Little Birds (Divine Songbird)

True story about Maria Callas attempting to befriend Alexander and Christina Onassis just before Christmas 1960. She arranges an afternoon tea, but her efforts are in vain.

December 1960

"The Christina", Monte Carlo

 

  As soon as Aristo had announced that Alexander and Christina would be staying on board "The Christina" for Christmas. Maria had started to plan for them. She knew what it was like to be the child of warring parents, and although she hotly defended her position as their fathers mistress as "Tina wanted to divorce Aristo anyway", she still felt sorry for the children. She had been a child when her parents were estranged, (her mother taking her and her sister back to Greece), and an adult when they divorced, she had refused to speak to her stepmother and all but cut her own father off. Maria hadn't once believed in divorce, and refused to speak to people who did. It struck her as funny as to how when these things occurred to one’s own self; things were no longer so black and white or so easy to judge others by.

So, how was she to welcome the children? Maria didn't want them to think she was cold and tyrannical and had broken the family up, quite the opposite; she wanted them to think she was kind and considerate and not the monster their mother, the press and Elsa Maxwell all made her out to be. The children must feel welcome and like nothing had changed, and so Maria planned an afternoon tea and set about investigating what they did and didn't like.

  Aristo was hopeless at knowing anything about his children; all he could say was that Alex liked machinery (Maria was not about to make him a present of a speedboat which she had learned he had already trashed two of, and he was only about eleven) and Christina liked dolls, but only as long as they were dressed by Dior, anything less wouldn't do. Maria was not going to go down that route, and she doubted that at eight or nine years old, Christina still played with dolls. Then again she didn't know; her mother hadn't allowed the budding Opera diva such frivolities in childhood. No, her toys had been the piano, the gramophone and the opera score. There had been no dolls, no teddy bears, no skipping ropes, and no other children where ever invited to the apartment and Maria was never allowed out to play. Even at recess her mother would come to take her home.

 

  A few weeks before the arrival of the children, Maria took Aristo's plane to Paris, and armed with her lover’s charge account, she set out to shop for his children - but what would they want? Clothes were always good, and Maria had ascertained from Christina's governess and Alexander's tutor, what sizes the children where, and so she bought them a cashmere jumper each. If only she could remember what Tina had said about them, but try as she might, Maria couldn't remember Tina saying anything ever about her children, except for when they were in her presence and then Alexander was the "angel" who could do no wrong, and Christina was criticised about everything. Maria knew what that was like from bitter experience with her own mother, and resolved to try harder with Christina.

 

  "Will "The Singer" be there?" Alexander asked the crewman who was escorting himself and his sister to the ship.

"Yes, Madam Callas is aboard"

Angry at confirmation of what he had suspected, Alexander angrily kicked the seat in front of him and slumped down in a sulk. As a small child he had thrown violent temper tantrums, but now that he was older he was beginning to realise that there were other ways of either getting attention or revenge. Last year he had smashed all the windows at his mother’s New York home, Sutton Place, when his father had told him that she was having an affair.   

Christina looked away; her dark eyes filling with tears. She was looking forward to seeing her father, but this was mummy’s ship. “The Singer” was trying to take her place.  

"I won't speak politely to her." Alexander vowed. "Not one word. He can do what he wants to me. I don't care!"

Christina, a nervous child made worse by her father’s frightening rages, said nothing but sat with her hands in her lap looking at the floor. She slid out of the car like a ghost when the door was opened, and followed her brother up the walkway to the deck where her father and Madam Callas awaited them. Walking up she remembered vividly the day when Tina had taken them away from their father. She had been woken up and told that they were leaving; a bag was quickly packed for her while she was hustled up onto deck where her mother was. Tina was taking passports from the captain, and as soon as she saw Christina she told her to get into the launch. Christina didn't see Alexander around anywhere, or her father, but there was the sound of his plane coming closer.

"Get into the launch Christina!" Tina said.

"Where...where am I going?"

"We're going to stay with Grandma and Grandpa Livanos"

Turning to the crewman who was manning the launch, Tina told him to go quickly and he pulled away from the ship.

Christina recalled seeing the beautiful face of the mother who had so little time for her as she launch lurched away. Tina turned away from the railings and temporarily disappeared.

The seven year old girl broke down and wept. She had no idea what was going on, and she was scared and knew that something was horribly wrong. From that moment on, she couldn't bear to be alone; someone always had to be with her, even her hated governess. She remembered joining Alexander and his governor on the dock, and then their mother arrived soon after. They got into a waiting car and drove to the airport. Tina offered her children no words of reassurance, only saying that they were going to stay with their maternal grandparents for a while and Christina would enrol in school in Paris, while Alexander would return to Switzerland. Yet another change for the child. Tina seemed to be nervous, always looking at the sky or at passing cars, she jumped whenever she heard a siren and traffic lights caused her to look pale, grip her bag and breathe heavily. Then they were marched through the airport at top speed, and onto a waiting plane. Only when they were safely behind the doors of the Livanos residence, did Tina lose her composure and break down to her father, begging him for permission to end her marriage with Ari. That's when the children first heard the words "divorce" and "Callas". Too young to understand what a divorce was, Christina asked Alexander who said that it basically meant that their parents didn't want to be together anymore and it was all the fault of "The Singer" who had destroyed their family, taken their father away and made their mother cry. From that night and for a year or so, Christina cried herself to sleep.

