Immediately, all calmness drains away. “Has something happened to Non? Has something happened to my daughter?”
He holds up the book he’s carrying and I’m shocked. There’s a photo of me on the jacket. I am nine years old, dressed in a ridiculously expensive outfit my father had indulged me with. I remember the moment it was taken clearly: I was standing in front of Leeuwarden’s fountain, imagining I was a queen. It was summer and the air was heavy with jasmine blossoms.
“Who found that photo?” I reach for the book but he pulls it back.
“This book is going to make you very, very angry,” he warns me. “It’s a biography,” he says. “Of you. Written by your father.”
Rage, white-hot, burns through my body. “You aren’t serious!” But he hands me the book and as I begin flipping through the pages I know that he is. “And what does he write about?” I demand, scanning the pages. “Does he apologize for abandoning me? For leaving my mother to die in Leeuwarden?”
Edouard moves toward the door. “I’m sorry. I wanted you to hear about this from me, not read about it in the papers. I believe your friend ‘Bowtie’ is penning something about it.”
As soon as he closes the door I start reading. The Life of Mata Hari: A Biography of My Daughter and My Grievances Against Her Former Husband. Page after page details my father’s flair for business, his former collection of art, his overall greatness that inevitably produced a person like me. In every chapter my father is the hero. I am a caricature and Rudolph is unrecognizable. My brothers are barely mentioned. And in my father’s version of our life, my mother never existed.
*
The next morning Bowtie finds me in the Ritz taking my coffee in a shady little nook far removed from everyone else. The man has the homing abilities of a pigeon. He makes for my table and I wish to God he would make a right turn and perch with someone else. But I know why he’s here. I might as well get it over with.
“Mata Hari!” His sandy hair is slicked back beneath his fedora. There’s no Press card tucked inside the band today. He takes a seat and snaps for the waiter.
“Good morning,” I tell him. I hope it’s obvious from my voice that I don’t mean it.
“It’s always a good morning, Mata Hari. If you’re walking and breathing, it’s good.” The waiter arrives and he orders a coffee. “Another?” he asks me.
“No.”
“You just opened a new show. No rehearsals today?”
“Not until next week.”
He nods. Then the coffee arrives and he’s all business. “So.” He takes a sip. “Is it true? Everything your father wrote about you?”
I don’t have it in me to play the fool. “Of course not. It’s trash.”
“Doesn’t matter, though, does it? Thousands of people will read his book. They’ll read it and they’ll be shocked.” He straightens his bow tie; today it’s deep magenta. “Is there anything you’d like to tell them? I’m offering you the chance.”
There is tenderness in his voice. He’s waiting for me to speak, his boyish face tilted to the side. He’s exceedingly good-looking. I’m sure he has his pick of women wherever he goes. Or perhaps men. “Yes, there’s something I’d like to say.”
He takes a pen from behind his ear and sits forward, ready to write.
“Tell them that my father is—”
“Delusional?” he offers. “That you were born in India, not Caminghastate?”
“Yes.”
“And what about your husband? Is any of that true?”
“I’d rather not speak about it.”
“But you do have a daughter?”
“I can’t talk—” My voice breaks. If Rudolph reads my father’s horrible book, what will he do to Non? Will he take his rage out on her? Tears trail down my cheeks and I feel myself shaking. Bowtie offers me his handkerchief. I press it against my eyes. “Please,” I say. “She’s only a little girl. If my ex-husband reads this book—”
“Are you afraid of him?”
“Yes.”
He shuts his notepad immediately. “Thank you,” he says. He stands, leaving his coffee unfinished.
The next day in Le Figaro I am the headline again: BETRAYED: JEALOUS AND DELUSIONAL FATHER WRITES FALSE BIOGRAPHY OF THE FAMOUS MATA HARI.
I am so grateful to Bowtie I could kiss him.
If only Rudolph reads this article and not my father’s book.
*
“An orchid among buttercups.”
His voice is just as I remember it. I turn from my dressing table and there he is. After pruning the garden of my life, up pops a weed.
“M’greet,” my father says. “My God, look at you!”
He rushes to me, clasping me in his arms, holding me as if we’ve been apart for too long. He is such a convincing performer I find myself thinking, Has he finally come to apologize?
Then he steps back and makes an imaginary toast. “To your success, Margaretha.” He leans forward, hat in his hand. It is expensive, a Wolthausen. I can smell alcohol on him. There is a knock on the door.
“Come in,” I call automatically, my eyes fixed on the man who deserted me.
“M’greet, I—”