Darling, do you mind if we reschedule lunch on Thursday? I’m hitching a ride to Acapulco with Gloria and Loel—just a few days in the sun. I’m in desperate need of a tan.
What began as a novelty has become a way of life. We’ve transmuted, through a dizzying combination of technology and means, into a migrant set. Nomads. Globe-trotters. Internationalists. Ours is the pulse of motion, propelled by a frenetic desire to keep up with our peers; desperate to stay a healthy length ahead of our rivals. We thus spend our days in a state of flux, conveniently rootless.
Our circle has expanded from a cadre of friends to an army of acquaintances. How else might one ensure hospitality in every port?
We know in our bones where the next migration will be— where we might find the rest of the flock. The most fashionable months for each locale, though we avoid a place with cultivated disdain the moment it becomes too popular.
We travel for weddings—though curiously not funerals, which might slow our pace with grim thoughts of mortality. For hunts, races and sporting must-sees. For auctions, exhibits, and launches of fashion. We fly to the slopes of St. Moritz when the snow is good, and to the beaches of St. Tropez when the sun is at its peak. We cross continents for premieres in every metropolis—particularly rewarding if we beat one another to the punch.
Even the most tone-deaf among us consider the Salzburg Festival required attendance, especially with Herbert von Karajan conducting, we being friendly with his third wife, Eliette, the toast of French fashion for a time. And even the most strident opera-hater would sell a lung to hear Maria Callas sing anywhere—though we couldn’t help but snicker when Gianni Agnelli described Callas singing Medea as ‘two hours of pure torture.’
We like that about Gianni—he hasn’t the time for dishonesty. In fact, Gianni might well be the cultural icon of our set, epitomizing the velocity of the age. Gianni has been known to wake in Turin, put in an hour at his Fiat office, fly to Rome for lunch, then to the snow-capped Alps—where his helicopter drops him at mountain’s peak, he having no patience for ski lifts, ending the day in the South of France, where he’s more than once been known to leap from the aircraft, landing in his swimming pool below. He seldom will finish a book or a film, and cannot bear to linger over dinner. He likes his conversation short, sweet and to the point (and—we’ve heard from several reliable sources—the same might apply to his lovemaking).
If anyone, in contrast, offers a glimpse of a more graceful age it is, ironically, Marella. While nine years his junior, she feels an ancient soul with her steady, regal calm.
It’s on one balmy summer evening in Salzburg that we find ourselves settling into our seats, contemplating such thoughts. As expected (given our presence), Karajan is conducting—and thank God he’s spared us the shrieking Valkyries. (We’d told Eliette quite plainly that another round of Götterdämmerung and we might be ‘otherwise occupied’ slitting our throats on opening night.) Perhaps as a gesture of appeasement, he has revived last season’s standby: Don Giovanni. It’s his third revival in eight years of this particular staging, so, in the spirit of been-there-done-that, we turn our attention to the surrounding scene, allowing the opera to function as a pleasant background track to the dramas in our midst. We nudge our seat-mates, coughing ever so delicately, nodding toward recent divorcés, test-driving new models; to their former wives mere rows apart, arms linked through those of eager young escorts. We spot the usual spattering of starlets, alongside their directorial counterparts. The expected ratio of aristocrats and members of the smart set, all fresh off their various planes, yawning and napping in their boxes.
Scanning the crowd, how can our eyes but linger when they reach Marella?
Perched in a loge just above the stage, she gives the impression of some exotic avian creature. Not the swan of Truman’s appellation—something more angular. A heron perhaps, slender neck extended from a high Pucci collar, skimming her cropped chestnut curls. There is indeed something birdlike in the way she cocks her head, poised atop that elongated throat, her aquiline nose a sort of fine-boned beak.
Seated beside her, Gianni, in his Battistoni suit, cut to perfection. His signature touches of loosened tie around a Brooks Brothers shirt, collar unbuttoned with the calculated insouciance of a rebel schoolboy. Ankle crossed over knee, hiking boots peeking from the leg of his fine wool trousers. Foot jiggling. Restlessness apparent. The epitome of Felliniesque visions of the beautiful life. Of restive playboys in slick suits, wading romantically into fountains, speeding in fast cars past jostling paparazzi, of Negroni-fueled nightclubs and ruins and reckless passions.
