drink together and frequented the Paris nightlife. On one of those nights, I drank a little too much and talked about you for hours on end. He knew I was in love and asked me to bring you here, because we were going to need your services very soon.”

“My services?”

“As someone who has access to the government’s inner circle.”

The word he was trying to say, but didn’t have the courage to voice, was “spy.” Something I would never do in all my life. As I’m sure you remember, honorable Mr. Clunet, I said as much during that farce of a trial: “A prostitute, yes. A spy, never!”

“That’s why you have to leave this theater straightaway and go directly to Holland. The money I gave you is more than enough. Soon this journey will be impossible. Or, more terrible yet, if it were still possible, that would mean we’d managed to infiltrate someone into Paris.”

I was quite frightened, but not enough to give him a kiss or thank him for what he was doing for me.

I was going to lie and say I would be waiting for him when the war was over, but honesty has a way of dissolving lies.

Pianos should never go out of tune. The true sin is something different than what we’ve been taught; the true sin is living so far removed from absolute harmony. That is more powerful than the truths and lies we tell every day. I turned to him and kindly asked him to leave, as I needed to get dressed. And I said:

“Sin was not created by God; it was created by us when we tried to transform what was inevitable into something subjective. We ceased to see the whole and came to see just one part; and that part is loaded with guilt, rules, good versus evil, and each side thinking it’s right.”

I surprised myself with my words. Maybe fear had affected me more than I thought. But my head felt far away.

“I have a friend who is the German consul in your country. He can help you rebuild your life. But be careful: Like me, it’s quite possible he will try to get you to help our war effort.”

Once again he avoided the word “spy.” I was an experienced enough woman to escape these traps. How many times had I done it in my relationships with men?

He led me to the door and took me to the train station. Along the way we passed a huge demonstration in front of the kaiser’s palace, where men of all ages, fists clenched in the air, shouted:

“Germany above all!”

Franz accelerated the car.

“If someone stops us, keep quiet and I’ll handle the conversation. But if they ask you something, just say ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ Look bored and don’t dare speak the enemy’s language. When you get to the station, show no fear, not under any circumstances; continue to be who you are.”

Be who I am? How could I be true to myself if I didn’t even know exactly who I was? The dancer who took Europe by storm? The housewife who humiliated herself in the Dutch East Indies? The lover of powerful men? The woman the press called a “vulgar artist,” despite, just a short time before, admiring and idolizing her?

We arrived at the station. Franz gave me a polite kiss on the hand and asked me to take the first train. It was the first time in my life I had traveled without luggage; even when I arrived in Paris I was carrying something.

As paradoxical as it may seem, this gave me an enormous sense of freedom. Soon I would have my clothes with me, but in the meantime, I was assuming a role life had thrust upon me: that of a woman who has absolutely nothing, a princess far from her castle, comforted by the fact that soon she will return.

After buying my ticket to Amsterdam, I found I still had a few hours until the train departed. Despite trying to appear discreet, I noticed everyone was looking at me, but it was a different kind of look—not of admiration or envy, but curiosity. The platforms were buzzing and, unlike me, everyone seemed to be carrying their entire homes in suitcases, bundles, and carpetbags. I overheard a mother telling her daughter the same thing Franz had told me shortly before: “If a guard appears, speak in German.”

They weren’t exactly people who were thinking of going to the countryside, but possible “spies,” refugees returning to their countries.

I decided not to speak to anyone and to avoid all eye contact, but even so, an older man approached and asked: “Won’t you come dance with us?”

Had he uncovered my identity?

“We’re over there, at the end of the platform. Come!”

I followed him blindly, knowing I would be better protected if I mixed with strangers. I soon found myself surrounded by Gypsies and, instinctively, clutched my purse closer to my body. There was fear in their eyes, but they did not seem to give in to it, as though they were accustomed to having to change expressions. Clapping their hands, they had formed a circle, and three women danced in the middle.

“Do you want to dance, too?” asked the man who had brought me there.

