“What?”
His expression makes me nervous. I rush the rest of my news. “Rousseau hired a woman named Anna. She speaks Dutch. She was born in the same town that I was. She knows what to do. She’s going to find Non and bring her to Paris.”
“Who is she? Do you trust her? M’greet, my men consistently report—”
“What? Don’t you trust Rousseau?”
“Why should I trust him? I don’t even know him.”
“You know me and I know Rousseau—he interrogates everyone thoroughly. He hired Anna, so she is qualified. She’s already in Amsterdam. Non will be here tomorrow!”
Edouard looks positively ill. “M’greet. My men are meticulous. They’ve been working for—”
“Months. And months and months! I can’t wait any longer, Edouard. Anna will arrive at my daughter’s school early for dismissal and say she is Rudolph’s new servant. She will produce a locket with my picture inside so Non won’t be afraid. The two of them will go directly to the train station.”
He watches me with a strange expression in his eyes.
“Non will be here tomorrow, Edouard. Be happy for me.”
*
It is the Ides of March. An unlucky day for Caesar, but my day of triumph. In three hours, Anna will return to France with Non.
Edouard arrives at two o’clock. Together, in the salon, we wait.
I am so excited, I feel brave enough to talk about the past. I say to Edouard, “In Java, Rudolph stopped forcing me to stay in the house after I became a mother. He decided that with a child I was safe and undesirable. Norman and I—my son and I—we visited all of the ancient shrines to gods my people don’t have names for. I took him to see Kraton, the two-hundred-year-old palace, and Tamansari, a water castle. Those were my favorite days. We would climb the stone steps and be the only people in the world. We’d be hypnotized by mango valleys newly washed with rain, listen to the chanting of monks. I told Norman about Buddhism and Hinduism. About why Brahma has four heads and Ganesh is an elephant. I began earnestly learning Malay. By that summer I was able to speak it.”
“What happened to Norman?” Edouard asks gently.
I wave him off. I never allow myself to visit that dark corner of my memory.
When the clock strikes four o’clock, I begin pouring wine. “You don’t think something’s happened?” I ask. “Should we call the station? The train may be delayed.”
He calls the station. No trains are delayed. I stare out the window as darkness begins falling. I had wanted so badly for her first sight of the villa to be in daylight. “Something has gone wrong.”
“Perhaps . . .” He tries to think of a positive scenario.
“What?” My voice sounds foreign in my ears.
“I don’t know.”
At eight, when Anna arrives alone, Edouard holds me close to him as I cry. “I’m sorry, ma’am,” Anna whispers. “I’m so very sorry—”
“What happened?” Edouard demands.
“Her father was there. He arrived moments after I had taken her by the hand. He began shouting for the police.”
“No!” I scream. “He’s going to kill her!”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do! I do know that! You wanted to know what happened to Norman? It was all Rudolph’s fault!”
Edouard guides me to a chair. Anna sits on the edge of the couch and I tell them the whole ugly story. I tell them that when Non was a baby and Norman was three, Rudolph was made commander of a garrison in Melan. We had two weeks to pack all our belongings and move from our home. I hoped things would be different now that Rudolph had a high-status position; he would be required to entertain society, so I wouldn’t be so isolated. In Melan, I became Lady MacLeod. Ours was the biggest house with the widest lawn and a marble fountain. Our garden parties saw more than two hundred people and soon I was so busy hosting that Rudolph hired a nurse to care for the children, a Javanese woman named Fairuza.
I hired Mahadevi and I watched her dance at my parties. I wanted to be her, to feel that free—like a child again in my father’s hat shop, where anything was possible. Rudolph would never allow me to dance in public. But she agreed to teach me in private, to show me how to make magic with my hips and hands. She watched me practice with longing. The way Rudolph never watched me.
“Close your eyes,” she instructed and I did as she told me.
We danced together wearing indigo silks, our bare feet flat on her polished floor. We danced until we were both dizzy, until my body felt as supple as the silk. She told me that you are what you believe yourself to be. She was able to look at a man and say, “He wants me for a week. No more, no less.”
“If I’d had that skill,” I tell them, “my heart would never have been broken. When she invited me to dance in public, I said yes.”