Anatoliy Petoyan – Ghosts of the Abyss: Titanic

This book is a tribute to the eminent journalist and spiritualist William Thomas Stead, who died on board the Titanic in 1912. "

1. "My Dear Beatrice. I seem as faceless as this ocean, as fragmented as this rusty hulk buried at the bottom of the sea, a long-forgotten shipwreck without markings. My bones are signals rising to the surface, reflecting from the abyss. Alas, over the years they have become covered in rust, and the signals have become intermittent, with a noticeable frequency. Perhaps these are signs of my permeated indifference to Caitlin? Has her soul rotted over time, like mine? Perhaps the answer is known to these damned wrecks in which I am imprisoned. The shadow of my consciousness tirelessly beats out the remnants of a long-rotted manipulator, still sending these signals to all those who did not hear the call for help on that fateful night. My naked nervous system is an antenna, transmitting signals across the darkness of the perilous abyss. I will direct its summit for you; I will leave fragments of radio waves at the foot of my tombstone. You will need them in the ruins of chaos, so that when the time comes, you can find me."

2. "Why is the seabed so calm? It beckons me to walk its surface; but I already know it will crack beneath my feet and drag me down. The ruins of this giant, frozen in time, have withstood years of storms, and now, deprived of the tides, they stand unmoving, like crushed and mutilated, empty temples. One day, I will try to escape them. I will search among its wreckage for your traces, apparently swallowed by sea creatures."

3. "For years, hobbling my spirit through the bowels of a giant, I can’t help but wonder: why are we here? Where is the truth for which we all came here? My boots are filled with soot and silt, and my pockets are completely empty. Perhaps they became empty when I was in the grip of dreams? Doubtful. After all, what meaning is there in dreams for those who shovel all the pain of this world into lonely, long-extinguished cauldrons, forgetting their own imperishable fears and grievances. My pain is you, and your bitter tears on my decayed bones remind me even more of its infinity. In the hold of the wrecked ship, I found what must have been twenty-one tons of glossy paint. Perhaps they were importing it. But I will give it a purpose: I will paint on the wreck the symbols and signs of our catastrophe. With their incomparable luminescent power, they will reflect from the depths to the sky, so that everyone in this doomed world will know that even death is filled with beauty and life. I will leave these signs for you as well. I am confident you will recognize them when you are ready."

4. "My sweet Madeline. I took my things, my books, this death certificate to the bottom. It will be written on the ruins of this rusting colossus of the Atlantic. Who was Jacob, and who remembers him? Morgan wrote of him, but who was Morgan, and who remembers him now? I have drawn, carved, chiseled, and marked on the steel crypt all that I could leave for you. There will be others at these ruins who, perhaps, will remember me. I will always be drawn here. One day, the fish will return and nest on my bones and my history. I will look to the left and see Vincent flying beside me. I will look to the right and see dear Ava hovering nearby. I will rise from the ocean like a giant, a beacon, and you will be able to see the shimmering lights in the distance. With my light, I will leave white lines on the waves for you, briefly opening the way to the mainland. I will wait for you and our son on this path, until the thread of all existence dissolves. I hope that among the rotting debris, I will rediscover the chronometer lost in the abyss of chaos. I will need it to know when this will happen."

5. "Dear Elizabeth. This will be my last letter, my twenty-first. Whether they are still piling up in the holes of this damned liner, I do not know. Why do I still send them to you through this endless darkness? They will petrify for centuries to come in this rusting time capsule of broken hopes and crippled destinies. Perhaps I can imagine these letters, folded into boats, floating to you, my beloved, waiting near the distant pier of a noisy city. I understand there is no escape from here. The long-extinguished lantern is giving way, along with my resolve. At times, I hear the singing of sea creatures from the depths above me. They call to me, to once again become an imperishable link in the chain of the universe. I believe that I have the courage to do this, to finally find peace and tranquility. I know that someday we will meet again, in a new life, in another Universe, and then the sea creatures of distant worlds will wrap themselves around us in an endless dance of existence."

6. "My refuge is here, amid the jagged wounds of desecrated grandeur. A ghostly abyss has cast a shadow over my rotten bones for years. At times, I still feel the breath of its ruins, the scraping cries of its passions, its inevitable urge to return to nature. It’s increasingly difficult for me to understand where I end and the ship and I begin. I’m entangled in a wet blanket, trying to plug the leak in the bottom of the vessel, holding back the ocean. The difference between sleep and reality has long since lost its meaning. Sometimes at night, I sense the lights of a passing liner. I’m sure, from the mainland above, these lights look entirely earthly, but from here, from below, they seem to flit between worlds. It’s impossible to determine whether they are above the waves or below them. Figuring this out now seems too pointless – why not both?! The only thing my exhausted spirit is capable of is to indulge in contradictions, waiting for the fabric of the universe to unravel."

7. "As the liner tilted, dead keel up, toward the darkness, my heartbeat was stopped by a powerful impact with the superstructure railing. I was already lifeless twenty-one meters down. Enough for the oxygen reserves in my brain to diminish, giving rise to hallucinations and a sense of ascension. Physical time froze, and the light from the darkness became almost unbearably bright. Perhaps this was a tunnel, cutting through the dimension, opening a path to the stars, or perhaps it was simply a meaningless idea of my fading mind. I hope the answer will be known to the sea creatures waiting for me below."

