A dominant husband 
Carina Ari 1939
The
farewell to the stage is the most painful moment of a dancer’s life. It
is far worse than for other artists. Carina was still so young, in her
early 40s, the best years of a woman’s life. And yet, it was perfectly
normal and unavoidable that her muscles started rebelling against her
soul’s craving to dance.
Carina was an extrovert and exhibitionist, like all real dance artists.
Long ago, she had learned a skill that had become second nature. Moreover,
Carina had been the centre of attraction, drawing the attention of thousands,
governing the audience’s emotions, arousing and seducing men and women,
young and old, throughout her entire adult life.
When it is at its best, it ceases abruptly. It gives a foretaste of death,
although half one’s life remains. Carina always shrank from the mere thought
of death.
This is a phase when dancers are extremely vulnerable. Most of all, perhaps,
they need the love and care of a partner. For Carina, this love had been
gradually slipping away from her. Inghelbrecht, who had never been particularly
warm-hearted in either of his marriages, fell madly in love for the first
time in his life, at the age of 60, with Carina’s best friend. Carina
herself had always been prone to fall in love easily, and her candid “affairs”,
some short, some long, sometimes with more than one lover at a time, had
never troubled Inghelbrecht in the slightest. He sometimes referred indulgently
to Carina as his daughter (which she could have been, with regard to the
age difference).
For the first time, Carina grew aware of feeling lonely. She fled the fashionable Paris circles and travelled to a sleepy, luxurious spa, Aix les Bains, under the pretence that her muscles ached (a psychosomatic complaint rather than a real one – she enjoyed robust health). As usual, she had no money. She had never before needed to pay her own way, and had always been able to rely on her rich and generous friends.
Jan Moltzer
The same was true now. A friend invited her to dinner at the finest spa hotel in Aix. Carina dressed (with her usual apparent simplicity, intended to cause a commotion) in a full-length white dress and a small red bolero. Her entrance into the restaurant was magnificent. The waiters lost their bearings and nearly dropped their trays. A short, nondescript gentleman at one of the tables totally lost his head. Very soon, he had invited her to his table for dinner. He was reluctant to reveal anything about himself. He was Dutch, extremely intelligent, accustomed to giving orders, but currently in a state of shock, because his wife had tired of him and had filed for divorce.
Mr Moltzer was colourless, short like Inghelbrecht, but sturdy and muscular, with a handsome, strong head. He was reticent and secretive. Carina was exquisitely beautiful and slightly buxom (since she had stopped ballet practice), outspoken, humorous, sensual and generous with the only thing she had left – her body and her strong spirit.
That
is how they perceived one another. He asked if she would accompany him
to South America to live. Marriage was out of the question, at least for
the time being, since his ex-wife had discovered that her discarded husband
had found new happiness. The divorce proceedings were protracted to punish
him, and it was expensive. The legal marriage between Jan Moltzer (his
third) and Carina Ari (her second) had to wait until 1942.
Carina eventually found out more about the new man in her life. He was the adopted son of a childless Dutch industrial magnate, and had inherited the old noble beverages company Bols. Moltzer foresaw the war with Germany. Perhaps he was not entirely Arian according to the Nazi definition. In any case, he took his best foreman with him to Buenos Aires and was able to supply his genuine famous alcoholic products to the entire free world throughout the war, when other industries in Europe were prevented from doing so. Both his sons died in the German occupation of the Netherlands, and one of his two daughters had some kind of accident. The other daughter was a close friend of her stepmother to the end of her life. Carina and Jan Moltzer never had children, but they did have a very happy ten-year marriage.
Carina
enjoyed having a dominant husband, she liked men who were strong and virile.
Moltzer was not particularly funny, but he was kind. He loved her prodigiously
in his own magnificent way, showering her with costly jewellery and furs.
He hated hesitation. If they were in a shop and Carina enjoyed the pleasure
of trying on half the stock, as some women do, he would burst out, “Do
you want the one you’ve got on? Otherwise, we’ll leave at once!” Quick-witted
as she was, Carina soon learned to say yes, just in case. She could always
have another fur coat later if it wasn’t entirely to her taste.
Carina grew
to be a superb hostess at Moltzer’s mansion-like residence outside Buenos
Aires. She was naturally theatrical, a primadonna from head to toe, and
at the same time refined, tastefully unassuming and always sympathetic
to other people’s worries.
Jan Moltzer died of a heart attack in 1951,
when he was only 68 years old. His widow inherited a large portion of
his fortune, which was mainly invested in shares in Bols companies. Carina
grieved her departed husband deeply and sincerely. She was 54, and never
again fell in love.
Carina Ari in 1950
In her Buenos Aires studio
Dancing was a finished chapter. Like many ballerinas, Carina had the urge to sculpt, in order to have a creative outlet. She studied in New York, among other places, and became proficient in sculpting portraits, mainly of her friends. Her large portrait of Dag Hammarskjöld is one of her most successful works. It now stands at the UN headquarters in New York and at Uppsala Palace in Sweden, where he lived when he was young.
EAfter the death of her husband, Carina Ari de Moltzer remained in Buenos Aires, where she had gained many friends and was the centre of an intense social life. Once every two years, she would visit Europe. She kept her beautiful little studio flat in Paris, and the crayfish season demanded a visit to Stockholm. She sometimes also spent part of the summer in Sweden.