*
I’m in no mood to rehearse the following day. It is a clear day and I wander the boutiques along the Champs-élysées with the money Edouard left for me. I can hear his voice in my head, scolding me. “Only for important expenses!” But today everything feels tremendously important: the hand-painted silk scarf in aquamarine, the stunning citrine ring and matching necklace, the bronze incense burner I discover in a shop run by an Egyptian man and his son. Nothing could feel better than this. Then I see a young girl begging outside of an expensive clothing shop and all of my happiness turns to dust. The girl has dark hair and wide dark eyes. Her arms look thin. She holds out her cupped hands and I tell her to wait while I go inside. When I come out, I wrap a new cashmere shawl around her shoulders. She begins to cry. “Thank you, madam. Thank you,” she keeps saying.
“It’s nothing, little one,” I tell her. “Where are your parents?”
“Maman is gone.” Meaning dead. “Papa is working.”
“What does he do?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t know.”
I buy her a warm baguette and several slices of meat. When I return home, my purse is empty, but Guimet has completely vanished from my thoughts.
*
Comtesse de Loynes phones to tell me that the snake has arrived. Edouard is sitting across from me, looking completely at home in one of a pair of aubergine chairs he bought for my apartment. As soon as I click the receiver back into place, he wants to know why the wealthiest woman in France is calling me at home.
“Why isn’t she calling me at my office?”
“Perhaps because you’re not there,” I offer. He doesn’t find my answer humorous. I can see by the look on his face that he is concerned. “Don’t look so grumpy,” I say. “I’ve planned a surprise.” Or a disaster.
He fixes me with his eyes. “I don’t like surprises.”
*
“Mata Hari!” Jeanne moves swiftly down the steps and kisses both of my cheeks. We walk arm in arm into her foyer, and for the second time in a week I am surprised by how little taste she possesses for furniture. The mirrors are ridiculously ostentatious. Her ornate chairs must have started life in Versailles; they look too complicated to sit on. She leads me into the foyer where the walls are frescoed with pasture scenes. Waiting for me is a man standing next to a crate. I smell straw and hear rustling. If I live to be a hundred, I vow silently, I will never boast about snake handling again.
“Mata Hari, this is Ishan,” Jeanne says. “He comes to us all the way from Bombay, not so far from where you were born, I believe?”
His face registers surprise; I hold his eyes and he keeps his silence.
“I know you must be eager to begin your rehearsal,” Jeanne continues, “so I’ll leave you two alone.” She shuts the door and the expectation on her face is almost embarrassing to witness. She should learn to better conceal her emotions.
I look at the crate. “The snake is inside?”
“You have never handled a snake before,” he says.
“No. And I’m afraid of snakes.”
He sighs. “The key is not to be afraid.” He reaches inside the box and lifts out a glistening creature that is much larger than I anticipated. It must be at least six feet long and it’s very muscular. Its forked tongue flicks in my direction. “Touch,” he says, holding the snake out for me, one hand keeping the head firmly at a distance while the rest of the animal is winding its way around his body.
“Will it bite me? Will it poison me?”
“I am holding the head. And this snake constricts; there is no poison. Touch.”
I touch. The skin is dry and cool like spun silk—not at all how it appears. I run my hands along its back and I feel a small thrill. This creature is powerful and elegant—and looks so dangerous.
“I will put her around your shoulders,” he says.
“She?”
He drapes the python around my shoulders and smiles. “Yes.”
I hold my breath as the snake moves its heavy body around mine, hugging my limbs, sliding over my breasts. The creature’s weight is somehow comforting. “She is beautiful.”
“She likes you.”
I think he must be mocking me: Can a snake truly be partial to someone? But Ishan is the picture of earnestness. I watch as the snake slides her tail between my thighs, her skin reflecting the light. “She glistens like water but feels like silk,” I observe.
Ishan’s entire face glows, like a proud father. And for the next four hours he guides me, instructing me on how to hold her, where to place my hands so that she is supported, how to understand her body language.
“Treat her well,” he promises when we are finished, “and she will never harm you.”