Ariana

by Edward Stewart

  As he looked at her time seemed to flow backward, and all anguish seemed to pass out of her face, leaving it smooth as evening sky. He had the impression that she was young again, the same dark-haired girl brimming with hope and fire who had held his hand and walked beside him through springtime streets and told him her dreams and listened to his.

  “Panagia mou,” she whispered. “Now I know. It was your spirit—your unselfishness—that came to me. Thank you, Mark. Thank you for being with me in all my darkest moments. Thank you for being here with me now.”

  Tears came into his eyes. Feelings poured back, the whole flood of a life unlived. There was a burning just above his heart. He could scarcely speak. “I should never have left you. Never, never.”

  “You never left me and I never left you. We’ve never been apart in all our lives since the day we met. And we’ll never be apart in death. You do believe that, Mark.”

  Mark said, “I do.”

  “Then I am your wife,” she whispered. “And you are my husband. And one day we will be married on earth as we are in eternity!”

  He lifted her from the pillow—how light she was!—and held her, wishing time would stop then and there. He kissed her and her lips were waiting, soft, soft, soft.

  “It’s strange,” she whispered. “The pain is gone. I feel strength coming back—a new strength.” Suddenly she gripped him with surprising force. “I’m going…to live!”

  He felt a bone-shaking spasm tear her. And then he realized what he was holding in his arms: silence—only silence.

  “Sleep well,” he whispered.

  She had crossed the frontier peacefully, in the safety of his loving face bent over her. It was as though she had done no more than step out of the bright stagelights into the coolness of the wings.

  For Ariana Kavalaris it was all over now: all yearning, all striving, all suffering.

  He longed to be at rest beside her.

  He whispered her name, and his thoughts shaped words that were never uttered. “I’ve always loved you. Only you. I always will.”

  Her expression answered him, beautiful and silent and secret.

  What had she meant? he wondered, One day we will be married on earth as we are in eternity.

  And why did he believe her?

  Part Four

  EXILE: 1979–1981

  34

  ONE RING.

  Ames Rutherford stared at the blank page in his typewriter. Being a writer wasn’t working today. He wanted to be a surfer or a tennis bum.

  Second ring.

  He lunged a hand to snatch up the receiver before the answering machine cut in. He knocked over a stack of research and the research almost knocked over a coffee cup.

  “Kavalaris died last night—the singer.”

  He recognized Greg Hatoff’s Class of 1964 Harvard drawl.

  “I heard on television.” And he remembered feeling just an instant’s anger for what the world had done to her.

  “The service is day after tomorrow, St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Can you cover it for us?”

  “That’s a crazy idea, Greg.”

  It was a crazy idea and Ames was thinking. Part of his legend—every writer nowadays had a legend—was that he could stop in the middle of everything and dash off a cover story for People or Atlantic in an afternoon. Here was a perfect leave of absence from the novel that was about to turn him into a tennis bum.

  “Greg, why me? I only met her once, years ago.”

  There was a hint of apology in Greg’s hesitation. “You don’t know who’s doing the eulogy?”

  “Should I?”

  “Your father is Bishop Mark Rutherford?”

  “Dad? But he’s Episcopalian. He wasn’t even her pastor.”

  “Vogue did call him confessor to the jet set.”

  “I can’t believe Dad would—” Ames realized how very little he actually knew about his father.

  “The invitation list is very elegant, kid. Crème de la crème de la crème. She’s a very hot ticket. I thought you might like to give us your slant on necro-chic.”

  Ames arrived at St. Patrick’s Cathedral early so that he could observe not just the mourners but the observers too. He spoke his notes softly into a tiny tape recorder that fitted almost invisibly into his fist.

  It was strange to see his father stride to the lectern, his plain black suit contrasting almost puritanically with the crimson and white and gold vestments of the cardinal and the archbishop.

  It was stranger still to hear him deliver the eulogy, his voice choked with emotion that Ames had never suspected him to be capable of.

