Did I make the right choice?

By Pierpaolo Maiorano

There are those who say that fate draws our lives and we can do nothing but suffer.
I have always believed instead, that each of us is our own “executioner”.
We are the ones, with the choices we make, who guide our lives...
In fact, I have often asked myself: did I make the right choice?
It comes full circle. Mario tells us about a painful and fundamental part of his life. Years that shaped him and left a mark, both positively but mostly with negative events.
He believed that the American “adventure” was his destiny, that it had become “his life”.
But what we wish for does not always coincide with reality. After discovering that his mentor is a mass murderer and he is being hunted by the New York mafia... he decides to run away. Again!
From the escape, to the shipwreck, to that decisive May 10, 2008!
This last chapter, is told as if we were reading through his personal and secret diary.
From which he highlighted the most significant pages of the long journey he had to go through to reach his goal.
These are years that leave a mark on him, mostly in a negative way. But he is Mario M and manages to learn from every situation. He suffers... he deludes himself... he suffers again...
Until becoming what he is today.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pierpaolo Maiorano
• Release date: Dec 29, 2023
• ISBN: 9791222490618

Book preview

The cruise

Katelyn was very kind and helpful, after booking my cabin she gave me a safe place to stay until departure. Her husband had explained to her why I needed to hide, and she helped me, without asking any questions. At 6 pm, disguised as a baggage handler I boarded the ship with the other workers; in the afternoon some men, probably sent from Davon, had gone to the ship to get the passenger list. Although my name had gone unnoticed, it was better not to risk it.

Once on board I changed and resumed my role, and went to check in. Being the first I was greeted by the captain himself, then the second officer took care of me. After escorting me to the cabin he offered me a welcome drink, we had an instant connection, he was not bad at all, although his hair was not grizzled, the charm of the uniform gave him a rather exciting look. Although I was scared to death, I had to keep my mind occupied. I asked him about his wife.

«Bachelor... who knows how many female passengers will crowd outside your cabin.» I threw out there.

«Actually a lot of men too, maybe more than women.» he replied, smiling.

He was rescued by a stewardess who came to call him to help the captain in welcoming the passengers.

«We will continue this discussion later at dinner. You are a guest at the captain’s table, okay? I have to go now.»

We set sail an hour late to wait for a dozen passengers who were delayed due to an accident on the highway.

As soon as we were in open sea, dinner began.

All the VIP passengers were at the captain’s table. Beautiful people no doubt, two in particular. A very charming woman in her thirties but accompanied by her husband who did not let her out of his sight for a moment, and a man, alone, very elegant and with very classy manners. He was sitting across from me, I tried to get to know him, to exchange a few words, but he spoke with no one.

At the end of the evening, Filippo took me to his cabin!

The next morning I visited the ship. Beautiful and huge. I spent the afternoon at the pool hoping to see the mystery man again, to no avail.

I managed to learn something about him during dinner, from Filippo. His name was Jùlien and he was one of the richest men in Switzerland. He had booked for two people, double cabin, but then he had shown up alone.

Good, I thought, that will make it easier for me.

He didn’t show up not even on the third day. I asked Filippo and he hadn’t seen him either, he realized I really liked him and asked around.

He always stayed in his cabin, even for meals. He went out very rarely and only in the early morning or late evening when there were no passengers around.

I let it go and decided to enjoy the cruise.

It was nice to do nothing, but how long could I resist? We were less than half of the expected passengers, and there were few interesting people, even just for a chat.

At that point I considered whether I should end the cruise and get off at the first stop where there was an international airport, or continue.

I postponed any decision until after the captain’s birthday dinner, at which everyone would surely come, including him.

I arrived late, and since Filippo had not reserved a place for me at their table, I sat a bit out of sight of the others. I was so bored that I decided, I asked a waiter where he advised me to disembark to catch an international flight, perhaps he understood that I was not happy with the treatment and asked me to wait. After a couple of minutes he returned, inviting me to sit at the captain’s table. I happened to sit right next to Jùlien, the only seat left vacant, and he couldn’t avoid me. After an initial moment of awkwardness he convinced himself to talk to me.

We chatted and although he continued to keep to himself, I sensed that he was upset, but I couldn’t tell if his unfriendly behavior was due to a romantic disappointment or was just arrogance. I ventured a few prying questions.

He had been drinking heavily and suddenly got up and went out on deck. After ten minutes not seeing him return I went to look for him.

I found him at the stern, motionless, staring at the horizon. He gave me the feeling that he was about to do something reckless and cautiously I approached:

«Jùlien, are you all right? Do you need help?»

