Ariana

by Edward Stewart

  For a month Mark had kept his evenings free on the off chance that Ariana would be free. It didn’t happen very often. Usually she called at the last moment, breathlessly apologizing that a waitress hadn’t showed or a soprano had strep, and would he forgive her if …

  He always forgave her.

  But two days after Nita’s call he was able to nail Ariana down to dinner.

  “Nothing fancy,” she said, and they went to a Chinese restaurant. They sat on a glassed-in terrace on Bleecker Street and stared at each other in silence.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I haven’t spoken much.”

  He smiled to show it was all right, and the smile was a complete lie. It wasn’t all right at all.

  Dessert came and they showed one another the messages in their fortune cookies. His said Now is the time to work and hers said You would be wise not to overextend your commitments.

  Afterward they strolled along MacDougal Street.

  “Would you mind awfully, Mark,” she said, “if we cut it short?”

  Dear sweet Jesus, he thought, cut what short? Here it comes, she’s met a tenor.

  “Ricarda DiScelta has taken me as a pupil. She’s hearing my ‘Una voce poco fa’ tomorrow.” Excitement was radiating from her. She said it was the first time that the music world had given her a clear and unambiguous sign that she was part of it. “I want to be my best.”

  “What’s ‘Una voce poco fa?’” he asked.

  “Rosina’s aria from Barber.” She saw his blank look. “Of Seville.”

  “Oh.”

  “You don’t mind, Mark, do you?”

  “I mind like hell but I hope you have a great lesson.”

  “Will you help me celebrate—afterward?”

  “You’d better believe it.”

  Ariana sang “Una voce poco fa.”

  DiScelta listened. After an endless silence she folded her hands in her lap.

  “With Rossini, Bellini, and Donizetti,” she said patiently, “we come to the flowering of melody. What is artificial in these works is what is artificial in song itself. No one makes love or commits suicide in verse, refrain. Except in this school of opera. But it doesn’t matter. These melodies touch the heart. Or, rather, they must touch the heart if anything is to be believable. Harmonically and orchestrally they are laughable—Wagner called them guitar music—but, properly sung, their emotional pull endures.”

  She had moderately kind words for Ariana’s performance. “But you must let more spirit and wit shine through. The aria is rhythmically alive and melodically inventive and the cabaletta never fails to delight. And there are even dramatic orchestral touches.”

  She pointed out the famous “Rossini crescendo” that occurred throughout the score—the orchestral phrase that appeared unobtrusively in the strings, then throughout the orchestra, moving upward in register, gaining in volume and power, till the voices joined in and all musical hell broke loose.

  “Say what you like, naïve it may be, obvious it may be, but it is a device that always works in the theater. Rossini knew how to get applause. And therefore he is every singer’s friend.”

  Moving on to Bellini, DiScelta became less enthusiastic. “A throwback, but he wrote extremely long melodic lines such as no one else before him or since.” That the melodies were all cut to the same pattern of two-bar units, that his rhythms rarely varied, that he dwelt endlessly on the third degree of the scale—none of this mattered.

  “His melody has power. It seems simple, but it is not. Enormous breath control and mental control are required. The phrase must never be broken. Even when you are silent in this music, you must be singing. The silences are part of the melody.”

  DiScelta pointed out that later composers had made Bellini’s handling of emotions seem pallid. “But his emotions are never pallid in their own context. Look at the aria ‘Casta Diva’ from Norma. The climax—very unusual for this period—is postponed till the end of the aria, and when it finally arrives it is pure ecstasy. Chopin based his piano writing on this climax. It is anything but pallid. But because the melody is exposed, because there are no harmonic or orchestral supports, the delivery must be perfect. Straightforward music is always more treacherous than complex music. The voice has nowhere to hide.”

  Which led to three hours of drilling in staccato runs, roulades, and trills. Which led to Donizetti.

