Love and Courage in the Village of Corenno Plinio, Between Mysteries and Conspiracies

Stories. The Secret of Corenno Plinio. Chapter 6: Silences and Suspicions

The north wind had cleared the sky, but the air cut their skin like glass. Seen from their window, Corenno Plinio looked like a motionless nativity scene: slate roofs, dimly lit streets, the lake rippling with the faintest breath. And yet, since they'd returned, every door had become a threshold, every glance a question no one asked. Lisa drew the curtains hesitantly, as if afraid to reveal who might still be staring at them from the alley.

"We have to go out today," Andrea said, putting on his coat. "We can't become prisoners of our fears."

"They're not ours," Lisa replied. "They're local. As if the village has decided we no longer belong in this quiet place."

They slipped into the maze of steps. A woman closed the shutter as soon as she saw them. Two fishermen, sitting on a step, broke off their conversation at their height. The echo of their footsteps bounced off the walls, too loud not to attract attention. Alessio's bar was a square of yellowish light cutting through the mist. Inside, the aroma of coffee tried to feign normality.

Alessio, behind the counter, obsessively polished the same glasses. "Cappuccinos?"

“Two,” Andrea said, trying to find the most neutral tone in the world.

When the cups landed on the marble, Lisa approached. "Alessio, do you have any more news on Enrico? Someone says they've seen him."

The bartender didn't look up immediately. He simply moved the spoon ever so slightly. "Rumors travel faster than the wind here, Lisa. And the wind, as we know, tells a bad story."

“Is that a way of saying you shouldn’t talk about it?” Andrea asked.

Alessio sighed. "It's a way of saying that someone insists on telling stories of maps and passages, stories that have already caused damage. It's best not to get involved." His dark irises flickered for a moment. "And don't trust anyone who wears a smile."

Lisa jumped. The sentence hit the marble like a stone on the seabed. "Who told you that?"

"These things are just plain ol' smack talk..." the bartender cut in, already regretting his gamble. "Be careful. Especially at night."

They stepped outside, feeling the chill on their skin, but the tightness in their throats wasn't coming from the air. "He repeated the same phrase from the notebook," Lisa whispered. "It means it's circulating, that someone spread it, like a proverb."

"Or that someone wants us to believe we're close to the answer," Andrea said. "If it's a game, they're leading us where they want."

The church of San Tommaso welcomed them with its smell of wax and ancient stone. Behind, in the archives, Don Carlo kept the keys like a relic. He had the weary look of someone who knows that secrets weigh more than records.

"I've been waiting for you," he said softly. "For days now, I've been hearing half-answered questions, as if someone was always stumbling over the same word and didn't want to say it."

"Map," Lisa said without circling around. "One from the sixteenth century. With marginal markings: caves, tunnels, shelters. Things that don't appear in the copies."

Don Carlo placed the keys on the desk. "Don't ask me how I know this, but certain maps weren't created to guide travelers: they were created to conceal."

He led them past shelves that smelled of mold and faded ink. He opened a ledger with almost affectionate care. "Look at the margins: circles, small crosses, isolated letters. Cartographers called them glosses. Here, however, they are codices. This sign recurs near the indentations in the coast: a cave, perhaps, or the mouth of a tunnel accessible at low water."

Lisa bent over the paper, her breath held. "The same symbol appears in Enrico's notes. It's as if he were following a trail that we see only with a delay."

A faint sound came from the corridor, like the rustling of a cloak. Andrea whirled around. "Is anyone there?"

Silence. Then, a shadow cut the light halfway through the door and disappeared. Don Carlo stared at them, pale. "You're not the first to seek. You're not the only ones. And not everyone wants to find."

They spent two hours photographing the edges with their phone, noting the recurring marks. The more Lisa arranged those graphite dots scattered among the folds of the paper, the more she glimpsed a constellation running along the shore, like a submerged necklace. She had the physical sensation of touching a thread stretched across centuries, a thread being tugged at from the other side.

As they left, the sky had become fierce and beautiful. The bell tower chimed three times; the lake responded with the crash of waves on the pavement, as if ancient words were mingling among the pebbles and foam. Andrea took her hand.

"If there really is a passage—a cave, a rock bridge—it could be halfway up the hill, among the reeds. And a man, the other night, died with a scrap of paper in his pocket. Enrico, meanwhile, disappears and reappears like lightning in the storm. Do you realize the picture?"

"Yes," Lisa said. "And the only thing I don't see is the face of the person in the center." Nor the face of the person who smiles too much, she thought, and as she thought this, she felt the longest shiver.

When they returned, they found a fish wrapped in newspaper on the doorstep. Fresh, shiny, its glass eye turned toward them. A gift, perhaps, or a mocking gesture. Andrea grabbed it by the tail and threw it into the bucket. "This one, too, speaks."

"It's a sign," Lisa murmured. "Someone has crossed our steps. Someone knows we've returned to the archives."

