Authors: Laurie Fabiano
Antonio climbed into bed after the long Christmas weekend. Christmas had fallen on a Friday this year, and for three long days he had not gone fishing.
It had been a particularly large Christmas dinner. His family had been joined by Zia Concetta and Zio Domenico, and his neighbors, the Cubellis, who had just returned from l’America. Antonio’s father, Giuseppe, would punctuate Signore Cubelli’s sentences with “Did you hear that?” every time he described the horrors they had to endure in l’America. Much to his father’s displeasure, in the two months since Giovanna and Angelina had returned to New York, twelve-year-old Antonio never missed an opportunity to voice his determination to go to l’America.
“Did you see my Zia Giovanna in l’America?” Antonio asked Signore Cubelli.
“L’America is big, Antonio!” chided the signore. “We were in a place called Pennsylvania. I worked from morning till night in a factory, never seeing the sun. The padrone would take our wages and put them in a bank. He said that our money would grow. I should have known not to believe something so stupid! Vegetables grow! Fungus grows! When the factory closed, so did the bank—with all our money in it!”
“Did you hear that, Antonio?” shouted Giuseppe.
“Giuseppe, let the boy eat,” reprimanded Fortunata, protecting her son. She knew her husband’s admonishments about l’America to be futile. Theirs was destined to be a divided family. There were few men left in Scilla for her daughters to marry, and it was only a matter of time before they received marriage inquiries from friends and family who had already immigrated to America. As for her sons, she knew the older boys, Orazio and Raffaele, would stay in Scilla; they already had their own families and boats. But she speculated that her younger sons, Salvatore, Franco, and especially Antonio, would be lured to the shores of l’America by the torch-wielding siren.
Twisting and turning on the straw mattress he shared with Salvatore and Franco, Antonio reached out and grabbed his cap given to him by Zia Giovanna. It was of fine wool, but most impressive was the hat’s silky lining. Fantasizing about his future in America and the fine suit he would wear, he fell asleep.
A hand shook Antonio’s shoulder. Even without light, he could tell his parents were up earlier than usual. It meant that they were rowing the women to Messina for work before going fishing and that his father was anxious to cast his nets after three days of rest. He heard his nephew crying to be fed, and Antonio watched his mother and sister-in-law shush him. They were waiting to feed the baby on the boat since the combination of milk and the lull of the gentle waves would put him back to sleep.
After dressing quickly, he headed outside to help his father. His older brothers, Orazio and Raffaele, were readying the boat that they shared next to their father’s slightly larger skiff. His brothers’ wives climbed onboard, babies at their breasts.
The men worked in silence. Only the sound of the chains unwinding from the great spools and releasing the boats into the sea cut into the predawn darkness. The chill of the December morning increased the family’s efficiency, and soon the two boats set off on a particularly placid sea just before five in the morning.
Giuseppe’s boat was full. Antonio, his older brother Salvatore, and his younger brother, Franco, had gone fishing with their father from the time that each of them turned six years old. Today, even the boys’ two older sisters were aboard. Fortunata thought that the wealthy woman in Messina would have even more work for them after the Christmas holiday.
“I’ll row,” said Giuseppe, uncharacteristically, to his sons. Antonio noticed that his father kept looking around as if a storm was approaching, but the sky was clear and the sea calm. His brothers also seemed to be studying the cliffs and the water.
“Papà, che cosa fa?”
“Niente, Antonio.” The unnatural tone in Giuseppe’s voice made Fortunata look up at her husband.
“It is nothing. The birds and fish are just skittish today.”
Giuseppe raised his oars and turned away from his wife. He looked across at his older sons who silently shrugged in answer to his expression. They were two hundred yards from shore, heading south into the strait of Messina.
Giuseppe dipped his oars back in the water. A slow, growling noise made him scan the skies again. Still nothing, but before he had time to register his confusion, the rumble grew in decibels until it was louder and more resonant than the thunder of the worst storm.