In response he began to snap at me, asking me who I was and what I wanted from him, shouting.

«Calm down, I didn’t see you come back in and I got worried.»

«No, your concern is not sincere. You want something from me, and now you’ll tell me what it is!»

Grabbing me by the collar of my jacket.

«Jùlien, you’ve had too much to drink. Come with me I’ll take you to the cabin.»

He kept screaming and shoving me.

«Now you’ll tell me what you want from me or I...»

I lost my patience and reacted. Some passengers hearing the screams warned the crew.

«Jùlien don’t make a spectacle of yourself. Yes, it’s true, I want something from you... take you to bed. I like you very much and I would be willing to do anything to sleep with you.»

At that moment Filippo arrived with two men from security. I reassured him by explaining that I just wanted to make sure he was okay, since he had been drinking. Jùlien, on the other hand, accused me of wanting to take him to the cabin to rob him of very important documents.

In the end the captain, summoned by Jùlien, believed him and wanted to confine me in my cabin. But that wasn’t enough for him and he got me locked up in a room in the engine room used as a cell, waiting to get to the first port and report me.

Honestly, it was the first time in my life that I found myself in a situation like this, I wasn’t able to fight back.

After half an hour Filippo came to talk to me.

«Mario, I’m sorry. I know that he made everything up, don’t worry, I’ll talk to the captain now and we will sort it out.»

«Thank you. I was speechless. Who knows why he had this reaction. It never happened to me in my entire life, I swear. I was insulted, but to do something like this... your captain too though, just because he’s an important person...»

At four in the morning, the captain himself came to open the cell door for me, accompanied by two sailors.

«I will release you if you give me your word of honor that you will avoid any contact with him.»

I nodded and followed them into the labyrinth of the engine room and then through the stairs and two elevators, to my cabin floor. I undressed and went to bed, but I couldn’t sleep. Julien’s face was there in my mind. I’ve never been speechless in front of a man, however handsome. And I could not understand his behavior.

Suddenly we started dancing. We were caught in the middle of a storm.

The shipwreck

The shiver prompted me to get dress and go on deck, where I noticed agitation among the ship’s personnel. I ran into the captain who invited me to go back to my cabin just as a giant wave knocked us off balance.

Soon after, the glass windows in the dining area on the deck where we  were standing shattered, and the ship shook again, as if it were twisting on itself. At that point, the captain gave the order to give the alarm and invited me to follow him to the control room. The instruments were not working, the radio was not working, impossible to steer the ship or send an S.O.S.

We were tossed around by waves tens of meters high for at least an hour. Fortunately, the ship – apparently - was unaffected.

Suddenly the sea calmed down and the black clouds gave way to the glow of the first light of dawn. We were all breathing a sigh of relief when a roar was heard and the ship froze for an instant, as if it had slammed into a wall.

Slowly it began to tilt to the side as the sea suddenly swelled again.

Large, black clouds of smoke rose from the rear of the ship and two more explosions were heard.

The second alarm went off and the crew began to lower the lifeboats.

As they reached the deck, the passengers were taken to the motor boats and quickly lowered into the water.

I helped the crew evacuate the ship and stayed with the last group of passengers. Fortunately, we weren’t that many on the cruise; most of the participants, who had to fly in from Philadelphia, had missed it due to a plane malfunction.

I boarded the last lifeboat and we got away from the sinking ship just in time.

It began to rain again as we were tossed around by the huge waves, to the point that we were in danger of capsizing several times.

We were lucky, not like the two lifeboats in front of us, which capsized and its occupants ended up in the water, about 30 people, whom we had no difficulty rescuing.

Unfortunately, some did not make it.

Just when we were convinced that we had rescued everyone, we spotted two more people who were drowning and could not come toward us, one of them was Jùlien.

Without hesitation I jumped into the water and went toward him. His foot was caught in a rope of the sinking lifeboat, and he could no longer stay even with his head out of the water. I struggled to free him but finally managed to get him to safety.

I was catching my breath when I noticed the desperation of an old woman, the second man in the water was her husband. He was about 20 meters from me. I swam as fast as I could, but within inches of him, he went under. I dived and tried to bring him back to the surface. Damn, he was entangled too. I managed to grab him, but he pulled me down too. I had to leave him and resurface, I was out of breath! I went back underwater but he had sunk.

Rising to the surface, I passed out. They pulled me into the lifeboat just in time.

