Ariana

by Edward Stewart

  She tried to understand the face that stared back at her, and the soft creases in her skin deepened.

  Aside from touching up an infrequent gray hair, she’d never tried to make a secret of her age. Yet there was something young in her movements, in the transparent play of emotion on her features. Like a little girl. As though something in her had stopped growing eighteen years ago.

  What makes me think of eighteen years? Seeing Nikos the other night?

  She approached the glass. The closer she got the less familiar the reflection seemed to her.

  I don’t know myself, she thought. I haven’t known myself for eighteen years.

  She reached out a finger and traced the shape mirrored in the cold glass.

  Who are you? Are you alive? Are you happy? Angry? Lonely? Are you a voice? Are you a career? Are you a woman? Do you wish you’d had a real husband? Do you wish you’d had children?

  There were no answers in her. Only questions.

  And hunger.

  At least she knew how to deal with the hunger. Prosciutto, she thought. I’ll have prosciutto.

  15

  ARIANA FINISHED HER PROSCIUTTO sandwich. She gazed from the balcony out at the city. Slender church spires flecked the starry sky. The bedroom seemed immensely empty, immensely quiet. The hands of the grandfather clock by the marble fireplace pointed to five after nine.

  A sigh came out of her. Only five after nine, she thought.

  She heard the ringing of a bell. She hurried to the door.

  The same bellboy who had brought her dinner was holding out a huge basket of flowers. Carnations, roses, lilies, gladioli. How sweet of Boyd, she thought. The bellboy set the flowers on the table. She tipped him 10,000 lire.

  She searched through the stems and found a heavy cream envelope. The handwriting of the note was large and bold.

  I am downstairs in the bar. Will you do me the honor of meeting me for a drink?

  It was signed Nikos S.

  For a moment she was amazed. And then she knew exactly what to do: pick up the phone and tell the switchboard that Madame Kavalaris sent her regrets.

  But instead she went to the armoire mirror and undid the sash of her bathrobe. Her eyes played over her bare midriff. There was no slack. Not bad for an opera singer, she thought. She opened the armoire and from her thirty-six dresses chose a blue silk cocktail gown.

  Ariana glanced about the lobby and saw a scattering of Japanese tourists. Her eyes scanned the bar. Nikos Stratiotis was not there.

  A hand suddenly waved from the terrace. Nikos was sitting at a corner table beneath a striped umbrella. His smile glowed against his tanned face. He rose and came striding toward her. She wasn’t aware of moving toward him, but they met on the threshold.

  His lips touched her fingers. “Thank you for joining me.”

  “Thank you for the flowers.”

  “I didn’t know what you liked, so I told them to send a little of everything.”

  She laughed. “They sent a great deal of everything.”

  He motioned toward the table with the umbrella. “Shall we?”

  They sat facing each other across the table. He ordered drinks.

  He kept looking at her. “You’re not at all what I’d imagined you’d be.”

  “I’m flattered you’ve found time to imagine things about me.”

  “I’d heard you were high-strung, short-tempered, utterly ruthless and completely unpredictable.”

  Her thoughts went back two decades to that eager, hardworking girl in the Broadway luncheonette whose idea of happiness had been a fifty-cent tip and a standing room ticket to the opera.

  “Are any of those things true?” he said.

  How does he see me now, she wondered, as the little waitress or the world-famous diva?

  “Everyone says the same things about anyone who’s famous,” she said. “To tell the truth, I’ve heard rumors about you. You drive yourself and everyone around you, you’re utterly ruthless, and you’re the despair of women and accountants.”

  He was watching her, half smiling, half challenging.

  I must look older, she thought ruefully, and then it occurred to her, maybe not so much older. Maybe I haven’t aged any more than he has. He still has the same eyes, the same smile. The accent was different from that first night, but the music of his voice—its suggestion of confidence and irony and intelligence—was the same as it had been twenty years ago. The only real change was his clothes: gone were the padded shoulders and rakishly tilted fedora. Instead there was a carefully understated opulence to his tailoring. But he still dresses as though he were onstage, she thought.

