He relaxed and asked my name so he could write a letter of referral to Monsieur Guimet. I had never thought of that! A name? My real name would lead to my family, and the last thing France wanted was to create a situation with a neutral nation because of a woman who was desperate to escape.
"Your name?" he repeated, pen and paper in hand.
"Mata Hari."
The blood of Andreas's wife was baptizing me again.
I couldn't believe what I was seeing. A giant iron tower stretched to the heavens, yet wasn't on any of the city's postcards. Lining both banks of the Seine were distinctive buildings in the style of China, Italy, and other of the world's most illustrious countries. I tried to find Holland, but could not. What represented my country? The old windmills? Heavy wooden shoes? Neither of those had a place among all these modern things--marvels I couldn't believe existed were announced on the posters mounted on circular iron bases.
"Look! Lights that turn on and off without needing to use gas or fire! Only at the Palace of Electricity!"
"Go up the stairs without moving your feet! The steps do it for you." This one was under a drawing of a structure that looked like an open tunnel, with handrails on both sides.
"Art Nouveau: fashion's latest trend."
There was no exclamation point on that one, just a photograph of a vase with two porcelain swans. Below it was a drawing of what looked to be a metal structure similar to the giant tower, with the pompous name Grand Palais.
Cineorama, Mareorama, Panorama--all promised moving images that could transport visitors to places where they'd never before dreamed of going. The more I looked, the more lost I got. And also the more full of regret; I might have taken a bigger step than my legs could stretch.
The city teemed with people, walking from one end of the banks to the other. Women dressed with an elegance I'd never seen in my life, and the men seemed busy with important matters, but whenever I turned back, I noticed their eyes were following me.
Though French was taught in school, I was very insecure. With a dictionary in hand, I approached a young woman who must have been more or less my age and asked, with great difficulty, how to find the hotel the consul had reserved for me. She looked at my luggage and clothes and, though I was wearing the best dress I'd brought back from Java, continued on her way without answering. Apparently foreigners were not welcome, or Parisians thought they were superior to all other peoples of the earth.
I repeated my attempt two or three times, and the reply was always the same, until I grew tired and sat down on a bench in the Jardin des Tuileries. This was a dream I'd had since childhood; just making it here was almost achievement enough.
Should I turn back? I debated with myself for a while, knowing how difficult it would be to find the place to sleep. Then fate intervened: A strong wind blew, and a top hat came knocking right between my legs.
Picking it up carefully, I stood to hand it to the man running to meet me.
"I see you have my hat," he said.
"Yes, your hat was drawn to my legs," I replied.
"I can see why," he said, not disguising a clear attempt to seduce me. Unlike the Calvinists of my country, the French had a reputation for being completely and utterly liberated.
He reached out to take the hat, but I put it behind my back and extended my other hand, where the hotel address was written. After reading, he asked me what it was.
"A friend of mine lives there. I came to spend two days with her."
I couldn't say I was on my way to have dinner with her, because he saw the luggage beside me.
He said nothing. I figured the place must be so low as to be not worth criticizing, but his reply was a surprise:
"Rue de Rivoli is just behind this bench where you are seated. I can carry your suitcase, and there are several bars along the way. Would you have an anise liqueur with me, Madame..."
"Mademoiselle Mata Hari."
I had nothing to lose. He was to be my first friend in the city. We walked toward the hotel and, on the way, we stopped at a restaurant where the waiters wore long aprons down to their feet and dressed as though they had just left a formal gala. They smiled for practically no one, except for my companion, whose name I've forgotten. We found a table tucked away in a corner of the restaurant.
He asked me where I came from. "The East Indies," I explained. "Part of the Dutch empire, and where I was born and raised." I commented on the beautiful tower, perhaps the only one like it in the world, and unwittingly awakened his wrath.
"It will be dismantled four years from now. This World's Fair has cost the government coffers more than our two most recent wars. They want us to think that, from now on, we'll have a union of all the countries of Europe and finally live in peace. Can you believe that?"
I had no opinion, so I preferred to keep quiet. As I said before, men love to explain things, and they have opinions on everything.
"You should have seen the pavilion the Germans built. They tried to humiliate us. It was this huge thing, in poor taste, full of installations with machinery, metallurgy, miniature ships said to soon dominate all the seas, and a giant tower filled with..."
He paused as if preparing to say something obscene.