It’s this last bit from which we draw the parallel, somewhere midway through the first act. It’s there right in front of us—had it been one of Truman’s cobras it might have bitten us. Mozart, it seems, was prophetic indeed! How closely does the rake singing his famed Champagne Aria on the stage before us resemble the Rake of the Riviera, Gianni’s sobriquet in those wild days of post-war hedonism? Even the name is uncanny, Gianni’s birth name being Giovanni, after his grandfather, the great Fiat chairman. Not that anyone calls our Gianni anything other than L’Avvocato, an affectionate nod to the law degree he’d discarded without a day of practice. Was he not an incorrigible seducer? To put it more crassly, were his fucks not famous… ? There were too many to catalog, their numbers rivaling those detailed in Mozart.
And of course! Good God—of course. We only just spot it…
Donna Elvira! The stoic, steadfast wife who suffers Giovanni’s betrayals. Did Marella see it too? How could she not? From that dawning Act One realization, we each watch Donna Marella and Don Gianni like salacious hawks. Ten minutes into the second act—not long after Giovanni’s crooning ‘Deh, vieni alla finestra,’ accompanied (tellingly, it will later be whispered alongside the rumors…) by a lone mandolin—we note Gianni glancing at his Rolex, fastened, as is his habit, on the outside of his cuff, having famously proclaimed in the press that he is too busy to pull back his sleeve to check the time.
He watches the serenade, shifting in his seat.
We’re a bit startled, we must say, when Gianni suddenly rises from his chair, mid-aria. We watch with fascination as he leans in close to Marella, whispering in her ear. She gives the faintest nod, not taking her eyes from the action on stage as he turns and slips out of the box. We strain to see if his exit has left an impact, but her features remain impassive, as if chiseled from fine Italian marble. An ever-stoic madonna.
It is only during Donna Elvira’s final, conflicted aria, ‘Mi tradì quell’alma ingrata,’ that we think we notice her heron’s neck lengthen a fraction with what we can only assume is wistfulness. Some of us could swear we saw a tear roll down her cheek.
MARELLA WAS DETERMINED—after Truman said what he did in the Antiquariato di Sloth several months back—never to trust a soul with what had transpired between them.
She vowed she would never, ever repeat his odious words, not even to herself.
Frankly she ceased to care if what he said was true or false— only that he’d said it, and from that point on he ceased to exist for her.
She remembered that fateful day in fragments. The dampness of their coats. The hiss from the hotplate upon which the Signore Sloth had boiled a kettle. The fading leather of rows of antique volumes, upon whose fragile spines Truman had run his fingertips in passing, en route to pay for his cabinet. She’d watched him pause and stare longingly at the centuries-old tomes, with a purity of gaze she seldom saw him bestow upon the animate. While his initial appreciation seemed more for the assortment of works, his eyes seemed to light on a particular volume. A smile crept across his face—one that conveyed the mischief she’d once found irresistible, something that now made her queasy. He plucked it from the shelf, leaving a hole in the collection. He trotted to the counter to confront the proprietor once more, while Marella managed to slip out of the shop before the haggling process recommenced.
THEY HAD TAKEN a taxi back to the port, where he sa
t snickering, turning the wrapped package around in his hands. It was as they neared the mooring that he handed it to her.
‘For you, Uno. Un regalo.’
Marella regarded the offering warily. She managed a terse smile as she shook her head.
‘Grazie, Truman, ma no, grazie.’
‘Whhaaaaat? Thanks but no thanks?’ His jaw dropped with mock offense. ‘You’re rejecting my prezzie, miele?’
‘Sì, Truman. No thank you.’
‘But Uno, you simply must take it. I picked it out for you specially.’ He dropped the package into her lap, ignoring her reluctance. ‘It’s not like I can give it to anyone else. I’s likes to be specific in my choices, and this really does suit you to a T. Go on… Open it.’
His eyes were so earnest, she began to wonder if this was, in fact, a peace offering. An apology for his unfathomable disloyalty. Without speaking, she unwrapped the paper to find a small volume of cracked ivory leather, pages brittle with age.
Embossed in flaking gold: DON JUAN.
