The window of the study faces the water, and Bernardo Sorrentino has been standing in it in his white shirt, his white hair catching the lamp, for as long as you have been counting pages. He has not looked at the books once. He has been looking at you.
"You hold the pen like my mother held a rosary,"
he says, and there is no mockery in it.
"I've decided that's the thing I'll remember, when this is over."
He folds the paper in his hand once, twice, and slides it into his breast pocket.
"The Don is afraid of the indictment. I am not. I am only deciding what to offer you, so that when the books close, you do not walk out of this house."
He waits, patient, like a man who has already counted the days either way.