Ariana Read online

  Ariana

  A Novel

  Edward Stewart

  THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED

  WITH THE LOVE AND THANKS OF A LIFETIME

  TO

  EDWARD SHELDON STEWART SENIOR,

  MY FATHER AND FRIEND.

  Contents

  Prelude: February 7, 1979

  Part One PROMISE: 1928–1950

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  Part Two GLORY: 1966–1969

  14

  15

  16

  17

  Part Three BETRAYAL: 1969–1979

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  Part Four EXILE: 1979–1981

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  Part Five RETURN: 1981–1985

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  When an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside, as fate. When the individual does not become conscious of his inner contradictions, the world must perforce act out the conflict and be torn into opposite halves.

  Carl Jung

  Prelude

  FEBRUARY 7, 1979

  BY 9:00 A.M. THE LINE outside St. Patrick’s Cathedral stretched ten blocks north along Fifth Avenue. These were the ordinary people, without passes to the funeral.

  Some had brought books to read; some, cameras; some, tape recorders; a few, food. Some held shopping bags; some wore jeans and wool jackets; some carried little bouquets on the off chance of passing within tossing distance of the coffin of Ariana Kavalaris—the woman who had given them some of the finest evenings of their lives.

  Policemen told them to stay behind the striped sawhorses, to keep the cross streets clear. They obeyed grudgingly, then at the first chance pushed forward again.

  Beginning a little after nine there was a constant stream of faces into the cathedral: the supporting singers, the chorus members, the nonstars who had worked with Kavalaris.

  At 9:30 a group of almost a hundred women carrying pickets surged east along Forty-ninth Street, taking dead aim on the cathedral. THE POPE NEVER HAD TO RAISE AN UNWANTED KID one sign proclaimed; another, NEW YORK MOTHERS FOR FREEDOM OF CHOICE; ANOTHER, WHAT JESUS HAD TO SAY ABOUT ABORTION NOTHING!

  A phalanx of police, pushing sawhorses in front of them, managed to drive the mothers back across Fifth Avenue. They took up position around the statue of Atlas in front of Rockefeller Center and began chanting, “Sepa-rate church and state!”

  At ten sharp celebrities began to arrive for the funeral.

  There was Giorgio Montecavallo, who had sung with Kavalaris—dapper in morning clothes; and Rodney Maxwell, who owned newspapers and TV stations on three continents; and Tad Brinks, who hosted the CBS evening news; and Adolf Erdlich, director of the Metropolitan Opera, where Kavalaris had had so many triumphs.

  A little after 10:30 a group of two dozen priests and nuns began moving west on Forty-ninth Street. Their voices could be heard intermittently above the tumult, singing “Salve Regina.” Their neatly lettered placards all said the same thing: THOU SHALT NOT KILL.

  It took only ten policemen to push the public back from Forty-ninth Street, making a narrow path for the small, dignified procession.

  A dozen other policemen kept the steps of the cathedral clear, making way for tycoons, actors, actresses, diplomats, bank presidents, society hostesses who had risen far earlier than their accustomed hour and whose hairdressers had too; the widow of an ex-President (“She doesn’t look a day over forty-nine!”); last year’s Wimbledon male and female champions, rumored to be having a romance; rock stars; two United States senators and their wives. …

  Across Fifth Avenue, the nuns and priests quietly took up position north of the mothers.

  By 10:30 every fifteen seconds brought a fresh Lincoln or Cadillac limousine to the steps, a Bentley or a Rolls, and—after a moment’s hesitation adjusting fur or overcoat—out stepped a new celebrity to fatten the crush.

  “Sepa-rate church and state!”

  Necks craned, recognition flared into screams of names, flashbulbs went off, TV minicams scanned.

  An ambulance sped down Fifth Avenue, siren wailing.

  A custom silver Mercedes pulled up at the cathedral steps. Everyone recognized the Hollywood actress who had won an Oscar the preceding year—her borzoi tried to follow her out of the car. Instructing the animal to be good and wait in the back seat, her escort (Who was he? He looked like that new soap-opera heartthrob on CBS) gripped it by its jeweled collar and handed it over to the chauffeur.

  Some of the well informed recognized Count and Countess Nicholas von Hohenschmidt-Ingolf, tanned from the Costa Brava and blond and among the minority who had worn mourning. They had flown in from Denmark to represent the royal family.

  Ambassadors arrived in limousines flying the little fender flags of their nations—Paco and Pilar de Guzman of Mexico; Sir Robert and Lady Fitzmorency of New Zealand; Ali Ben-Golah of Algeria; dozens of others.

  “Sepa-rate church and state!”

  The mayor arrived and waved somberly to reporters.

  The governor and his wife arrived and did not wave.

  Representatives of the great opera houses were there: the directors of the Paris Opéra, of Buenos Aires’s Teatro Colón, of Covent Garden, of Milan’s La Scala.

  The world of international fame and luxury had turned out for this, Ariana Kavalaris’s last public appearance. They all passed up the steps and through the cast-iron doors like images on a TV screen, flashing faces, names, smiles, greetings, cheek-to-cheek kisses.

