Maria Callas: The Woman Behind the Legend (54 page)

Maggie van Zuylen had prepared the way. She had completely taken Maria’s side and was furious with Onassis, but being a supreme realist and knowing Maria’s misery, she had begun the long process of convincing her that nothing more could be lost by seeing him. Seeing him was by no means forgiving him, especially as she could hardly avoid being reminded of the existence of the new Mrs. Onassis, of her first Christmas on the
Christina
, of her legendary shopping sprees, of Easter with Rose Kennedy, of Jackie’s latest present from her husband, a set of earrings worth $300,000, or a diamond necklace and bracelet worth no one knew quite how much. All Onassis could hold against Maria was her first outburst when asked for a comment after his wedding: “She did well, Jackie, to give a grandfather to her children. Ari is as beautiful as Croesus.” He reminded her of it at their first reunion, a quiet dinner at Maggie van Zuylen’s home immediately after his first Christmas with Jackie. The first time Ari went to dinner at her apartment, Maria made sure they were not alone: Nadia Stancioff and Francesco Chiarini, Hélène Rochas, of the French perfume family, and the man in her life, Kim d’Astainville, were hastily invited. The house was filled with flowers and all was impeccably arranged for his arrival. Maria phoned Chiarini to ask him to play host and sit opposite her at the head of the table; then she phoned him again to tell him that she would, after all, ask Ari to sit there. “You do what you want, Maria,” Chiarini said, “but I don’t think you are right. Ari is now a married man and it would be much more correct to put him on your right.” She did, but throughout the evening she continued to worry. “She was behaving like a nervous teenager,” remembers Nadia, “picking the dogs up, putting the dogs down, opening and closing the windows, arranging and rearranging the flowers. At one point, she started showing Onassis the albums of photographs from the shooting of
Medea
, and prodding me to tell him stories from the filming: ‘Nadia, tell Aristo about what happened that morning in Goreme, or that afternoon in Aleppo, or that time in Grado,’ and so forth, and so forth. It was as if she wanted to show him that she could still do things, that life could go on without him.”

As he was once again becoming a regular feature of her life, forgiving him came more easily. What made it easier still was the disenchantment that very soon began to creep into Aristo’s marriage. Jackie had, from the beginning, been his Narcissus pool; he could gaze at her and be flattered. But he was soon to discover that he could not sustain himself emotionally on that alone, nor on the surface affection that he and Jackie shared. At first Onassis enjoyed indulging the child-wife he had acquired, and protecting her from the Kennedys, the paparazzi, the world. “Jackie is a little bird that needs its freedom as well as its security,” he said once, “and she gets both from me. She can do exactly as she pleases—visit international fashion shows and travel and go out with friends to the theater or any place. And I, of course, will do exactly as I please. I never question her and she never questions me.” Gradually, however, as Jackie spent an estimated $1.5 million in the first year of her marriage, removed his favorite allegorical friezes from the
Christina
and completely, extravagantly and by no means always to his taste, redecorated the Skorpios house, Onassis began to feel invaded and used. He had once said that “if women didn’t exist all the money in the world would have no meaning,” but there was something compulsive, almost manic, about Jackie’s spending. And the more he felt used by Jackie, the more he felt loved by Maria.

The turning point came in February 1970, when all the letters that Jackie had written to her former escort, Roswell Gilpatric, fell into the hands of an autograph dealer and were published around the world before they were returned to Gilpatric under the terms of a court order. There was one letter among them, written by Jackie from the
Christina
during her honeymoon, that raised a massive bruise on Ari’s ego:

Dearest Ros

I would have told you before I left—but then everything happened so much more quickly than I’d planned. I saw somewhere what you had said and I was very touched—dear Ros—I hope you know all you were and are and will ever be to me—

With my love,

Jackie

The day after the publication of the collection of letters, Gilpatric’s wife sued for divorce. Onassis was only affected by that one letter, but the blow to his Greek manhood was enormous and totally disproportionate to the actual content of the letter. He feared so deeply any real or potential social humiliation that a large part of his life—not least his marriage to Jackie—was lived in an attempt to “show” the world, before the world had had a chance to “show” him. Now the world that he had intended to dazzle and to some extent
had
dazzled with his marriage was quietly laughing behind his back: “My God,” he was confessing to his intimates, “what a fool I have made of myself.”

