military road on the mountain-side, we saw below, on the top of the
lemon gardens, long, thin poles laid from pillar to pillar, and we heard
the two men talking and singing as they walked across perilously,
placing the poles. In their clumsy zoccoli they strode easily across,
though they had twenty or thirty feet to fall if they slipped. But the
mountain-side, rising steeply, seemed near, and above their heads the
rocks glowed high into the sky, so that the sense of elevation must have
been taken away. At any rate, they went easily from pillar-summit to
pillar-summit, with a great cave of space below. Then again was the
rattle and clang of planks being laid in order, ringing from the
mountain-side over the blue lake, till a platform of timber, old and
brown, projected from the mountain-side, a floor when seen from above, a
hanging roof when seen from below. And we, on the road above, saw the
men sitting easily on this flimsy hanging platform, hammering the
planks. And all day long the sound of hammering echoed among the rocks
and olive woods, and came, a faint, quick concussion, to the men on the
boats far out. When the roofs were on they put in the fronts, blocked in
between the white pillars withhold, dark wood, in roughly made panels.
And here and there, at irregular intervals, was a panel of glass, pane
overlapping pane in the long strip of narrow window. So that now these
enormous, unsightly buildings bulge out on the mountain-sides, rising in
two or three receding tiers, blind, dark, sordid-looking places.
In the morning I often lie in bed and watch the sunrise. The lake lies
dim and milky, the mountains are dark blue at the back, while over them
the sky gushes and glistens with light. At a certain place on the
mountain ridge the light burns gold, seems to fuse a little groove on
the hill's rim. It fuses and fuses at this point, till of a sudden it
comes, the intense, molten, living light. The mountains melt suddenly,
the light steps down, there is a glitter, a spangle, a clutch of
spangles, a great unbearable sun-track flashing across the milky lake,
and the light falls on my face. Then, looking aside, I hear the little
slotting noise which tells me they are opening the lemon gardens, a long
panel here and there, a long slot of darkness at irregular intervals
between the brown wood and the glass stripes.
'_Voulez-vous_'--the Signore bows me in with outstretched
hand--'_voulez-vous entrer, monsieur?_'
I went into the lemon-house, where the poor threes seem to mope in the
darkness. It is an immense, dark, cold place. Tall lemon trees, heavy
with half-visible fruit, crowd together, and rise in the gloom. They
look like ghosts in the darkness of the underworld, stately, and as if
in life, but only grand shadows of themselves. And lurking here and
there, I see one of the pillars, But he, too, seems a shadow, not one of
the dazzling white fellows I knew. Here we are trees, men, pillars, the
dark earth, the sad black paths, shut in in this enormous box. It is
true, there are long strips of window and slots of space, so that the
front is striped, and an occasional beam of light fingers the leaves of
an enclosed tree and the sickly round lemons. But it is nevertheless
very gloomy.
'But it is much colder in here than outside,' I said.
'Yes,' replied the Signore, 'now. But at night--I _think_--'
I almost wished it were night to try. I wanted to imagine the trees
cosy. They seemed now in the underworld. Between the lemon trees, beside
the path, were little orange trees, and dozens of oranges hanging like
hot coals in the twilight. When I warm my hands at them the Signore
breaks me off one twig after another, till I have a bunch of burning
oranges among dark leaves, a heavy bouquet. Looking down the Hades of
the lemon-house, the many ruddy-clustered oranges beside the path remind
me of the lights of a village along the lake at night, while the pale
lemons above are the stars. There is a subtle, exquisite scent of lemon
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