
Ranieri Bassani
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.


















