The watch in the tray is his father's. The kind you wind. An initial he polishes with his cuff on the tram. On his wrist, a pale band.
The junior has brought the tray. Thirty years in the office of effects and this is the first he cannot begin. A ticket folded his way. A drowned pocket dictionary. Bone button. Green thread wound round a matchstick.
He puts his thumb to the reader.
Pending confirmation of identity.
The card prints his name. His renewals. The desk fee from a school he left forty years ago. Standing orders. The body downstairs is him. The office must confirm.
Through the glass he sees a water face. His reflection lies across it. Which expression is his? Then the hands. He knows the hands.
The winter he turned six, his father took two boys to the registry. Coming home fewer. Two bowls became one. One coat on the hook. Nobody said struck. That was for other families. The firstborn's watch stayed in the drawer for years. When it came to him it had cooled.
His brother had lived. No account. No queue. No fare. At the end, the water. A tray delivered to the only man who could read it.
The junior reads the rule. Effects identify the dead. The officer's signature completes the identification. The estate follows the name.
In the old type beneath: A name can cross once.
The junior points to the box for the officer's own retention. Four words a year while the file remains open.
"If I sign?"
"The name goes with the body."
"And me?"
The junior points to pending.
"If I void it?"
"Unidentified. Northern wall."
The wall does not face the water. With the fare from his account, his brother could take the dusk boat within the week. He himself would take his brother's place below the reading. Or he could keep the name. Keep the desk. The account, now gray at the margin. Renewals read margins.
Two nights he sleeps in his coat at the desk. Winds the watch. On the second evening he tries the dictionary. One wet stone. It opens nowhere. He does not force it.
On the third morning he signs.
The reader summons the specimen. The registry winter. A child's careful letters, placed rather than made. Fifty years he has signed them like a song learned through a wall. They were never his. Downstairs, the drowned fingers wrote them.
Two boys went in with a strike to place. The name went where it went. The child who came home was the child who came home.
He confirms the deceased in his own hand. A hand no file holds. It does not shake. The reader files it under the name it finds.
The dusk boat takes the name entire. Effects go with the dead, except one item retained against error. He keeps the dictionary. RETAINED. Nothing under REMARKS.
He fastens the watch himself. His brother's arm is too swollen for the strap. The office punch makes another hole. He takes the cold wrist. Closes the buckle. The watch goes wound, on the wrist it was promised to.
The light stays on above the trays. At his desk he winds the watch he no longer has.