 

"Alex!" Ari said expansively to the boy.

Alex looked around to see if there were any cameras around; usually his father made a display of being the good father when there were reporters in wait while in private ignoring his children for days on ehd. One of his favourite sayings, to anyone who would listen, was that his father needed the flash of a photographer's camera going off in his face in order to set himself up for the day.

"Dad" Alexander said stiffly as his father embraced him and ruffled his hair.

"Hello Alexander" Maria said in a voice he found drawling, deep and mixed with a hint of Italian, Greek and New York all fighting for supremacy.

Alexander fixed her with a cold stare his eyes turning almost black. He wished they would burn into her.

Maria nervously swept a strand of hair behind her ear.

"Now," Ari was saying to Christina, "don't we look pretty today?"

Christina said nothing.

"Children, I have prepared a wonderful surprise for you" Maria said.

Alexander looked at Christina, who looked at the floor.

"I thought we would have tea and cakes in the parlour, while you opened your Christmas presents. I know it’s not Christmas yet, but I thought you would like them early" 

 

There were about eight presents in the parlour; four for Christina, and four for Alexander, all neatly wrapped, but the children hardly noticed. They also hardly noticed the cakes that had been laid out in their honour. Maria had gone to the trouble of finding out what their favourite delicacies were, and either she had them flown in, or the chef had made them on-board. Christina sat with her hands in her lap staring at the floor, and Alexander scowled. He took a tiny nibble of his favourite, and then thrust it aside as if Maria had personally baked poison into it. 

The atmosphere in the room was unpleasant. It was even worse than how it had been towards the end of the infamous cruise when the passengers had tried to pretend that nothing was going on.

Aristo attempted to lighten it by asking a generic question.

"So, how was your trip Christina?"

Christina said nothing. She seemed to have slipped into her own little world.

"Christina?" her father said.

She took no notice.

“Christina, why don’t you answer me?”

Maria nervously put down her teacup.

"Don't you want to open your presents?" she asked changing the subject.

Alexander glared.

"I don't mind if you don't" she said. "There will be more when Christmas comes round."

"Alexander? Christina?" Aristo said angrily. "Aren't you going to say anything?"

"No" Alexander said boldly. "I have nothing to say, what about you Chrissie? Do you have anything to say?"

Christina said nothing but gazed at the floor.

"Well, at least try some of the cakes" Maria said. "I know you like Macaron, Alex."

"I'm not hungry" Alexander said looking at his father as it was he who had asked the question.

"Christina? How about you? Would you like one?" Maria said hurriedly. "Why don't you have some Éclair au chocolat et vanille? They are just as you like them, all the way from Paris?"

Alexander sneered; did she really think that impressed them? The oranges they had with their breakfast had been flown in from their fathers own trees in Glyfada.

No response from the little girl was forthcoming. On a normal day she would have wolfed them down as she loved them. Today she just wanted to get far away. She was in a fantasy land that her mother would come through the door and return to her father, or failing that that as soon as she and Alexander quit this miserable tea, her mother would just have arrived on the ship. Head down and silent she may have been, but she was listening for sounds, each footstep, each door shutting made her heart leap in excitement and hope. She hadn't heard the sound of the seaplane approaching or the sound of a motorboat, but that didn't mean that it wouldn't come true.

Aristo glared at his children, and Alexander gave him a look back.

"So," Maria asked seeing the interaction between bad father and unwilling son. "How is school?"

Alexander gave her a withering look and turned back to his tea shaking his head. This was the question that awkward adults the world over asked children when they had nothing else to talk about, and thought they were terribly original doing it. Both he and Christina had been asked this question time and time again by friends of their parents passing through who had been asked to drop in on the children and give a postcard from mummy or a toy from daddy when they had been half the world away from their children who were bought up by nannies, governors and security guards and hadn’t seen their parents for months on end, and when they did eventually come to see them, their children took second place to a dinner party, or a ski party or a business lunch, and now even the Opera, something their father professed to hate, was more important than them.

"What are your favourite subjects?" Maria persisted briefly meeting Ari's eyes.

Ari lit a cigarette and took a drag on it, he blew out the smoke and looked at his children.

"I'm going swimming" Alexander said getting up without even waiting for his father’s permission.

“It’s too cold to swim!” Ari said.   

“I don’t care” Alexander said insolently.

"At least open one present" Maria protested vainly as the children walked off as if they hadn't heard her and went out of the room. Alexander was angry, he walked with his shoulders hunched and his fists clenched, stamping as he went. Christina walked as if she was walking in a rainstorm, her shoulders bent and her eyes fixed firmly on the floor.

Alexander banged the door on the way out.