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loved her. Tell her how sorry he was for all the pain he had caused.
        But he said nothing. Instead, Paolino lowered his head and once again began tugging at his child, trying to ease the baby from the safety of a mother's womb. The head was hanging silent and low as Paolino pulled the shoulders out and then watched as the rest of the body quickly slid forward. He ignored the screams and shouts around him. He closed his eyes to the explosions that now rocked the hold and the angry waves that lashed at the outside of the boat. He ignored the inferno surrounding him as well as the cold ocean waiting to swallow up anyone foolish enough to escape.
        He held the umbilical cord in the palm of his right hand, the final connection between mother and baby, and looked around for a sharp object with which to cut it. He stripped a wooden shank off one of the floor panels and began to cut frantically at the cord, desperate to break the baby free. With a final frenzied tug, he cut it clean away and lifted the child from Francesca's body. Holding him at eye level, Paolino slapped him twice on the back with the flat of his palm. He waited for what seemed to be nothing short of a lifetime for a sign of life.
        He smiled when he heard the baby's cry rise high above the screams and shouts, roar past the moans of approaching death. His son now cradled to his chest, Paolino brought him close to Francesca's face.
        Look, amore, Paolino whispered. Look at your son.
        Francesca looked at her baby through smoke-ravaged eyes and managed a weak smile.
        E un bello bambino, she whispered, gently stroking the infant's forehead. She then closed her eyes for the final time, her hand slipping off her husband's leg down to the floor.
        Paolino Vestieri stood, cradling his minutes-old son in his arms, his feet resting against his wife's body, and looked around the hold. He saw the fire now raging out of control. Bodies rested in rows on the floor, many surrounded by the elderly, sitting quietly, resigned to their fate. Mothers rocked back and forth on their knees holding their dead while fathers blindly tossed their children toward the apparent safety of the crammed stairwell. The strength of the fire had reached the engine room, flames wrapping themselves around old pipes, churning pistons and rusty crankcases. The ocean continued its assault, intent on toppling the old ship and bringing her to rest.
        For such a young man, Vestieri had seen more than his fair share of death. He had killed a son and buried him in the dry soil of his native land, alongside the violated body of his own father. He had watched his wife die bringing new life into a world she had grown to despise. And how he stood, staring at an out-of-control fire that would so easily welcome him and his child. Vestieri lowered his head, held his child closer to his side and disappeared into the thick smoke of a sinking ship.
        There were 627 passengers aboard La Santa Maria, even though the official log registered only 176 names. Eighty-one of them survived the ice storm and the engine fire on that frigid February night in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
        Paolino Vestieri was one.
        His son, Angelo Vestieri, was another.
       
         *     *     *
       
    I LOOKED AWAY from Mary and stared down at the old man in his bed. He had always told me that destiny was nothing more than a lie believed by foolish men. You choose your path, he said. You decide the curves of your life. But I couldn't help wondering if he had been wrong. That maybe a life such as his, that began stained by the darkness of death, had already been placed on a preordained track. Such a start could place a hole in a man's heart that no amount of time could repair. It would split his spirit in ways that might chisel it away from basic decency and harden his views and judgments. It could easily help turn him into the man Angelo Vestieri grew to