I said I had never danced in my life. He insisted, but I explained that, even if I wanted to try, my dress did not allow me freedom of movement. He seemed satisfied, began to clap his hands, and asked me to do the same.

“We are Roma from the Balkans,” he said to me. “From what I’ve heard, that’s where the war started. We have to get out of here as soon as possible.”

I was going to explain that no, the war hadn’t started in the Balkans, and that it was all a pretext to ignite a powder keg that had been ready to explode for many years. But it was better to keep my mouth shut, like Franz recommended.

“…but this war will come to an end,” said a woman with black hair and eyes, much prettier than her simple clothes might suggest. “All wars come to an end. Many will profit at the expense of the dead, and, in the meantime, we will keep on traveling far away from the conflicts while the conflicts insist upon pursuing us.”

Nearby, a group of children played, as if travel was always an adventure and none of this was important. For them, dragons were in constant battle, and knights fought one another while dressed in steel and armed with large lances. It was a world where, if one boy didn’t chase after another, it would be an extremely dull place.

The Gypsy woman who had spoken to me went to them and asked them to quiet down, because they shouldn’t be so conspicuous. None of them paid any attention.

·

A beggar, who seemed to know every passerby on the main street, sang:

I had no idea who Thea was; all I knew was I had to get to the consulate as soon as possible to introduce myself to Karl Kramer, the only person I knew in The Hague. I had spent the night in a third-rate hotel, afraid someone would recognize me and kick me out. The Hague was teeming with people who seemed to be living on another planet. Apparently, news of the war had not yet reached the city, stuck at the border along with thousands of other refugees, deserters, French citizens fearing reprisals, and Belgians fleeing the battlefront, all seemingly waiting for the impossible.

For the first time I was happy to have been born in Leeuwarden and hold a Dutch passport. My Dutch passport had been my salvation. As I waited to be searched—glad not to have any luggage—a man I didn’t even get a good look at tossed me an envelope. It was addressed to someone, but the officer in charge of the border saw what had happened. He opened the letter, closed it, and then handed it to me without comment. Immediately thereafter, he called over his German counterpart and pointed toward the man, who had already disappeared into the darkness:

“A deserter.”

The German officer ran after him; the war had barely started and already people were beginning to flee? I saw him raise his rifle and point it toward the running figure. I looked the other way when he fired. I want to live the rest of my life believing he managed to escape.

The letter was addressed to a woman and I thought perhaps he was hoping I would put it in the mail when I got to The Hague.

As soon as I arrived in Amsterdam the gods conspired for me to find one of my hairdressers from Paris, wearing a war uniform, on the platform. He was known for his technique for applying henna to women’s hair so that the color always looked natural and pleasing to the eye.

“Van Staen!”

He looked toward the sound of my cry; his face was overcome with bewilderment, and, immediately, he started to turn away.

“Maurice, it’s me, Mata Hari!”

But he continued to hurry away. I was outraged. A man to whom I’d paid thousands of francs was now running from me? I began walking toward him, and his pace quickened. I quickened mine as well, and he started to run, until a gentleman who had witnessed the whole scene took him by the arm and said, “That woman is calling your name!”

He resigned himself to his fate. He stopped and waited for me to approach. In a low voice, he asked me not to mention his name again.

“What are you doing here?”

He told me then that in the early days of the war he’d decided to enlist to defend Belgium, his country, while imbued with patriotic spirit. But as soon as he heard the crack of the first cannons, he immediately crossed to Holland and sought asylum. I feigned a certain disdain.

“I need you to do my hair.”

In fact, I desperately needed to regain some self-esteem until my luggage arrived. The money Franz had given me was enough to keep me going for one or two months while I thought of a way to return to Paris. I asked where I could stay—temporarily, since I had at least one friend there, and he would help me until things calmed down.

