excerpted from A Tower in Tuscany (Rizzoli)
August 27
At the heart of the house, looking out onto the courtyard, next to the dogs and below i casieri, this is the small room with the metal-framed single bed. This is the bed that squawks when you roll around in thin cotton sheets, in the heat of a late August night. Your British body will, eventually, acclimatise to the long hot nights, but for now you’re lying there veiled in your own sweat, looking up at the blue-hued ceiling that’s subtly painted as clouds. Remaining still for a moment, your gaze drops to the doorway, to the heavy curtains of a deeper (but not dissimilar) tone that are always drawn together; during the day to keep out the heat, and at night as the last frontier between you and the moths and mosquitoes. You eventually fall asleep that night, lying at the centre of this old new world, in the only room in the house that doesn’t have a name. You will, while you’re here, simply hear it called, ‘Your Room’ and you suspect this is the same for the other assistants, past and future.
cealck | hc. krempels 