Pulling the oars in, Giuseppe pushed his family off their seats to the bottom of the boat. Barely a second later, the boat rose out of the sea as if a mighty underwater power had lifted it skyward. They were atop a mountain of water and, for a second, Giuseppe was certain that he even saw the sea’s bottom below them. The boat stayed on the wave as it collapsed. The initial rumbling roar turned into the sound of a thousand bombs bursting and was quickly followed by a torrential rain.
The sea was swelling in every direction, and Giuseppe managed to get his oars back in the water. Yelling to his sons to do the same, he struggled to see their boat through the sheets of rain. The explosive noises gave way to ear-splitting cracks. Giuseppe caught glimpses of Scilla. It was as if God was a sculptor and was swinging his hammer at a chisel in the cliffs. Crashes and a sinister hissing followed the cracking of the rock. Straining to see, Antonio pulled himself up and squinted over the edge of the boat and watched in horror as much of Scilla collapsed.
After the first few houses in the Chianalea fell like sand, the dust and smoke from onshore obscured most of what could be seen beyond the pelting rain and hail. The boat was violently spun around, but not before Antonio saw parts of Castello Ruffo fall into the sea. Farther across the strait in Messina, they could see nothing but flames.
As they cascaded over a swell, Giuseppe stood straining to see through the rain and black smoke filling the strait. Looking up, Antonio saw horror on his father’s face. Giuseppe yelled to Orazio and Raffaele to catch the rope that he threw in the direction of their boat. Muttering prayers, Fortunata kept trying to raise her head, only to have it pushed down again by her husband. Giuseppe grabbed one oar and shouted to Antonio and Salvatore to grab the other. “Hold tight the oars, sons!” he shouted. Antonio struggled against the rain and wind to raise himself from the floor of the boat onto the seat. Grabbing the oar and sitting upright, Antonio saw what his father had already seen. A fifty-foot wave, as tall as the cliffs that were now dust, was heading west in the strait for Messina.
Giuseppe had tied his boat to his sons’ boat. Antonio knew that this was not safe and that it meant that his father thought they had no chance of staying in their boats. It was a desperate attempt to keep his family within reach. They were north of the strait and would avoid being swept into the tsunami, but when it hit Messina, they would have to survive its aftermath.
“Listen to me,” shouted Giuseppe to his boys. “Hold tight to the oars and push back on the swells. Keep your oar to the wave, when it shifts, you shift.”
“Sì, Papa!” screamed Antonio, pulling the oar toward him. Young Franco was pushed to the bottom of the boat, and Salvatore was frozen in fear. “Do you understand, Salvatore? Salvatore!” There was a flicker of recognition.
“Fortunata, no matter what, don’t let the children up!”
Sounds collided and smoke momentarily cleared when the tidal wave smashed into Messina. The entire port of Messina disappeared. The wave receded, and the sea rushed through the streets and buildings as if they were pebbles on the beach. Giuseppe and his sons braced themselves and watched in horror as the catastrophic wave pulled back over thousands of years of civilization.
The sky became pitch black from the momentarily extinguished flames so they couldn’t see the first wave to crash into them. The two boats were thrown at one another. Antonio emerged from the wave coughing, and in a second his father was shoving his own oar into Antonio’s hands. Through the slaps of water on his face, Antonio could see glimpses of the sinew of his father’s arms dragging his sisters-in-law and their babies into the boat. His brothers’ boat was nearly severed in half and was starting to pull down on their boat. Having gotten their wives onboard, his brothers were using the rope to pull their way through the foam. As soon as Orazio and Raffaele reached the boat, Giuseppe cut the rope loose, and what was left of his sons’ boat disappeared beneath the foam.
Raffaele and Orazio each grabbed an oar and shared the seat with Antonio and Salvatore. Giuseppe moved to the prow shouting instructions to his oarsmen.