  As the hour of the mass neared, the crush thickened. Between 10:45 and 11:00, in less than fifteen minutes, over $15 million in jewelry and fur and high fashion streamed into St. Patrick’s.

  Through the open cathedral doors, rising faintly above the turmoil, came the unhurried, unhurrying notes of an organ. The church air, sweet with the smell of wealth and fame, bloomed and buzzed like a dark garden.

  Within, everything was movement, stir, color.

  The pews gradually filled up and the cathedral became a sea of designer hats. Heads turned. Kisses were exchanged, greetings murmured. Earrings and necklaces threw out pinpoints of light. Beneath sable and mink, Galanos and Saint Laurent and de la Renta originals rustled silkenly on famous bodies.

  A whisper swept the pews as Nikos Stratiotis came striding up the aisle alone. The owner of six world corporations listed among Fortune magazine’s top hundred, he had been the dead woman’s lover and, later, her betrayer.

  He stopped and for an instant faced the altar. Kneeling quickly on one knee, he crossed himself in Orthodox fashion, forefinger touching right shoulder before left. He stepped into a pew and as he knelt again the light outlined his solid frame and graying, leonine head. Eyes shut, he began moving his lips in silent prayer.

  Everywhere, fabled gems flashed against velvet and silk and satin and pampered flesh.

  The coffin, covered with a burgundy-colored pall, lay in the center aisle before the steps leading to
the altar. There was a great cross of white lilacs on it, with clusters of red roses at the four extremities.

  Heads turned as an usher led Kavalaris’s arch-rival, Clara Rodrigo, to her pew. With Kavalaris’s death, Rodrigo was arguably the most famous living soprano in the world. She walked in white mink, head held high, her eyes heavily mascara’d and watchful. She turned toward the altar and—giving the flap of her mink an outward fling—dropped to one knee. With great deliberation she touched a jeweled finger to her forehead—“En el nombre del Padre”—to her bosom—“del Hijo”—to her left shoulder and her right—“y del Espíritu Santo.”

  The Greek ambassador to the U.N., seeing she would be some time in that position, stepped respectfully around her.

  Clara Rodrigo finally moved into the pew. She opened her purse—the catch gave a click like a tiny firecracker—and took out a large rosary of onyx and ivory beads the size of walnuts. She knelt again. Grasping the shining gold medallion of Our Lord, her voice low-pitched but prevailing over the murmurs around her, she began reciting the “Padre Nuestro.”

  Boyd Kinsolving, Kavalaris’s husband for seventeen years and her conductor for twenty-one, now music director of the New York Metropolitan Opera, bowed his head and whispered the words of the Twenty-third Psalm: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…”

  Beside him, Richard Schiller, who had been Kavalaris’s agent for almost a quarter-century, sat silently, head angled downward, eyes resolutely averted from the movement and activity around him.

  The last mourners to arrive finally found their places. The thousands were now still, waiting.

  An expectant silence fell, like the hush before the curtain rises in an opera house.

  A procession of altar boys filed in from the sacristy doorway, led by an acolyte in white, swinging a gold-chained censer. Then, like a sort of royal procession, came the Roman Catholic cardinal and archbishop and—slightly behind them, in a plain black suit—the Episcopal bishop who was to speak the eulogy over Ariana Kavalaris.

  He was a handsome man, dignified and gray-haired, and emotion choked his voice.

  “The woman we mourn today opened for us the doors of a different world. She not only cheered us and stirred us with her gift of song, colored our lives with her mastery, she lifted us, gave to our mortal ears the only image of eternity they will ever be able to perceive. 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.”

  The bishop turned and stepped away from the lectern.

  For a moment no one moved or breathed.

  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. The sound filled the arches of the cathedral like light from a glorious summer sky.

  There was a stir, a surge. A wind of shocked recognition blew through the crowd.

  There was no mistaking that voice. It was the voice of the woman who had died… Ariana Kavalaris.

  Even before the last notes died the air trembled in glassy ripples. A forest of heads whipped around. Eyes fixed on the choir loft. Dozens of mourners rose and on their faces were expressions that ranged from bafflement to terror.

  In the twelfth pew Richard Schiller turned to peer through the crowd.

  “Is it a recording?” he muttered wonderingly.

  Beside him, Boyd Kinsolving froze. For an instant he sat staring straight ahead, his face a pallid oval of disbelief, and then he turned and saw the woman standing in the loft.

  “That’s no recording,” he whispered. “Who is she?”

  Two pews ahead, Nikos Stratiotis shut his eyes. The voice caught at his throat and sent a trembling along his spine. Suddenly he wanted to cry.

  Slowly, he turned to look.

  The voice came like a hard hit to the pit of Clara Rodrigo’s stomach. Disbelief shot through her. The blood drained sickeningly from her head.

  There were indefinable stirrings in the crowd around her, a silence that was like a whisper of alarm.

  Her head spun around.

