Ariana

by Edward Stewart

  Boyd took her hand. “You don’t mean you actually want to buy that awful thing?”

  “Naturally. Hilde Ganz-Tucci was my teacher’s teacher.”

  “And if they recognize you and ask a fortune for it?”

  “Well, I’ll just have to sing another Norma.”

  Boyd glanced again over his shoulder. The man in the striped red shirt was still staring. He pulled Ariana along quickly to an arcade leading to St. Mark’s Square. A bandstand had been set up by the campanile and a crowd had gathered. A cloud of pigeons swooped overhead.

  “That must be the civic band.” Ariana listened a moment, and her nose wrinkled. “It sounds like Donizetti, but which one?”

  “Maria Stuarda. Come on, let’s get a table at Florian’s.”

  “But, Boyd, those awful trumpets.”

  “I’m thirsty. I’ll buy you an aperitif.”

  They threaded their way through tourists to Florian’s cafe. Ariana lifted her dark glasses just long enough for the waiter to recognize her and give them a table on the piazza.

  The man in the red shirt strolled past their table and glanced lingeringly at Boyd. Twirling his glass stem in embarrassment, Boyd looked at Ariana to see if she had noticed. She was sipping her vermouth, listening to brass-band Donizetti.

  “You know,” she said thoughtfully, “even in those awful oom-pah arrangements, that music holds up.”

  Across the square from Florian’s café, near the shadow of the campanile, stood a man who had never earned a cent from Donizetti and who detested every note of it.

  It was business that had brought Nikos Stratiotis to Venice. He had come the day before. The place had immediately disoriented him. The blindingly blue air overhead and the canals below made him feel he was hanging between two skies.

  His deal had fallen into place far more quickly than he’d planned, and now he had two empty days ahead of him. He was a man who lived life for its storms, and he didn’t know what to do between hurricanes. And so he had wandered into St. Mark’s Square.

  Tall and well-dressed, he made a handsome figure. His shoulders were sturdy and there was no thickening of the stomach. His hair was just beginning to show flecks of iron-gray. But there was restlessness in the way he shifted weight from foot to foot.

  He had not counted on the pigeons, or the crowds, or—worst of all—the municipal band, a hundred strong, thundering out operatic potpourris. He grew bored, wondered how people could crowd together and endure such stuff.

  And so he began to stroll aimlessly. He turned down an unmarked passageway. The oom-pahs of the municipal band vanished as abruptly as if a needle had been lifted from a phonograph record. The evening air was damp and still.

  For an instant he was alone and then in the deserted arcade ten feet ahead of him a dress flashed like blue fire. A head turned fleetingly in profile.

  Though he had not spoken to her in how long—seventeen, eighteen years?—he immediately recognized Ariana Kavalaris. How could he fail to? She’d been in headlines and magazines for almost two decades, and there were posters advertising her four appearances at La Fenice plastered all over the city.

  He deduced from the way they were talking, heads close with careless intimacy, that the man beside her must be her husband. Nikos Stratiotis believed in few things, but he did believe that destiny sent signs. At that instant his boredom lifted. He drew back into the shadow of the arcade.

  Kavalaris and her husband stopped at a window farther up the arcade. They discussed something with excited hand movements, and then they went into the shop.

  Nikos crossed the passageway with measured slowness. From the opposite arcade he saw Kavalaris standing in a small, dusty shop. She was holding a frame of elaborate gilt. Her husband hovered at her shoulder, nodding more like an echo than an independent opinion. Finally she came straight to the window and angled the frame to the light.

  Nikos stepped back quickly from her sightline. A moment later Kavalaris and her husband emerged from the shop, empty-handed.

  Nikos waited till they had turned the corner. Then he went in. The shop smelled of crumbling paper and old leather bindings.

  The salesman approached. “Signore desires?”

  “What was she looking at? The woman who just left?”

  An instant’s surprise flitted across the man’s face and then his features readjusted themselves into business. “A beautiful piece.”

  “May I see it?”