“Don’t fight, ride them!” rasped Giuseppe. “Here comes one to the left. Use your oars to stay in the boat. Steady!” The boat rode the crest of the wave and was delivered hundreds of feet northwest. Giuseppe said a prayer of thanks because his goal was to get as far north of the strait as possible. His relief was short-lived. They were hit by another wave, knocking them back and nearly overturning the boat. Giuseppe continued to shout instructions to his sons, whose arms strained against the oars.
When they emerged from under the last wave, Giuseppe tried to get a sense of where they were. They had stayed north, but they were farther west, off the coast of Sicily. South of him in the strait, he could see the fires of Messina and for the first time the ruin of Reggio. It was like two bonfires had been set facing each other on the coasts. A cloud of smoke hung over Scilla, but he saw only isolated flames.
Two waves approached from both the east and west, and he shouted to the boys to row toward the end of the western wave in hopes of skirting up its back to avoid being caught in the collision. Just in time they flew down the back of the wave and only caught the backlash of the force of the two waves smacking together.
Antonio wasn’t sure if he was crying or not. Seeing his mother and sisters drenched and screaming at his feet frightened him more than the waves. They clung to the bottom of the boat, sputtering for air between waves. Antonio prayed to his patron saint. He thought of his grandparents, cousins, and many aunts and uncles onshore in Scilla. Were they alive? The thought of reaching them gave him renewed strength, and he listened to his father’s instructions even more intently.
His sisters-in-law kept the two infants breathing by clasping their heads between their breasts so that they could find air when waves swept over the boat. After the collision of the last two waves, Fortunata saw her infant grandson pushed up against the side of the boat, crying next to his unconscious mother. Fortunata wasn’t sure whether Raffaele’s wife had been knocked out or had swallowed too much water, but she pumped her chest and blew into her mouth, not calling to the others for fear Raffaele would release his oar. Pumping and breathing, she prayed for the break in the waves to continue. Torturously long minutes later, her daughter-in-law began coughing up water, and Fortunata was able to raise her to a sitting position. She propped her against the side of the boat and put her grandson in her daughter’s arms.
After the tidal wave hit Messina, it crossed over the strait, slapping back at Reggio. The waves continued back and forth across the strait, each time lessening in height and intensity.
They were now able to ride the waves without being completely engulfed by each swell. For the first time, Giuseppe could think instead of simply react. Where was his family better off—on land or sea? What if there was another tremor? He looked at the others instead of the sea for the first time and saw that his young daughter-in-law was nearly unconscious and many of his children white and weak from enduring the constant onslaught. Deciding that they couldn’t endure much more, he planned to navigate the boat back to the eastern side of the strait, toward the northernmost point in Scilla.
Battling shifting currents and crashing waves, they inched toward Scilla. Hours later, Antonio’s arms burned from the exertion. But the pain in his muscles wasn’t nearly as excruciating as the sights and noises that were growing more discernable from the coast with each dip of their oars. They could hear before they could see. Cascading stone, crumbling brick, and the crashing of half-collapsed buildings. Exploding gas and water mains. The closer they got, the more horrific the sounds became, and they were no longer anonymous. There were screams, moans, and calls for help. After fighting for their lives, the devastation they were beginning to see through the smoke, the agony they heard, and the smell of ruin signaled that a worse fate awaited them onshore.
DECEMBER 29, 1908
“Terremoto! Terremoto in Sicilia e Calabria!”
The Italian newsies ran down Mulberry and Elizabeth Streets, abandoning their usual corners.
“Messina destroyed!”
“No news from Reggio!”
“Earthquake followed by tidal wave!”
“Thousands dead!”
Before the newsies were done trumpeting headlines, church bells began to toll. If the residents of the Italian colony were not awoken by the sound of their neighbors’ footsteps running downstairs to get the paper, the chorus of pealing bells roused them. The newsies’ canvas bags were quickly emptied, and people grouped around the nearest person with a paper. Those who couldn’t read or were too far from the newspaper beseeched the readers, “Tell us! Tell us!” Their pleadings were met with loud admonishments to be quiet as the reader, hands shaking, tried to get through the front page.
