Mata Hari's Last Dance Read Free Page B

reclines on his bed and stares at the ceiling, breathing deeply. “I had no idea,” he keeps saying. “ No idea . . . ”
    I run my hands over cotton sheets so fine they feel like silk. This is where I belong.
    *    *    *
    As I dress the following morning in the cavernous luxury of Guimet’s bedroom, he asks what I will require to enhance my performance when I dance at the unveiling of his museum. “Anything,” he stresses, as he tightens the blue sash of his silk robe. “Tell me what you need and I will give you absolutely anything.”
    Countless things I need leap to mind. But I limit my request to statues I’ve seen in Hindu temples and heavy bronze incense holders that are common in Java. “Also,” I say, “I will need a set of Javanese gamelan. Eight instruments. And a flute and zither as well.” It’s a tall order. But Guimet appears unfazed.
    â€œConsider it done.”

Chapter 2
    My Dance Is a Sacred Poem
    T his time I am the one who is early. I wait for Clunet in the foyer of my run-down building. I rent my tiny room from a man who beats his wife. The carpets stink of urine and mold. I force myself to take a deep breath. After tonight, when Guimet and his guests meet the “Star of the East,” perhaps I’ll never have to live with the scents of poverty again.
    â€œWhat are you doing?” Rudolph snapped the first time I allowed myself to inhale the fragrances of Java. The air was heavy with the scent of the yellow and white blossoms of frangipani trees.
    â€œSmelling the air,” I said, already regretting my marriage to him.
    â€œYou enjoy the scent of cow shit?”
    I ignored his comment and pointed to where terraced gardens were being cultivated in shades of emerald and jade. “What’s being grown over there?”
    He licked a stray morsel of food from his mustache. “Those are rice paddies and coconut palms. The natives call the paddies sawah s,” he said with a dismissive grunt.
    Sawahs . I committed the word to memory. “And that grass, what’s it called?”
    â€œ Alang-alang. A bloody uncivilized language if you ask me. Too much damn singsong. It’s no small wonder these people never contribute anything to society. They’re all too lazy and too busy singing.” He checked his pocket watch. If the driver went any faster our luggage would topple over and litter the streets. “It’s shameful. We colonized this land fifty years ago. But with darkies, what can you do?”
    We were on our way to Yogyakarta, to the house that would have cost a prince’s fortune if it were built in Amsterdam. It was only a few days after my eighteenth birthday, and when we arrived, I ran inside and danced through its whitewashed rooms, admiring my burnished teak furniture and bamboo tables. “I can’t believe it,” I kept saying. I touched everything. The oyster-white countertops, the cinnamon and beige curtains, the flowers in terra-cotta pots. I took off my shoes so I could feel the polished floor, cool as silk, against my feet. “There are servants,” Rudolph said, impatient with my excitement. They appeared on cue behind him. Two women and a man. All three bowed. The women smiled and I recognized my amber tones in their skin, my long, dark hair in theirs. I felt I had come home and I thought that I would live there forever as Margaretha MacLeod. Lady MacLeod.
    Now I know I should have married a man like Guimet. Intelligent, refined, a lover of art. A gentle man.
    Three uncouth-looking men pass through the dingy lobby and try to engage me in conversation. I shiver inside my black cloak. I’m wearing almost nothing underneath it—only a few veils and a thin top. I turn my back on the men and wish Clunet would hurry. When he finally arrives, he parks across the street and I watch as he walks up the three steps into the lobby. As he