It was odd to surrender when he had done nothing but fight his whole life. Antica would never see his family again. He would never see Scotland again. He would never take that last trip home to Bardi. How strange to know that those long-held dreams would, for certain, never come true. Soon Antica felt emancipated from the craving for something he could never have. The struggles of life were no longer his problems. Antica observed the grand finale of the horrible attack, as the young men dove off the side of the ship one by one, like acrobats into the water. A teenage boy did a swan dive, which in itself was a work of art as he broke the surface of the water without creating a ripple. A white ring of foam appeared, followed by his head through it, as though it had been a stunt, the curtain call of a seaside circus act. The boy opened his mouth wide and gulped air. Antica whispered, “Breathe.”
Antica looked up at the morning sky. Free of the barbed wire walls, he could take in the expanse of it. He did not see a single cloud. The sky was an odd color, the patina of slate. The sky did not appear bright as in a Bellini or Tiepolo painting but fractured like a mosaic, made of tesserae, shards of glass, pieces of ceramics, and smashed bits of stone, shattered elements that find beauty anew even in their broken state. He wondered if this particular sky was the blue portal of purgatory. He closed his eyes and recited the Hail Mary. He made the sign of the cross slowly. His mother had said in times of trouble, pray to the Blessed Lady; like any mother, she would hear your plea. The men who had saved themselves by diving into the ocean and the men who had found a seat on the lifeboats called for their mothers as they jumped. So, what his mother had told Antica as a boy was true. He whispered to his mother to meet him in the sky when his moment came.
“Come on, old man.” A sentry, his face covered in the oil from the boiler, carried a spare life jacket covered in sludge in his hand and attempted to put Antica into it. “She’s going under,” he said matter-of-factly, as though ships of this grandeur sank every day.
“I’m all right.” Antica wriggled his arm loose. “They need you.” He pointed overhead to the second tier. The sentry left the life jacket with Antica and climbed the stairs.
An Italian boy ran past Antica to take the stairs. He stopped. “Andiamo!”
Antica smiled. He handed the boy the life jacket the sentry had given to him.
“Put it on,” Antica suggested.
The boy slipped on the life jacket. “Come with me,” the boy said. “I will help you!”
“You go!” Antica pointed to the hole in the barbed wire. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll meet you in the water.” The boy jumped into the sea.
Antica looked over the railing. The boy bobbed in the water. He had made it! He had his whole life before him.
Antica searched the surface of the sea for his friends. There were so many men in the water, he could not discern faces. A man was only as lucky as the friends he had made. Their fate, your fate. In this regard, Antica, even in the hour of his death, felt blessed. He had not been chained or beaten as a prisoner. He had not starved to death. The ice cream peddler had gone to sleep the night before having enjoyed a meat pie followed by a shot of whiskey with his friends. Antica had even managed the rare feat of grown men and made a new friend in Savattini. Even the burden of his salvation had been lifted. Don Fracassi had given him absolution. His soul was as pristine as an altar cloth of white linen.
Who was Antica to complain? He was slightly befuddled at the odd turn his life had taken and so quickly, but it was all right. There was nothing to fear because Antica knew how his life would end. There was nothing left but surrender, and there was no pain in that. Antica, the Italian-born immigrant, had thrived in Scotland. The streets of Glasgow had crackled with life: his life. He knew the names of the children on his route and took delight when he rang the bell and they came running for a dish of ice cream. He made a living, enough to provide for his family. His children were hard workers and his wife had been a faithful and loving partner. It had been a good life. Gratitude filled his heart like warm honey.
“You deaf, old man? Jump!” the sentry cried from his perch on the landing above Antica.
The old man pretended to be deaf. Antica tucked the homemade telescope under his arm like a spare umbrella on a cloudy day.
He gripped the railing and waited for the Arandora Star to capsize. “You will not know the day, you will not know the hour,” the Scripture taught. Antica smiled, because in fact he knew the day and the hour, because he was living inside of it. That too was a gift at the end.
Antica looked down at his feet. The deck, painted white, was now black and roiling with a sludge that had bubbled up from the bilge. The stench, similar to the pungent smell of a blacksmith’s barn when the horses were shoed with iron, made him dizzy. Fire would have engulfed the ship if it were not sinking quickly into the water. It was either the Titanic’s fate or the destruction of the temple on Good Friday—Antica believed the tragedy of the Arandora Star was both.
Sound fell away.
The men’s cries for their mothers became muffled as the survivors paddled farther away from the sinking ship.
Antica was alone on the lower deck. The boilers rumbled, shaking the deck floor beneath him. The thick red arrows painted on the walls to indicate the upward direction of the stairs disappeared as the black sludge crept up the wall.
The last of the lifeboats careened in the distance over the waves, so tightly packed with men, only a few could loosen their arms to paddle the boat away from the capsizing ship. The small rafts made zigzags in the water as the waves carried them off. The men for whom there had been no room in the lifeboats clung to any object made of wood that had snapped off the ship’s décor or slid off the deck into the ocean as the ship tilted. Antica could see a long wooden banister, a tabletop, and the back of a cane chair—all had human life attached to them in some fashion. The survivors, their desperate faces lifted to the light, looked like a field of sunflowers following the sun.
The seawater was up to Antica’s knees.
Antica sat down on the deck, placing his hands by his sides to steady himself. The cacophony of the ship’s contents crashing as the boat tipped over made Antica’s heart pound faster.
The water crept up to Antica’s chest and neck. As the Arandora Star sank into the Atlantic, Arcangelo Antica did not hold his breath, nor did he call for help or panic; instead, he let the ocean take his life from him. The water was cold, but Antica did not feel it. He let go.
* * *