  The salesman hesitated, then produced the framed photograph from a drawer beneath the counter. He held it for Nikos to admire. “A signed photograph of Hilde Ganz-Tucci. Most unusual.”

  Nikos studied it. “How much are you asking?”

  The salesman shrugged apologetically. “The lady made a deposit.”

  “How much?”

  The salesman named a price. It fascinated Nikos that anyone could believe this faded photograph of a fat woman with its decidedly grotesque frame was worth the equivalent of $2,000.

  “Who is Hilde Ganz-Tucci?” he asked.

  There was a flicker of condescension before the salesman answered. “Ganz-Tucci was the greatest dramatic soprano of the post-World War era.

  Nikos found himself wondering: What does Ariana Kavalaris feel toward this photograph? Why does she want it so much? “I want to buy this,” he said.

  The salesman’s face tightened. “As I explained to signore, Madame Kavalaris and her husband made a small deposit—”

  Nikos handed back the photograph. “My name is Nikos Stratiotis. I’ll pay whatever you ask. I must have this photograph.”

  The salesman made a quick, respectful bow of the head. “If signore will wait, I shall speak with the owner.”

  Ariana and Boyd returned to the shop at noon the next day. The salesman greeted them as though they were old friends. He opened a drawer beneath the counter and searched a moment. He shook his head in perplexity. He called the owner. The owner consulted a ledger.

  “I am sorry.” The owner turned the ledger around to show Signore and Signora Kinsolving the entry. “Sold by mistake.”

  With sincerest apology, the owner returned the Kinsolvings’ deposit.

  As they walked back to the Hotel Danieli, Boyd realized he must steer his wife’s thoughts away from disappointment. He took her hand. “We could stop in the bar for a Bellini,” he suggested.

  “Panagia mou,” she murmured. “It’s an omen.”

  “Sweetums, it was only a photograph. It doesn’t mean anything.”

  “If it doesn’t mean anything, why did it disappear?”

  “Accidents happen.”

  “There are no such things as accidents. Aristotle says chance is simply a cause hidden from human understanding.”

  “Aristotle did not understand bel canto.” Boyd snapped his fingers. “Bartender. Two Bellinis, please.”

  They took a table on a terrace overlooking the Grand Canal. Ariana sipped at a bubble of peach crushed in champagne that had risen to the edge of her glass.

  “Tonight,” she said, “will be my worst Norma ever.”

  That evening Nikos Stratiotis paid a scalper for a stall seat to the Teatro La Fenice. He had seen opera before and it had always struck him as a stretching emptiness. Tonight, he began to fear, would be more of the same.

  He gathered from the program that the scene was ancient Gaul during the Roman occupation. In the sacred forest of the Druids, by the foot of the stone altar, Pollione—Roman proconsul—told his friend Flavio that he had betrayed Norma, the Druid high priestess, and loved Adalgisa, another priestess of the temple.

  Nikos covered a yawn as the Gauls trooped onstage to celebrate their sacred rite.

  And then he sat forward. For suddenly she was there: Ariana Kavalaris, wearing the slim white toga of a pagan priestess.

  The Gauls urged Norma, who alone could declare war, to give the signal to drive out the Romans. But she had secretly wed Pollione and, unwilling to endanger his life, she called upon the chaste goddess of th
e moon—“Casta Diva”—to bring peace.

  Kavalaris as Norma bewitched Nikos. Her voice moved through the orchestra and chorus like a spot of pure sunlight cutting through clouds. He watched her face in the small circle of light. Even after eighteen years, time seemed barely to have touched it. Of course that could have been due to makeup or distance or light or the very fact of the music itself playing upon the emotions.

  As she sang the long, arching melody of “Casta Diva,” the notes spun out of her, melting together like a cool flame. He sensed something almost religious in the quality of the audience’s attention. At the end of the aria, slowly lifting her arms, she sent a note through the theater that was wild and sweet at the same time.

  Slowly, the arms descended. For an instant the hush was deep and still and then the house screamed with bravas and applause.

  She bowed, and he suddenly saw her not as a woman but as an achievement. Finally there was silence and the stage cleared.

