“Twenty-two?”
He opens the velvet top. “Eighteen.” Inside is an emerald in gold filigree. “One of many, acquired on trips to India,” he says. “There are pieces in my client’s home that he knows to be fakes; he keeps the originals here, with me.” He holds out the jewel and I touch the Far East, running my fingers over the lives of princesses forced into marriage, mothers who lost children, lovers who cried on their wedding day. History wrought in emerald and gold.
“Monsieur Guimet isn’t one of your Montmartre customers.” He closes the box and puts it back, turning the key in the cabinet door. “He is an industrialist, an intrepid traveler, and one of the richest men in Europe. When we meet him tonight, I want you dressed as you were at L’Ete. Wear your most elaborate sarong. Wear all of your jewels.”
“I don’t have any,” I tell him. Rudolph, my husband, was the last person to buy me anything expensive—and everything I owned that had value I sold in order to eat.
“No matter. I’ll loan you jewels to wear,” he says. There is a piece of paper on his desk. He pushes it toward me.
“What is this?”
“Our agreement.”
I consider it carefully. “This is a partnership?”
“Yes. I found you, M’greet.”
“Then you’re my lawyer?”
“And your agent. As soon as you sign.”
*
That evening, in my apartment in Montmartre, I lay my best sarong on the cheap brown comforter that covers my bed. Red silk trimmed with embroidered leaves of gold. I trace a finger across the cloth and in the ripples of the fabric I can see my father sitting like a bronzed sentinel by the fire, his black hair tinged gold by the orange flames. I climb into his lap and rest my head against his shoulder. He’s staring out our parlor window at the canals. It’s snowing and the houses along the water have disappeared like painted women beneath white veils. “I hate snow,” I whisper into his beard. He smells of fresh wood and rain.
“Why? It wipes everything clean. Makes it fresh, new.”
We both look outside at the color of nothingness. “But white is plain,” I tell him.
“Plain can be nice. But you’re right. White is not your color, M’greet.”
I like it when my father reveals things about me. I bury my head in his neck. “What is my color?” I don’t have white-gold hair like my mother or Dutch-blue eyes like my brothers.
“Red.” My father pauses. “Because red is passion. It’s life.”
Passion, I think as I dress. I stand in front of the mirror in the color my father envisioned for me and I know my papa was right. I am striking; unusually tall for a woman and in the sun my skin bronzes to cinnamon. When I was a girl, my dark eyes and hair made people whisper that my mother had taken a Jewish lover. “An orchid among buttercups,” my father called me. Tonight, my dark hair is pulled back from my face. The deep red of my lips matches my sarong. I move my arms and my hips into different poses and the silk reflects the room’s light like water.
There’s a knock at the door and I am startled. I had planned to meet him outside my building. Yet here he is, early. I open the door and before I invite him inside, Edouard Clunet welcomes himself into my apartment. If he’s shocked by the silk scarves I’ve hung to cover the shabbiness of the walls or the aroma of the urine-scented halls that my incense can’t hide, his expression doesn’t betray him.
“Your costume is excellent,” he says. He produces a box and opens the lid. “I want you to wear these,” he says. I count six bangles—all gold—and a heavy necklace encrusted with rubies.
I catch his eye. “Are these—”
“Most certainly real. He’s the greatest collector of Asian art in the world. I can’t have you meet him wearing inauthentic jewels.”
I tease the bangles over my wrists and he clasps the rubies around my neck. We both look at me in the mirror; my image is regal.
“If you can charm him this evening, M’greet, your entire life will change.”
*
I imagined Guimet as old, thin, eccentric. But the man who stands in the finest parlor I’ve ever had the pleasure to be invited to is taller than Clunet, bearded, distinguished looking. In the light of the crystal chandeliers his hair is silvered, but beneath his tailored suit, his shoulders appear to be broad and strong.
“émile Guimet, it is my privilege to acquaint you with Paris’s next sensation.” Clunet makes a sweeping gesture toward me. “May I introduce Mata Hari, the Star of the East.”
Guimet inspects me from head to toe, then we meet each other’s eyes. I know he is calculating the worth of my jewels, the quality of my sarong. “Please, have a seat.” He gestures to some silk-covered chairs. I sit slowly, crossing my legs so that the sarong rises along my thigh.