  “Tell me,” she said. “Are any of the rumors about you true?”

  “The rumors about the accountants are true.”

  I haven’t changed, she thought with sudden happiness. He’s staring at me the way he did then.

  Drinks came. The glasses were tall and frosted.

  “Then we’re the same,” she said. “The only difference is that I sing and you make money.”

  “Or more accurately, you make your money by opening your mouth and I make mine by keeping mine shut.”

  She raised her glass to her lips and a pleasantly sweet liquid passed coolly down her throat. Suddenly there was singing and laughter and the splashing of oars, and a party with lanterns glided past on the canal.

  “I love Venice,” she said. “I always have.”

  He raised his eyebrows. Two dark eyes flashed. “Why?”

  “It calms me to think that beautiful things can last.”

  “Would you like to live here?”

  “No. It makes me too sad to know that Venice will last and I won’t.”

  “Then where do you live?”

  “Mostly New York. Boyd has a contract with the Metropolitan, and with the Philharmonic, and it’s…easier for us there. And where do you live?”

  “Everywhere. But I think of Paris as my home. Have you dined?”

  It occurred to her to lie. But he had known her hotel room number; he had known she was alone that evening; and it was a good guess he knew precisely what had been on the dinner trolley that room service had rolled into her suite.

  “Thank you, but I had a small snack.”

  “So did I. Well then, would you care to see a little of the city you love so much?” He angled a nod toward a gleaming motorboat with mahogany coaming moored in the canal. “My driver’s waiting.”

  She hesitated. “But my husband…”

  “Has a rehearsal. I’ll have you back in plenty of time.”

  “You’ve been spying on me.”

  “Naturally.”

  She looked at him, wanting to be outraged, and all that she could muster was laughter. They got into his boat.

  He gave orders in Greek, and the driver took them gliding past the ancient stones and leaded casements of the sinking palazzi.

  “There’s a place I want to show you,” Nikos said.

  A bend in the canal carried them into the bay. A wind was creeping up. The waves leaped and the night warmth was suddenly shot through with ripples of coolness. She felt Nikos place a shawl over her shoulders. His touch made her uncertain who she was.

  The driver cut the motor and made the boat fast to a jetty. Something like thunder rumbled overhead and she realized they were shooting off fireworks on the Lido. Nikos helped her onto the pier.

  A cloud passed, and iron bars and carved stones were suddenly patterned and silvery with the light of the full moon. She saw he had brought her to a graveyard.

  “All the best people are here,” he said. “Come on.”

  He guided her along deserted paths. They stood at a grave and he lit a cigarette lighter for her to read the inscription.

  “Alberta Gesualda.” Gesualda’s portrait at my throat, she thought, and her body at my feet. “Why did you bring me here?”

  “In a way, she’s your ancestor—the first woman to have the Pope’s permission to sing on the Italian stage.”r />
  She looked at him sharply. “How did you know that?”

  “Your Norma inspired me. I did some research this morning. Gesualda loved opera and she loved Venice. She was like you.”

  “No. She wasn’t like me. Gesualda has lasted.”

  “I’d say on the contrary she’s been forgotten.”

  “There are those…who remember.”

  “Only a few books in the library remember. For Alberta Gesualda it’s all over. Just as one day it will all be over for you and me: happiness, misery, Swiss banks, flowers, love, lawsuits, wine.”

  She could not move her eyes from his face. “You’re a cynic.”

  “And you’re not?”

  “I’m a realist. And as a realist I have faith.”

  He smiled as though she were a child. “In what? God?”

  “In music. But it’s the same thing.”

  “I was educated by nuns, and they never taught me that.”

  “Certain things can’t be taught. They’re given.”

  She had a sense he was going to take her hand and it surprised her when he didn’t.

  “We’d better go,” he said. “Mr. Kinsolving’s rehearsal must be just about over.”

  At the hotel pier he bent to kiss her on the cheek. “I’m glad we’re friends,” he said.

  “Thank you, Nikos. I’m glad too.”