  Adalgisa and Pollione met in the deserted clearing. He begged her to run away with him. In the next scene Adalgisa confessed to Norma that she had broken her sacred vow of chastity. Norma was ready to forgive her until she learned the name of Adalgisa’s lover. In a furious torrent of melody she cursed both Adalgisa and the faithless Pollione.

  Kavalaris took six curtain calls.

  In the next act Norma resolved to kill her two baby sons by Pollione. But watching them in their sleep, she was unable to raise the knife. Adalgisa entered and, moved by Norma’s plight, offered to persuade Pollione to return to his wife. Norma entrusted the two infants to her.

  The scene shifted to the temple. As Adalgisa performed the sacred ceremony, Pollione tried to seize her. Norma entered and, outraged, struck the sacred shield to summon the Gauls. She declared that Irminsul, the Druid god, commanded war against the Romans.

  At that instant, as Kavalaris’s voice called down the powers of heaven, a shiver went through Nikos. He felt himself in the physical presence of a mystery. He saw that Kavalaris wielded power, perhaps the purest, the most naked form of all because it was not power commanded, like his, but power given.

  The woman fascinated him. Her hold on the audience fascinated him. He wondered if it was a gift, to be loved like that.

  The Gauls seized Pollione as a victim for the sacrifice, but Norma, ripping the sacred wreath from her brow, confessed her own guilt. The Druids prepared the sacrificial fire. Pollione, moved by Norma’s nobility, begged to die with her. Together, their throats pouring forth music, they ascended into the flames and perished.

  The curtain fell. Nikos did not wait in his seat to applaud. He bribed an usher to take him backstage.

  “Ariana Kavalaris?”

  She had given orders that visitors were not allowed, and as soon as she heard the voice she whirled around, ready to be furious.

  A man stood in the doorway. The steadiness of his gaze suggested that he owned the theater. His hair had begun to turn gray, but little else about him had changed.

  “Nikos,” she said, surprised at the genuine pleasure she felt.

  He gave a barely perceptible signal to the dresser, and the old woman gathered up an armload of linen and scurried from the room.

  Ariana saw that Nikos Stratiotis was used to being obeyed.

  He took her hand, bent over it, and brought it to his lips. The movement might have been a bit of stage business from an opera, but their eyes met and lingered just a second longer than would have happened in any performance. His were luminous under thick dark brows.

  “So,” he said. “You’ve kept up with your singing.”

  “Some people are kind enough to say so. And I hear you’re very busy making fortunes.”

  “And losing them. But it averages out.”

  “You look as though you’re doing far better than averaging out.”

  “So do you.”

  “I read somewhere that you’re married?” she said.

  “Separated. And you’re still happily married to your conductor?”

  She smiled, aware of the irony of the remark and flattered that he should want to goad her. “Very happily. Boyd conducts all my performances. You heard him tonight.”

  “A talented man.”

  A slender man in evening clothes rapped on the door and Ariana turned.

  “Boyd darling, we were just saying wonderful things about you. This is Nikos Stratiotis—an old friend from—why should I lie?—from my days at the lunch counter. And my first sponsor. And an opera lover.”

  Nikos took Boyd’s hand. “Your wife pays me a compliment I don’t deserve. It’s not opera I love. Only aspects of the art.”

  “Ah well,” Boyd said, “taste takes time to acquire.”

  Nikos glanced toward Ariana. “Anything worthwhile takes time to acquire.”

  Nikos and the bearded informant were alone in the conference room of the Venice office of Minerva Società Anonima, a wholly-owned Stratiotis subsidiary. Nikos got straight to the point. “What does this famous couple do when they’re not performing?”

  Embarrassment rose from the informant like the unclean mist from one of the city’s canals. “Parties. Ceremonies.”

  “That much I know from the newspapers.”

  The informant consulted a small notepad. “Yesterday Kavalaris stayed most of the day in her hotel room.”

  Nikos’s fingertips drummed on the desk blotter. “And Kinsolving?”

  “He spent most of the day…strolling.”