  “She gave us music. In some ways hers was the sort of music that sounds strongest in memory. We never really hear it till it is gone. Like light that we see only by the shadow it casts, we hear her—know her—mourn her—only by her silence.”

  A hush fell: the congregation waited.

  From somewhere high in the rear of the cathedral, a thread of sound wove itself into the stillness. Softly at first and then with increasing volume, a soprano was singing the “Et Lux Perpetua” of Verdi’s Requiem.

  A wind of unbelieving recognition blew through the crowd. Ames couldn’t be sure, but the voice sounded very much like Ariana Kavalaris.

  He turned, and suddenly his sight blurred.

  It was like a dream seen through shivering layers of memory.

  She was standing in the choir loft. The area surrounding her had dimmed out and a white spot seemed to be focused on her. Her face engulfed him. A dazzling light spread from her and she seemed to be alone, silhouetted against a dark sky.

  He couldn’t tell if he was seeing her or imagining her or, somehow, recalling her. Her blond hair, parted down the center, hung in two long tresses framing the oval of her face. He saw things he knew he couldn’t possibly be seeing at that distance: the gray-green of her irises, and a strange, unmistakable plea in her eyes.

  He felt something slip inside him, as though a handbrake had been forced loose under violent pressure.

  And all at once ideas were racing in him, ideas so foreign to him they might have been someone else’s: that there was danger in his remaining seated there; that he must get to his feet, shove his way to the aisle, find the stairway to the choir loft.

  One thought above all was so clear in his mind it was a voice commanding him: I have to reach her this time. This time I have to reach her.

  And suddenly, inexplicably, he was standing at the top of a narrow flight of stairs, and an astonished organist was staring at him, and an old gentleman in morning clothes was pulling at him, saying, “I’m sorry, sir, you’re not allowed here.”

  Fleetingly, through the black-gowned choir, he saw her.

  She raised her head and it seemed to him she was about to acknowledge him in some way.

  And then the choir shifted, and she vanished from his sight.

  A dense, rain-slashed mist cloaked the Long Island shore. As Ames skidded the Mercedes into the driveway he could barely see the house and grounds. He let himself in through the kitchen.

  Fran was sitting at the table. She was wearing her bright pink jogging shorts and her dark hair was bound in a towel turban. She set down her cup of tea and looked at him. “Good funeral?”

  “Celebrity stuff.” As he passed her chair she leaned back and he planted an upside-down-kiss on her forehead. He went into his workroom and closed the door and sat at the typewriter.

  For four hours he tried to write a stripped, objective, brief account of the funeral. It missed by thirty miles. He rolled a fresh sheet into the carriage and sat frowning at the blank page.

  The thought wouldn’t let go of him. I have to reach her this time. This time I have to reach her.

  The funeral left Nikos Stratiotis in a strange mood. He stayed up late that night, locked in his study, staring at walls, seeing old phantoms. His mind kept replaying the voice from the service.

  When he went into the bedroom, Maggie was waiting up for him, reading. S
he looked at him, closed her book, and crossed to the chest of drawers. His eyes followed her.

  At thirty-one, she had the silky body and arrogantly careless grace of a twenty-year-old. She worked for it: exercise classes three hours a day, diets, a bathroom filled with exotically labeled ointments and lotions. Her hair was its natural auburn—had been for the last three years—and it fell in smoothly maintained waves that grazed her shoulders as she took a very slender cigarette from a mother-of-pearl box. She lit it and came back to the edge of the bed and sat beside him.

  She inhaled delicately, exhaled. Her dark eyes fixed him questioningly. “Why don’t you ease up on yourself, Nikos? Get high.”

  “Why should I get high?”

  “Because you’ve had a rotten day, and it’s made me depressed too, and we should make love and get our minds off …”

  She didn’t say Ariana. He’d asked her not to come to the funeral and she’d said she understood. She’d gone shopping instead.

  He took the joint and pretended to inhale. In a while he turned down the lights and they began making love.

