His mother tied it on when he was nineteen. Left wrist, braided, two centimetres of tail left hanging.
Sixteen years and it did not break. He showered in it, swam in it. It went dull and the fibres furred up.
At thirty-five he was in a car accident. The car was written off; he walked away from it. At home, undressing, he saw the cord had broken — broken on his wrist, the two ends facing each other with a millimetre between them. It had not fallen off.
He tied a knot in it.
At forty a length of scaffolding pipe came down on a site and landed twenty centimetres from his foot. At home the cord had broken again, and again it had not fallen off.
The third time he does not remember what happened. He counted the knots: three.
He asked his aunt. She said if the cord breaks you throw it away. You do not knot it. Knotting it means you are still owed.
He tried to take it off. He could not. Apart from the three knots there was no join anywhere in it — one continuous loop, no beginning. Scissors would not cut it. It was hard under the blade, like a wire under tension.
In his mother's things, at the bottom of the camphor chest, he found a coil of the same red thread, braided the same way. He measured what was left: one metre seventy. She had bought two metres.
The cord on his wrist measured twenty-two centimetres.
That leaves eight unaccounted for. His mother's urn was sealed ten years ago. She had a red cord on her wrist when they sealed it.