‘It’s Byron, miele. Of course you wouldn’t be able to understand five syllables, it not being written in I-talian… But I think Gianni might be just the man to summarize the plot.’
As Marella ran her fingers over the lettering, she noted the faintest traces of gold residue on her skin, along with a layer of dust.
‘Of course I wanted to get you Ovid’s Heroides. It’s about wronged heroines, told in a series of epistolary poems to the menfolk who betrayed them. Do you know what “epistolary” means? Doubtful. It means letters. The letters of those poor wives whose husbands abandon them. Penelope to Ulysses, Medea to Jason. Perhaps L’Avvocato might shed some light on this as well?’ There it was again. That smug grimace.
‘He came back, Ulysses. To Penelope. His wife.’ Marella met Truman’s gaze, her regal chin jutting as defiantly as his own.
He shrugged, a casualness to his malice. ‘Sometimes theys do, sometimes theys don’t. Face it, for the very rich, marriage is like travel these days… One stays as long as one’s interest holds, then he—or she—but let’s be honest, it’s usually the he—moves on to the next port.’ Then, pointed—‘Sometimes one never knows how close one’s come to loss.’
They sat in silence the rest of the drive. The moment the taxi pulled up to the quay, Marella was out the door and halfway up the gangplank, before her companion had bent to collect his faded treasures.
BACK ON BOARD the Agneta, Marella locked herself in her cabin, where she intended to stay in self-imposed exile for the rest of the journey. She prowled the master stateroom, which Gianni did not share, preferring to sleep in a guest berth so that he might come and go as he pleased. It was a luxurious cell to be sure, with its Carrara marble fireplace and priceless modern art, Rothkos and Bacons filling the space. Still, Marella resented her dubious guest having the run of the ship while she stewed below.
How dare the little beast! He with his ugliness and lies! And all because… what? She had the temerity to criticize his work? To have served as the sibyl predicting his demise, should he fail to heed her oracle? She could see the fate that awaited him should Babe ever read the filth he’d spouted on deck. It was then that it first began to dawn on her, that while she loved Truman-the-Artist and still felt a reverence for his gift, she found she no longer cared for Truman-the-Person. And for confusing one with the other she found herself ashamed. Perhaps because she had told him so much. About her marriage. About Gianni. About that wretched Churchill woman. About Mrs. John Fitzgerald Kennedy, about whom she still had suspicions. She had told Truman these tales, along with hundreds of others. She’d always shared with her Piccolo Vero her inner, innermost fears.
Marella paced the stateroom, recalling an occasion seven years before, which now felt chillingly similar. A reprise of an earlier chorus. A variation on a theme, played out time and again, with its operatic blend of farce and tragedy.
IT WAS AUGUST 1962, and Lee and Stas had taken a villa in Ravello.
Lee had gone to great pains—agonizing over every minute detail, she confessed to Marella—to host her sister Jackie, the latter desperate to escape the madness of Washington at the height of the Kennedy presidency. This was to be Mrs. Kennedy’s Italian adventure, beginning with Lee in Rome, moving on to the Amalfi Coast. It was a lively party, the Radziwills having asked mutual friends to join. Photographer Benno Graziani and his wife Nicole, and lawyer Sandro D’Urso and his stockbroker son Mario were included in the guest list, so how could the Agnellis refuse? They were at the end of an Amalfi cruise as it was. It was a natural choice to point the Agneta’s sepia masts toward the tiny fishing port.
It proved an enchanted setting. Even Gianni slowed long enough to observe the scent emanating from the lemon trees on the rocks and the verbena wafting on the breeze, commenting on the flora of the region—something Marella had scarcely heard him mention in all the years she’d known him. Each morning the little party began the descent—three hundred steps to be exact— to the beach across the bay, under the watchful eye of the Kennedy Secret Service detail. How awkward that poor young Agent Hill looked, a pistol tucked into his bathing trunks, stark white legs extending like toothpicks; limbs that had scarcely seen the light of day.
Marella couldn’t imagine how Jackie endured the burden of the entourage. She had admired her quiet grace when they’d met through the Roosevelts several years before, recognizing in the politician’s wife something of her own public persona. When the Kennedys had hosted a White House state dinner for the Agnellis and Radziwills the previous fall, Marella had been impressed by the First Lady’s attention to detail. Signora Agnelli had worn black and diamonds, though she barely noticed Jack Kennedy’s eyes fixating on her lengthy neck, her attention otherwise occupied with Gianni, the latter clearly mesmerized by Jackie.
