Maria Callas: The Woman Behind the Legend (49 page)

That summer on Skorpios she ached for a new beginning, with no more struggle and no more torment. “Love is a single thing,” she was to say three years later. “You love, you worship and you honor, they go together. You can’t love in a different manner. They say, oh, well, I’m attracted and all that. No. You love, then you worship, then you honor.” It could have been a line from any one of her heroines who loved totally, heedlessly, obsessively. It nearly
was
Lucia’s: “My hopes, my life, I pledged to this one heart.”

But that summer was their worst time together. Onassis, a master of the art of pleasing women, was no less a master of the art of crushing them. And there was something in Maria’s way of treating him like a sultan or a god that brought out the despot in him. Underneath the easy sophistication of the café society habitué (and not that far below the surface), Onassis had retained all the primitive male impulses of the old-fashioned Greek. Ingse Dedichen, the woman he nearly married during the Second World War, remembers the first time he beat her up, leaving her “like a boxer who has just lost a fight.” “Every Greek,” he told her afterward, “and there are no exceptions, beats his wife. It’s good for them. It keeps them in line.” There is no evidence that he ever beat Maria, but all the suppressed violence in him came out in the way he treated her, especially in front of his children. He would walk ahead with them, leaving her behind, and he belittled her constantly: “What are you? Nothing. You just have a whistle in your throat that no longer works.”

At the beginning of their relationship it had been just the occasional jibe, but in the summer of 1965 it suddenly became unremitting, and, for many of Maria’s friends, unbearable to watch. Zeffirelli was one of them. One day on Skorpios he took Onassis aside: “Listen, Aristo,” he said to him, “I don’t know the details of your private relationship, but it is very distressing to people who love Maria to see her treated like this.” It had no effect, of course, and Zeffirelli found himself resisting their invitations more and more, simply because he felt powerless to protect her either from Onassis or from herself. Maggie van Zuylen, on the other hand, tried to make Maria see everything as part of life. “Of course he loves you. That’s why he yells and abuses you and puts you down. If he didn’t love you he would just ignore you and be totally indifferent to you.” And there were times in their relationship when Maria so desperately needed to clutch at something that even these straws of Maggie’s were better than nothing.

Throughout this summer, they were hardly ever alone. Ari was constantly surrounded by a retinue of aides and managers—all of them men, all of them in a hurry, and most of them intent on raising a barrier impenetrable to mere women, even celebrated opera stars. There was much of the boy hero in Onassis. And as the feelings he shared with Maria, especially over the past year, had become deeper and more intimate, the boy hero had become frightened. Maria was so much more real than Tina or his various mistresses that he feared she might draw him into a true and complete relationship from which he could not run away. So he turned against her and clung to his wandering masculinity even more fiercely than before, almost challenging her to make him give it up. Maria could see that she loved a man suffering from almost pathological restlessness and, despite his joviality, from chronic dissatisfaction; she could see that while she wanted a family, he wanted the world. She could even see that under the tide of his will, her own was draining away. But perhaps the test of great passion is not that it is blind but that it survives even when those in its grip can see clearly. She had given her power over to him, and he, now feeling the stronger of the two, dictated the terms of their relationship.

After her last
Tosca
, there was nothing that really mattered in her life except Aristo, although there was, right to the end, much talk about the many projects that she was considering with her mind but rarely with her heart. For the time being, the film of
Tosca
was the project most likely to materialize. Zeffirelli was going to direct it, and he had great dreams for Maria: “She will immediately impose herself as what the French call a
monstre sacré
, she will be the new Greta Garbo.” Maria’s friends, headed by Vergottis, were totally in favor of the project. In fact Vergottis was in touch with Beta Films, the German producers, and together with Sander Gorlinsky, who was negotiating on Maria’s behalf, he had been discussing terms and conditions with them. “I went a couple of times to the island that summer,” Zeffirelli remembers, “and could not believe the way Onassis manipulated her mind and unleashed her greed. At one moment she asked for twenty-five percent of the gross plus about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for appearing in it.”

