There was in fact hardly any dialogue in Medea and Maria sings only once—a Greek lullaby to her son. During her last month in Paris she could hardly get up before midday; in Goreme she was up at dawn. She arrived on the set to be dressed and made up before anyone expected her, always carrying a little transistor tuned to some soap opera or other. Piero Tosi, who had designed her costumes, remembers how “she’d follow every word with incredible concentration, participating in the action muttering, ‘What’s that? What did he say? Go! Go!’—all in Veronese dialect. She gets so involved with whatever she’s doing, even if it’s only some trivial broadcast.”
She was almost obsessively involved with Medea. In one scene, she was being taken in long shot, and had to run frantically barefoot on a dry riverbed. She was wearing a heavy gown with huge ropes of pagan jewels, the sun was beating down and she was running, running until she fainted and collapsed on the mud. Pasolini and the entire crew ran toward her, and as she came back to consciousness her first words were, “Please forgive me! I’m so stupid. I shouldn’t have done that. It’s cost everyone so much time and money.” Maria, the professional, could not bear to be the one slowing things down. She was full of humility about her new venture, constantly seeking advice, confirmation, reassurance. “Tell me, is this gesture too grand? Too operatic? I know the rhythm of my own movements, but when the camera is moving as well.”
Pasolini, fascinated by her face, kept wanting to shoot her in close-up. It was the one thing that made Maria uncomfortable. She would beg him: “Please shoot from far away, for me!” For the final moments of the film, she refused the stand-in who was available: “Here,” remembers Piero Tosi, “Maria reached the apex of her performance. Medea must build a great fire, and holding the bodies of her dead sons, perish in the flames while defying their faithless father. It was very dangerous, because she had to stand on a high wooden platform with flames soaring before her. It was a sacred ritual and Maria, blind as she was, had to hurl herself into the holocaust, or at least seem to do so for the camera’s eye. Three times she acted out the scene, and during the last take she nearly fell right into the inferno. For Maria, it could have been done no other way.” When she was not filming, she was looking at the rushes again and again. Rossellini remembers getting bored going through the same rushes: “I kept telling her, ‘Come on, Maria, let’s go and have dinner, or let’s go to sleep.’ But she would not budge.”
“Didn’t you find it exhausting to have to shoot the same scene many times?” they asked Maria at the end of July, when the shooting had moved to Italy. “No, it’s futility that exhausts me, not work. . . . There will be a great void when it’s all over.” There was a void, but something had happened during these two months of living with Medea and Pasolini that nobody could take away from her. She had reached a deeper understanding of what the last nine years had meant and a quieter acceptance of the way they had ended. She had always called herself a fatalist, and often her fatalism implied resignation, a self-destructive giving up on life. But for the moment, the fatalism was of a different kind: an accepting trust that the patterns, large and small, of every aspect of her life, had some definite, however obscure, meaning. Her relationship with Pasolini, who, through both his poetry and his films, had always sought the meaning and the connections beneath the surface, encouraged this trust.
Their friendship seemed to deepen in the months after the shooting, when Pasolini was editing Medea and recording the folk songs and Greek Orthodox music for the background to the film. His editing, though, was hardly of service to Maria. His predilection for the gory and the monstrous meant that at times he made Maria look like Jimmy Durante. Nadia, who saw all the rushes with Pasolini, was appalled at the number of shots of sheer beauty that ended on the cutting-room floor. Maria went to Rome herself in December 1969 to look at the rushes, but, awed by Pasolini’s intellect and trusting his artistic judgment, she said nothing. At the time, she was feeling unusually full of optimism and goodwill. She rang Nadia when she arrived in Rome to arrange to see her: “You can’t come anywhere near me,” said Nadia; “I am in bed with terrible flu.” Ten minutes later Maria was puffing up Nadia’s stairs, with armfuls of the latest books and magazines. And when other friends arrived to visit the patient, Maria opened the door and, in high spirits, introduced herself as the maid. They looked rather puzzled, with that expression that says “Haven’t we seen you somewhere before?” but no one called her bluff.
In the same mood of adventure, Maria left with Pasolini for Argentina to present Medea at the Festival of Mar del Plata. Then on January 28, 1970, again accompanied by Pasolini, she arrived at L’Opéra for a first night of which she was doubly the star—on the screen and in the audience. The premiere of Pasolini’s Medea, in the presence of Madame Pompidou, was one of the most dazzling galas of Maria’s career. The beau monde was there in force. A box for four had been reserved by Aristotle Onassis, but on the day itself, the reservation was canceled; his wife was not going to be in Paris in time. Nonetheless, he was very much present in Maria’s thoughts. She wanted a triumph that would erase the defeats of the past, a triumph that would convince him and the world—but him most importantly—that the past was done and that this was not merely a new beginning, but a new and glorious one. It was not a triumph; it was at best a succès d’estime. The gala audience applauded politely and went to dinner. It soon became clear that commercially the film was going to be a failure; its future lay in art cinemas and film clubs. Maria, who had reached millions through the elitist medium of opera, was going to reach only thousands through the popular medium of film.
In her present fragile state, anything less than a complete success would be a failure for Maria. And this is precisely what Medea was. The hopes of the last few months had been dashed, and she felt let down, drained, like a magnet that had lost its charge. Whenever she tried to piece together the splinters of her broken life, she found that the image of Aristo was still glued to them. The picture she presented to the world was very different. “Everything is peaceful with me,” she wrote to her friend Dorle Soria. “I’m working, practising and enjoying life. As for Daddy O, what is over is over, Sagittarians are like that . . .” Bravado was increasingly important as the fears it silenced became louder and more insistent: “You mustn’t go around making a spectacle of your weaknesses. You have to keep your dignity.”
In fact Onassis was back in her life—if, that is, he had ever left it. The day after his wedding, he left his bride honeymooning alone on Skorpios and flew to Athens for a meeting with the head of the Greek junta, George Papadopoulos, over Project Omega, a $400-million, ten-year investment project, the biggest in Greek history. “On that day,” said one of his associates, “Onassis was the Sun King. He had everything.”
A few days later, he flew triumphantly to Athens again, to launch Omega at a press conference. Shortly afterward, Jackie flew to New York and Onassis resumed his old life. It began with a phone call to Maria. “Madame n’est pas içi,” was Bruna’s rehearsed reply. “No, Madame has not told us when she will be back.” The phone call was followed by flowers, by more phone calls, by more flowers. And always: “Non, Madame n’est pas içi.” It was a familiar game, and he was a master at it. He knew that with the barrier of his marriage it was going to be much harder than before, but he also knew that it was only a matter of time and ingenuity before Maria opened her door and her life to him again. He was not short of either ingenuity or time and, as he longed to see her, he was prepared to take risks. He knew his prey well. He knew that Maria would do anything to protect her “dignity,” to avoid making a “spectacle” of herself, so he chose the quickest route—whistling under Maria’s window at 36 Avenue Georges Mandel. When this failed, he started calling “Maria, Maria”; and when this failed, he threatened to drive his car straight through the front door.
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 Ma
ria’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 ski
es 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.
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