Just Jackie by Edward Klein (trending books to read TXT) 📕

As the society columnist Taki wrote: “Gratsos loved Maria, stuck by her until the end, and, more important, told Ari that Jackie K. O. was a woman who not only would ruin his life, but would bring him bad luck.”

Maggie van Zuylen played an important part in this drama, as well. She let Ari know that Maria was still madly in love with him, sincerely in love with him, unlike you-know-who. Maria was waiting for him to return to her.

“She had a mad passion for him,” Maggie said. “They were like two wild beasts together. They got along well, but in the end she wasn’t glamorous enough for him. Jackie Kennedy was glamorous. Maria learned of the marriage not from Onassis but by reading about it in the newspapers, like everybody else. She was totally devastated. It was dreadful, awful. She was so frightfully broken up, so disappointed, so profoundly hurt.”

“Not Paris,” Gratsos said in reply to Ari’s suggestion that they go off and have some fun together. “I’ve got a better idea.”

“What’s that?” Ari asked.

“Didn’t you hear?” Gratsos said. “Maria is on her way back to Greece.”

Maria had been invited to Greece by Perry Embiricos, the scion of a prominent Greek shipping family. A confirmed bachelor in his fifties, whose passion was music, Perry had asked Maria to spend some time on Tragonisi, his private island in the Aegean. He had also invited Pier Paolo Pasolini, the notorious Italian homosexual writer and film director, who had directed Maria in the film version of Medea; Nadia Standoff, Maria’s half-American, half-Bulgarian private secretary and best friend; and Costa Gratsos and his wife Anastasia.

“Why don’t you join us on Tragonisi?” Gratsos said to Ari. “Saturday is the Feast of the Holy Virgin. It’s Maria’s name day. You’re allowed to give her a kiss.”

On Saturday morning, August 15, Ari slipped a pair of antique diamond earrings into his pocket, climbed aboard an Olympic Airways helicopter, and took off for Tragonisi, which was located just south of Euboea, one of the largest islands of Greece.

From the air, Ari could see the wooden drop bridge at Chalkis, the capital of Euboea; the bridge spanned the narrow Euripos channel. Legend had it that in 322 B.C. Aristotle drowned himself in the Euripos because he could not explain the enigma of how its current changed direction from north-south to south-north as many as fourteen times a day.

A moment later, Ari spotted Perry Embiricos’s marvelous gardens on Tragonisi.

The helicopter landed on the beach, and Ari got out. Maria was a hundred yards away, under a big beach umbrella with Djedda, the poodle Ari had given her. Her hard peasant skin had turned nut brown under the Aegean sun, and her black hair was pulled back in a sleek bun.

She looked up, and saw Ari coming toward her.

CHIPPED INTO STONE

It was not the first time that Ari and Maria had met since his marriage to Jackie. Back in December 1968, shortly after Ari had celebrated his first Christmas with Jackie, he flew to Paris, where he dined with Maria at Maxim’s, and then lunched with her the next day at Maggie van Zuylen’s home. The face-to-face meetings between the two former lovers attracted the attention of the press, and spawned the first generation of rumors that Ari’s marriage to Jackie was on the rocks.

However, these encounters were brief, and not the romantic trysts they appeared to be. In fact, they were about business. Ari was still handling some of Maria’s financial affairs, as he was those of Lee Radziwill, and he needed to talk to Maria about her investments. In addition, he and the opera singer had to discuss business arrangements that had been left unresolved from their joint lawsuit against Panaghis Vergottis, an old friend with whom they had had a bitter falling out.

Despite rumors of a divorce, Costa Gratsos and the other members of the anti-Jackie cabal knew that Ari was still madly in love with his American wife. There was nothing they could do about it but bide their time. Their patience was rewarded when all the letters that Jackie had written to her former escort Roswell Gilpatric, the New Frontiersman, were stolen from his office safe, and published. One letter in particular, which Jackie had written from the Christina during her honeymoon, caught everybody’s attention.

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 letter was published, Gilpatric’s third wife, Madeline, filed separation papers, leaving the impression that she, for one, suspected her husband had committed adultery with Jackie. Shortly thereafter, sensational stories began to appear in the press offering readers the inside scoop on Onassis’s private reaction to the Gilpatric affair.

It was said that Jackie’s letter was a blow to Ari’s Greek manhood, and that he felt his American wife had emasculated him. He had suffered the very thing he feared the most—social humiliation. The whole world was laughing at him behind his back.

The stories had the ring of truth. And they were given added credibility by Ari’s own bitter words, which ran between quotation marks in all the newspapers.

“My God, what a fool I have made of myself,” he was quoted as saying. “What a fool. I’m afraid my wife is a calculating woman, cold-hearted and shallow.”

Or another quote: “This woman is a bore. Why didn’t I see that before I married her?”

Or yet another: “She is always reading.”

There was only one problem with the press coverage of the Gilpatric affair. Through it all, Ari did not speak to a single reporter. Nor, for that matter, did he authorize his public relations man, Nigel Neilson, to issue any statements, on or off the record, on his behalf. Whatever Ari had to