  It was skillful sex, as it always had been, but tonight for the first time in all their troubled marriage it was flavorless. When she gripped him and called his name, a horrible thought occurred to him. I’ll never enjoy making love to her again.

  Afterward, she sat staring at the Matisse still life on the wall.

  “Something’s bothering you,” she said.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “I’m going to smoke another. It helps me sleep.”

  “Go right ahead.”

  He fell asleep. In a dream, he heard the voice in the cathedral singing “Et Lux Perpetua.” When he awoke shuddering in the dark, Maggie was breathing peacefully beside him.

  In the morning he went to Richard Schiller’s office at Americana Artists Agency in its glass-faced headquarters on Fifty-fifth Street.

  It was hard to believe that they had known each other thirty-two years. Theirs had not been a close friendship, but the sheer accretion of time had become a bond between them. Neither was offended when the other asked a favor. Usually, Nikos wanted theater tickets, and Richard needed backing for a client’s show.

  But today Nikos asked for something else. “I want you to represent the young woman who sang at Ariana’s funeral. Get her dates at the Metropolitan, La Scala, Covent Garden, all the places Ariana sang. I’ll pay.”

  “Nikos, an unknown singer can’t just—”

  “With the right management this one can. You heard her voice.”

  “I heard her sing thirty-two bars and beyond that I don’t know a damned thing about her. And neither do you.”

  “I know one thing about her. Ten years ago she was Ariana’s pupil.”

  Richard’s eyes narrowed. “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure. I came home one day and she was getting out of the elevator.” She smiled. “I don’t forget people. Phone the archdiocese and get her address and go sign her.”

  “Nikos, it doesn’t work like that.”

  “Make it work like that. I’ll pay.”

  The archdiocese said the singer’s name was Vanessa Billings. They had an address for her on Seventeenth Street. Richard Schiller slipped a white carnation into the lapel of his Chesterfield and took a taxi to her apartment. He climbed five dingy flights in a rickety old walkup, knocked on her door, and introduced himself. “I’m an artists’ agent. I want to represent you.”

  Her blond hair was pulled straight back from her forehead and her gray-green eyes looked huge. She backed away from him. “No.”

  “May we talk about it?” He handed her his card and stepped over the bar of a police lock.

  She had one dark room, one window, a view of the factory across the airshaft. “I’m not a singer,” she said. “I have no voice.”

  “If you have no voice, Miss Billings, I have no ears.”

  “You haven’t heard me.”

  “I heard you at St. Pat’s.”

  “But that wasn’t…the real me.”

  “Okay—whoever it was, I want to represent her.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the voice that I heard at Ariana’s funeral is going to have a career.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Thirty years in the business.”

  Something flickered in her eyes. “Would you like some coffee?”

  “Sure. Milk, no sugar.”

  There was a two-burner gas range in what looked like a closet. She fixed coffee in a Chemex. He was surprised how rich and good it tasted.

  “There’s something you should know about me.” She looked at him. “I’m no good onstage. I mean that. No good. I’ve tried.”

  “You need a little coaching, a little confidence, a little experience in front of audiences. It’ll all come together.”

  “I’ve had some experiences in front of audiences that were pretty…dreadful.”

  “But you’re a real singer. We both know that.”

  “Do we?”

  “Sure. You studied with Ariana.”

  “Long ago. Only for a little while.”

  “And she believed in you.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Maybe, hell. That’s her locket around your neck. Her teacher gave it to her, and now you’re wearing it. That tells me she wanted you to go on from where she left off.”

  Miss Billings’s finger went to the locket and touched it nervously.

  “I represented Ariana,” he said. “I represented her for twenty-four years. And what’s more I was her friend for twenty-four years. And I want to represent you for twenty-five years. And I have a hunch I’ll want to be your friend too.”

  He set his coffee cup down. She sat motionless there at the table but he could feel something inside her beginning to sway.

  “Here’s my card.” He placed it in front of her. “Call me.”

  She appeared at Richard Schiller’s office one week later.