They remained in the kitchen until the light faded from the glass. Then Lisa picked up the parchment hanging above the fireplace: for the first time, it seemed less like a relic and more like a map among maps.

And somewhere, along the shore, someone was counting their steps.

Later Lisa saw on the table a worn notebook that she had never seen before, darkened by humidity.

Lisa held out her fingers like a wounded animal. The smell of old paper rose to her nose.

On the first page, Enrico's nervous handwriting. Broken dates, place names in columns, small drawings: an X next to wavy lines, a cross marking a descent to the lake. Short sentences, like notes taken during a getaway. Among them, one repeated three times, with the ink crinkled, as if the pen had run out of air: Don't trust anyone who smiles.

"It's him," Lisa murmured. "It's his hand." She felt an unreasonable tenderness for that hurried cursive, like a dehydrated voice begging for water.

Andrea slowly flipped through the pages. "Look here: a Latin reference—fossa sub lapide, a ditch under the stone. And here: breva. Perhaps it refers to the afternoon breeze, the time when the water is shallow or calm enough to pass through."

Lisa marked everything with her pencil, right next to those words, as if she could echo them. "Why did you leave it here? And how did it get in?"

Someone opened the door with a makeshift key. Or they actually have one. In any case, they chose not to steal anything. Just to leave something there. This is a gesture of trust. Perhaps.

They stood still for a moment, listening to the house. The wood creaked as if a weight had fallen from a step. The world was all on that table: map, notebook, parchment. Three roads converging toward the same blind spot.

"Should we try to connect the symbols?" Lisa said. She spread out a sheet of paper and copied by hand the photographed glosses from the archive: the circles, the crosses, the scattered letters. Then, with the tip of her pencil, she drew thin lines, like connecting stars in a personal sky. "If the scale is consistent, this stretch should be less than a kilometer from the port. A cove hidden among the reeds."

"You can't see anything at night," Andrea objected. "During the day, he's a target. And now we're as visible as lighthouses." His voice betrayed a concern he struggled to contain. "The man on the platform didn't die by accident. Enrico isn't hiding on a whim. I have to protect you."

"You do it every minute," Lisa said softly. "But we can't stop searching. If there's a way out, if someone uses it, then someone lives within the same labyrinth as us."

Evening fell like a slow curtain. A silver line cut across the water. Lisa and Andrea, wrapped in their woolen blankets on the balcony, stood still, peering into the darkness. Suddenly, a light appeared. Small, distant, midwater. It swayed like a lantern, coming forward at intervals, then stopping. Andrea held his breath.

"Is it a boat without oars, or is someone rowing slowly..." he whispered. "See how it always stops on the same shots?"

"They match," Lisa said, her voice faint. "With the markings on the map." She felt the skin tighten on her arms. "It's like she's measuring the points. One by one."

The light advanced a little further, then went out. No engine noise. Just the pounding of the waves against the rocks, a beat every two seconds, regular as a metronome. Somewhere, a dog barked twice and then fell silent.

They went back inside. Andrea moved the table to the window, as if to make a light barricade. "No one will sleep tonight," he said with a tired half-smile. "Tomorrow at dawn, we'll go to the reed beds. We'll pretend we're walking. If there's an access between the rocks, we'll see it."

Lisa nodded, but her thoughts returned to three things: the fearful phrase, the notebook placed down by someone with a light hand, the lantern calibrated like a theodolite. Then, a fourth, more uncomfortable thought: the smile. The courteous face that had welcomed them, the kind neighbor, the hand ready to open a door, to offer advice. Don't trust anyone who wears a smile. How many people here wore smiles like cloaks?

"What if one of them were the bridge between the country and those who move on the water?" he ventured. "What if there really was an ancient pact?"

Andrea ran his hand through his hair. "So that's why no one's talking. It's not just fear: is it a debt or a sick loyalty?"

The lamp on the dresser dimmed a notch. The silence became a room where the house breathed softly. Lisa placed her palm on Enrico's notebook. "If you're watching us, give us a good sign," she murmured. "Stop leaving us sentences and come out."

At that late hour, three sharp knocks struck the wooden hallway. Tap. Tap. Tap. Andrea leaped to his feet. He opened the door: no one was there. On the floor, just inside the landing, was a folded triangle of paper. He picked it up. Inside, written only two words: Tomorrow, dawn.

He remained with the paper in his hand, his heart pounding. "It's either help, or an invitation to the trap."

"Or both," Lisa said. And she understood that their story, from that moment on, would have to walk a fine line between one possibility and the other, with the lake below, black and silent, ready to swallow both guilt and innocence.

They slept little, taking turns, one sitting by the window, the other lying with the notebook on her chest, like a relic recently rescued from the water. Before the sky even hinted at light, they rose without speaking. The village was a beast, still snoring. The lake below was a cloudy glass on which someone—or something—had drawn the first circle of a hunt during the night.

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