She is finally free. At last.
She has memorized every article given to her by the journalist from Le Figaro. She has weeks, possibly even months, before her money runs out and she has to find employment. Until that happens, she will visit the cities where her mother once lived and meet the women her mother once knew. She plans to fit together the broken pieces of her childhood, putting faces to the names that echo in her mind: Norman, Laksari, Mahadevi. And, of course, the most important name of all: Mata Hari.
After so many years, finally, she is going home.
Author's Note
On October 15, just before dawn, Captain Bouchardon woke Mata Hari from her sleep and ordered her to dress. She was given several minutes to compose herself, then driven from the Conciergerie to the Chateau de Vincennes where reporters and military officers were waiting. Among those present was Edouard Clunet. Witnesses said that as they embraced for the last time, Edouard became hysterical.
At 5:45 a.m., Mata Hari was taken behind the chateau and tied to a wooden stake that had been placed in the ground. Twelve men aimed rifles at her chest. She nodded her head when she was ready and, at 6:00 a.m., the twelve men fired. Only three of the trained riflemen hit their mark, but one of the bullets pierced her heart. Mata Hari died at 6:06. She had refused a blindfold. When the execution was over, no one was allowed to claim her body. In accordance with tradition, an officer emptied his pistol into Mata Hari’s ear. Afterward, her body was brought to the University of Paris for medical research and experimentation.
Mata Hari’s daughter, Jeanne Louise MacLeod, did sail to Java a few weeks shy of her twenty-first birthday. Shockingly, she died while en route, and her cause of death is uncertain. Her early passing guaranteed that she would never learn the truth about her mother’s arrest.
Many more years would pass before the world would learn that Arnold Kalle had sent his “secret” messages from Madrid to Berlin in a code that the British had already cracked. Recognizing Mata Hari for what she was—a very amateur spy working for France—Arnold Kalle neatly orchestrated her downfall. He sent a series of telegrams to Berlin written in this broken code, fully anticipating that the British would share the contents with their French allies, and that France would then indict Mata Hari.
If the French knew that Mata Hari was set up, they weren’t interested in seeing the truth revealed. In 1917, there was one thing the Germans and French agreed upon: Mata Hari was most valuable dead. Germany likely resented the hoodwinking of Consul Cramer; seeing Mata Hari killed by the French would have been a victory. France was in dire fear of losing the war and desperate to convince her citizens that the government could swiftly destroy all enemies. Mata Hari’s sensational execution answered the same need that the deaths of three hundred other French “spies” accomplished: The wartime propaganda machine was fed.
If Mata Hari did “pray for a quick end to this war” in the hope of saving herself, her prayers were answered too late. The truce that halted fighting went into effect at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918. Today, that day is commemorated in the United States as Veterans Day.
Even so many years after Mata Hari’s death, fact and fiction are still hard to separate. Much of her success can be attributed to her ability to fabricate—like her father, she was an extraordinary teller of tall tales. The stories she fed to the public were often aggrandized and the result is that the exact truth of her life is nearly impossible to prove. And as time has passed, her legend has only grown. Today, the fantasy of Mata Hari has more substance than the reality of Margaretha Zelle. I believe the girl from Leeuwarden would want it no other way.
TOUCHSTONE READING GROUP GUIDE
Mata Hari's Last Dance
Michelle Moran
In the glow of prewar Paris, Mata Hari seems to have everything: a successful career as an exotic dancer, scores of rich lovers, her own apartment, and the attention of the elite European art clique. But as a world war dawns, Europe begins to change—and so does life for Mata Hari. In the midst of this changing world, Mata Hari must learn to navigate growing tensions between rival superpowers Germany and France, as well as her own personal battle for her estranged daughter, Non. Despite all her efforts, Mata Hari fails to win back her daughter and her old way of life. In the end she finds herself poor, alone, and sentenced to death for a crime she swore she never committed. At once tragic and beautiful, Mata Hari’s Last Dance chronicles the line between fact and fiction, creation and destruction, and life and death.