THE SPY

Paulo Coelho has written a fine epistolary (a novel based on written or typed letters) historical novel about the execution of accused WWI spy Mata Hari. The novel is propelled by Mata Hari writing a letter to her lawyer, Mr. Clunet, explaining her life and how it came down to this death sentence. At the novel’s end, Mr. Clunet writes a letter back to her on the eve of her execution (she never gets this letter). I thought Mr. Coelho’s slant was probably correct...that she wasn’t a spy, but a victim of knowing too many political higher-ups in France and Germany. The novel, based on a true story, is written in my favorite genre...narrative nonfiction (so coined by one of my most-liked authors, Erik Larson). Did Paulo Coelho write a worthy novel? Yes, but not as good as his famed novel, The Alchemist (see my review of 2/9/2015). Mata Hari’s own braggadocious personality got her in front of a French firing squad more than anything else. As a exotic dancer in the early 1900s (usually stripping nude by the dance’s end), she met many important people who wanted to be her lover. She thought these VIPs would come to her defense...wrong. When somebody is in big trouble, the best defense for a guilty party is denial. The fact that many French soldiers were being killed daily by the Germans didn’t make the court feel very sympathetic.

Mata Hari, nee Margaretha Zelle, was born in Holland on 8/7/1876. She was sent to school to become a teacher after her mother became ill and her father went bankrupt. She was raped by the school’s principal when she was sixteen. “He called me into his office, locked the door, then placed his hand between my legs and began to masturbate...he pushed aside some papers on his desk, laid me on my stomach, and penetrated me all in one go, as if he were scared that someone might enter the room and see us.” Sometime later, she saw an ad from a Captain Rudolf MacLeod stationed in Indonesia. He was seeking a bride. This was her chance to get out of Holland. She married MacLeod and later regretted it. He accused her of being a whore since she wasn’t a virgin (because of the rape she never told anyone about). She had one daughter and one son, who was later murdered by his nanny. “Then one day, everything changed.” Captain MacLeod and Margaretha were invited to a local dance performance to honor an island ruler. Looking sensual, Margaretha was the hit of the party. Her husband was jealous and very drunk. A Dutch officer, Andreas, falls for Margaretha. His wife is so distraught that she commits suicide by putting a bullet in her heart. The next day the MacLeods took the first ship to Rotterdam, Holland. Did observing the exotic Javanese dancers give her an idea for a future profession?

"One day, I took a train to The Hague and went to the French consulate without anyone knowing...he attempted to seduce me...I got my one-way ticket to Paris...he asked what I could do.” She replied, “I’m a classical dancer to oriental music.” Once in Paris, she changes her name to Mata Hari and meets a Monsieur Guimet, who gives her a chance to perform in his private museum. She does her seductive dance of seven veils and receives a standing ovation. Okay, I just whet your appetite with a review of the first fifty-nine pages. The rest of the novel deals with her dancing career and how it got her into the supposed spy business. Was she a spy? I did a little research on Mata Hari (besides this novel) and couldn’t come up with any revelation that she was a spy for any country, no less France, Germany or Russia. You will have to read the rest of Paulo Coelho’s historical novel to find out why the French put her in front of a firing-squad. This is the type of novel that not only entertains the reader, but also improves his/her expertise of history. Although not the author’s best, I highly recommend reading this piece of history.

RATING: 4 out of 5 stars

Comment: I acquired this novel during Barnes & Noble’s Christmas sale of novels “signed” by the author...a very nice bonus.

In the author’s epilogue, I would like to impart to you the last two paragraphs of his novel:

Mata Hari’s body was buried in a shallow grave, which has never been located. According to habits of that time, her head was cut off and handed over to government representatives. For years it was kept in the Anatomy Museum on Rue des Saints-Peres in Paris, until, on an unknown date, it disappeared from the institution. Museum officials only noticed it was missing in the year 2000, although it is believed that Mata Hari’s head was stolen well before then.

In 1947, prosecutor Andre Mornet, by then publicly indicted as one of the lawyers who founded proceedings to revoke the “hasty naturalizations” of Jews in 1940, and largely responsible for the death sentence of the woman he claimed was “the modern-day Salome, whose sole objective is to deliver the heads of our soldiers to the Germans,” confided to journalist and writer Paul Guimard that the entire proceedings were based on deductions, extrapolations, and assumptions, concluding with: “Between us, the evidence we had was so poor that it wouldn’t have been fit to punish a cat.”

According to the New Testament, Salome (mentioned the the above paragraph) was the daughter of Herod II and Herodias. She is infamous for demanding and receiving the head of John the Baptist.

The brave Mata Hari faces the French firing-squad wearing her heavy silk kimono in which she slept in, black stockings, high-heeled shoes, a floor-length fur coat and a felt hat tied under her chin with a silk ribbon.