I said yes, but really, I do not know. All I know is that my current heart is a ghost town, one populated by passions, enthusiasm, loneliness, shame, pride, betrayal, and sadness. I cannot disentangle myself from any of it, even when I feel sorry for myself and weep in silence.
I am a woman who was born at the wrong time and nothing can be done to fix this. I don't know if the future will remember me, but if it does, may it never see me as a victim, but as someone who moved forward with courage, fearlessly paying the price she had to pay.
On one of my trips to Vienna I met a gentleman who had become a roaring success in Austria among men and women alike. He was called Freud--I can't remember his first name--and people adored him because he had restored the possibility that we are all innocent. Our faults were actually those of our parents.
I try to see now where mine went wrong, but I cannot blame my family. Adam and Antje Zelle gave me everything money could buy. They owned a hat shop and invested in oil before people knew of its importance, which allowed me to attend a private school, study dance, take riding lessons. When people started to accuse me of being a "woman of easy virtue," my father wrote a book in my defense--something he should have never done. I was perfectly at ease with what I was doing, and his words only drew more attention to their accusations of prostitution and lying.
Yes, I was a prostitute--if by that you mean someone who receives favors and jewelry in exchange for affection and pleasure. Yes, I was a liar, one so compulsive and out of control that I often forgot what I'd said and had to expend great mental energy to cover my blunders.
I cannot blame my parents for anything, except perhaps for having given birth to me in the wrong town. Leeuwarden, a place most of my fellow Dutchmen will have never even heard of, is a town where absolutely nothing happens and every day is the same as the last. Early on, as a teenager, I learned that I was beautiful from the way my friends used to imitate me.
In 1889, my family's fortune changed--Adam went bankrupt and Antje fell ill, dying two years later. They did not want me to have to go through what they went through, and sent me away to school in another city, Leiden, firm in their objective that I have the finest education. There I trained to become a kindergarten teacher while I awaited the arrival of a husband who would take charge of me. On the day of my departure, my mother called me over and gave me a packet of seeds:
"Take this with you, Margaretha."
Margaretha--Margaretha Zelle--was my name, and I detested it. Countless girls had been given the name Margaretha because of a famous and well-respected actress.
I asked what the seeds were for.
"They're tulip seeds, the symbol of our country. But, more than that, they represent a truth you must learn. These seeds will always be tulips, even if at the moment you cannot tell them apart from other flowers. They will never turn into roses or sunflowers, no matter how much they might desire to. And if they try to deny their own existence, they will live life bitter and die.
"So you must learn to follow your destiny, whatever it may be, with joy. As flowers grow, they show off their beauty and are appreciated by all; then, after they die, they leave their seeds so that others may continue God's work."
She placed the packet of seeds in a small bag that I had watched her stitch carefully for days despite her illness.
"Flowers teach us that nothing is permanent: not their beauty, not even the fact that they will inevitably wilt, because they will still give new seeds. Remember this when you feel joy, pain, or sadness. Everything passes, grows old, dies, and is reborn."
How many storms must I weather before I understand this? At the time, her words sounded hollow; I was eager to leave that suffocating town, with its identical days and nights. And yet today, as I write this, I understand that my mother was also talking about herself.
"Even the tallest trees are able to grow from tiny seeds like these. Remember this, and try not to rush time."
She gave me a kiss goodbye, and my father took me to the t
rain station. We barely spoke on our way there.
All the men I've known have given me joy, jewelry, or a place in society, and I've never regretted knowing them--all except the first, the school principal, who raped me when I was sixteen.
He called me into his office, locked the door, then placed his hand between my legs and began to masturbate. At first I tried to escape, saying, gently, that this wasn't the time or place. But he said nothing. 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.
My mother had taught me, in a conversation laden with metaphors, that "intimacy" with a man should take place only when there is love, and when that love is for life. I left his office confused and frightened, determined not to tell anyone what had happened, until another girl brought it up when we were talking in a group. From what I could tell, it had already happened to two of them, but to whom could we complain? We risked being expelled from school and sent back home, unable to explain the reason. So we were forced to keep quiet. My solace was knowing I wasn't the only one. Later, when I became famous in Paris for my dance performances, these girls told others and, before long, all of Leiden knew what had happened. The principal had already retired, and no one dared confront him. Quite the opposite! Some even envied him for having been the beau of the great diva of the time.
From that experience, I began to associate sex with something mechanical, something that had nothing to do with love.
Leiden was even worse than Leeuwarden; there was the famous training school for kindergarten teachers, and a bunch of people who had nothing better to do than mind other people's business. One day, out of boredom, I began reading the classified ads in the newspaper of a neighboring town. And there it was: Rudolf MacLeod, an officer in the Dutch army of Scottish descent, currently stationed in Indonesia, seeks young bride to get married and live abroad.
There was my salvation! Officer. Indonesia. Strange seas and exotic worlds. Enough of conservative, Calvinist Holland, full of prejudice and boredom. I answered the ad, enclosing the best and most sensual picture I had. Little did I know that the ad had been placed as a joke by one of the captain's friends. My letter would be the last of sixteen to arrive.
He came to meet me dressed as if he were going to war: in full uniform, with a sword hanging to the left, and his long whiskers coated in pomade, which somewhat hid his ugliness and lack of manners.
At our first meeting, we talked about trivial matters. I prayed for him to return, and my prayers were answered; a week later he was back, to the envy of my girlfriends and the despair of the school principal, who possibly still dreamed of another day like the one before. I noticed Rudolf smelled like alcohol, but did not pay it much mind. He was likely nervous in my presence, me a young woman who, according to all my friends, was the most beautiful in the class.
He asked me to marry him on our third and final meeting. Indonesia. Army captain. Voyages to faraway places. What more could a young woman want from life?
"You're going to marry a man twenty-one years your senior? Does he know you're no longer a virgin?" asked one of the girls who had had the same experience with the school principal.
I didn't answer. I returned home, he respectfully asked my family for my hand, and they took a loan from the neighbors for the trousseau. We were married on July 11, 1895, three months after reading the ad.
"Change" and "change for the better" are two very different things. If it weren't for dance and for an officer named Andreas, my years in Indonesia would have been a never-ending nightmare. My worst nightmare now would be to go through it all again. A distant husband who was always surrounded by other women, the impossibility of running away and returning home, the loneliness that came from being forced to spend months indoors because I didn't speak the language, not to mention being constantly kept tabs on by the other officers.