The construction site right across the street from my house went dead some weeks back. Much of the rough work is already finished, but the house still needs a roof. The construction crew vanished just before Christmas, though. As far as I could gather, they had no construction permit. Judging from the house itself, they had no plans, either. Anyhow, the foreman returned a few days ago. He is tidying up the site and closing it off. “What’s up?” I asked him this morning. He was banging together some planks for a makeshift front door. “We have another job in Buzet,” he began nonchalantly. It took a while for us to come to the missing construction permit. Then we shifted to building anyplace in this town. Before long we started talking about living in Motovun. “Who’d ever come to live in a place like this?” he raised his shoulders at some point. After a pause, he answered his question himself: “Poets, loners, weirdoes…” When he noticed that I had turned quiet, he did his best to change the subject.