They are renovating Artur Montrevasso's house. I have never met him, but Marco knows him well. You can see his house from the kitchen, a bright fleck of white wash against the gold and green hill. At night, his house is brighter still, lit up like a white sun-candle against the darkness. Marco curses the light when he wants to look at the stars, and rings Montrevasso and speaks sternly to him. Sometimes the lights go out then.

We know that they are working on the house because of the noises. It is unclear what beasts of machines make them.

Some of them ring high. We do not hear too much of them; the sounds get lost in the treble air between there and here. Juliet says that the higher frequencies do not propagate as well. Marco says they do not come to us because the noises would rather spend their time playing with the birds, darting in the currents above the valley. I look at the raptors floating, and think of them diving on the high, thin machine wailings, thinking them mice or rats and then crashing through them, talons grasping nothing.

The low noises are worse. They come in deep thrums, sent down into the earth by the big engines to shake the soil and loosen the grapes. There is a pounder over there, too, sending out each minute a dull thump, so deep in the earth and the bone that it seems to come from all around and nowhere. If I am careful I can see it in my water glass sitting outside. They turn it off at night, but they begin early the next morning. This has not been going on for long, but it feels as if it has been a long time, and we are mostly used to it.