We strolled arm in arm around the museum. I wondered what his house in Java looked like; I imagined bamboo floors and fans turning slowly on hot afternoons. With each step we took I left The Netherlands behind. When he asked for my hand, I’d known him for six days. We were married on July 11, 1895, in city hall. My wedding dress was yellow tulle. I bought it in the most elegant shop in Amsterdam. “In yellow, mademoiselle?” the French dressmaker questioned. “You can’t possibly desire yellow. Cream, perhaps?”
“Yellow,” I insisted. Like saffron. And curry. And tropical suns.
*
Before I could leave Amsterdam behind, I climbed the seven steps to 148 Lange Leidschedwarsstraat and knocked. A blonde woman answered the door and I was surprised by how young she was, a thirty-year-old version of my mother, but not as pretty.
“Is Adam Zelle here?” I could smell hutsput cooking. My mother made hutsput.
“May I ask who’s calling?”
“Tell him his daughter has arrived.”
Her hand moved to her chest. “Daughter?”
I wondered if he hadn’t told her, or if she simply believed I’d never intrude on his new life. I saw him in the kitchen and my chest constricted; he turned and I would have forgiven him anything at that moment. But then a terrible thought occurred to me. What if he wouldn’t let me in the door? What if he denied knowing me, his black orchid? “Look at her. Could a girl that dark belong to me? No, my children are lilies, pale as snow.”
“Margaretha, you’ve come back!” He rushed over to embrace me but I backed away. I glanced at his wife as I said, “You were the one who left me. You left us all.”
“No.” He shook his head. “No, come into the parlor.”
I let myself be led into the parlor. I watched him. He was happy. No tears, no regret. He sat in a straight-backed chair, still the baron of Leeuwarden, now with a wife named Catherine. He sat forward in his chair. What had he been telling people all these years? That his children had abandoned him? That our mother had run off?
His wife sat next to him, pulling her chair close to his.
“I’m getting married,” I said, my voice flat. I couldn’t accept that he was married to another woman, letting her cook for him, sleep with him. Had she given him children?
I held my purse tighter, watching my knuckles turn white on the clasp. “Will you give me permission to marry?”
“Oh.” He sat back. “So is that what this is about? I thought you had come to visit.”
A wave of anger swept over me. I felt a new M’greet blooming in place of the old, something darker. I stood, enraged. “Are you not the least bit curious to know what happened after you abandoned my mother? Aren’t you interested to know why I was thrown out of Leyde’s school for teachers? I waited for you,” my voice was shrill. “In Leeuwarden, in Leyde, in The Hague. You never came! Where were you?”
Catherine pulled a handkerchief from her pocket, giving it to me. I hadn’t even realized that I was crying. “It’s all right.”
She patted my hand as if I were a child, making a fuss over nothing.
What had he told her? That I had left? “Where are my brothers?” I demanded.
My father hesitated. “In the factories. They’re doing well.”
No one did well in the factories. Grief overwhelmed me. This was not the man I remembered. My father really was dead. “Do you give me permission to marry?” I asked, moving toward the door. My body felt like lead.
My father hurried to his feet. “You’re not leaving?”
I didn’t answer him.
“Of course you can marry. As long as he comes to me to ask for your hand.”
I stopped. He hadn’t cared what happened to me for years, and now he wanted a formal visit?
“He must come to ask for your hand.” The idea was blossoming in his mind. He was thinking of all the fruit it could bear.
My cheeks flushed. “How dare you ask this.” He was living in his own world. I wasn’t his daughter. I considered telling him about fending off the Walrus. How would he react when I told him that I’d had half a dozen men at the Grand Hotel? I wanted him to see what he’d created, to feel the sharp edges of my pain.
“Margaretha,” Catherine interjected. “A formal proposal is only right.”
I turned around, prepared to give her a lesson on what was right. But I stopped myself. A woman can’t marry in Amsterdam until she’s thirty without her father’s permission. It was either comply with my father’s wishes or lose a husband, and I wanted Java too much to lose Rudolph.
I set my jaw, cursing him to hell. “Tomorrow, then.”
Chapter 11
A Girl's Private Laundry
I’m changing my clothes after an exceptional opening night when Edouard lets himself into my dressing room at the Odéon. “Did you see the prince of Schwarzburg?” I ask. “He was in the second row tonight. I have to hurry. He’s waiting for me in the lobby.”
I look up and notice Edouard’s face. It’s serious. He sits down across from my dressing table and I realize that he’s holding something. “M’greet, I want you to be calm.”