Castel poggio

We lodged with La Dirce, a widow, in the top of her house. The marble table in the kitchen was cold, the marble floor was cold, we had to light a fire at night. It was a mystery to us what to do about wood. Wood was everywhere. It was being chopped in the fist-sized piazza under the naked plane trees outside our window. It was being cut on every chestnut hillside, trussed and faggotted and trotted in on muleback. It was being carted morning, noon and night on women’s heads, faggots proudly sailing through the village. In Dirce’s backyard the bundles were stacked as high as the roof.