  “Again,” DiScelta said, “melody is all. Donizetti is nothing in the way of harmony or orchestra. He uses the same devices over and over, and no other composer dared to wring so much sadness from plain major chords.”

  She pointed out other deficiencies: arias that climaxed too early, overuse of repetition, expanded cadential formulas that invariably ended in the major. “But he is brilliant, he is expressive, he achieves drama by shaping the vocal line—and he always lets the audience know exactly when to applaud. In opera this matters. Donizetti can still build careers.”

  As Ariana rode down in the elevator her thoughts were spinning. She had prepared one tiny aria and her teacher had rewarded her with a three-hour seminar of which she could remember not one word.

  Am I studying with a madwoman? she wondered. Or am I a simpleton?

  And yet that night, in her dream, she heard a voice singing “Una voce poco fa”—singing it with wit and spirit and proper style.

  When she awoke, she recognized the voice.

  Her own.

  5

  FOR THE CELEBRATION DATE Mark took her to La Jacquerie, a “neighborhood” restaurant of the sort that only a neighborhood like Fifth Avenue and East Ninth Street could afford. Ariana’s fingers touched Mark’s arm as they entered the restaurant. He felt her hesitate at the sight of the softly glowing place settings and the well-dressed men and women quietly conversing in three different languages.

  “Panagia mou,” she murmured, “ti kano edho?”

  “How’s that again?”

  She smiled. “Just a Greek way of saying ‘Wow!’ Literally it means ‘Virgin Mary, what am I doing here?’”

  She glanced at herself in the mirrored wall. With a barely detectable movement she brushed her hair forward to cover her earringless ears. Jacques, the owner, welcomed them personally. He bowed to Ariana, called her “Mademoiselle,” and then, joking with Mark, led them to a pleasant table in the corner.

  Ariana asked Mark to order for both of them, and he ordered champignons á la grecque followed by a blanquette de veau á l’ancienne. Jacques solemnly advised a bottle of Pouilly Fuissé, and when that was gone he gave them a second, courtesy of the house.

  Ariana spoke of her plans, her hopes, her disbelief that out of hundreds of students, Ricarda DiScelta had chosen her.

  Mark listened and smiled and thought how beautiful her eyes were.

  With their dessert soufflés he ordered champagne.

  She lifted the glass and stared at the bubbles rising from the long stem. “I’ve never had champagne before. A little vin mousseux in Toulouse, but never real champagne. And this is my first real restaurant. Last November was my first orchestra seat at the Met. I’m doing a lot of firsts with you, Mark. It probably shows. Do I embarrass you?”

  The question amazed him. “How in the world do you think you could possibly embarrass me?”

  “We come from very different backgrounds. It must be pretty obvious by now if it wasn’t before.”

  “What difference does that make?”

  “Maybe a big difference, maybe just a lot of little differences. But still a difference. Maybe I’m using the wrong fork. Wearing the wrong dress. Talking with the wrong accent. Maybe I’m asking the wrong questions, like whether or not I embarrass you.”

  “You could never embarrass anyone. You’re one of the most tactful, sensitive people I’ve ever met.”

  She looked at him, her eyes moving carefully across his face, and then her gaze turned to the glass and with absolute dignity she lifted it to her lips and took a tiny swallow. It struck him at that instant that she was not Ar
iana Kavalaris from East 103rd Street, but Verdi’s Traviata or Puccini’s Manon, and that this was a moment not from life, but from opera.

  “All my life I’ll remember this evening,” she said with a seriousness that surprised him. “Nothing will ever change it.”

  A little ache went out from him toward her. Their glasses touched.

  “I’ll remember this evening too,” he said. “All my life.”

  And he did.

  Afterward they strolled down Fifth Avenue and through the soft evening. They stopped at a sidewalk cafe on Bleecker and had cappuccinos.

  She gazed up at the glowing night sky. “In almost three years it will be 1950—the second half of the twentieth century. Do you realize the fifties will be our decade, Mark? I’m going to be somebody, and you’re going to be somebody.”

