COVER STORY
No one who was aboard that night will soon forget the party on the yacht Christina last August. While the guests flirted, drank, dined, and danced the surtaki, a bouzouki band beat its heart out. The host listened with a touch of melancholy as the musicians played his favorite ballad:
These are bitter summers
And you have taught me to spend them with you . . .
The guest of honor nibbled on white grapes, and when her companion asked the band to play Adios Compagnia, she joined the bittersweet chorus. The candles guttered in their pink crystal holders, and then there was only the moon to illumine the close faces around the silvery deck.
A Symbolic Farewell
The Christina was docked again last week at the grey-green isle of Skorpiós, and the principal figures were the same—Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy and Aristotle Socrates Onassis. This time they were the center of rapt international attention. From practically every capital and every level of society, the guests and members of the wedding came, by jetliner, shuttle plane and helicopter, to the mountainous island in the sunny Ionian Sea. From Holland an elaborate airlift brought in mountains of tulips, and lemon buds to be woven into garlands for the bridal pair. From the mainland came Father Polykarpos Athanassion, pastor of the Kapnikarea Church in central Athens. Angelo of Athens descended on the isle to attend to the world's most closely scrutinized coiffure. Bouzouki bandsmen were on hand to play the haunting melodies so dear to the bridegroom's heart. Argosies of viands and wines were lightered in and unloaded while the white-hulled honeymoon yacht creaked at her quay.
In a cypress grove above the harbor, workmen labored long and lovingly on the task of refurbishing the tiny, neoclassic Chapel of Panayitsa (the Little Virgin). The centuries-old ritual was prescribed by Greek Orthodox tradition. The wedding ceremony called for the couple to walk around the altar three times; bride and groom traditionally try to be the first to step on the other's feet (the winner is then able to claim supremacy in the household). Man and wife are crowned with wreaths and drink from a cup of wine in order to symbolize the "harmony of soul and bodies." Everything, from sugared almonds to the waiting yacht, was ready to celebrate the new life of Mr. and Mrs. Aristotle Onassis. Everything, that is, except what is known as "the world," which seemed unable to comprehend or accept the match.
Reaction in the U.S. and abroad ranged from dismay to a kind of shocked ribaldry. JACKIE, HOW COULD YOU? headlined Stockholm's Expressen. "Nixon has a Greek running mate," cracked Bob Hope, "and now everyone wants one." Said a former Kennedy aide: "She's gone from Prince Charming to Caliban." In a more sober vein, French Political Commentator André Fontaine wrote in Le Monde: "Jackie, whose staunch courage during John's funeral made such an impression, now chooses to shock by marrying a man who could be her father and whose career contradicts—rather strongly, to say the least—the liberal spirit that animated President Kennedy."