Ariana

by Edward Stewart

After the final curtain the wide waiting silence of the audience exploded into a seventeen-minute ovation.

  She took eight curtain calls, the greatest number of any Mélisande in the history of the Metropolitan.

  And yet something was wrong. She knew it, and DiScelta knew it at their next lesson.

  “I admire the tree; I dislike the fruit.” DiScelta drew in a deep breath. She turned to Austin Waters, erect and silent as ever at the keyboard. “Austin, thank you very much. That will be all for today.”

  “Yes, madame.” He gathered up his scores and shot Ariana a glance that said, I’ve seen her in this mood before—you’re in for it.

  There was a moment of silence after he left. The surfaces of DiScelta’s face seemed to shift and move as she gazed at her pupil.

  “You’re taking shortcuts. Something is diverting you. Or perhaps someone.” DiScelta rose from the piano bench. “Stratiotis, yes?”

  There was no point in telling a lie that was not going to be believed. Ariana met her teacher’s gaze. “I’m tired of living in parts and particles.”

  “Ah, the truth is beginning to glint through.”

  “What in the world does my personal life have to do with my singing?

  “When I pour twenty years into you, and this merchant changes your voice, yes, that has to do with your singing. And believe me, I can hear the difference. You who are a great voice are turning yourself into an interesting and pleasing one.”

  “That’s nonsense.”

  “My ears don’t lie! You are becoming ordinary!”

  “Maybe I am ordinary. What do you expect me to be, a nun?”

  “If your voice requires it, yes!”

  “I have a right to love.”

  “This man isn’t giving you love, he’s giving you lovemaking.”

  “And I love it! It takes the jaggedness off life. It softens things. For a moment I can relax.”

  DiScelta stood shaking her head. “A moment. What is a moment compared to a career?”

  “Sometimes a moment can be everything.”

  “And sometimes you are a fool! This man has millions, he invites you on a yacht, he introduces you to people you read about in gossip columns, and to you this is the real world at last. And what does he feel for you?”

  Ariana looked down at her hands. “He’s fond of me.”

  “My poor child, you must face the truth. He could have any woman in the world, and he has chosen you. Why?”

  “I suppose because he prefers me.”

  “And why does he prefer you? There are hundreds of millionaires’ wives who make conversation better than you, thousands of jet-set courtesans who make love better, but you have one quality none of them can match.”

  Ariana swallowed. “And what is that?”

  “Fame. And when he has stripped you of that, he will throw you aside like a gnawed steak bone.”

  Ariana was silent. Her heart thudded against her chest. “Are you trying to frighten me?”

  “I’m trying to terrify you.”

  “You’ve managed very nicely.”

  Summer came, swollen with festival dates—Edinburgh, Florence, Athens, Mar del Plata. It took every ounce of resolve Ariana could muster, but for three months she didn’t see Nikos.

  He tried.

  There were cables and phone calls at every hotel. He sent flowers: two dozen vivid violet hyacinths every Monday, two dozen scarlet roses every Tuesday, two dozen of one beautiful sort of bloom or another every day of every week wherever she went.

  But DiScelta’s warning followed her like a shadow, and her teacher took to mailing her, without comment, gossip columns ripped jaggedly from the gutter press of the world.

  Nikos was escorting actresses, heiresses, other men’s wives, a twenty-five-year-old beauty who would one day inherit controlling interest in General Motors.

  He can’t be trusted, Ariana thought.

  But one September evening in Barcelona she returned from an exhausting Traviata at the Teatro Lirico and found an emerald necklace lying on her pillow.

  The note with it said Efcharisto, Nikos.

  She was tired, so tired that sleep refused to come. She stared at the empty pillow beside her and thoughts kept crowding into her mind. Was she a fool to keep putting him off? He said he loved her. She loved him, she was sure.

  Almost sure.

  They met that fall at a dinner in New York. Most of the guests were worried about the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia that had taken place the night before.