  They toasted one another in cappuccino.

  “To us,” he said. “To the somebodies we’re going to be.”

  He walked her back to her room on Sullivan Street. They held hands crossing Houston, and at the door of 107 she handed him the key.

  He followed her into the narrow front hall. There was a smell of sandalwood and old books.

  “Three flights up,” she said. “Sorry about that. My landlady’s a light sleeper, so tiptoe.”

  He went up behind her. She opened a door on the fourth floor.

  “The bulb’s out. Do you mind candles?”

  She vanished. By the streetlight from the window he could make out a decoupage screen of opera singers, opera programs, jackets of opera albums. A cabinet squeaked open and shut, and then she reappeared holding what looked like two votive candles. She placed them on the wicker table.

  “Make yourself at home.”

  In the dimness of the room he could make out a daybed with a flowered print spread, a bentwood rocker, a spinet piano, bookcases overflowing with vocal scores. He opted for the rocker.

  She reappeared holding a small cylindrical brass pot with a long handle.

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  “A briki—it’s for making Greek coffee.” She lit a can of Sterno, held the briki over the flame till the water came to a boil, then poured in some rich-smelling ground coffee and sugar. In a moment the mixture foamed up. She blew out the Sterno and tipped the coffee into two Venetian-blue cups. “Specialty of the house.”

  As he took a cup their hands touched. A gentle explosion went off inside him.

  She sat on the bed.

  He sipped the incredibly thick coffee and heard her talking about the freak high F above the staff in Lakmé and the freak G-flat below the staff in Salomé, and what did he think of Wagner sung in English?

  Something came out of him that must have sounded like an answer, but all he could think was: I love you. I want you.

  And on a deeper, more disturbing level, he was thinking of the promise he had made when he entered seminary—not to marry till after ordination.

  “When you’ve finished,” she said, “you put your saucer over the cup, like so—and turn it upside down. And then you can tell your future.” She lifted the inverted cup and stared at the pattern of coffee sediment in her saucer.

  “What do you see?”

  “Success. Good luck. Let’s see yours.”

  He inverted his cup and saucer and lifted the cup.

  As she bent to read his fortune the candle flame drew her face out of the shadows. “Success for you too.”

  She was leaning close to him now. With the movement of hand he could have brought their mouths together.

  “I’d better go,” he said suddenly.

  She seemed surprised.

  “Heavy day tomorrow,” he said.

  She saw him down the stairs. At the door she offered her cheek and he kissed her quickly, lightly. Her hand clung to his a tiny extra moment and then she stepped back and closed the door.

  He crossed the street. When the faint glow in her window finally winked out, he turned away.

  After three steps his fingers felt something in his pocket. He pulled it out and stood staring at a hard little point of light burning in the palm of his hand.

  The key to her front door.

  He hesitated only an instant, then crossed the deserted street and pushed the buzzer. One endless moment leaked into another.

  The door opened. The moonlight fell on her face like a glow on a pale flower.

  “Your key,” he said.

  Their hands touched. The key fell to the pavement with the ringing sound of a coin.

  He put his arms around her and drew her toward him. They kissed. How long they stood pressed against the wall of the narrow hallway he had no idea. It could have been minutes. Years.

  “The key,” she whispered.

  He knelt and picked up the key from the sidewalk.

  This time one of the steps on the second flight squeaked. He half expected the landlady to come flying out of her room on a broomstick. But silence closed in, sealing off the moment.

  Ariana shut the door of her room behind them, closing them into a space separate from the world.

  She brought a candle to the bed and as she set it on the table a little circle of light slid down her face. They sat there gazing into each other’s eyes, smiling. He drew her toward him.

  It began awkwardly, tenderly.

  At first he was satisfied to touch her breasts through her clothing, but then she took off her blouse and skirt and unhooked her bra. Following her lead, he undressed too. His eyes never left her and he almost tripped over his trouser leg.