In August, Maria interrupted her holiday to go to London to be at Vergottis’ side following the death of his brother. Once again they talked of the project. Finally a compromise was reached and Maria, Gorlinsky, Vergottis and the German producers all met in Monte Carlo to complete the arrangements. Zeffirelli had agreed, Gobbi had agreed, the studio had been booked and at the Monte Carlo meeting the final details were ironed out. All that was needed was Maria’s signature on the contract. She asked to take it with her to show it to Ari.

Two weeks later, Gorlinsky received a call at his office from Maria on the
Christina
. Could he, together with Onassis’ lawyer, leave London immediately and come to Skorpios, where the
Christina
was anchored, to discuss the contract? A car rushed them to London airport where the Olympic Airways flight to Crete was held up until they arrived. In Crete, a private plane was waiting to fly them to Skorpios. Right from the start, their talks turned into legalistic wrangling. Quibble after quibble followed, until Onassis had torn the contract to pieces. When the producers arrived a couple of days later, the discussions became even more fraught with tension. It was instantly obvious to all, who dominated the meetings; so much so that when, at one point, Maria asked a question, Onassis cut her off: “Shut up! Don’t interfere, you know nothing about these things. You are nothing but a nightclub singer.” “I was hoping,” remembers Gorlinsky, “that she would pick up the nearest bottle and throw it at him, but no, she just got up and walked out. She was totally under his thumb.”

“We are going to make the film on our own,” Onassis finally said to Gorlinsky. “You find out how much they want to sell the rights for, and you become the producer.” When Beta Films eventually realized that in no circumstances would Onassis let Maria make the film with them, they agreed to sell their rights. Gorlinsky was dispatched to Rome, with a suite booked at the Grand Hotel and the full resources of the Onassis offices at his disposal, to negotiate the hand-over and start on the film. Gorlinsky is now convinced that Onassis never intended to buy the film rights or let Maria make the film. Apart from sabotaging the negotiations with Beta Films, he reinforced all Maria’s own doubts and fears about launching into something new. He wanted a slave—and a new career is not conducive to slavery.

Two weeks after Gorlinsky had called his wife in London to ask her to make preparations to go to Rome for the film production, the whole thing had collapsed, and in October, Maria announced publicly that she was withdrawing from
Tosca
. Vergottis telephoned her and implored her to reconsider. She was, he told her, making a big mistake, depriving both herself and the world of art of something very important. Maria, sounding like Onassis’ mouthpiece, began talking about crooked producers who could not be trusted or relied on, and it was clear that nothing Vergottis could say was going to move her. He felt that she had not even been listening. He lost his temper and began accusing her of having given up everything, including her judgment, for “that man” who had now torpedoed her chance to make the film. It was Maria’s turn to flare up. It is impossible to discover exactly what she said but it was abusive and hurtful, and one thing is certain—Vergottis never forgave her. It did not take her long to realize that she had gone too far. She sat down and wrote him a letter, explaining, asking him to understand. He did not reply, nor did he understand.

A few months before their quarrel, Maria had had dinner alone with Vergottis. He had tried to persuade her that it would be much more secure for her if, instead of owning twenty-five of the hundred shares in
Artemision II
, she were to invest the money as a loan to the company at six and a half percent interest. The ship had developed some technical problems and Vergottis had convinced himself, and was trying to convince Maria, that it was “unlucky”; so he told her that it was too risky for her to own shares in it. Maria agreed with the loan arrangement on the understanding that she could at any point convert the loan into shares. Meanwhile, Onassis had given her twenty-six percent of his share, the other twenty-four percent going to his nephew.