  “You realize, this could be World War III,” a CBS news anchorman told Ariana.

  “I hadn’t realized.”

  She hadn’t noticed Nikos among the guests until she saw him standing on the terrace alone in the shadow.

  “You shouldn’t have sent me flowers,” she said. “Or jewels.”

  “Shouldn’t is a strong word. Why did you run from me?”

  “Because you bribed the musicians. Because you attacked me in my dressing room.”

  “And because of what you call an attack, you gave one of the greatest performances of your career.”

  “It wasn’t me performing. It was something you unleashed in me.”

  “It’s called woman.”

  “You can be banal in the most insulting way.”

  “And your eyes show contempt in such a pretty way.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for it to be pretty.”

  “I wish you’d stop acting as though I’m a bigger bastard than God.”

  “Maybe I will when you stop acting as though you’re richer than God.”

  “You’re wearing the necklace.”

  “That was an oversight.” She unclasped the necklace and held it out to him. Instead of taking it, he gripped her hand and pulled her tight against him. For one instant she could feel their two hearts beating wildly out of synchronization. She yanked loose but he caught her arm.

  The necklace made a slapping sound as it struck the terrace.

  Nikos retrieved one of the stones. “You’ve lost an emerald.”

  “It’s yours now.” She kicked the rest of the necklace toward him.

  As he stooped and picked it up light struck his face.

  She recoiled. “Your cheek is scarred.”

  The whiteness of his teeth went through her like a knife. “What do you expect when you throw an oak clock at a defenseless man?”

  A wave of hesitation washed over her. “But can’t the doctors—”

  “I’m too busy to waste three weeks on such a little scar. And besides, it has sentimental value. It’s the only thing you’ve ever given me.”

  He’s perfect, she thought. Dear God, why does he have to be perfect?

  “You’ve got to have it taken off,” she said.

  “On one condition.”

  And even before he named the condition, she knew she was going to say yes.

  A month is a strange thing. It can change all the years that have gone into a life.

  Nikos rented a beautiful estate for them in New Jersey. He showed her how to ride horses, how to play tennis and bridge, how to meet people. She’d never had such nurturing from a man. Overnight she was mixing with media celebrities, European nobility, international millionaires, NFL commissioners, baseball pitchers, artists, singers, dukes, men and women she’d never have met in the narrow world of opera.

  And something astonishing happened.

  They accepted her.

  She couldn’t believe it: Ariana Kavalaris, the little girl from East 103rd Street, was being treated as an equal by people who she’d thought existed only in headlines and on the evening news.

  It was a time of discoveries, of finding out how much more there was in her than just a voice. She found she had the wit to make small talk with a cardinal from Venice, the charm to flirt with a glittering Mafioso, the quick grasp of information to make intelligent conversation with a Swiss financier and a Latin-American presidente.

  And the courage to stand up to soci
ety lionesses like Marge Macintosh.

  It happened one night at a dinner for sixty at the home of a TV newsanchorwoman. Ariana was standing alone on the terrace looking down at Park Avenue when Marge materialized next to her and in a rather mysterious voice said, “Congratulations.”

  Marge was the wife of the second-largest TV network in the country and the daughter of the third-largest oil company, and she was not given to congratulating people.

  “Thank you,” Ariana said, “but what for?”

  “I do believe you’ve tamed the world’s least tamable playboy. Nikos used to have a compulsion for dazzling women, but since he met you he’s given all that up.”

  Ariana recognized the odor of malice. “You’re very kind.”

  “Not kind at all. Just a poor loser.”

  “You were in love with Nikos?”

  “Three times in the sack, is that love?”

  Ariana looked at this woman in the $3,000 Adolfo and the $250,000 diamond necklace. She’s dangerous. Not because she has power, but because she has jettisoned pride.

  “For some people it might be,” Ariana said.

  The woman’s eyes fixed her and the loathing was undisguised. “Not for Nikos, obviously. Tell me, dear, I know so little about opera, what should my husband and I see you in? Have you got any good roles?”

