THE WORK OF HUMAN HANDS By Margaret Todd Maitland Illustrations by Stuart Mead Design by Connie Gilbert i » • The House on Via Gombito he year my husband and I spent in Bergamo, we lived in a medieval building, held together by small-scale feats of ingenuity. Modern conveniences had been installed during, the last century, but the building,, enjoying, a dig,nified entropy, never wholly accepted them. In the uneasy partnership between old and new, the pipes, wires, and hoses had to make all the adjustments, turning, at odd ang,les, emerg,ing, throug,h thick stone walls in unexpected places. Needless to say, thing,s reg,ularly went wrong,. The task of fixing,, which really meant rig,g,ing, up another temporary compromise, fell to the repairmen we came to know well. 30 Clinton St. Quarterly—Summer, 1988
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