Often when they finished or reached a sentence that spelled doom, the reader collapsed, unable to tell their family and neighbors of the catastrophe. Weeping summaries were reduced to “Gone, they are all gone!” Then the others would also collapse, and each doorway was littered with knots of people moaning “No!” and praying aloud to the saints.
Frances had run downstairs for the paper and had scanned it on her way up before handing it to her stepmother. She knew her father no longer had family in Italy, but she had quickly read enough to know that this was horrible news for her stepmother.
Giovanna laid the paper on the kitchen table, spreading it out in full. Unable to sit, she stood over it, gripping the sides of the pages. Her daughter, husband, and stepchildren watched in silence as her chest heaved and her pale skin turned blotchy, but with a steely concentration she continued reading. An emotional earthquake was taking place. The surface of her body showed only the faintest signs, but the pressure building up beneath was visible. Frances was sure her stepmother was going to split in two. Instead, it was the paper that was torn in half from the stress of Giovanna’s grip. Leaving the ripped paper on the table, Giovanna ran to her bedroom.
“Giovanna! What is going on?” asked Rocco.
“Messina is destroyed. Probably Reggio too. An earthquake and a tidal wave. They could all be trapped. I’m going to find them,” she said, throwing things, including the little money they had saved, in a bag.
“Stop this! You can’t go there. Even if it was possible, it would take weeks, and by then…”
Giovanna flashed Rocco a look of determination and grabbed her bag and rushed to the door. When she opened it, Lorenzo was standing there with a look of terror on his face.
DECEMBER 30, 1908
After a day of grieving, Lorenzo knew that the only thing to do was to go with Giovanna to the shipping lines. The ticket office was crowded with hundreds of Italians, each being told the same thing. There were no tickets, and even if they could get to Naples, there was no way to get to the stricken area. Only first-class tickets aboard the
Lucania
were on sale. In desperation, immigrants handed money and scraps of paper bearing family names and locations to wealthy Italians boarding the
Lucania,
begging them to send word of their families.
“Giovanna, I know that man!” exclaimed Lorenzo, pointing to a man ready to board. “I painted a mural in his import office.”
Lorenzo fought his way through the crowd, calling the man’s name. The well-dressed signore heard the call and turned.
“Signore, I am Lorenzo Costa. Can you help us?” The man’s face was swollen and red, and he looked at Lorenzo with a dazed expression.
“Remember, signore, I painted your mural? Of the Strait of Messina?”
“Oh, sì, sì.” The man continued to stare at Lorenzo.
“Signore, please, can you send word of my family? They are in Scilla, Calabria.”
“But I hope to go to Messina. My wife, my children, my parents, they are all there. I…,” he said, pounding his chest, “I sent them. I sent them for Christmas. I sent them to their deaths. May the saints be with your family, Signore
Artiste
.” The gentleman turned and left.
The scene at the cable office, which was their next stop, was no different. Crowds of Sicilians and Calabrians jammed the small office and the street. A clerk, standing on his desk, tried to yell over the din of the crowd. “You can place a cable, but it won’t get there. There are no telegraph or telephone lines in the area. Try again in a few days.”
Most of the crowd, including Giovanna and Lorenzo, waited in line anyway to send their futile missives, even prepaying for the reply they wouldn’t receive. The line was long, and the crowd exchanged newspapers while waiting. Today’s story was longer, covering many pages and featuring maps and photographs of Messina and Reggio before the disaster. Giovanna was given a
New York Herald
and was about to pass it on when she saw much of it was written in Italian. Leaving Lorenzo in line, she went outside to read.