·

One year later, I was settled in The Hague, thanks to my friendship with a banker I’d met in Paris. He’d rented a house for me where we used to meet. At one point, he stopped paying the rent without saying exactly why, but perhaps it was because he considered my tastes, as he’d once told me, “expensive and extravagant.” In reply, I told him: “Extravagant is a man ten years my senior wanting to regain his lost youth between the legs of a woman.”

He took that as a personal insult—which was my intention—and asked me to move out of the house. The Hague had already been a dreary place when I’d visited as a child; now—with rationing and the absence of nightlife due to the war raging in neighboring countries with increasing fury—it had turned into an old-age home, a nest of spies, and a massive bar where the wounded and deserters went to drown their sorrows and get into brawls that usually ended in death. I tried to organize a series of theatrical performances based on ancient Egyptian dances—since no one knew how they danced in ancient Egypt and the critics couldn’t dispute its authenticity, I could do this easily. But theaters had little in the way of audiences and no one accepted my offer.

Paris seemed like a distant dream. But it was the only true north in my life, the only city where I felt like a human being and everything that means. There, I was allowed both what was accepted and what was sinful. The clouds were different, the people walked with elegance, and conversations were a thousand times more interesting than the dull discussions in The Hague’s hair salons, where people hardly spoke for fear of being heard by someone and reported to the police for denigrating and undermining the country’s neutral image. For a while, I tried to inquire about Maurice Van Staen. I asked a few school friends who had moved to Amsterdam about him, but he had seemingly vanished from the face of the earth with his henna techniques and his ridiculous fake French accent.

My only way out now was to get the Germans to take me to Paris. And so I decided to meet with Franz’s friend, first sending a note explaining who I was and requesting his help to realize my dream of returning to the city where I had spent much of my life. I had lost the weight I’d gained during that long and dark period; my clothes never made it to Holland and, even if they arrived now, they would no longer be welcome. The magazines showed that the fashion had changed, so my “benefactor” had bought me all new things. Not of Parisian quality, of course, but at least the seams didn’t rip at the first movement.

·

When I entered the office, I saw a man surrounded by every luxury denied to the Dutch: imported cigarettes and cigars, libations from the four corners of Europe, cheeses and charcuterie that had been rationed in the city’s markets. Sitting behind a mahogany desk with gold filigree was a well-dressed man, more polite than any of the Germans I had ever met. We exchanged pleasantries and he asked me why it had taken me so long to visit him.

“I didn’t know you were expecting me. Franz…”

“He told me you would come one year ago.”

He got up, asked what I would like to drink. I chose aniseed liqueur, which the consul served himself in Bohemian crystal glasses.

“Unfortunately, Franz is no longer with us; he died during a cowardly attack by the French.”

From the little I knew, the rapid German onslaught in August 1914 had been held at the Belgian border. The idea of reaching Paris quickly, as the letter I had been entrusted with read, was now a distant dream.

“We had everything so well planned! Am I boring you with this?”

I asked him to continue. Yes, I was bored, but I wanted to get to Paris as soon as possible and I knew I needed his help. Ever since I’d arrived in The Hague I had to learn something extremely difficult: the art of patience.

The consul noted my look of ennui and tried to summarize what had happened as much as possible. They had sent seven divisions to the West and advanced onto French territory with speed, getting as far as fifty kilometers from Paris. But the generals had no idea how the General Command had organized the offensive, and that brought a retreat to where they were now, close to a territory bordering Belgium. For practically one year, they hadn’t been able to move without soldiers on one side or the other being massacred. But no one surrendered.

“When this war is over, I’m sure that every village in France, no matter how small, will have a monument to their dead. They keep sending more and more people to be sliced in half by our cannons.”

The expression “sliced in half” shocked me, and he noticed my air of disgust.

“Let’s just say that the sooner this nightmare is over, the better. Even with England on their side, and even though our stupid allies—the Austrians—have their hands full trying to halt the Russian advance, we will win in the end. For this, however, we need your help.”

My help? To stop a war that, according to what I’d read or heard at the few dinners I attended in The Hague, had already cost the lives of thousands? What was he getting at?