  “I’m superb in everything. Including…how did you put it?…the sack.”

  There was an instant’s recoil and reappraisal before Marge spoke again. “Enjoy it while you’ve got it.”

  “Thanks. I intend to.”

  When Ariana and Nikos returned from a vacation at Carlotta Busch’s estate in Barbados, she hit an A-major chord on the Steinway and tried to sing the arpeggio. Her voice made a stretched, creaky sound like old piano wire. She had no control over timbre or pitch.

  “Darling, I love you,” Nikos said, “but do you have to make that noise?”

  “That happens to be the noise singers make when they’re trying to get back in shape after much too long a vacation.”

  “But you don’t sing till next week.”

  “Nikos, I’m singing Turandot next week.”

  “Is Turandot hard?”

  She stared at him with his wonderful dark curls and his wonderful ignorance of everything operatic. “Come over here and hug some sense into me and make me forget about music.”

  And he came to her and took her in his arms.

  “Why are you so good to me?” she said.

  His mouth was grazing along the back of her neck. “I want you to need me. More than you’ve ever needed anyone.”

  “I do. You know I do.”

  “Then I’ve found my reason to live.”

  She had to laugh. “Nikos, how can you say things like that? You’re worse than opera.”

  At that moment he had the look of a hurt little boy. “I’m better than opera.”

  She tried to find words, but there were too many feelings all at once. It was as though she were home at last—as though she’d found her father, her lover, her friend. “Oh, Nikos, what will I do when you’re not here?”

  “But I am here.” His arms tightened around her and then his tongue touched the inside of her ear, where nothing but music had ever touched her before. “I’ve found you, you’ve found me. Nothing else matters.”

  For the next six months, the elements of her life were in perfect harmony: the parties, the travel, the performances, the reviews. The Hamburger Zeitung called her Marschallin “God-sent”; the Milan Corriere delta Sera said of her Tosca, “Not since Callas.” Her days and nights turned into a feast, and she realized how much of her had never lived. She felt as if she had finally awakened from the long sleep of childhood.

  Life and business were going well for Nikos too. He was able to acquire controlling interest in the North American uranium cartel. He began real estate projects in Majorca and Sardinia as well as a major push to take over the property surrounding Manhattan’s Union Square. In June 1969, after one of his foundations gave their law school a new dormitory, he received an honorary doctorate of philosophy from Harvard University.

  Ariana attended the ceremony. It was a cloudless blue day and she sat with the 25,000 parents and graduating students who had crowded into Harvard Yard. She gazed proudly at Nikos holding himself like a king among the honored dignitaries on the platform in front of Memorial Church. With the eyes of the Eastern establishment upon him, he seemed absolutely at ease in the scarlet robe that covered his Savile Row suit and his Turnbull & Asser shirt and tie.

  Ariana let the endless speeches flow over her, a contented reflection of the light projecting from her lover.

  And then a young man in a black robe took the microphone at the center of the platform and began addressing the gathering in Latin.

  Ariana’s heart struck a sudden blow under her throat.

  The Latin bouncing off the façade of Widener Library had the rhythm and melody of another voice. She had not heard that other voice in almost a quarter-century, but still she recognized it as though it had greeted her only that morning.

  She opened her program.

  Address in Latin, she read. Mark Ames Rutherford III.

  She sat forward in her chair. Mark’s son!

  She had followed Mark’s career from a distance. She knew of his service as chaplain in Vietnam and rise to bishop. She had read his letters and his Op-Ed pieces in the New York Times and seen him on television panels. She had never known that there was a son.

  The young man was handsome and well-built, with Mark’s pale blue eyes and light brown hair.

  She was able to follow the parts of the Latin that resembled operatic Italian. He was making a good-natured speech about sons of Harvard and their mission to civilize the world.

  There was a great deal of laughter, loud applause when he finished. After the ceremony she hurried through the crowd and caught him. “Excuse me, Mark Rutherford?”

