. . . at the end of lovemaking. Ah kisses Aria and starts to get up.
ARIA:
(eyes closed)
No, don’t sleep out there. Stay with me tonight.
AH:
Are you sure? You should get some rest.
ARIA:
Sleep with me tonight. I’ll be fine, I promise.
AH:
Okay.
Ah cuddles up beside Aria and closes his eyes. A lone bedside candle allows us to see Aria’s closed eyes. Slowly, we begin to see movement behind the lids.
Darkness, blue-black night, ocean, and a ship that pulls into frame. It is the same scene as the first, only now we experience everything from the perspective of the woman who holds her stomach. The rock of the ship is steady, nauseating, the glow of the moon, the horror of her surroundings, those enchained, the bestiality of her captors, all in the rhythmic sway of the sea. She holds her stomach, looks around and notices those in chains around her begin to drop as if dead. Each one seems to look up and say something as if for the moon to hear, before they drop. Bodies around her drop in slow motion. The rhythmic sway of the ship.
AH:
(V.O.)
Three is the beginning of all things try angles when wrecks tangle your wings, let vision blur not your deserving see self as the ghost of your servings . . .
We pull back and see the white cross painted on the ship. We watch in slow motion as dead bodies are wrangled from the living and piled on deck. We reenter the vista of the woman as she observes.
AH:
(V.O.) con’t:
If you’re serving the father, there’s no Sun without mother, parent-bodies discover water-bodies and drown. Wade me in the water ’til Atlantis is found.
We pull back on the face of the woman who with shock and fear in her eyes makes one last startled look up into the first camera before saying
WOMAN:
Ama Nyaninga.
She falls.
Aria wakes up crying.
AH:
It’s okay, love. It’s okay.
ARIA:
Ama Nyaninga.
Ama Nyaninga?
ARIA:
She died. Everybody was dying. They would look up at the moon, say something and then drop. Ama Nyaninga. Ama Nyaninga. Ama Nyaninga.
She was looking right at me.
AH:
Do you think that’s her name?
Aria nods yes.
AH:
She says her name three times before she dies.
ARIA:
They all say it.
AH:
Her name?
ARIA:
No they all say their own names three times before they die.
(under breath)
Beetlejuice. Beetlejuice. Beetlejuice.
Night.
Ah sits on the couch. He pulls up his laptop. We follow a montage of keywords and images: Atlantis. Legend. Plato. Poseidon. Atlantic. Medusa. Northwest coast of Africa. Volcanoes submerged underwater. Ah types “Transatlantic Slave Trade.” “Middle Passage.”
“Overcrowded.” “Disease.” “Death.” “Thrown overboard.” “Ships followed by sharks.” . . .
Morning.
Aria and Ah sipping tea in front of Aria’s paintings.
ARIA:
You think I’m crazy?