Suddenly I remembered Franz’s warning, which reverberated inside my head: “Do not accept anything Kramer might propose.”

My life, however, could not get any worse. I was desperate for money, with no place to sleep and debts piling up. I knew what he was going to propose, but I was sure I could find my way out of the trap. I had already escaped many in my life.

I asked him to go straight to the point. Karl Kramer’s body stiffened and his tone changed abruptly. I was no longer a guest to whom he owed a bit of courtesy before addressing more important matters; he began to treat me as his subordinate.

“From your note, I understand you wish to go to Paris. I can get you there. I can also get you an allowance of twenty thousand francs.”

“That’s not enough,” I replied.

“This amount will be adjusted as the quality of your work becomes apparent and the probationary period is completed. Don’t worry; our pockets are lined with money when it comes to this. In return, I need any sort of information you can get in the circles you frequent.”

Frequented, I thought to myself. I didn’t know how I would be received in Paris after a year and a half; especially when the last news anyone had of me was that I was traveling to Germany for a series of shows.

Kramer took three small flasks from a drawer and handed them to me.

“This is invisible ink. Whenever you have news, use it, and send it to Captain Hoffmann, who is in charge of your case. Never sign your name.”

He took a list, scanned it up and down, and made a mark next to something.

“Your codename will be H21. Remember that: You will always sign ‘H21.’ ”

I wasn’t sure if it was meant to be funny, dangerous, or stupid. They could have at least chosen a better name, and not an abbreviation that sounded like a seat number on a train.

From the other drawer he took twenty thousand francs in cash, and handed me the stack of notes.

“My subordinates, in the front room, will take care of details like passports and safe-conducts. As you might imagine, it is impossible to cross a border during a war. So the only alternative is to travel first to London and, from there, to the city where, soon, we shall march under the imposing—but foolishly named—Arc de Triomphe.”

I left Kramer’s office with everything I needed: money, two passports, and safe-conducts. When I crossed the first bridge, I emptied the bottles of invisible ink—it was something for children who like to play war but never imagined they would be taken so seriously by adults. Next I went to the French consulate and asked the chargé d’affaires to contact the head of counterespionage. He responded with disbelief.

“And why do you want that?”

I said it was a private matter and I would never speak with subordinates about it. I must have seemed serious, since soon I was on the telephone with his superior, who answered without revealing his name. I said I had just been recruited by German intelligence, gave him all the details, and asked for a meeting with him as soon as I got to Paris, my next destination. He asked my name, and said he was a fan of my work and that they would be sure to contact me as soon as I reached the City of Light. I explained that I did not yet know in which hotel I would be staying.

“Don’t worry; it is precisely our job to find out these sorts of things.”

Life had become interesting again, though I wouldn’t discover how interesting until later on. To my surprise, when I arrived back at the hotel, there was an envelope asking me to contact one of the directors of the Royal Theatre. My proposal was accepted, and I was invited to perform the historical Egyptian dances to the public, provided they involved no nudity. I thought it was too much of a coincidence, but I did not know if it was help from the Germans or the French.

I decided to accept. I divided the Egyptian dances into Virginity, Passion, Chastity, and Fidelity. Local newspapers spun praise, but after eight performances I was once again bored to death and dreaming of the day I would make my big return to Paris.

·

In Amsterdam, where I had to wait eight hours for a connection that would take me to England, I decided to take a little walk. Again I ran into the beggar who had sung those strange verses about Thea. I was going to continue on my way, but he interrupted his song.

“Why are you being followed?”

“Because I am beautiful, seductive, and famous,” I replied.

But he told me it wasn’t those kinds of people who were after me, but two men who, as soon as they’d noticed he’d seen them, mysteriously disappeared.

I couldn’t remember the last time I talked to a beggar; it was unacceptable for a lady of high society, though those who envied me still considered me an artist or a prostitute.

“It may not seem it, but here you’re in paradise. It may be boring, but what paradise isn’t? I know you are likely in search of adventure, and I hope you’ll forgive my impertinence, but people are usually ungrateful for what they have.”