In November 1965, Maria asked for her loan to be converted to shares. Vergottis replied that there was no option giving her the right to ask for such conversion. Then Onassis, in one of his favorite roles as the traditional knight in shining armor, went into action. He demanded that Vergottis transfer to Maria twenty-five shares in the company owning the ship. Vergottis refused and when, soon afterward, they met accidentally at Claridge’s, their meeting flared up almost instantly into an argument at the end of which Vergottis grabbed a bottle of whiskey from the table and yelled at Onassis, “Get out of here or I’ll throw it at you!” His last word, shortly after that, was that if Maria and Onassis dared to go to court over the shares, they would be faced with a great deal of scandal both in court and in the press. Onassis flew into a colossal rage, branded his friend of thirty years a blackmailer and determined that, scandal or no scandal, they
would
take action.

It was more than a year before the case got to court. When it did, Vergottis’ counsel described how his client, after his telephone conversation with Maria over the
Tosca
film, “there and then underwent a complete change of heart about her.” Whatever other feelings may have been there, part of his change of heart was undoubtedly his bitterness over Maria’s total surrender to Onassis. Vergottis’ love for her and his devotion over the last six years had been a complex and inflammable mixture of paternal and other feelings. The realization, after the
Tosca
film row and her angry words, that he could not even be friends with her without their friendship being darkened by Onassis’ shadow, lit the fuse. So by the beginning of 1966, from the small gallery of Maria’s really intimate friends a very important one was missing.

Something very important was missing from Onassis’ life as well. Since 1953 he had been the most powerful man in Monte Carlo. He called Monaco “my headquarters of convenience,” but there was much more emotion in his connection with it, and in the sense of power he derived from it, than the description implied. In 1964 Prince Rainier began the process of deposing him; by 1966 the State of Monaco had created 600,000 new shares in the company in which Onassis had the controlling interest and which in turn effectively controlled all Monaco’s activities, and had also offered to buy any shares that the existing shareholders wanted to sell at the market rate. Onassis appealed and lost. He received a check for $10 million for his shares and, humiliated, left Monte Carlo, not to return until the month before he died. Monaco had been part of his glory. What was now to replace it?

For over ten years Onassis had believed Monaco was his for life. The
Christina
was anchored in the prime berth and the ostentatiously opulent Salle Empire, the dining room of the Hôtel de Paris, had almost become an extension of his office. “He was in heaven every time he came into the Salle Empire,” remembered one of his directors. “It was like a diamond that belonged to him.” So when Rainier decided to exercise his authority, the open confrontations and the secret intrigues that followed totally absorbed Onassis; much more was at stake than a few million dollars. Maria lived the ups and downs with him. He would talk to her about what had happened, marching up and down hurling sarcasms and abuse at Rainier and his court. He moved from rage to withdrawn melancholy with a rapidity that continued to astonish Maria even after she had become used to it. If it was not Rainier and Monte Carlo, there was always something else. Whether in Paris, on the
Christina
or on Skorpios, Maria, awed and expectant, awaited Aristo’s next mood. Was he angry, or jovial, or wistful? As she knew very well by now, how he felt in himself determined how he behaved with her. Self-tortured and torturing, Aristo would slip from anguish to exhilaration, drawing her down or lifting her up with him.

It was in his moods of exhilaration that he would talk of marriage—and then the subject would be forgotten until the next time. At the beginning of April 1966, Maria announced her decision to renounce her American citizenship. “After seven years,” she said, “of struggling with divorce proceedings my lawyers discovered that by taking Greek nationality my marriage becomes simply nonexistent throughout the world—except in Italy.” According to a Greek law passed in 1946, three years before Maria married Meneghini, no marriage of a Greek citizen was valid unless the wedding had taken place in a Greek Orthodox church. So, as Maria said with a certain glee, her marriage was effectively “nonexistent.” Not, however, according to Meneghini: “As far as I am concerned Maria will always be
my
wife,” was his comment. But much more interesting to the press, the public and for that matter Maria was what the other man had to say. “All along,” was Onassis’ answer to
the
question, “we have explained that we are very close, good friends. This new event changes nothing. Of course, I’m very happy that her seven years of struggle have ended so well. It is wonderful for her to be a Signorina again.” His statement would have been dripping with irony even without the sting in the tail, but then Onassis could never resist the opportunity for a verbal thrust.