Palladian Days by Sally Gable

villa, based on the fact that he is the one who rewired it for Dick Rush and now no one else understands it.)
    Saturday will be showtime!
Manifesti
—colorful posters—are on walls and shopwindows all through town. The event that brings so much excitement? A recital by Scuola di Danza di Castelfranco,a regional ballet school that holds its classes in Castelfranco, a much larger town and trading center lying seven miles northwest of Piombino Dese.
    Now, on Friday morning, the whole troupe arrives in full dress for a brief rehearsal on the massive stage and a group photo on the villa's north steps. The dancers range from four-year-old large dolls, so left-footed I'm sure they'll find a way to trip over their own thigh-length tutus, all the way to a few late-teens whose concentration is already so intense and professional that they seem sulky and detached. There are a few males among them, but my whole attention is swallowed up by the craze of colors on the girls and young women flashing back and forth before me as they gaggle and chatter, then move from warm-ups to tentative twirling rushes across the stage.
    I can sense a quiet, contented grin from my villa, that so much youth and vitality is still fascinated by its own centuries-old form and drawn to dance in its shadow.
    Saturday dawns bright and sunny, perfect for the ballet that will begin at the traditional hour of nine in the evening. But Silvana wears a worried face when she arrives to open the
balcone
. Despite the splendid weather that the new morning has brought, the forecast is not good. I will not let an anonymous weatherman confound my own eyes, I tell her; my optimism is undiminished.
    Piombino Dese bestrides an ancient Roman road in the Venetan plain midway between Venice on the Adriatic coast to the southeast and the Dolomite range of the Alps surging from the plain to the north and northwest. On a clear day, free of the haze and ozone that are more typical in the modern industrial era, I can stand on the north portico of the villa and see past the low line of foothills, where Asolo and the other hill towns nestle, deep into the Alps themselves, standing snow-covered all summer long. All
tempo-rali
—storms—affecting the villa arise in the Alps and come down from the north. They have always done so. Palladio himself was well aware of the phenomenon; it led him cautiously to specify stone capitals for the columns of the villa's north porticos, evenwhile he was experimenting with the exuberant free form of terracotta for the capitals of the less weathered south facade.
    Shortly before lunch, Carl buzzes me on the intercom to suggest that I join him upstairs on the north portico. When I arrive, he directs my gaze northward toward the Alps. I have to agree that there is a distinct darkening in the sky along the peaks.
    “There may be a storm building up, but it will never get here in time to ruin the recital,” I insist.
    “Maybe it will pass to the east or west,” Carl says, but with less certainty. The mountain-bred storms of the Veneto are often violent, but they frequently follow a random path, so there is an element of chance in whether a particular storm sighted on the horizon will actually hit Piombino Dese.
    By midafternoon the sky has darkened across the whole northern horizon, blocking all sight of the Alps, but the clouds are still far, far away. About six o'clock we hear a vague shudder from the distance that a pessimist might take to be thunder. An hour later the thunder has settled into a syncopated rhythm that cannot be denied. Flashes of light begin to cavort across the northern sky before falling to earth with a crash.
    “I think it's slipping off east of us,” I suggest bravely. Carl listens without comment.
    The dancers and their parents begin to arrive at eight, but they show little enthusiasm for donning their costumes in the dressing rooms that have been provided in the
cantina
. Giancarlo and his assistant show much more energy in