  The Episcopal bishop looked up.

  And suddenly something came unmoored inside him. He began to shake. His sight became blurred.

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

  She was standing in the choir loft. The light had somehow changed; the area surrounding her had dimmed out and a white spot seemed to be focused on her.

  Her face engulfed him.

  A dazzling brightness spread from her and it was as though she were alone, silhouetted against a dark sky.

  She seemed to be someone else, someone he had known long ago. He rose, reaching out to her.

  And then the light changed again, and he saw her blond hair, parted down the center, hanging in two long tresses that framed the oval of her face.

  He staggered as though he had been struck.

  An acolyte helped him back to his seat.

  “Mark?”

  It was night now. A woman’s voice cut into the bishop’s thoughts. He turned in his chair and saw his wife standing in the doorway, a small, neat-looking woman of fifty-six, her face lit by the glow from the fireplace.

  “Yes, dear?” he said pleasantly. He had had a tiring day. It was good to be home, enclosed again in familiar Episcopalian walls.

  “Coming to bed?”

  “Not just yet. I think I’ll sit by the fire a little longer.”

  His wife gazed at him. “She meant a great deal to you, didn’t she?”

  “Who?”

  His wife smiled a gentle little ghost of a smile. “You don’t need to pretend, Mark. We all have our memories to keep a little springtime in our hearts.”

  The bishop rose from his armchair and went slowly over to the desk. Embarrassed, he busied his hands lighting a pipe.

  “I didn’t mean to intrude,” his wife said.

  “You never intrude, my dear.”

  “I love you, Mark.” She blew him a kiss and closed the door.

  “I love you too,” he said softly, speaking to someone who was no longer there.

  The fire, beginning to die, filled the old room with flickering shadows.

  The bishop stood alone for a moment in silence. He went over to the shelf where recordings were kept. He searched a moment, chose one, and placed it carefully on the phonograph. He went back to his armchair by the fire.

  Slowly, he sank down.

  The needle dropped to the disk. A faint crackling hiss filled the warm, drowsy air.

  The bishop’s head began nodding in rhythm to Puccini’s melody.

  From far across the years the rich, never-forgotten soprano voice soared through the darkness.

  “Tu, tu, amore? Tu?” It was the great Act Two duet from Manon Lescaut.

  The tenor entered and the music swelled.

  The bishop shut his eyes, letting the present melt away.

  In his memory, chandeliers bloomed into light and the past lived again; he was a boy of eight and once more, for the first time, he saw her.

  Part One

  PROMISE: 1928–1950

  1

  IN 1928 HERBERT HOOVER was elected president of United States, Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic, and—at the old Metropolitan Opera House on Broadway and Thirty-ninth Street—Mark Rutherford saw his first opera, Puccini’s Manon Lescaut

  He quickly grasped that opera was profoundly different from life. On the stage, grown men and women threw away everything for a kiss. In the audience, grown men and women—including his own parents—sat believing, approving, applauding.

  The first three acts gently lured him into the dizzying melody-filled space of a universe whose existence he had never suspected.

  During the final intermission
he wandered onto the grand tier promenade. He felt curiosity, dissatisfaction, a seeking for the things he had glimpsed on the stage.

  Suddenly, far away on the edge of the brilliantly milling crowd, in a thicket of pillars with heavy gilt coils twisting up them, he saw a tiny figure. He saw her for just an instant, silhouetted against the red velvet wall. She was standing near the water fountain.

  For that flicker of an instant her eye caught his. She was like a dream, like something on the opera stage. He had never seen such a beautiful, strange girl before.

  The light from the chandeliers scattered little sparkles through her thick black hair. Parted in the middle, it hung in two long braids. Her face was slender and dark and glowing. She wore a white skirt, white gloves, knee-length cotton socks. Her tiny red purse on its gold-colored chain was small enough to be a doll’s. She couldn’t have been more than six years old.

  All that he saw in a glance, till the crowd closed like seawater around her. He moved through the throng till he could get another glimpse of her.

  The pink ribbons on her hat fluttered nervously behind her as she turned her head. It came to him with astonishing certainty that she was frightened, perhaps lost, in need of help. His help.

  He was eight years old. Old enough to help.

  The opera was whispering to him: Go ahead.

  He made sure the brass buttons of his navy blue school blazer were buttoned. He moved a little to the right, then to the left, as though he were strolling nowhere in particular. Just as he was about to pass her, she raised her head.

  For an instant her eyes, strangely sad and gentle, looked directly into his. A pain like none he had ever felt before squeezed his heart. She smiled at him. He was standing in front of her.

  “Hello,” he said. He felt he should be singing, not speaking.

  She answered softly, “Hello.”

  It was as though they already knew one another. Something surged out of him. He stepped toward her, kissed her swiftly on the forehead. It was a kiss out of a fairy tale; a kiss out of opera.

  She pulled back, giving him a tiny grin.

  “Ariana—there you are!” This from a woman in black, seizing the girl’s hand, dragging her away toward the stairway that led up to the balconies.