Bells

Bells

Before dawn this morning, I climbed the white hill to hear the tinny bells of an ancient monastery ring the hour. There was no sound except my breath and footsteps, the blub-blub of sleepy birds, a rattlesnake robin in an arbutus. Beyond the monastery, the hill totters a while then falls steeply into another valley, equatorial green, olive groves silver-backed along the far side. It is so steep, I have to run to keep up with myself; so rutted with cypress roots, I need to be careful.   

Just before the acceleration point, somebody is renovating a house. I love seeing properties renovated, all the work, the busyness of craftsmen and women, the bet taken on the future by the owners. Their names are already on the gates, one derived from angels, the other from the sun. Already auspicious. I hope they will be lucky, happy in their centuries-old new home, the previous inhabitants, in spirit, either loving or loathing what they have done with the place.

Even after another shower it’s hot.  ‘Thank God for the cool of the morning’ calls the woman in the next yard, as I lay the table outside for breakfast in the old farmer’s cottage, his world blue and green and ochre and terracotta. Bringing the coffee out there are more bells. Those nearby clear, tuneful, insistent. The barely-there peals, low and rumbling as from a dam-burst or thunder, seem to arrive from deep in the equatorial valley.  I will search for their source tomorrow.