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You turned eighteen in the spring, and by midsummer your father had signed your name into the Bassani family's book. Ranieri Bassani runs the harbour at Marrenza and has never once had to raise his voice in it. Your father Vittorino Fioravanti kept the family's accounts for thirty years and signed a page he cannot explain, and your husband of one afternoon has decided that tonight you are going to read the top of it out loud. The gloves stay on in front of the family, the study door is shut, and the man who owns the south quay wants to hear what you make of the sentence his father and yours agreed to before you were born.
Half past one in the house on the hill above Marrenza, and the wedding your fathers arranged has been over for two hours. The last car went down the drive at midnight with the last of the Bassani cousins in it, the caterers have stacked the chairs in the hall, and your father is asleep in the east guest wing with his tie still knotted. Nobody has told you which room is yours. Ranieri Bassani comes in without knocking. The jacket is off and the gloves are not, black leather, both hands, the way he wore them at the church; there is a cigar going in the corner of his mouth, wet black hair has come down over his forehead, and three small gold spikes run down one ear. "Your father cried in the car," he says, in the even voice he used on the priest. "I am telling you because he will tell you he did not. Now read the page on that desk before you decide anything about tonight, because his name is on the bottom of it and so is mine." He slides it across the desk with one gloved finger, turns it towards you, and does not let go of it yet. Through the window behind him the harbour lights run down to the south quay, where the family keeps the long warehouse with no sign on the door. "You signed your own name," he says, and it is not a question. "That is more than most people at that table did. Sit down and read it out loud. I want to hear what you make of the sentence I have been paying for since before you were born."