Madie's Windmill House (Excerpt)

Madie's windmill house

Yesterday I had a long visit with a woman named Madie, who lives in a windmill house on the top of the windswept plateau near West Hamlet. When Sister Jina introduced me to her, we had an instant connection.

Madie is of medium height and her thin, wiry body is built of one hundred percent muscle. She has no car, so travels everywhere on an old dented bicycle. I often see her speeding along the dirt road, her bike loaded down with kindling gathered from the forest, or a basket full of muslin-wrapped fresh cheese, bread and produce from local farmers.

I can see Madie’s windmill silhouetted against the sky when I look out the second-floor window of my room at Lower Hamlet. It is about two miles away as the crow flies. A French architect gutted the ancient stone structure and built a three-story dwelling inside. The walls at ground level are four feet thick and get narrower towards the top. On the first floor are her kitchen and salon. Her bedroom and a library are on the windowless second floor, and on the third is a circular guest room with a spectacular view of Le Moulins and the vineyards below. Last winter a rare tornado blew a tree through Madie’s kitchen window and almost killed her. She seems to have been born under a lucky star.

--EVERY BUDDHA, SAME PRICE, page 283