  The information did not fit. Nikos Stratiotis distinguished only two kinds of people: those who possessed power and those who did not. Ariana Kavalaris belonged to the first group because she had fame. Her husband belonged to the second because he possessed only his wife. And yet it was the husband who strode through Venice like a conqueror and the wife who sat in a dark hotel room like a captive. “Where did Kinsolving stroll?”

  “Along the Rialto. By the bridges near the Fondamente Nuove.”

  “Was he alone?”

  “He arrived alone, but he met someone…”

  Nikos leaned forward. “He went to the Rialto for sex?”

  The informant nodded.

  “Who was the woman?”

  The informant’s silence trailed clouds of implication.

  Nikos rose from the desk. “He met a man?”

  The informant nodded again.

  And at that moment Nikos Stratiotis understood the wife, the husband, the marriage, the existence. He understood that Ariana Kavalaris lived in the dark. And that he, Nikos Stratiotis, had the power to turn life on for her like a motion picture film and project it onto the largest, most silver screen in the world.

  He smiled and handed his informant the 500,000 lire that they had agreed upon. He added another 500,000 as a tip. “I’ll be requiring another service of you.”

  Boyd was irritated with the heat and the shops and the crowds on Fondamente Nuove. He turned left into a street whose name seemed to translate as Passage of the Dwarf.

  He stopped at a stand and bought a bottle of pear juice from an old woman. It was a small bottle and he emptied it in two parched swallows. As he handed it back he was aware for the first time of a shadow sliding like smoke behind him. It occurred to him that he was being followed.

  He wanted to look back. Instinct told him not to. He paid the woman, smiled, kept walking. As he approached a dark passageway steps echoed against his own. And then there was dead silence and a man stood beside him.

  “Scusi, signore.”

  Boyd looked at the man. He was broad-faced, tanned, with a mustache that seemed to smile. There was an odd stab in Boyd’s heart and an absurd thought crossed his mind.

  I’ve seen this man before. He’s been following me. He was wearing a red striped shirt and dark trousers. But today he’s wearing a business suit.

  The man spoke again. “Lei parla inglese?”

  “Of course,” Boyd said.

  “Have you light?”

  A hundred indecisions pre
yed on Boyd’s mind, but his body did not hesitate. He reached into his pocket for the gold Van Cleef and Arpels lighter Ariana had given him for their second anniversary. He flicked flame from it.

  The man was standing beside him, too close, in the way Latins have. But instead of bending to accept the light, the stranger pushed his hand very firmly against Boyd’s groin.

  He had a rough, friendly voice. “My name is Egidio.”

  When Boyd came into the room she was lying on the bed, one hand clasped over her eyes.

  “Ariana, sweetums?”

  She did not move.

  He tiptoed to the bar. He poured himself a generous double Chivas, opened the ice bucket and tonged three cubes into it.

  The space where Ariana lay sleeping seemed sad to him. He bent down to kiss her. Her eyes opened and she looked at him.

  “I love you,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve ever loved another human being so much.”

  She stared at him with groggy wondering. “Your cheeks are so red. Have you been in the sun?”

  The glass with the Danieli decal slipped slowly from his hand and tapped down onto the table. He lit a cigarette. “I have to go out tonight. I’m sorry. It will only be for a while.”

  She raised herself to a sitting position. “But we were going to have dinner at…”

  He sighed. “Yes, but you’re tired.” He was careful not to exhale cigarette smoke in her direction. “And the orchestra has called another rehearsal.”

  “Another?”

  He nodded, eyes not quite meeting hers. “Will you be lonely?”

  “Of course not. I love Italian television. They have the strangest game shows. And besides I could use the rest. The dampness in this city tires me.”

  They were silent.

  “We should never have agreed to four Normas,” he said.

  “You’re right,” she said. “You’re always right, my darling.”

  He bent over her and gazed at her silently. They kissed and said goodbye and a moment later a door closed.

  As she sat up she caught sight of herself in the armoire mirror. She stared curiously at the woman in the glass, the woman they said was the greatest soprano in the world, this woman abandoned for the night like a lonely child.