Sisters of Salome -- Excerpt 2
Taken back to Saint-Lazare, Mata Hari spent almost three months on death row. Conditions in the prison were miserable. “I need some air and exercise,” she pleaded to her jailers, “this will not prevent them killing me if they absolutely want to, but it is useless to make me suffer, closed in the way I am.” Appeals of all sorts were lodged by both Mata Hari and Clunet to the Dutch government and French President Poincaré, but all came to nothing.
Given her months of isolation and decreasing hope Mata Hari, at age forty, became self-reflective perhaps for the first time. With no one left to impress, to dazzle, or to love, she took stock of herself, sending her personal confessions to her captors. These letters were added to her criminal file.
She admitted to selfishness and greed, and though inconsiderate she denied ever intentionally been cruel. She longed all her life, she wrote, for the admiration and acceptance of those whose birth, money or talent were above her own humble origins. She had so wanted to join their ranks and be one of them, only to discover, now that those she so admired were no better than herself, even worse; they were willing to betray her. She was aware that her fate was the result of “half vengeance and half fatality of appearances,” but she accepted it with considerable dignity.
“As for myself, I have been sincere. My love and my self-interest are guarantees of that. Today, around me, everything is collapsing, everyone turns his back, even he [Vadime, her lover] for whom I would have gone through fire. Never would I have believed in so much human cowardice. Well, so be it. I am alone. I will defend myself and if I must fall it will be with a smile of profound contempt.”
At 4 a. m. on Monday morning 15 October Mata Hari was awakened in her cell by a group of men at the door. It was time. Sister Léonide, who had spent thirty-seven years in the jail watching prisoners come and go, began weeping. “Don’t be afraid, sister,” Mata Hari consoled her, “I’ll know how to die.” She dressed quietly asking Dr. Bizard if she could wear a corset. He consented, it would not stop the bullets. She put on her silk stockings, a pearl-grey dress, hat and veil and Pastor Jules Arboux baptized her with water from a prison mug. With a dark coat about her shoulders, she left her cell.
Maître Clunet attempted a last minute stay of execution by declaring that Mata Hari was pregnant. There was a law that stated that a pregnant woman could not be executed until she gave birth. Since she had been in prison for eight months there was considerable surprise and Clunet claimed, in his desperation, that he was the father, despite his seventy-four years. Mata Hari was equally surprised when asked if she was carrying a child, and denied it with a glance of gratitude to her lawyer. She was given ten minutes to write three short letters to her daughter Non, to Vadime and to Henri de Marguérie. They were not forwarded.
Refusing the grip of a guard, declaring she was neither thief nor criminal, she was ushered into a military car as a crowd looked on. Word had gotten out that the notorious spy would be executed on this day. The weather outside underscored the chilly scene: it was cold, 35 degrees, grey and drizzling. After a long ride across Paris to the Château de Vincennes, she was led to a clearing in the polygon where a stake marked the spot. She walked with Sister Léonide to the pole and hugged her goodbye. She refused to be tied to the stake and she refused a blindfold. She looked straight ahead at the twelve soldiers from the Fourth Regiment of Zouaves, positioned in two rows of six.
The official order had been to have four privates, four corporals and four sergeants shoot her to give the various ranks the pleasure and experience of shooting a German spy. The commanding officer, however, was afraid of the less experienced men’s reactions to shooting a woman and only sergeants were in the line up. He raised his sword and shots rang out.
One officer fainted but eleven other bullets hit their mark. Legend has it that she flung open her coat to reveal a nude body causing many bullets to be diverted from their mark. But this was not true: the men in uniform whom she had so loved, killed her. At 6:15 a. m. Mata Hari fell to her knees, then backwards, face to the sky.
No one claimed her body. In a final, ironic, exposition for the woman who had in life so loved to show her flesh her corpse was delivered to a municipal hospital for dissection. This “sinister Salome” became a human anatomical venus for young men with medicine in mind. Her blood, her heart, her bones and her orifices were examined and analyzed, but the mystery of the seductress remained unrevealed. Mata Hari has no grave, but her incinerated ashes dispersed into legend. |
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