4 Beds · 3 Baths · 211 m²
Country House in Montecatini Val di Cecina, Italia
I swear on the bread I eat: I didn't want to do it. But when the master says "it's done," you bow your head and push the cart, and you don't ask why. That night there was a full moon, and the statue of the Redeemer seemed like the heaviest thing in the world. We had taken it from the oratory of the neighboring village, because the master said it would bring us luck for the harvest. I transported the statue on the cart together with Nanni, the other farmhand. We arrived at the house at dawn. The master made space in one of the ground-floor storerooms, moved the sacks of grain, and ordered us to lay it there. The two storerooms, large and deep, with walls as thick as a man's arm and floors worn by the footsteps of generations. The master said that those rooms would one day become homes for his children, but at the time they served only to store the fruit of labor. The master's family lived on the first floor. I slept in a small room attached to the storeroom, and at night I heard the wood creaking. Or perhaps it was the statue moving. I don't know. Three days passed. On the first day, the master went down to see the statue and found it turned toward the window. We had placed it with its back to the wall, and now instead it was looking outside, toward the valley. On the second day, we found it on the ground. It hadn't fallen—it was as if it had sat down, with its legs bent and its head bowed. On the third day, the statue disappeared. The master shouted, cursed, accused us of having sold it. He searched the whole house: the two ground-floor storerooms, the cellar carved into the rock where he kept the wine and oil, the garage where he repairs the cart and the mules. Nothing. Then the oldest farmhand, the wise one, said: "Master, it has returned where it was. The statues of the Redeemer are not stolen. They are welcomed." I have never touched a statue again in my life. But of that farmhouse, of those walls that hosted a miracle for three days, I still have a vivid memory. On the first floor, the kitchen was the heart of the house, with the fire always lit and the smell of bread rising. The dining room was the room of celebrations, where the master received neighbors and stories were told until late. There were four bedrooms, large and airy, with windows that opened onto the hills of Montecatini, and a study with a massive walnut desk where the master kept his accounts and wrote letters. A bathroom, which at the time was a luxury, and a pantry where provisions were kept for the winter. From the first-floor windows you could see the Metalliferous Hills, the outline of the village, and on clear days, a silver reflection that was the sea of Cecina. It was a house made for looking, for breathing, for living. Around it, the outbuildings told the story of every day's labor: the stable with its stone mangers, where the mules rested after work; the barn, low and long, which once housed the tools and the threshed grain; and the shed, with its roof of worn tiles, where we stacked the bales of hay that smelled of summer and sweat. All of it immersed in 30 hectares of green, fields that stretched as far as the eye could see. Today I know that those two ground-floor storerooms can become two independent apartments, refuges for those who love peace. The cellar and the garage can become workshops or cellars for aging wine. And the first floor is still there, with its four bedrooms, the study, the kitchen, and the dining room, waiting for a family to fill those rooms with voices and laughter. The farmland around it is what Nanni and I hoed, what we planted and harvested, what sweated and wept with us. I don't know if the story of the statue is true. I know that if you buy this house, you buy a piece of that night, and of all the nights that came before and after it. You buy the scent of grain in the storerooms, the cool of the cellar, the light of the first floor on the hills. And if one night you hear a slight creaking in the wooden beams, don't worry. It's just the house telling its story to those who know how to listen.
