“What is it like not to have a care in the world?” he asks. “No demanding husband, no needy children?”
I laugh as if he’s said something funny. But for a moment I find it difficult to speak. If I was honest, I’d tell him, “I have too many cares. That’s why I’m with you.” Instead, I make some silly remark about never being tethered down.
Later though, I can’t shake off his question. I go back to my apartment and sit on my small balcony, watching the people go by. Men hurrying to the office. Women pushing prams with other women, laughing over something their babies did at home. So that’s how I appear to all of these men. As a lighthearted diversion without any worries at all. A pretty dancing girl with a smile permanently etched on her face like one of the apsaras carved into the temples. I think of all the people in my life who know the truth, but all of them are gone. Even Edouard.
*
Six months somehow disappear and Edouard and I remain strangers. I know that he is still in Berlin, living in an apartment on Unter den Linden, because I see him one morning while I’m shopping for fruits and vegetables at the B?ckerei.
I catch his eye. He nods.
But we don’t speak to each other.
*
The following Sunday as I am strolling with Alfred I spy Edouard window shopping with a woman. He doesn’t see me and I watch them until they are out of sight. For days I can’t get their image out of my head. How she gazed up at him with her big blue eyes, how his arm touched the pearl buttons on her waist as he gently steered her from shop to shop. I was the one who told him to leave, but my heart aches when Kiepert presents me with a pendant shaped like a dragon, because I realize I want to feel Edouard’s arm on my waist, and instead I only feel gold, heavy around my neck.
*
I invite a German general named von Schilling into my dressing room after one of my shows. He is tall, strong, with a rigid jaw, graying blond hair, and sharp blue eyes. We drink together at the Hotel Fürstenhof and then go to his apartment, a five-bedroom suite in cream and gold. He has no pictures of any children, no wife. He professes to be an extremely practical man: children are too expensive, brass buttons are not cost effective in the military, war is good for the economy. But when he takes me to his bed a second time and gifts me diamond earrings for entertaining him, I understand how practical he is in actual fact.
We see each other for several weeks and I amass an impressive collection of jewelry: two bracelets, an anklet, a necklace, an emerald brooch. My conquest makes me feel giddy. I decide to telegram both Givenchy and Guimet to boast of my success in Berlin. Givenchy writes back at once, inviting me to an important soiree in Paris.
You have no idea how bored I am without you. All of Paris is black and gray for me now. Why don’t you return and the two of us will attend the Marcell soiree? Think of the entrance we’d make! Maybe you’re angry that I was photographed taking Edith Lane to the Rothschilds’ chateau last week? Don’t be, ma chérie. You know very well that your Givenchy can’t go anywhere alone. Come back and all of Paris will talk about us again. Then we can go south. Think of all the fun we’d have on the Riviera. Your Givenchy in a bathing costume. My exotic dancer in—well, preferably nothing at all.
I imagine myself with him. Perhaps I should catch a train, only for the weekend. But I have plans with Kiepert that I don’t want to break. The Rothschilds and the Riviera will have to wait. I fold the letter into my collection. Guimet is more reserved. His brief response comes by telegram a week later. Givenchy, at least, is still mine.
*
“Come,” Kiepert says. We are in my apartment, the bedsheets twisted around us like vines. He wants me to accompany him to Silesia where we are invited to watch the German army practice their maneuvers. It’s tempting to join him. Especially when he drapes himself across the bed and watches me with his deep blue eyes. But I can’t leave Berlin; Edouard may want to reconcile.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “But you know I can’t.”
“If that lawyer needs to find you, he can send a telegram.”
I look away and Kiepert goes alone. When he returns, a German reporter discovers him visiting my apartment. Berlin’s leading paper runs a photo of us linked arm in arm. Underneath, the -caption: SCANDAL! MATA HARI LURES GERMAN OFFICER FROM WIFE. The next day, another paper picks it up. By the end of the week we are everywhere. “The temptress Mata Hari and her innocent victim.” Berlin was in love with me; now women hiss at me in the streets. I tell Kiepert that it is time for us to part.
“I rely on the papers to draw in audiences. If they focus on you—”