I thanked him for the advice and went on my way. What kind of paradise was this, where nothing, absolutely nothing, interesting happened? I was not looking for happiness, but what the French called la vraie vie, a true life, with its moments of inexpressible beauty and deep depression, with its loyalties and betrayals, with its fears and moments of peace. When the beggar told me I was being followed, I imagined I was playing a much more important role than any of the ones I had played before: I was someone who could change the fate of the world, make France win the war while I pretended I was spying for the Germans. Men think God is a mathematician, but He is not. If anything, God would be a chess player, anticipating His opponent’s next move and preparing His strategy to defeat him.

And that was me, Mata Hari, for whom every moment of light and every moment of darkness meant the same thing. I had survived my marriage, the loss of custody of my daughter—though I’d heard, through third parties, that she kept one of my photos glued to her lunch box—and at no point did I complain or stand still in one place. As I was throwing stones with Astruc on the coast of Normandy, I realized that I had always been a warrior, facing my battles without any bitterness; they were part of life.

My eight-hour wait at the station passed quickly, and soon I was back on the train that took me to Brighton. When I landed in England I was subjected to a quick interrogation; apparently, I was already a marked woman, perhaps because I was traveling alone, perhaps for being who I was, or, what seemed most likely, the French secret service had seen me enter the German consulate and warned all its allies. No one knew about my telephone call and my devotion to the country where I was headed.

I would make a lot of trips over the next two years: traveling across countries I’d never before visited, returning to Germany to see if I could get my things, and being harshly interrogated by British officials even though everyone, absolutely everyone, knew I was working for France. I continued to meet the most interesting of men while dining in the most famous restaurants, and finally, I crossed glances with my one true love, a Russian who had been blinded by the mustard gas used so indiscriminately in this war and for whom I was willing to do anything.

I risked everything and went to Vittel because of him. My life had taken on new meaning. Every night when we would go to bed, I used to recite a passage from Song of Songs.

And when he writhed in pain, I would stay up all night nursing his eyes and the burns on his body.

The moment I saw him sitting there on the witness stand, saying he would never fall in love with a woman twenty years his senior, the sharpest of swords pierced my heart; his only interest was in having someone to tend his wounds.

And from what you told me later, Mr. Clunet, it was that fateful pursuit of a pass to allow me to go to Vittel that aroused the suspicions of that damned Ladoux.

From here, Mr. Clunet, I have nothing to add to this story. You know exactly what happened, and how it happened.

And on behalf of all that I’ve suffered unjustly, the humiliations I am forced to endure, the public defamation I suffered before the judges of the Third War Council, and the lies on both sides—as if the Germans and the French, who are killing each other, couldn’t leave a woman whose greatest sin was having a free mind in a world where people are becoming increasingly closed-off well enough alone—on behalf of all this, Mr. Clunet, if my final appeal to the president is refused, I ask you, please, to save this letter and deliver it to my daughter, Non, when she is old enough to understand everything that has happened.

Once I was on a beach in Normandy with my then agent, Monsieur Astruc. I’ve seen him only once since I came back to Paris, and he said the country was undergoing a wave of anti-Semitism and he could not be seen in my company. He told me about a writer, Oscar Wilde. It was not hard to find the play he had mentioned, Salome, but no one had dared invest a single cent into putting on what I was about to produce. Though penniless, I still knew influential people.

Why do I bring this up? How did I wind up interested in the work of this English writer who spent his last days here in Paris, was buried without any friends to attend the funeral, and whose only crime was to have been the lover of a man? Would that this were also my condemnation, because I have been in the beds of famous men and their wives, all in the insatiable pursuit of pleasure. No one ever accused me, of course, because then they would be my witnesses.

But back to the English writer, now cursed in his country and ignored in ours. During my constant travel, I read a lot of his work for the theater and discovered that he had also written stories for children.

That was my life; I am the nightingale who gave everything and died while doing so.