Jackie called to apologize and explain. He was a model of sophisticated,
homme du monde
understanding. Not long after that, he took his revenge. He spent four successive evenings with Maria and was seen leaving Georges Mandel at one o’clock in the morning. On the evening of May 21, Maria and he were photographed radiantly smiling at Maxim’s. They were, it is true, chaperoned by Maggie, but it was too much for Jackie—which is precisely what it was intended to be. She called Ari from New York and warned him that she was leaving immediately for Paris. She was not met at the airport, but the same night, at the same restaurant, at the same table where Ari and Maria had dined with Maggie van Zuylen, Ari and Jackie dined alone. Neither of them seemed in a mood to enjoy the evening. There were long pauses and closed faces, but, after all, this was not a private dinner: Jackie was making a public statement to the world and to Maria.

Maria heard it all too clearly. She knew that Aristo had opened his heart to her as to no one else. He had complained about Jackie, he had raged against Jackie, he had defied Jackie by appearing with Maria at Maxim’s. But when Jackie instantly demanded a symbolic replay of his dinner with Maria, Aristo did what Jackie wanted. From Maxim’s they went to Régine’s where they stayed until two thirty in the morning.

For Maria their four nights together culminating in their first public appearance since his wedding, and this at their favorite old haunt, had been much more than an exercise in nostalgia. That brief interlude sang with a joy she had almost forgotten. She felt alive again, and after nearly two years of being dignified, self-possessed, even cheerful, she could experience happiness, something she thought she had lost forever. The joy was real, the life flowing through her was real, and on the basis of these few happy days she began to build her fantasies about the future. How extravagant they were we do not know. What we do know is that the day after Ari’s tête-à-tête dinner with Jackie at Maxim’s, the fantasies were in ruins. Two days later, on Wednesday, May 25, Giulini and his wife went to dinner with Maria at Georges Mandel. They found her worried, anxious and full of gnawing fears. “Please stay for a while,” she said, when they were getting ready to leave. “Don’t leave me alone. Please stay.” They did finally leave, both of them very perturbed about her emotional state. The next morning, Marcella Giulini called to find out how she was. She had been taken to the American Hospital.

At eight fifty that same morning, Edgar Schneider had announced on Radio Luxembourg: “Maria Callas has attempted to commit suicide by taking an overdose of barbiturates. She has been urgently admitted to the American Hospital at Neuilly.” Maria had been taken there at seven o’clock in the morning. But had she tried to take her life? Or was she at the American Hospital, as the official story from Georges Mandel had it, for her routine checkup, only earlier than usual?

Neither the official nor the sensational version was accurate. She was clearly not there at seven o’clock in the morning for a routine checkup, but neither had she attempted to commit suicide, at any rate with the conscious decision the assertion implied. In the previous three days, feeling once again betrayed, once again used, a rope in Onassis’ tug-o’-war with his wife, an instrument in the service of his damaged pride, she had begun to feel her life draining away. A web of futility—the emotion she dreaded more than any other—had spun itself around her. It was the same pattern she had described to John Ardoin: “My hopes are built to the skies and then banged down. Oh, no. I’ve had enough of these up and downs. I’d rather stay down all the time.” She had, however temporarily, given up on life, and giving up on life is not such a long way from consciously taking it. She longed for sleep but it eluded her. The sinus trouble that had plagued her all her life had come back and at times she felt as though she could not even breathe. She took more barbiturates to find sleep and more tranquilizers to find peace. By the time the morning of May 26 dawned, she was so dazed that she was barely conscious.

By the middle of the afternoon she had left the American Hospital. But the news went on traveling. “I’ve never received so many flowers without singing,” she said. The phone did not stop ringing. Reporters and well-wishers crowded outside Georges Mandel. The news of her attempted suicide had struck a deep chord with the public, far beyond the fascination of the sensational. “It’s because of Onassis,” was the universal conclusion. And everybody who had ever been jilted, rejected, abandoned for someone else identified with her in a way they would never have identified had she been just another rich and famous malcontent.

