Gathering Wood in Tuscany
There’s been thin snow outside and iced puddles with interesting oval designs in them. These stone houses
are just cold, cold, cold. And the wood fires attack us with smoke – the stoves are old and have wide gaps
where the round iron lids fit in, and plenty of cracks elsewhere too. Often, it seems, a batch of wood will be
damp; the large swinging window in the thick wall must be opened then, before the fire is lit, to let out the
worst of the initial smoke. But plenty remains. Cold comes in, smoke goes somewhat out; this is the tradeoff.
Wood is brought to the Podere (large farmhouse establishment in the country) each six weeks by an old man
in a small truck, and we go out in the cold morning to help unload it. Swinging small or split logs in relay
down into a wheelbarrow – we take turns trundling this along the dark passage into the ancient low-roofed
barn – back to the dark stall assigned to Nisarg. Hurl it in over the low wall or through the thick, battered
door held ajar – and then go out again to the light, over iced puddles, for the next batch. We are dirty, our
gloves shaggy with wood-scrap. With four of us working, - Nisarg, me, Rudra, and the wood-man - the
truckbed empties fast, until only shreds and twigs are left.
I see all this wood with mixed feelings. In the flat, I hover between getting ill from cold and getting ill from
smoke. But I may have found a solution – am now wearing a white construction-worker’s mask to keep out
the smoke. One more bulky, peculiar thing to have on! The only warm room is Nisarg’s study, a very
pleasant space, high-ceiled and with a tall window and two little desks and a cozy sofa covered with a white
throw. It’s smaller, less drafty, than the kitchen-dining room, and more enclosed than the attic space, which
gives onto a stair.
The other rooms each has a woodstove too – one in Nisarg’s bedroom, one in the kitchen, one upstairs in my
little garret, which I never even think of lighting. I make do with hot water bottles. I wear a small one by day
in the waistband of my baggy jeans, and change the water frequently. I cannot look any dowdier than I
already do, in any case. The white mask elevates it all to the level of comedy – almost. At night I load my
bed up with two big ones.
The kitchen is too large to be effectively warmed by one stove. It’s a clumsy room, with a long refectory
table and benches to stumble over, and a narrow avenue between these and the sink. Other motley things sit
about, stumble-able as well. A canvas director’s chair, into which Nisarg sometimes flings herself; mostly it
just takes up space. The woodbox. Shelf unit. Huge glass water bottles, kept for nostalgic reasons I think,
since the tap-water has been pronounced excellent by a local healer. A couch, and sundry low end-tables. An
armoire full of crockery and canned goods and silverware and pots and pans. The old Christmas tree has
never been dethroned, and it adds its twinkling lights to the semi-disarray.
The firewood must, of course, be brought in several times a day from the tumbledown barn. This is just
across the muddy drive from our huge stone building with its several divisions into flats. It’s so very dark in
the barn. Each time I go in I shudder at the thought of how our ancient Briton ancestors must have lived – in
huts of mud and wattles made, with just a smoky fire for warmth, and the freezing air coming in through the
cracks. Dark. Ack!!! These reflections make the all-too-rustic flat seem, well, palatial.
(But honestly, I’m getting quite tired of rustic. I’m forgetting to be grateful for the wonderfully organic
vibes of wood and stone and ancient tile. The kitchen floor is so rough it looks just… dirty. Grunge sticks in
old cracks – one could imagine the room with livestock quartered in it. If ‘twere mine I’d wax and polish
and seal this floor, but Nisarg protests it’s beautiful like it is. The study has a more polished brick. All the
floors are uneven.)
When you bring in a box of wood – always too heavy – out of the barn, you cross the little funky muddy
courtyard – it’s actually just ex-barn, roof gone - where in summer clothes are hung to dry. A glare-eyed
Tom gazes down at you from a stone perch in a wall; adjoining areas are still covered with ancient muchlichened barrel tile. Then you struggle across the drive, where members of the cat-pack go about their
business. These are not domestic, fond and happy cats with friendly quirkish personalities and winning ways.
These are chewed-ear, human-indifferent, worn-furred cats who spend their time spraying, fighting,
muttering, howling, chasing each other, gang-banging-and-chewing, and camping out in the stairwell and on
the drive and in the barns.
Then you must manage to get up two very steep flights of stairs with the box. There are usually a few cats
sitting on this first flight, and naturally they see no reason to move for the passage of a mere human – why
should they? So you must look over the top of the box for them, and skirt the beasts with their tattered ears
and psycho eyes. These sublimely self-absorbed, incestuous, profligate miscreants stare with cold, piratical
sneers as you stagger around them. They don’t even twitch their pugilists’ shoulders, or ripple their
motheaten black-and-white hides.
The first flight is still in the outdoor light; it ends in a fairly wide landing, with doors opening off it. Where
the second flight begins there’s a swinging door designed to keep the cats from spraying the upper hallway.