  He stopped. She could feel celebrity recognition going out like a wave. Heads turned and young men whispered, and she knew they were saying, Isn’t that Kavalaris?

  “Yes, I’m Mark Rutherford, usually called Ames.”

  “Bishop Rutherford’s son?”

  “That’s right.”

  She held out a hand and managed to keep it from trembling. “I’m Ariana Kavalaris. I knew your family once. Long ago.”

  Suddenly her whole past seemed to be present in the young man staring at her speechlessly. A tide of recollection rushed in on her. She smelled the trees through the open window of the apartment on Perry Street, she heard the old spinet, she saw Mark frowning with concentration as he turned the print-black pages of a student Bible. A feeling of loss went through her, sharp and immediate as a stab: This boy might have been my son.

  She smiled her kindest smile, inviting his, and slowly he smiled back.

  “My family’s here today,” he said. “Would you like to say hello?”

  She felt her smile about to stream down her face. “It’s been so many years. They’ve forgotten me.”

  “Dad hasn’t. He collects all your records. Come on and say hello. He’d love it. He worships you.”

  For a moment she couldn’t force words through the tightness in her throat. “Maybe another time.”

  Ames Rutherford grinned good-naturedly, accepting the rebuff. He reached beneath his robe and pulled out a tiny notepad and a chewed pencil. “In that case, could I have your autograph?”

  He held the pad steady and she signed. Then quickly, she kissed him on the side of his face.

  He gazed at her a moment. “Thank you.”

  There was nothing more to say; there was everything more to say. She saw Nikos approaching through the crowd. “If you ever get to one of my performances come backstage, please.”

  “I’d love to,” Mark’s son said.

  But the crowd was pulling them apart, and she knew she would never see him again.

  Nikos’s hand touched her lightly. “Who was that you we
re talking to?”

  She smiled. “No one. Just the son of an old friend.”

  Part Three

  BETRAYAL: 1969–1979

  18

  AT SEVEN O’CLOCK IN the evening Ames Rutherford sat in a chair in his club, staring at his friend and classmate Dill Switt. Mustachioed, impressively overweight, Dill was drunk. Not drunk drunk, but wisely drunk: a Harvard senior and former Crimson editor who had just been handed the world rolled up in a diploma.

  “It’s all bullshit,” Dill said. “Law school and business school and being part of the ruling caste—what good’s all that?”

  “As long as there are laws, there’ll be lawyers,” Ames said.

  “But why you? Why the hell do you have to join the power brokers? Can’t you see what they’re doing to this country?”

  Ames and Dill were alone by the fireplace. The clubhouse was a litter of glasses and bottles and cigarette ashes.

  “Maybe once some of us get a little power we can do something a little different for our country,” Ames said. He was thinking of Ariana Kavalaris, who had given her voice to the world and who had made the power brokers bow down to beauty.

  Ariana Kavalaris, who had stepped out of a crowd and kissed him.

  That kiss still felt warm on his cheek. And it filled him with a glowing hope like none he had ever felt before. For the first time in his life, he could almost believe that the world belonged to him too, that his dreams had a place in it.

  “Of all the people I never expected to sell out…you, my best friend.” Dill was shaking his head, slurring his words now.

  “I’ll always be your best friend,” Ames said. “And I’m not selling out. Some lawyers are decent people, you know.”

  Dill’s eyes fixed Ames’s with sudden shrewdness. “Name one.”

  “Me.”

  That summer, for graduation, Ames’s parents sent him abroad.

  “You’ll never be this free again,” his father said, shaking Ames’s hand at the airport. “Enjoy yourself, son.”

  There was a remembering in Mark Rutherford’s eyes that was so sad and loving that Ames grabbed him and hugged him.

  “I’ll enjoy myself, Dad. Don’t you worry.”

  “Be careful.” Ames’s mother, immaculate in her bishop’s wife blue cotton suit and trying very hard not to look too maternal or too concerned, embraced him tightly.