At dawn, Marina leaves Foppolo with a silent weight on her heart, while the mountain lingers behind her like a secret. The descent into the valley is a journey through time: San Giovanni Bianco welcomes her with its stony quiet, and San Pellegrino Terme appears to her like an intact memory of the Belle Époque, suspended between elegance and melancholy. Crossing the Brembana Valley, her thoughts stubbornly return to the events of Foppolo, to that home that never ceases to call her.
As the landscape opens up to the plains and the traffic of Bergamo signals a return to reality, a brief stop on the highway turns into something unexpected. At the service station, amid the smell of gasoline and coffee, Marina meets a young woman with an uncertain past and a restless gaze. It's a brief, seemingly casual encounter, but one that gives the journey a new, subtle, and unpredictable twist, like a heartbeat announcing a turning point in the silence of the asphalt.
A journey between mountain and plain, where the past still whispers and an unexpected encounter changes Marina’s fate
Stories. The Enigma of the Abandoned House of Foppolo. Chapter 13 A: Along the Road of Silence
Marina left Foppolo behind her in a silence that felt suspended, as if the mountain, in the first light of dawn, were holding its breath to watch her go. The road that wound down toward the valley stretched like a silver ribbon between rocky walls and patches of untouched snow, and for a moment she felt like a child again — when she made that same trip with her father, and every turn was a promise of plain, of light, of future.
She drove through San Giovanni Bianco, the small village nestled at the foot of the mountains, with its low roofs and stone houses pressed close along the provincial road. The windows, framed with white curtains, reflected the water of the Brembo running beside her like a faithful companion. Then, after only a few minutes, the landscape changed abruptly.
San Pellegrino Terme appeared before her like a postcard from another time: a town that still seemed to cling to the Belle Époque with both hands. The elegant lines of the Grand Hotel, with its arched windows and golden decorations, stood out against the clear sky like a monument to the bourgeois dream of the early twentieth century. The thermal baths, with their Liberty-style façade of iron and glass, glimmered in the morning light. The arcades — where, a century ago, ladies with parasols and men in linen suits once strolled to the sound of small orchestras — stood silent now, yet retained the grace of eras that never age.
The slender columns, the capitals adorned with floral motifs, the amber and green stained glass told the story of a time when San Pellegrino was considered the pearl of the Brembana Valley, the thermal lounge of the Lombard bourgeoisie.
They came from Milan, from Turin, even from abroad, to drink the healing waters, to dance in the halls of the Casino, to be lulled by the scent of acacia and the sound of the Brembo, always the same, always present....