  When she let herself into the suite, Boyd had not yet returned.

  At ten o’clock the next morning a bellboy came to Ariana’s door with a small, flat package. With the point of the pencil she used for marking scores she tore the envelope open. The note bore the crest of the Bauer Grünwald hotel. This time it was written in Greek.

  Efcharisto—Nikos. A thank-you from Nikos. She couldn’t help smiling at the thought of Nikos Stratiotis, his gifts, his millions, his pirate’s mustache, his life like the blurb on a paperback novel.

  She neatly began to tear an opening in the wrapping. Understanding came in pieces. At first she realized only that she was holding a carved wood frame. In the frame was a photograph of an overweight woman in a flowered dress with a feathered hat.

  The woman’s eyes held hers. There was a gentleness in them stronger than any force in the world. A dream rippled out from those eyes like light.

  As Ariana stared at the photograph a serenity seemed to cloak her. She became aware of something unvarying, something permanent in the flow of things, like a rock submerged in a turbulent stream.

  Hilde Ganz-Tucci is dead now: she is history. Her voice is silent. But she was alive, and my teacher was alive with her, and she lives in my teacher, and through my teacher she lives in me.

  “Whatcha got there?” Boyd stood in the doorway rubbing his eyes. He saw the picture. “Well—so the old dame turned up after all. Where’d you find her?”

  She had never lied to her husband before. “The shop made a mistake,” she said, “that’s all.”

  He squinted. “What a terrible frame. I know two fellows in Greenwich Village who can change it.”

  “I’m not changing the frame. I want it exactly the way it is.”

  “And what in God’s name do you intend to do with it?”

  “I’ll hang it, of course.”

  “Not in our living room, sweetums, or I’m going to move out.” He kissed her quickly. “Only joking.”

  She took the picture from him, protecting it. “Boyd, I don’t know what you were drinking after your rehearsal, but it’s foul. Go brush your teeth.”

  In a moment water was running in the bathroom pipes. She moved instantly to the phone and asked to be connected to the Bauer Grünwald. “Nikos Stratiotis, please…Ariana Kavalaris calling.”

  “I’m sorry, signora, he checked out this morning.”

  Ariana and Boyd left Venice the next day, after the last Norma. They plunged into a long winter of touring: Otello in Stockholm, Ariadne auf Naxos in Hamburg, Medea in Genoa, Tosca in Prague, three Aïdas at the New York Met.

  The critics praised them, as always; society lionized them, as always; but Ariana was beginning to feel like a migrating bird. In odd little ways her life seemed lonelier than ever before—three embassy receptions, thirty indifferent meals in a dozen first-class hotels, a hundred meaningless conversations with strangers, and at the end of every long day a goodnight kiss exchanged with Boyd.

  The thought kept coming to her, It’s not enough.

  More and more often she found herself gazing out windows and envying the clouds.

  Five miles above Lyons, on Air France Flight 607, Boyd folded his London Times shut. It was all too depressing: demonstrations around the world against U.S. involvement in Vietnam; students in Madrid battling Franco’s police; Red Guards in China protesting God only knew what. Israel and Jordan at it again. Pope Paul VI planning to meet with the Soviet foreign minister…talk about mad tea parties…No wonder people needed opera.

  Boyd glanced up and noticed that Ariana had spent the last half-hour staring out at the evening sky. “Sweetums, what in the world is so interesting out there?”

  “The sunset.”

  She’d seemed preoccupied lately, and he was beginning to worry. She had a lot of high C’s still to get through. And it was her top and not his conducting that brought in the $50,000 fees.

  “You’re looking at that sunset as though you’re memorizing it.”

  “I am. That’s the last color we’ll see for a week. It will be raining in Brussels.”

  She was right: it was pouring in Brussels. They had to run to their limousine under a porter’s umbrella.

  “Three Dinorahs,” Ariana sighed. “In this place.”

  “This place,” Boyd said, “happens to love you.” He put his hands on the sides of her neck and massaged her shoulder blades. He could feel the tension in her like piano wires. “And so do I.”

