“It’s right there,” Non says. “Feel free to get up and pour it.” She turns to her mother’s friend. “Why don’t we go across the street?” She retrieves her coat from the back room and puts on her hat. When she leaves Joossens with Ancel Dupond, she has no intention of returning.
As they make their way to the coffeehouse, Ancel recognizes Mata Hari in the girl: the same dark beauty and a similar willfulness, too. He wonders how this girl’s father has managed to control her.
In the bright light of the coffeehouse Ancel orders coffee for both of them and waits for the girl to ask questions. He has some of his own. What was it like to be raised by a man who didn’t want you? Were you aware of how badly your mother yearned for you?
“My mother is dead?” Non asks.
“Yes. I’m very sorry.” Ancel reaches into his bag and retrieves an article. It’s not one he wrote, but it’s a kind and melancholic piece that describes the trial and Mata Hari’s execution. He feels uncomfortable watching Non while she reads it, so he stares across the coffeehouse at a pair of women laughing together over their porcelain cups. There can be such joy in the world, he thinks. And so much sorrow. When he looks back, Non’s eyes are red. She’s so young. Sixteen? Seventeen? Mata Hari told him her age but he can’t remember and it would be rude, now, to ask.
“This is so terrible,” she whispers, trying not to cry. “Why didn’t anyone tell me? I’ve been working. I was saving money to visit Paris and find her.”
“I’m very sorry.” All he can offer her are words. He takes out a folder. Inside is everything he’s ever written about Mata Hari. His article covering her debut at Guimet’s library, her triumph at the Kursaal, the lies he published about her time in Berlin.
He pushes it toward Non.
“What is this?”
He hopes he isn’t making a mistake. But this was what Mata Hari had wanted. “Your mother’s press,” he says. “Whatever your father’s told you about her, she loved you deeply.”
“How do you know?” There’s an edge in her voice. She mistrusts her mother, but at the same time she’s looking for reasons to love her.
“Because I was one of the last people to see her.”
A woman arrives with their coffee but Non doesn’t drink. She stares at the steam rising into the air, visible and then gone forever. “My father never told me she was in prison,” she says flatly.
“For a long time, very few people knew.” Though surely, Rudolph MacLeod was one of them.
“You knew.”
“I’m a reporter for Le Figaro. It was my job to know.”
“Was she mistreated?”
“No.” He tells the lie without hesitation.
“I’m glad to know that.”
“She was innocent, in my opinion.”
“Then . . . why?” Non’s voice begins to rise. “Why did they execute her?”
“Publicity. During war, sacrifices are made.” Ancel knows how bitter he sounds. “The story of a femme fatale betraying France could only end in death.” His guilt is gnawing at him: Without Mata Hari he wouldn’t have a large office overlooking the Seine. Without him, the sensation that was Mata Hari might never have existed. Fueled by his articles, France had built her up and then tore her down.
Non doesn’t open the folder. “Do you know why she abandoned me?” she asks.
“She was afraid of your father. Afraid that he would kill you if she came for you.”
“She tried to take me once,” the girl whispers. “She didn’t succeed. When we got home, my father beat me so badly I wasn’t able to walk for two months.”
Ancel doesn’t know what to say.
“I live with him. If he knew the two of us were meeting here, he would kill me. But don’t worry. I won’t give him that chance.”
If there was any doubt, Ancel is now certain this is Mata Hari’s daughter. “She left you this,” he says, reaching into his coat pocket and handing her a locket. It’s silver, and he had Non’s initials engraved on the front. He purchased it the day Mata Hari clipped off a lock of her hair and handed it to him through the prison bars. He wanted to create a nicer presentation than hair wrapped in paper.
Non is weeping now, clasping the locket to her chest. Other customers have started to stare; Ancel wonders what this scene looks like to them. Non opens the locket and sees her mother’s hair. “It’s unfair,” she manages to say.
It is. Ancel can’t spin the story any other way. He watches as she fastens the locket around her neck and he thinks of how similar mother and daughter are in their body language. Were.
“You quit your job,” he observes. “What will your father say?”
“I don’t know. I don’t care. He won’t be able to find me where I’m going.”
*
She stands at the rails of the ship Outlandia and closes her eyes, imagining the warmth of Java. No one on this ship knows who she is. She had been afraid that her father was having her followed, but now, with the sea air to clear her head, she can think better.