Of course Marella had learned over the years to closely observe in such cases, but to keep her powder dry—for nothing was more abhorrent to Gianni than ‘a scene.’ He had been raised to keep emotion at bay. It was partly a matter of temperament, partly a self-imposed discipline, one she suspected he developed after losing both parents by the age of fourteen to accidents of speed—father flying his plane into a cliff, mother’s lovely neck snapped in an auto crash, racing along the winding roads above the Riviera. For Gianni, expression of feeling—worse still, lack of control—was not just a sign of weakness; it was the worst of all transgressions.
It was inelegant.
She was under no illusion that her husband was faithful, but she did consider him loyal. His quickly discarded tarts may have their brief moments spinning in the warmth of his gaze, but it was she to whom he was devoted.
She knew of his conquests long before she married him—had read the tabloids that chronicled his exploits. His sisters had warned her, when Marella was but a schoolgirl, long before the flirtation began. After she was introduced to L’Avvocato at a party in Rome, the sorelle Agnelli had demanded—
‘Did he pay you attention?’
‘Not much,’ she had conceded. ‘In fact, none at all.’
‘Run, then! Fast as you can! Veloce!’
Marella had smiled, eyes clouded with the dreamy infatuation of an eighteen-year-old girl. ‘But he’s magnificent, is he not?’
The sorelle laughed with affection and launched into a catalog of his conquests—‘Ascolta, Marella. You are not the first and you won’t be the last! Each town, each district, each country testifies to his affairs with women. In Italy, by the hundreds; in England, Spain and France—on the Riviera a thousand at least, we should think! In winter he likes fat ones, in summer thin ones. Tall or short. Young or old. It doesn’t matter if she’s rich or poor, ugly or beautiful; if she wears a skirt, you can guess what he does!’
They were exaggerating for effect… though not by much. And they would, when the time came, encourage Marella to marry their beloved fratello.
Marella had tried to heed their warning. She moved to Paris for a stint in art school, then to New
York, where she was scouted to model for Vogue, her lissome frame providing an ideal mannequin on which to drape the latest styles. It proved an endeavor that bored her above all others, until she was encouraged by the great Erwin Blumenfeld to step behind the camera.
He gave her a twin lens Rolleiflex and she submerged herself in surrealist imagery akin to his own. He trained his eager apprentice in techniques of double exposures; of combination printing and solarization. Dismantling beauty and putting it back together— one’s subject rendered all the more lovely in the end for having once been not so.
She scanned the papers for news of Gianni—most of it gossip. Of carousal at the playboy’s Villa Leopolda on the Côte d’Azur, with film stars and aristos and wild nocturnal romps. In her separate world, Marella was satisfied waiting in a darkroom for images to emerge in those pungent chemical baths.
It was only when the Agnelli clan summoned Marella to their Avvocato’s bedside that the romance finally flourished, his nearly amputated leg preventing his flight. Though she willed it to be otherwise, Marella was under few illusions when he asked for her hand. Gianni still had his ways. She had always secretly worried that he had loved the scheming Pam Churchill rather than her at the time of their union, and that she had only won the matrimonial prize because his sorelle had forced a proposal. Or perhaps because she was already carrying in her womb Gianni’s future heir.
The day of their nuptials was cursed with rain, which she refused to accept as an omen. She emerged from the chapel in Balenciaga lace, her arm threaded through Gianni’s. He was dapper in a slim-cut morning coat, fragrant gardenia in his lapel. Yet the photos—taken by Robert Doisneau, whom Vogue had commissioned to capture the occasion—could not conceal the awkward presence of not one but two walking canes, upon which the handsome groom leaned throughout the service. He had been determined to wean himself off the crutches he had been dependent upon since his accident, the one that had occurred while fleeing his lover Pam Churchill. The gold-tipped canes were at least a gesture of sartorial eccentricity, but Marella saw them as nothing more than grotesque appendages—reminders of Pam on what was supposed to be her special day. It was as if her rival was there, a specter haunting the proceedings.
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