  She reached up and held tight to his hand. “Thank you, darling. Please never stop.”

  A rough wind was bending the almost leafless trees in Place de la République when they arrived at their hotel.

  Georges Guiraud, their Belgian agent, was waiting for them in their suite. He looked sad. He kissed them both. “You didn’t get my cable in Hamburg? The Dinorahs have been canceled.”

  Boyd’s eyes heaped disbelief upon the dark-mustached little agent. “Canceled?”

  “Decision of the Ministry of Culture. La Fanfarade has…preempted.”

  “And what the hell is La Fanfarade?”

  “It’s an opera by a young Belgian composer.”

  “And what do you suggest we do for one week in this town? Go to the goddamned zoo?”

  “You are at liberty. Your fees have been paid to your Swiss corporation.”

  “You could at least have tried to let us know a little earlier than Hamburg.”

  “It was all…very fast.”

  “I don’t believe you, Georgie. Nothing in opera is fast. Least of all you.”

  Ariana was only half listening. She’d finished glancing through the mail that the hotel had stacked on the writing desk. “Boyd, we have a cable. Nikos Stratiotis would like us to join him in Nice.”

  “Perfect!” the agent cried.

  It struck Boyd that it was all a little too perfect: the cancellation, the cable, Georges’s cri de joie. He stared at the cable Ariana had handed him. “What the hell language is this?”

  “Greek. He’ll keep a plane waiting for us at the airport.”

  “He can keep his damned plane waiting a month for all I care.”

  A flush of defiance was beating at the base of Ariana’s throat. “I’m not going to spend a week in this rain while you hire lawyers to battle the Ministry of Culture. I want rest, I want sun, and frankly I think $150,000 for not singing three Dinorahs is pretty generous pay. I’m going to sleep now and tomorrow I’m going to Nice.”

  She crossed the room and kissed Georges’s bald pate. “Goodnight, Georges, and do thank the ministry for me.”

  It was not the ministry that Georges Guiraud than
ked the next day but Nikos Stratiotis, by collect phone call from the Brussels airport. “It took all my persuading, but they’ll be arriving in two hours.”

  Stratiotis’s voice was cool. Either he had no conception what, besides money, was involved in rescheduling a week at the state opera or he was used to buying miracles. “Your Liechtenstein account will be credited with the sum we agreed on.”

  “It was my pleasure, Mr. Stratiotis.”

  Nikos met them at the airport. He was bare-chested and very muscular and tanned. He flung one arm around Ariana and the other around Boyd and then he gave Ariana a flickering glance.

  “I’m delighted you could make it. Good flight?”

  “Mercifully short,” Boyd said. “The champagne was excellent.”

  Nikos smiled and Ariana couldn’t help smiling back.

  “Where are your baggage stubs?” he asked.

  Boyd found the stubs and Nikos handed them to a servant.

  “If we hurry,” Nikos said, “we can catch the sunset.”

  Nikos drove them in a Karmann Ghia convertible with the top down. The Mediterranean blurred by in a glow of swimming-pool blue. The highway was only two-lane, and he passed trucks on blind curves.

  “I invited a few friends,” he shouted. “I hope you don’t mind.”

  His yacht was moored in Nice harbor. It was the size of a small ocean liner. They had to take a speedboat to get to it. A steward helped them on board. Several guests were clustered around the swimming pool and Nikos made introductions.

  “Why don’t we make this easy,” he said. His hand was lightly touching the hollow between Ariana’s shoulder blades, lightly staying there. “This charming couple is Ariana and Boyd, and these charming people are Karim and Inger and Anatoly and Marlene—did I get that right?”

  “You always get it right.” A Swedish-looking blond woman in a bikini smiled.

  “Then please excuse me while I show our new arrivals to their room.”

  Ariana sucked in her breath at the sight of the damask-and-walnut-paneled suite with its silk-covered chairs.

  “If there’s anything you need, you just give the bell there a yank.” Nikos gestured toward a gold brocade bell cord. “We’ll be having cocktails in the salon before dinner. You can meet the others then.”