The Dance Was the Cover Story (Mata Hari)

Lyrics

[Verse 1]
You were born Margaretha Zelle
in Leeuwarden
which is a Dutch town
that produces cheese
and sensible footwear
and you looked
at the footwear
and the cheese
and the marriage
to an officer
who drank
and hit
and you decided
to become someone
who had never
been to Leeuwarden —
Mata Hari,
a Javanese temple dancer,
an origin story
built from whole cloth
and imported perfume
and the specific audacity
of a woman
who understood
that a biography
is a garment
and garments
can be replaced

[Verse 2]
The dance
was barely dance —
you removed the costume
slowly
in front of audiences
who had paid
to see a Javanese ritual
and were watching
a Dutch woman
perform the idea
of the East
for a continent
that could not tell
the difference
between a temple
and a striptease
The performance
smelled like sandalwood oil
and the warm paraffin
of stage lighting
and the distance
between who you were
and who they believed
was the space
where the profit lived
You monetized the gap
between the real
and the performance
which is either fraud
or the oldest profession
in entertainment

[Chorus]
The spy work —
if it was spy work —
was the same skill
applied to a different audience:
you told the French
what the Germans told you
and the Germans
what the French told you
and the information
may have been worthless
or invaluable
and the historians
still cannot agree
because the only person
who knew what was real
was the person
who had spent a lifetime
proving
that what was real
was the least interesting
version of every story
she told

[Verse 3]
The trial lasted two days
and the evidence
was a woman
who had slept with officers
from both sides
and the prosecution
did not need to prove
espionage
because the jury
had already convicted
the lifestyle
and the lifestyle
was the evidence
and the evidence
was a woman
who had been
too visible
in too many rooms
that preferred
their women
either invisible
or decorative
and you had been
decorative enough
to become dangerous
without firing
a single shot

[Outro]
You refused the blindfold —
October 1917,
Vincennes,
twelve rifles,
and you stood there
looking at the men
who were about to shoot you
the way you had looked
at every audience
that had paid
to see you perform:
directly,
without blinking,
as if the firing squad
was the final stage
and the final stage
deserved the same commitment
as the first —
no blindfold,
no binding,
just a woman
who had spent her life
deciding
what the audience
was allowed to see
deciding one last time