Spouse and Wills had decided to sell Palu, the house they had made their home for decades. Years ago, they had bought it as a pile of rocks with buckets in the loft to catch the rainwater. It would eventually be turned into a B&B, but they now needed to liquidate what was their only asset. They were downsizing and hopefully creating a small income from the capital, having closed the business shortly after the disaster of the pandemic.

Son, a student, lodged at Palu. He was custodian and guardian to the house, assisted by Ash the Lagorai shepherd, (for those not familiar with the breed, just think wolf), and Atlas the black cat. Wills and Spouse were trying to remotely manage the decline of the building from Spain, where they were currently residing.

They were renting in on the Costa del Sol and planning to relocate there. It made little sense for Son to rattle around in six bedrooms, with five bathrooms at his disposal. As for Daughter, you needed a globe and some kind of tracking device to follow her movements. She did occasionally turn up to occupy two bedrooms, two bathrooms and three wardrobes but was ever really just a visitor, more often seen on video calls from an unpronounceable location with palm trees in the background and humming birds in the foreground.

How much was the pile worth? It had some historic value and also a large garden, home to ponds, bridges, lawns and gazebos. It had been built when Shakespeare was not yet a twinkle in his father’s eye so there were not many similar properties to compare for a market price. It had only been half restored, and that work had by now been done over 20 years ago. Serious refurbishment was required. The windows alone would have had a Z energy efficiency rating on any “APE” certificate. Many of the ground floor examples were perforated by cat flaps for the wandering Atlas, and bullet holes made by fierce hail storms.

The first estate agent worked out a complex mathematical calculation of what a restored version could achieve for an investor in holiday lets or B&B. The figures he arrived at, less the works, resulted in his asking price that was posted on the web. A year later he cut the figure in half and Wills and Spouse engaged a different agent.

The real problem, and one they had not expected, was that you don’t just sell a house on the lake. You have to have every stone measured to see if it corresponds exactly with what appears in the land registry, the infamous “Catasto”.

Therein lay a problem. Back in 2020, no doubt with the best of intentions the Italian government invented the Superbonus, a system of financing and facilitating improvements to housing in the form of such things as insulation and earthquake-proofing. Over half a million householders jumped at the opportunity. To access the benefits everything had to be in order with the building in terms of layout plans, town planning, the registers and backdated building permits. The “Sanatorie”, or pardons, for past building irregularities, accompanied by lucrative fines flowing into the coffers of the authorities, and recalculations of the taxable value of the properties, all had to be catalogued. The system got snarled up. People like Wills and Spouse found they were in a logjam at the town hall. There was a fervour, a slow fervour if that is a thing, in the registry offices of the municipality.

Wills and Spouse had to find a technician. The one they identified was not a man “in” the townhall as such, more a man who could talk to the fleas which could talk to dog that could talk to his master who was the guard for the door of the Castle; to borrow a parable from Kafka. They would have to wait for three years from the guard to consider opening the door.

“T”, the local technician, was located through a Verona lawyer friend who knew everyone.

He looked around the house and informed Wills and Spouse that it was very old, which they already knew. “This is not going to be easy”. The phrase was unusually succinct for the prolix T. His dialect was almost impenetrable to a somewhat deaf Wills but this announcement was clear enough, and, as it turned out, not wrong.

A preliminary visit by T brought good news, the solar panels had been installed with the correct paperwork. T seemed confused by his own positive findings, this was rarely the case, usually there was a pardon to be paid, or they had to be ripped off the roof.

“You’ll have to brick up the window in the dining room, and the one in the utility room”.

“But they were both here when we moved in nearly forty years ago”.

“That’s not the point, they are not in the Catasto”.

Wills objected that the Catasto was wrong then. T smiled, “The Catasto is never wrong”. It was as if Wills had complained that the tablets God gave to Moses had been full of typos.

Wills bricked up the windows, plastered over them and painted them. His handiwork could best be described as ugly. “It’s all right,” said T, “any purchaser will just open them up again after conveyance of the property”.

“Well what was the point then?” asked Wills. T did not seem to understand the question, why did there have to be a point?

Purchasers were occasionally biting at the price hook but disengaged and swam off when it became apparent the town hall’s documents completion date was unpromisingly described as “sometime soon”. It was a date that was put back a month, on a monthly basis.

A geologist connected with the municipality looked at the garden and the septic tank. “That’s not got the capacity for five bathrooms”. “But the system has been working perfectly for 20 years with the house full of guests”.

“The fact that it works is irrelevant”.

“And another thing, the pond has to go, and the bridges, and the belvedere”.

“Why?”

“Because they are not in the Catasto”.

Wills wondered how you could dig up a pond. Apparently, you could fill it in, after digging up its plastic liner and paying a thousand euros to dispose of it.

A large tattooed man with a digger was given the task of turning a pretty ornamental garden into a depiction of first world war trenches. The pipes were laid. There were fifty serpentine metres of water filled trenches, and a sea of mud. It had been the wettest spring for decades. Wills was in Spain and received a slurry of photographs of an unhappy workman up to his waist in marshy sods.

The house, cheap at half the price, squatted on the web month in month out. Occasional prospective purchasers were welcomed and shown around by Son but they were all put off by its medieval construction, the trenches, and the ever-unfinished paperwork.

The drainage for five bathrooms was finally completed, much to the relief of the very large man with his digger. A gentleman, and who he was Wills never really discovered, turned up to inspect the works. He looked unhappy. He informed T that the diameter of the drainage pipes was too small and the trenches were too shallow. The whole of the works had to be dug up again and started from scratch.

The price of these sewage works was getting out of hand. It was in an upward tailspin. The original estimate had been the equivalent of a month’s income for Wills and Spouse. On final completion, and total destruction of what had been a garden and backdrop to many festive barbecues, stood now at nine times their monthly income. It was no longer a matter of scratching the money together, it needed tattooed man’s digger to pile it up.

After private loans, bank loans, and sleepless nights, the monumental work was paid for. T said that the sewage system was now a work of art that even the municipality would admire. That would be a Jackson Pollock then, thought Wills.

The rain continued. The drainage system flooded. It had never done so with the old system, the one classified as “inadequate”. Wills told T who did not some unduly worried. “But they won’t approve it in the town hall if it doesn’t work”, said a concerned Wills. T brushed off the detail, “It has already been approved”.

“But it doesn’t work” said Wills.

“Once it has been approved it doesn’t matter if it works or not, they are not interested in details”, said T, ever a pragmatist.

Wills was reassured. Eventually the rain stopped and the tide ebbed.

The house was surveyed three times, lasers were pointed at walls, bathrooms were measured and plans were submitted to the town planning office. Mercifully the Historical homes agency people were not involved as the exterior had not been touched. T told Wills that had they had to get involved then the sale would be something for the grandchildren to deal with in their dotage.

The story was due to end here but the town planning office is still pouring over the plans and calculating what fine they will impose for the bathrooms. Wills was unaware that permission had not been obtained. It seems they had been tacitly approved with the proviso that the Catasto could be sorted out in the eventuality of a sale. That sale is now upon Wills. There is an offer, contracts have been exchanged. There is of course a snag; the offer has a deadline, “subject to completion of paperwork at the town hall”. Fingers are crossed. Hail Marys are proffered and all parties wait for the guardian of Castle door to fully usher them in.