100,000
DEAD IN MESSINA, REGGIO’S LOSS IS
45,000
IN STAGGERING CALAMITY
SHIPS RUSHED TO STRICKEN SECTIONS WITH FOOD AND TENTS
HELPLESS, HOPELESS SURVIVORS OF THE TERRIFYING SHOCK BECOME SHRIEKING MANIACS AND ADD TO THE TERROR OF THE SCENES BY ENDING LIVES ALONGSIDE VICTIMS’ BODIES
Try as she might by praying feverishly, Giovanna could not stop visualizing her parents trapped beneath rubble, dead—or worse, in pain and unreachable. To have her fears expounded upon in the ink of a newspaper was too much to bear. She forced herself to scan the article, looking for mention of Scilla, but she did not find it. Even the map didn’t show Scilla. But it did show the neighboring towns of Bagnara and Palmi, and it said that hundreds of bodies had been found. She shivered at the thought that Scilla was closer to Reggio and Messina than either of these two places.
“It is sent.” Lorenzo lifted his sister off the crate by her hand. “Did you find out anything more?” Wordlessly, she showed him the map and pointed out all the surrounding cities that had been destroyed. He looked at the paper but said nothing.
“I heard someone say that people are going to the Consul General’s office,” mumbled Lorenzo. “Let’s try.”
Arriving at Consul General Massiglia’s office on Lafayette Street, they were greeted by mayhem. People were fighting to get in the door and yelling, “Give us transport!” “Release the names of the dead!” The Consul General’s underlings moved through the crowd, telling them the little they knew and trying hopelessly to quell the anxiety and assure people that when they received information it would be quickly disseminated. Lorenzo shrugged in desperation. There was only one place left to go.
Lorenzo and Giovanna stepped into Our Lady of Loreto on Elizabeth Street. Every candle was lit, and the church was crowded with weeping women—and even with men, who were unaccustomed to the surroundings because baptism and death were often the only occasions that brought an Italian man to church.
Looking around, Giovanna felt a pang of guilt for not coming here first. She surprised herself at how practical she could be sometimes. Kneeling before the altar, she took a stick from the tray and placed it in an existing flame. There were not enough candles in all the churches of New York for the victims. Each candle would have to carry the burden of many souls. More than fifty times she put the stick in a flame, saying the name of the person for whom she prayed, starting with her mother and father. After lighting their candles, she lit one each for Nunzio’s mother, Zia Marianna, Nunzio’s sister, Fortunata, and her husband, Giuseppe Arena, and their children. Because her mind was clouded with smoke and grief, she aided the process of inventorying her loved ones by imagining the faces of her friends and family in her trip down the aisle to marry Nunzio. She lit a flame for each soul and prayed to Nunzio to save them or receive them in heaven.
Lorenzo was also mumbling prayers not far from where Father Longa was trying to comfort the many families surrounding him. Giovanna knew Father Longa came from Messina and wondered how he had the strength to comfort others when his own family’s fate was unknown. She decided Father Longa was either blessed with this diversion or had a higher calling.
DECEMBER 31, 1908
It took Angelina a day to figure out what was happening, but when she did, she was inconsolable. Her Nonna and Nonno, who had lavished her with attention in Scilla, might be buried in rocks, drowned in a gigantic wave, or burned in a fire. Everywhere she went, adults were talking or reading the paper. And if she didn’t understand what they said, she could understand the grief of women who sat in doorways with their aprons thrown over their heads, wailing and rocking.
When she wasn’t thinking about Nonna and Nonno, she was thinking about Antonio and his brothers and sisters. How could that same calm, beautiful water that Antonio taught her to swim in swallow people up? She heard one lady reading that the survivors were going insane and walking around naked. Frances said that meant that they were crazy. Was Antonio crazy, with no clothes on?
That morning when she woke up, her mother was already kneeling beside her bed praying. Angelina started crying again, but she tried to muffle her sobs with her pillow. The only time her mother cried was when she saw Angelina cry, and she didn’t want that to happen. Seeing her mother cry was worse than imagining all those horrible things.
