To us, aged from 3 to 8, the walk seemed a very long one, when we used to visit la Sunta at the bird hunting grove. Her husband Giovanni was the fowler and they used to live there with no electricity or water. But it was not a problem: they had oil lamps and a fireplace, and Giovanni took every day two buckets of water from a peasants’ house nearby.
Sunta was a short woman with a kind face, dressed in black, welcoming us as a good fairy. When we arrived, she used to give us some water from the bucket with a ladle. We drank it as a magic potion.
That heat and sunshine in the countryside, the shadow in the hunting grove, the extraordinary coolness of that water still today represent, to me, summertime at the Villa.
© Alberto Passi – All rights reserved