Back at Georges Mandel, Maria, whose will to live was still stronger than her will to die, was in a fighting mood: “All this anxiety about me is very touching, but at the same time it’s an invasion both of my private and my professional life.” After a few days, when the weekly paper
Noir et Blanc
repeated Edgar Schneider’s claim, Maria asked her lawyer, Yves Cournot, to sue both
Noir et Blanc
and Radio Luxembourg. On November 4 she won the case and was awarded 20,000 francs in damages.

Meanwhile she had retreated behind the armor of her legend. And she built the fortifications around her even higher than before. “The less you give, the less you’re hurt,” she said. “Even if you meet something that’s good you don’t want it because you are so afraid. So even that is spoiled. You’re not open-minded, you’re not confident.” It seemed so logical: she had been hurt by people, by things outside herself; it must be because she was not sufficiently protected. Yet the more she cut herself off from life, the more frightening became the chill creeping over her world. “It is very difficult to be friends with a star,” she said once. Frightened of being used, terrified of being hurt, she would hold back, always defensive, warding people off.

She was still trying to discern the pattern that her life was to take. For the time being, the pattern emerging was made up of ceremony and protocol: Maria, standing next to Jacques Baumel, the French secretary of state, cutting the ribbon inaugurating the Nocturnes du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, with the Republican Guard on horseback; Maria in Moscow, the official guest of Madame Furtseva, the Soviet minister of culture, judging the finals of the Tchaikovsky Competition; Maria at the opening night of the season in Milan, sitting resplendent next to Ghiringhelli in his box—still the unchallenged Queen of La Scala. At the beginning of the second intermission, the audience suddenly broke into spontaneous applause punctuated by cries of “
Ritorna Maria
.” It was a passionate explosion for a woman whose every performance had had the hallmark of passion and who was now, visibly moved, acknowledging her public’s gratitude for what she had given them and their longing to have her back.

In between ceremonial appearances she had, for the first time since Aristo’s marriage, come back to Greece to stay with Perry Embiricos at Tragonisi, his private island in the Aegean. Tragonisi belonged to the Petalii group of islands on which various members of the Embiricos shipping family were scattered. Maria had met Perry through Onassis early on in their relationship. Now in his fifties, never married and a great music lover, Perry Embiricos spent a large part of the year on the island. It was kept in perfect order, with its beautiful main house, a ravishing garden and two cottages for his guests. Pasolini joined them for a few days, as did Constantine Gratsos and his wife Anastasia. Gratsos had been a friend of Aristo since the Argentinian days and his partner in the whaling business. He and Anastasia were the two people from Onassis’ immediate entourage who stayed closest to Maria after the breakup. Maria had also invited Nadia Stancioff. “I can’t afford it right now,” Nadia had said, whereupon Maria sent her a ticket to Athens and was waiting for her at the airport so that they could fly by helicopter to Tragonisi. They spent hours lying on the beach, talking. “She seemed obsessed by death at the time,” Nadia remembers. “In an instinctive, almost primitive, way, she believed in reincarnation. ‘I wonder what I’ll be when I come back,’ she said once. ‘I don’t want to be buried,’ she told me at another time: ‘I want to be burned, I don’t want to become a worm.’ Like many Greeks she was superstitious about preparing a will, as if writing things down brought bad luck.”

They all met at mealtimes, and after dinner they would play cards or listen to music; but most of Maria’s day was spent in the water, swimming, fishing underwater and coming up with shells, strangely shaped stones, the odd piece of antiquity like an urn and once even a small fish. She had a hard, peasant skin that tanned marvelously, and with her tan and her long hair pulled straight back, she looked confident, strong and free. She may have hated all sports, and even disliked walking, but she was a passionate swimmer. The sea was always a joy for Maria, bringing out the child in her, and with it all her optimism.

In that expansive mood, on her name day, August 15, she received a surprise visit. Onassis flew in by helicopter, kissed her on the lips under her big beach umbrella, put a pair of hundred-year-old earrings on her ears, kissed Djedda, the poodle he had given her, was photographed doing all these things and flew out again. All was once again forgiven. The Greek bearing kisses and gifts had wiped his record clean—until the next time. Maria was becoming more and more resigned to the fact that their relationship, however unsatisfying and even humiliating to her, still remained the most important thing in her life. So although many hopes had died, others still flickered, and there was in any case the precious knowledge, which time only confirmed, that she was his greatest friend. Whatever happened, she would be there; and whatever happened, and many things did, she was.