  “I’ll sign.” Her voice was calm. It didn’t match her eyes, which were drops of seawater spinning with life.

  Richard managed to keep from shaking. He had his secretary bring in the contract. “Do you want a lawyer to read it?”

  “No.”

  “Want my pen?”

  “Thanks.”

  She signed and he pointed out the riders, and she initialed those, and when she handed the contract back to him he felt he was picking up a thread from the tapestry of the past.

  He opened his desk drawer and handed her an envelope. “This is yours. You’ll be getting one the first of every month.”

  She opened it and stared at the cashier’s check. “I don’t understand. I haven’t earned this.”

  “There’s a certain someone who doesn’t want you having to sell perfumes at B. Altman’s when you should be home practicing.”

  “Who is this someone?”

  “They prefer to be anonymous.”

  “I don’t see how I can accept.”

  “How much money do you have now? Be honest.”

  “Ninety-seven dollars.”

  “Then take it as a loan.”

  For the rest of the afternoon Richard Schiller purred, shouted, told some lies and a few truths, answered phones, slammed down phones, shot off a two-word note to the manager of a regional opera house who had balked at his demands, informed La Scala they would have to bid against Hamburg if they wanted their favorite Sonnambula for the next season’s opening.

  And all the while, in his memory, he kept seeing Ariana Kavalaris running across a stage, Isolde’s sun-streaked hair flying out behind her. He buzzed his secretary. “Find me Kavalaris’s ‘Leibestod,’ will you?”

  She found the tape. He sat and listened.

  God made that voice, he thought. He never gave that power to any other voice again. And yet, this Billings…He phoned Boyd Kinsolving, music director of the Metropolitan Opera. “Meet me at the Russian Tea Room at six-thirty. I’ve got something you want.”
>
  “All right, what’s this mysterious something that I want?”

  “This.” Richard slipped the earphones over Boyd’s head and pressed the start button. He’d put nearly dead batteries in the cassette player, so Kavalaris’s “Liebestod” sounded only intermittently like Kavalaris. The rest sounded like shortwave during a nuclear blitz.

  Boyd monkeyed with volume controls and listened. His eyes searched Richard’s. “Lousy sound. Who is it? Ariana?”

  “Are you kidding? Ariana never sang with a pit band like that. It’s Billings. Her pupil. The girl who sang at the funeral.”

  Boyd’s face went white. “You’ve signed her?”

  “Of course. Think I’d let you get to her first?”

  Over two more rounds of drinks, Richard coaxed the deal to ripeness. “Three Santuzzas,” he insisted.

  “But she’ll understudy six Neddas.”

  “Provided she covers two Marschallins in Washington.”

  Boyd grimaced. “One. I promised Columbia Artists—”

  “Do you want her or don’t you want her?”

  Boyd drained his Scotch. “I want her. Two Marschallins.”

  “You’re looking well, Boyd.”

  “You’re looking well too, Clara.”

  Boyd removed his bifocals. He didn’t like to be seen in them, and while Clara Rodrigo was in his office he was obviously not going to be able to continue working on Shostakovich’s orchestration of Mous-sorgsky’s Boris Godunov.

  “Thank you for your nice tempo change in Turandot last night.” She’d run out of breath on the climactic phrase, cutting short the high C in the Riddle Duet. He’d rushed the accompaniment to make the gaffe less obvious. There had been knowing boos.

  He smiled graciously. “My pleasure, sweetums.”

  “I understand you’ve found me a new cover for Nedda?”

  He’d made the deal barely forty-eight hours ago and already she knew. There had to be a leak in the contract department.

  “Tell me about her.” Clara sat massaging her diamond rings. “She’s…promising.”

  “Have I heard her?”

  “Possibly.”

  Clara seemed to have stored up only a limited number of smiles and she had obviously now exhausted her supply. She rose to her full five foot three, four inches of which were heels. “I am a reasonable woman, yes? I do not expect to live forever. Nor do I expect to fade so soon as you would like!”