  His hand returned to her breasts. They were small and firm. The brown nipples seemed to become larger when he began stroking them again.

  His eyes dropped to her flat stomach, her full thighs. He kissed her on the mouth.

  Gently, instinctively, she pressed his head down. His lips touched her nipple. She had never felt the sensation before. The idea came to her, I’ll never in my life need more happiness than this. She wished time would stop them, that this instant could become their eternity.

  And something changed.

  She wasn’t instructing him any longer. His hands caressed her everywhere and his mouth was everywhere at once. He bent her backward onto the bed and positioned himself above her and she could see his eyes gazing down into hers in the candlelight.

  And then he hesitated. “Am I going to hurt you?”

  “No,” she whispered, “you won’t hurt me.”

  “But what if I get you pregnant? You’d better just take me in your hand.”

  Without thinking, letting her instinct rule her hand, she guided him into her body. Pain came in a rush. She held to him and it passed, leaving only an unfamiliar warmth.

  Then he was whispering, “Ariana, oh, Ariana,” and she felt him slide into her, strong and thick. He began moving easily and she arched in answer and her eyes shut.

  “You’re in my body—in my body,” she murmured.

  He held back, not wanting to rush the moment, and then she was begging him and the moment was there.

  “Mark,” she cried, “oh, yes, oh, Mark!”

  There were tears on her closed eyelids, glistening in the candlelight. He kissed them away.

  “Oh, Mark,” she sighed, “that was beautiful.”

  “It was for me too.”

  She pressed meltingly against him. Later they made love again: tender and solemn and gentle and over and over.

  In the morning daylight streamed through the dormer window. An alarm clock went off and she swatted a hand out and silenced it.

  “You make the coffee,” she said, “I’ll run the bath.”

  They bathed together, like children. She soaped him and squeezed the sponge over him and warm water rained down on him.

  He said quietly, “I didn’t tell you everything. There’s something you have to know about me.”

  She looked at him curiously and stepped out of the tub. “You’re married,” she said.

  He smiled. “No. I’m going to be an Episcopal minis
ter.”

  Her gaze fell on him strangely and there was an instant’s silence and then she broke into laughter. “My dear beautiful Mark.”

  “It doesn’t bother you that I—believe in God? That I want a church and a parish and I want to spend my life—serving Him?”

  “But don’t you see—I believe in the same thing, only I call it music?”

  He looked at her and suddenly it was all possible: his dreams, her dreams, the world. He crossed the room and hugged her. “I’m going to hold you in my arms every night and keep you safe all your life.”

  “It’s funny, but I have the feeling I’m the one who’s going to have to keep you safe.”

  It was close to midnight, and a young flashily dressed man of twenty-five or so was leaning idly against a car parked outside the luncheonette. Ariana knew it wasn’t his car. How she knew she couldn’t have said, but she knew. He was wearing a stiff-brimmed fedora cocked at a theatrical angle. It left his face half in shadow, but she sensed even without seeing his eyes that he was watching her.

  He waited till the shop was empty and then he pushed open the door and came in. Ariana began memorizing, deciding how she was going to describe him to the police after the holdup. He had deep brown eyes and curly hair and a broad, olive-dark handsome face. No scars.

  He slid one haunch onto a stool and settled down at the counter. “I’ll have a cup of coffee—hot, regular, and made this week.”

  “You’re going to hate ours.” She poured a cup and slid it across the counter to him.

  He seemed to chew the coffee. “What else you got?”

  “What do you like?”

  His tongue flicked over his lips. “Anything you like, baby.”

  She couldn’t tell. Maybe it wasn’t a stickup. “I like opera.”

  “Funny thing. All my life I’ve wanted to go to the opera.” His hands went up to fool with the knot of his cream-and-tan striped tie. He smiled. “Just to see what it’s like. You sing in the opera?”

  “I sing in an opera. It’s not the same as singing in the opera.”