Immediately, the image of another Jeanne forms in my mind. But I refuse to allow it to come into focus; I simply won’t allow myself to dwell on her. Not here. I focus on the heart-shaped face of the woman in front of me instead. “Jeanne,” I repeat, giving her name a Malaysian lilt, and her hands go to the pearls around her neck, drawing attention to her face. It thrills men to hear their names spoken with an accent. Now I know it thrills her, too.
“You don’t look like Isadora Duncan,” she says. “If you don’t mind my saying.”
Yes, Isadora. The Dancing Nun. “My lawyer,” I say, brushing Isadora aside, “has told me you desire a sensual performance, a piece that is provocative.”
“Yes.” She moves closer to me. “I read in Le Figaro that the most sacred festivals”—her voice is a whisper—“involve a snake.”
I actually feel the color draining from my face. After I danced for the Rothschilds, Bowtie followed me all around town; I didn’t notice him until he finally cornered me with Edouard as we were dining at Maxim’s. I made up all manner of things to impress him. What else did I tell that man?
“If I arrange for such a creature, will you perform that dance?”
A servant lowers a platter of tea and sandwiches onto the settee between us.
“I . . .” I have never been near a snake, let alone danced with one. “I will have to consider this request.”
“I understand. The dance is sacred. In ordinary circumstances it would be viewed in a temple.” She indicates that the servant should pour the tea. “But as we do not have a temple . . .”
She has mistaken my reluctance for piety. I’m about to decline, to impress upon her the strict religious nature of a snake dance, when I recall how furiously Bowtie was scribbling. If he were to write about Mata Hari dancing with a living snake in Madame de Loynes’s famous salon in front of an audience composed exclusively of “certain” women . . .
“Please,” Jeanne says. She is actually begging.
I take her hand. “For you—and only you—I will do it.”
All throughout India men charm snakes. It can’t be that difficult to dance with one.
*
I inform Edouard that my new dance requires extra time to rehearse and he has given me seven days. But I still have not solved the problem of working with a snake. It has started to rain and the cream-colored walls of my apartment feel as if they are closing in on me whenever I think of reptiles. What am I going to do? My thoughts turn to the purse with the hundred francs. Perhaps I should visit the Champs-élysées? I can shop, distract myself. I desperately need a new pair of gloves and also some boots for the winter. I look out the widow to judge how hard it is raining when the sound of the phone startles me from my daydreams. I hurry to answer it, feeling like an actress in a fancy movie. It is such a luxury to have a phone.
Guimet wishes to see me.
*
I watch from my window as the chauffeur opens the car door. As always, Guimet is impeccably dressed. Today he wears a long black coat against the rain and an expensive fedora. When he arrives at my door, I greet him with kisses and notice that he is wearing a new wristwatch.
“My God, I’ve missed you,” he mumbles into my hair. And then he says, “I hear you are dancing for Jeanne de Loynes next week.”
If my marriage to Rudolph MacLeod taught me nothing else, it schooled me in the ability to recognize jealousy in an innocent comment, to interpret a tone. When Rudolph asked, “Where have you been?” it always meant trouble. I could hear the tenseness in his voice as he sat at the table without his paper or drink, staring at the wall, waiting for me.
“I said, where have you been?”
“At the market,” I hurry my words. “At the market—”
“I told you not to go there anymore, goddamn it!” He pulls his arm back and hits me. “You think you can defy me? You think I don’t see the way you look at the men I command?”
“Yes. The performance is for a small group,” I say, forcing myself back to the present, ignoring the tense quality of his voice by imagining the Buddhas of Borobudur calmly meditating their way to Nirvana. “The gathering is for women only.”
“Jeanne will want you for herself, you know. Once she meets you.”
I did not realize Guimet was the type of man to be jealous of a woman. “A woman will woo me away from you?” I tease. I don’t like this ugly aspect of his personality.
“She’s no longer a beauty but she can still be very convincing.”
I want to ask if she has ever “convinced” him, but decide to distract him instead. “It’s only a dance,” I say. I lead him to my bedroom and we make love. Afterward, he isn’t angry. But he’s not happy, either, and he doesn’t offer to take me to dinner.
I spend the night alone, feeling anxious. I am unable to sleep for the longest time, and when I finally do, my dreams take me to my darkest times in Java.