8. "Dear Ariadna. Sometimes it seems to me that I myself created this steel skeleton. Somewhere, between longitude and latitude, the fabric of life split on its way to the bottom, and my lifeless remains washed up on the lifeless ground, walling up my consciousness between worlds. No matter what I try to relate this colossus to, its overhanging stern remains for me an unchanging emptiness, a rotting grave, and at the same time the alpha of my death, which defies any theory. How did I end up here? For what purpose, unknown to me? Perhaps it doesn’t exist at all? Perhaps the answer lies in the rusty bones buried beneath the shaft of a long-rotted propeller… There is no answer, just as there is no peace for a forgotten soul, endlessly languishing beneath the silt and rotting ruins. Each time, I return, and to my remains, which, I desperately hope, centuries later will bear the fruits of insight. I will wait. The moment will come when all will end, and my ashes will blossom from the abyss, embraced by your unattainable starlight. I believe that our unbreakable bond will help us find new lives again, so that we can find each other again in the infinity of creation."

9. “I don’t know the name of the sunken ship. Perhaps I once did, but the harsh environment has gnawed at my remains, and the merciless passage of time has erased its arrogant and useless name; it seems to have been here for many years, though it has not yet had time to settle to preserve its stricken grandeur. I do not remember if anyone died; if so, I did not see them with my own eyes. Perhaps when it hit the bottom, the wave from the impact scared away all the fish around. I will search for bodies near its wreckage, to be sure that life will return to these places again. I am certain that I am not alone here; however, just as I am certain that my journey is not yet over. For example, I do not remember where I got these rotten candles from, or why I decided to use them to illuminate the gloomy tunnel between the skeletons of the engines, leading deep into the impenetrable blackness. There are only twenty-one of them. Perhaps their light is meant for the only ones who will follow me.”

10. "My dear Frank. The vegetation here has ossified into unimaginable shapes, nonexistent hues, much like our old garden in Cork. It’s strange to think that there was once nothing here but a bleak seabed. Yet here everything remains dying: the water is too filthy for fish, the ship’s interior is drowning in an impossible architecture of chaos straight out of a Picasso painting, and the soil is dotted with the remains of hermits like myself. I once knew human ashes could make excellent fertilizer, and that in twenty-one years you could grow a great forest on what remains of your hips and ribcage; and still have enough left over to thicken the air and stock the bay with fish. But alas, here in the freezing abyss, my remains are condemned to become meaningless fertilizer, a useless chaos of decaying luxury, hidden from the sun’s rays. Only a solitary pair of smoldering shoes adorns the mortal remains of a lonely tombstone. Over the years, they have become clogged with sand and dirt, increasingly enriching the soil above me. Perhaps one day you will visit this place, and when that happens, my tombstone will finally blossom with the unearthly colors of eternal creation."

11. "I play… I play tirelessly… with my eyes closed, without fear, rushing towards the inevitable end. I play with my last breath, with love and tenderness, writing my last words through the strings. Our notes together were the brightest, the most resonant in my life. Neither the symphonies of Mozart nor Bach can compare to the bliss that we wove together. Unfortunately, the music of my happiness must end here, in the middle of the ocean. The notes of love in my mind are distorted, shimmering with the cries of drowning people, men, women and children, with the grinding of steel, with breaking dishes, cracking windows, with water rushing rapidly onto the lower decks. Slowly, but surely, these destructive sounds are coming closer and closer to me, displacing the notes from my memory. Soon they will be gone altogether. Only the music of death's chaos will remain, which will envelop me in the abyss of freezing hell. She will imprison my body and soul in the darkness among the cold stars. My journey is over. The music is played. But know, only your heart will remain bound to my lifeless chest, and I will feel how it warms me with its inexorable love, through the frozen strings. I am deeply grateful to you, my Maria, for your love for the mortal heart of a musician. As a gentleman, I am obliged to return it to you. Preserve it and find it again, with someone more worthy, and the music of love will play in your eyes as never before. The time has come… Live long and happily, my dear. With love, Henry."

11. "My Mary, I am writing to you from the Titanic. I remember how happy I was to step aboard, full of joy and hope. It was as if the whole world had stretched out into a long structure of strong steel, and in this world I felt safe. Even after so many years, I still feel it, like a tightly sealed coffin, with elements of my wounded consciousness long since dissolved within it. Now I have merged with it, become one with it, like so many other hermits stuck in its depths. I am broken, scarred by memories. A hole has grown in my soul, much more massive than that of that damned, godforsaken ship. For many years I searched for you among its wreckage, looked for your reflection in the shattered portholes. From time to time I hear behind them the death cries of men, women, and children who have long since crossed all conceivable boundaries of life. Maybe I was in the boiler room when the same thing happened to me? It doesn't matter now. It doesn't matter how it happened. What matters is that all my thoughts at that moment were of you. Later, I learned one simple truth: sooner or later, judgment day will come, and the ocean filled with pain and suffering will part. When that happens, our mortal cells will merge, and then we will be together again. "

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