The signature opens two possible outcomes. Confirming lets the name go with the body, with the fare drawn from the living officer's account. The officer would take his brother's place below the reading. Voiding leaves the body unidentified at the northern wall; he keeps his name, desk and an account grayed at the margin. The four words a year concern a separate retention field. Registration alone is not a universal promise of passage within a week.
Recognition complicates the printed identity. The body bears his name, but he knows his brother's hands. Two boys went to the registry; one name continued. The specimen signature he has copied for fifty years came from the drowned fingers. He finally confirms in his own previously unfiled hand. Those recognitions do not reconstruct every detail of the childhood substitution or prove that the register was always right.
The effects separate at the crossing. He keeps the swollen dictionary, which remains closed. He punches another hole in the watch strap and fastens it to his brother's wrist. The watch leaves wound, on the wrist to which it was promised. At his desk he repeats the winding gesture without the watch. The retained object and the retained action cannot open the unreadable book.