(Margaretha Gertrude Zella aka Mata Hari)
It took me three hours to finish reading the novel, ‘The Spy’,
the latest from Paulo Coelho’s pen (yes, pen, do not go for the other meanings
of the word). Not really a page turner but the 180 pages work of fiction based
on the true story of Mata Hari, the spy woman who was executed on 14th
October 1916, within just two years since Europe went into the First World War,
is a sympathetic retake on a woman’s life. Marguerite Gertrude Zelle aka Mata
Hari was a Dutch woman who sought her freedom and became a double agent for the
warring Germany and France. Mata Hari became famous as a dancer and seductress
in the high circles of Paris, which gave her a passport to the state secrets,
as alleged by her inquisitors.
The novel is short and crisp and while reading one feels
that Mata Hari is a much wronged woman by a society governed and led by the patriarchal
values. Margaretha (a spelling used in the novel) was a woman ahead of her
times; perhaps that quality of her came from the fact that unlike many other women
of her time, she did not want to live an oppressed life, initially by the
parents, then by the school and eventually by a husband and family. However,
young Margaretha was confused about her own self, like many other female
protagonists in Coelho’s novels. Like other protagonists, she too aspired for a
good life. Her body was violated by the principal of her school, when she was
just sixteen years old. Since then, for Margaretha sex became a painful and
abominable thing but she realized later in life that she could return it in
favour of the luxuries that she received from the rich and powerful.
Margaretha marries an army man and goes to Java as her
husband is deputed there. There the philandering army men make their wives mere
witnesses to their womanizing, almost crushing their subjectivities as
individuals. The wife of one major Andreas, having insulted by her husband as
he flirts openly with a Javanese dancer, takes out her pistol and shoots
herself. She dies in the hands of Margaretha and the look in the eyes of the
dying lady, suddenly ‘enlightens’ her and she decides to leave Java and go back
to Holland. Margeratha now knows what life means to her; she wants her freedom.
She also knows she could use her body to gain access to anywhere she wants and
she migrates to Paris by flirting with a French officer. She chooses a life of
a dancer by pretending herself to be an exotic dancer from the east and adopts
a name, Mata Hari.
Mata Hari, in her exotic dance, removes her clothes one by
one and in the process she realises that she absolutely comfortable with her
body. She is now the much written about cultural personality of Paris and
everyone wants to be with her and of course to sleep with her. In one of the episodes
we also see how a young artist of that time namely, Pablo Picasso trying to
flirt with her and as she understands, to ‘bed’ her. But she likes an Italian
artist present there, Modigliani and he treats her with due dignity. She goes
through a series of bedrooms of the rich and powerful and suddenly is ceased by
the fear of getting old. She gets an invitation to perform in Berlin and by the
time she is on her first platform there, the war between Germany and France
starts. Now Margaretha has to leave the country. In Hague, she decides to
become a German spy and once back in Paris she agrees to be a double agent by
becoming a French Spy. The intrigues finally lead her to the prison and all
those high ranking men who have slept with her disown her. Finally, she is
executed by the firing squad not because there were evidences against her but
her acquittal would have left many men with grease on their faces.
(Author Paulo Coelho)
The novel tells us something emphatically: Freedom and love
are to be hailed. It also tells us that Mata Hari was not a spy but used her
ability to glide through the affluent circles to share gossips because for her
political intrigue was a strange thing. She wanted to live her life without
heeding to the morality imposed by the male world, which hypocritically tried
to sneak into her bed whenever it got a chance. While millions of European
women silently suffered the disgrace imposed on them, Mata Hari decided to live
her life. She always kept the seeds of Tulip that her dying mother had given to
her. Tulip seeds would become tulip flowers wherever they are, they cannot be anything
else. Mata Hari was to be a daring woman and she could not have been anything
else.
Technically speaking, the Spy is an epistolary novel; it is
comprised of two long letters written by Mata Hari from the Saint-Lazare
prison, addressing her defend advocate Maitre Cluent and the letter written by
Cluent explaining his angst in not being able to save her from the firing
squad, without knowing that Mata Hari was writing a letter to him, which is to
be handed over to her estranged daughter. The narrative technique is familiar as
in the other novels of Coelho. A sinning or sinned woman as the central
character and the author pitches in to say (through his narrative) that she is
not a sinner but our perspective is what making her a sinner. Mata Hari stands
closer to Maria of his early novel ‘Eleven Minutes’. Maria too is a woman who
pawns her body to earn a good life and goes through tremendous physical and
mental tortures to realize her own self/worth.
(The Trial of Kuriedathu Tathri in artist Namboothiri's imagination)
While reading this novel, somehow I was constantly reminded
of Kuriedathu Tathri, a Malayali Brahmin woman, almost a contemporary to Mata
Hari but less known outside Kerala. Kuriedathu Tathri was violated by a middle
aged Brahmin, when she was hardly ten years old. Then she was forced to marry the
rapist’s younger brother. Then the brothers together ‘presented’ her to many
men. In the meanwhile, Tathri too used her body to assert her right. She became
a problem for the Brahmin community and was made to go through a trial which
was called ‘Smartha Vicharam’. In the trial conducted in 1905, Tathri revealed
the all the sixty six men who had sex with her for almost fourteen years. Instead
of punishing those men, the society was successful in excommunicating her. Mata
Hari is a successor of Tathri.
Paulo Coelho has been a delightful read till her wrote his
last novel, ‘Adultry’ which was published internationally in many languages
simultaneously. It was a disaster. The right mix of spiritual pilgrimage to
alleviate oneself from the apparent sins and ample amount of sex has been the
attraction of Coelho’s works so far. His early novels, Alchemist, Zahir, the
Warrior Light and so on stand apart because of their pure spiritual quest. The
sex and sexuality that Coelho uses in his later novels have become very
predictable these days. Had it not been Mata Hari’s life, this novel would not
have been much of an interest for the reader. Though full of quotable quotes on
life, freedom and love, and above all on domestic and platonic relationships,
the novel seems to be a rushed one without really imparting any literary
pleasure pertaining to structure or narrative. The subdued, calm and whispering
tone of Coelho could be heard throughout the novel, which is detrimental to a
literary narrative. I believe, Coelho should attempt non-fiction now. For an
Indian reader with some spiritual introduction to the Hindu/Indian
philosophical diversities, Coelho’s takes on humanity, love and freedom look
very text bookish, even if it is quite exciting for the Euro-American readers
who are too materialistic to be spiritual or need additional environments to
feel spirituality. I think the popularity of Coelho in India shows nothing but
our growing interest in materialism and the growing gap from the spiritual
foundations of (Indian) life.
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