After about twenty minutes the clouds cleared and the sea calmed down. We looked around. An endless expanse of water, we could not tell where the ocean ended and the sky began. Of the other lifeboats not even a trace.

Dragged by the current for hours, at one point we spotted another lifeboat behind us. They were rowing and caught up with us within minutes.

Were we the only survivors? After a quick count, a hundred survivors out of more than six hundred people, including passengers and crew members. A true tragedy.

We were all okay, Jùlien had a head injury but they had managed to stop the bleeding.

As I was talking to Filippo, I noticed the woman who had seen her husband drown, hidden at the back of the lifeboat, slowly stepping over the edge to let herself slip into the water. I stopped her just in time, and apologized to her for not being able to save her husband.

She hugged me, sobbing. I felt so sorry for her. I hugged her tightly, too. I discovered that she was not only Italian, but from Salerno. I stayed with her, holding her, the whole time.

Meanwhile Jùlien asked who had rescued him. When he learned that it had been me, he looked away without a word.

After two days we were exhausted, it was crazy hot during the day and freezing at night. Several of us began to show obvious signs of impatience, and arguments were becoming more and more frequent, due to hunger and thirst.

On the third day it started raining again, a very strong current started dragging us faster and faster, but where? It seemed as if we had an engine. On the verge of capsizing several times, just as it had gotten cloudy and had started to rain, the sky cleared, the sea calmed down and the wind stopped. Even the current suddenly stopped.

We were still for more than two hours, when it began to dawn, from the other boat they started shouting: Land... Land!

We immediately thought it was a mirage due to the moment, then even from our lifeboat someone started shouting.

We began to row with the last of our strength, it took us almost an hour to be sure it was land, we were disappointed when we realized it was an island, and not even that big.

We were wrong. It was indeed an island but it was getting bigger and bigger, there were mountains and we began to see vegetation.

It took us six hours to reach it and only at dusk did we manage to find a place to disembark.

Having rounded the headland, the crazy thing was to see the carcass of the ship, lying on its side at the other end of the bay.

If the shipwreck had happened there, we had been circling that place for days...

The barrier reef, just above the water, forced us to look for a gap to reach the beach. We were happy to have found land, but aware that we could be who knows how many miles from civilization.

The island

Had we been on vacation, that would have been paradise. White sand, crystal clear sea and fish that circled around us without fear. Crescent-shaped beach, almost a kilometer long and a hundred meters wide, gave way to a rainforest. In the center flowed a small river.

After getting everyone out of the lifeboats, we took stock of the situation. Shelter had to be arranged for the night; we were all exhausted from hunger and soaking wet.

Having found a fairly sheltered place, we gathered wood to build fires, but how? After nearly twenty minutes of useless attempts, rubbing wood against wood or trying to cause sparks by striking rocks together, it occurred to one of the castaways that he had a lighter. We had to see if it still worked!

We eventually managed to light the first of the fires and with it the others. Six in all, managing to warm us up a little. Night had fallen and we postponed the search for food until the next day, taking turns to keep the fires burning. We finally managed to relax, all except Esterina, who had wandered off and was in the cold crying. I tried to comfort her, I hugged her to warm her up. I saw a mother in her, I thought how mine might have felt if it had happened to her, to lose the man she loved and with whom she had shared her life with.

To distract her from the pain she was feeling, I asked her to tell me about some moments from the past, how they had met, their family, when they had gotten married. I even managed to make her smile when she told me about their 25th anniversary gift, but suddenly she began to cry again.

In tears, she told me that a few days before their departure, she had found her husband’s results of some tests. He had been diagnosed with malignant prostate cancer, and he, not to make her worry, didn’t tell her. I took this bad news as my cue to try to console her.

«Ester, in my opinion your husband was relieved to pass away like this. I think, from the way you described him to me, that it was devastating news for him and he would not have been able to bear to suffer and undergo a treatment that you said would have been of little use. Now you have to pull yourself together and do whatever you would have done to help him.»

«But now, what will I do without him?»

«Take care of us. Look at us, we are all afraid, so many of us have suffered at least one loss in this tragedy. What do you say, should we go by the fire?» We joined the others.

In the morning we carried out a screening, how many of us there were, how many women and men, and what each of us was able to give as a contribution to the community. Thirty-four men and forty women between the ages of twenty and sixty. Eight among children and infants and twenty-seven over sixty.

In total, one hundred and nine. I, Esterina and Romolo, were the only Italians.

Getting so many people to get along was practically impossible; we were helped by the presence of Filippo, the 2nd ship’s officer who everyone agreed