When Rocco came home from work, earlier than usual, he looked at the sad expressions on his children’s faces and his wife still on her knees in prayer and said, “Come, children, let’s all go for hot chestnuts and visit your cousins. It’s New Year’s Eve.”
Mary, with Angelina clinging to her hand, whispered to her father, “I don’t want to leave Zia.”
“Zio Lorenzo will come sit with her.”
Rocco sensed that his wife didn’t want him around and was only finding comfort with her brother. Her grief and anxiety were far too great for him to resent her feelings, so he tried to stay out of her way.
The door closed on Giovanna’s solitude; her shoulders slumped in relief, and she laid her head on the bed. Her mind wandered to the New Year’s Eve she spent as a voiceless widow traveling in the bowels of a boat to a foreign land. Six years later, worse than sailing away from the land and people she loved, she might have lost them completely. The memory of the pink icing on that little girl’s finger burned in her throat.
JANUARY 1, 1909
The first day of the New Year brought confirmation of Giovanna’s worst fears. The headlines of the
New York Herald
were each more horrifying than the one before.
IN ONE INSTANCE THE GROUND OPENED AND FROM A CHASM EIGHTY FEET WIDE THERE SPOUTED BOILING WATER IN WHICH THOUSANDS WERE SCALDED TO DEATH
CLOUDS OF CROWS MYSTERIOUSLY ATTRACTED TO THE STRICKEN DISTRICTS ADD TO THE TERRORS THERE
HUMAN BEINGS FIGHT WITH DOGS FOR FOOD
Scanning the first page, she ignored details while desperately looking for the word
Scilla
. Turning the page, her search ended, for there was the name “Scilla” staring back at her. A box listed all the affected cities, their populations, and the number dead. Number six on the list was Scilla. But while all the other cities listed a number dead, or said “hundreds dead,” in Scilla’s column it simply said “in ruins.”
Giovanna stayed at the table staring. Rocco looked over her shoulder; the chart was easy enough to figure out even for an illiterate. His gnarled index finger pointed at
“in rovine”
across from Scilla’s name.
“What does this say?”
“In ruins.”
“Let’s go for a walk.”
“No.”
“I’ll take the children for a walk. Do you want me to get Lorenzo?”
Giovanna didn’t answer. The children, who were just waking up, gathered around Giovanna and the newspaper. Their father tried to shoo them away.
“Come on, get dressed. We’re going for a walk.” Rocco even roused Clement who was still sleeping.
Rocco and the children were nearly out the door when Lucrezia knocked. She carried holiday pastries, a
New York Times,
and her doctor’s bag. Rocco waved her in, and, motioning to his wife, gently shook his head. He tipped his cap in farewell.
“Giovanna, it’s me, Lucrezia.” She sat at Giovanna’s side, and Giovanna actually took her hand and held it.
Lucrezia used her other hand to fish in her bag. She pulled out Humphries Pills No. 17, which, although advertised for depression, Lucrezia had found to be a good sedative.
“Here, take this,” she said, putting the pill in Giovanna’s mouth and getting up to get her a glass of water. “Before I speak further you should know that my husband said they could be exaggerating the devastation to get more aid. But there was more news of Scilla today.”
Giovanna nodded and pointed at the chart in the newspaper in front of her. Lucrezia looked at it. “Yes, that’s what the
New York Times
had. There was something else, too. It said two priests from Scilla escaped because they were in the vault of a church that resisted collapse.”
Giovanna’s eyes flickered. This was the first news of Scilla that was not abstract. She tried to think which church had a vault.
“It also said that Scilla was completely destroyed. Even the rock of Scylla has completely disappeared.” Lucrezia’s voice lowered. “The priests think they are the only survivors.”
For the first time in her life, Giovanna fainted. Lucrezia had a difficult time getting her to the bed. Once conscious, Giovanna was still drowsy because the sedative had begun to work. In spite of this, Giovanna pushed up from the bed.