However, people prop it open with a rock and the cats spray anyway. Before you go through it there’s a
light-switch to push for fifteen seconds’ light on the dark, cat-scented stairs before it goes out again. The
knees like kneether the stairs nor the load of wood; and the light is certain to go out before or just as you
reach the top. Someone has quaintly arranged, all up the left side of this staircase, a series of large white
lumpy rocks with tea-light candles set on them, which are never lit. These add to the tumult.
Almost at the top – the light goes out – you stand for a moment disoriented in blackness, afraid to fall back
down the precipitous stairs. Step blindly up and park the heavy box on the landing, dreading picking it up
again. Step up to the left of it and find the next light switch, which is lit with a little red glowing dot inside.
Push this – the hall light comes on. Then – get back down around the box and up to the right side of the very
narrow landing. Take off the thick glove necessary for wood-loading. Reach up and grope in a little electrical
box on the wall where the key is hidden. This entails lifting the flap-door on the box up; it has no latch or
handle. You just have to sort of pry it out and up. Get the key off the tiny flat space at the bottom of the box.
Take it out without dropping it amongst the mud-boots, broom, and wagon-wheel which live here.
Yes, on this landing – maybe two feet wide – reside these articles, which must be taken into account when
standing on the little shelf in the dark. There is also a truly terrible original oil painting, hung on the wall,
and so out of your way; it is the only thing to be grateful to the darkness for, that you temporarily cannot see
it. It is an abstract in deep swamp-green with black swirls and sort of violent upward motions in it. Like
food-poisoning after eating… spinach lasagna made with cuttlefish-ink pasta. Yeah.
The light goes off again. Lean over to the switch on the opposite wall, hoping not to fall down the stairs. The
light comes on. Now both hands are needed to turn the key and push the door handle and sort of pull out and
up at the same time. It’s that kind of lock-and-key situation; the thing does not work unless you pull on the
inserted key and tug the door towards you by the handle, at once. Hard to describe – it’s a knack. The door
opens, so at least light is now available. Get down the stairs a bit to lift the box without hulching your back
over dangerously whilst lifting. Get the box in the door. Watch out for darting cats. Wonder what to do
about shoes – tread with barn-muddy ones to the woodbox beside the stove? Or set the box down, sit on the
inner steps which lead up, four of them, to Nisarg’s study, and de-shoe? Then have to again lift the box to
take it to the woodbox? Or kick it across the floor, minding your knee, which does not like kicking; after
folding back the rug? Meanwhile, too, you must shut the door to prevent the cats’ form of interior decoration.
You can then repeat this process as many times as you like! – it takes many trips to fill the woodbox.
Another possibility: when you haul the wood up the first flight of stairs, instead of setting it down, you can
try to push up against the box with your body and get it pressed to the wall. Raise one knee slightly as a
warning to the box not to fall. Press the light-button, one hand still grasping the box. Or, keep holding the
box (it has sort of handle-holes) with both hands and elevate your thumb backwards to push the switch at the
same time.
Heft the thing up the stairs, with light-loss as previously. (The neighbor who installed the light is very
thrifty.) At the top endeavor to push the box against the wall in the same manner while fetching down the
key. This is generally impossible. Sometimes the key is already in the door; then twist your body to attempt
the lift-pull operation while holding the box up. It probably won’t work. Pound on the door. Nobody comes.
Give up, turn to your left, punch the light, and gingerly back down a few stairs, swinging the weight of the
box forward; set it down.
Now, where are those guys? They may have gone off to the bar in the village five kilometres away; or Nisarg
might be out for a walk and Rudra, no longer in the best of hearing, on the computer in the study. Whatever –
you’re on your own. Get the door open boxless; then lift the box in the careful manner you’ve learned on
construction crews those many years ago and in lifting your own luggage the years since. Stick out your rear
– arch the small of your back – take the weight in your thighs. Easy does it.
Easy does it, but the kneesies still don’t love it.
Anyway – more fuel for the smoke. What hey?
There is another, more poetic side to fuel-gathering. Sometimes, when you go out for your pleasantly
melancholy walk across the rolling winter farmland, with its far hills with walled towns atop them, and a
cold blue-and-cloud-streaky sky above, take with you a big plastic square-bottomed bag, of the sort Ikea, the
house-shop, gives out with its large goods. Wear gloves of course – but then, it’s too cold to go out without
them. Up the unpaved road there’s a side-road turning off into the hilly fields. If you walk down this a ways
you come to a dry hedgerow. Lots of good kindling lies about on the ground. It has thorns though – but you
can imagine that this is rose-kindling, that it must smell good and be somehow romantic. Break the branches
down to fit in the bag. Get whatever unthorny twigs you can find too, from other bushes. When you’ve got a
good bagful, and have had your exercise and your spaciousness, go home with your treasure. Nisarg will
reward you with exclamations of praise.
Loc Cassette, Jan. ‘05