Pian di Nava

Pian di Nava is a meadow on the route between the village and Dasio, where Lelia Camin waits alone for Massimo Alberti and encounters him returning from Muzzaglio. The place becomes the setting for their reunion: a landscape of paths, a hollow, chestnut trees, and woods in which the two approach without knowing whether they will meet. Its physical openness makes the encounter visible, but the forest and the solitary vigil give it the tension of a meeting both desired and feared.

Setting and approaches

A young woman from the village directs Lelia toward Pian di Nava, explaining that Massimo is expected to pass there on his way back from Muzzaglio and that the meadow is roughly a quarter of an hour away. She accompanies Lelia up through the poor but clean village to the public washhouse, then points out the path leading west. From there, she says, Pian di Nava is only five minutes away. These estimates make the meadow a reachable place of waiting rather than a remote destination, though Lelia must make the last part of the journey alone.

Lelia follows the path beyond the cemetery and the hollow of Terra Morta. Where it climbs into a hollow meadow shaded along its southern lip by large chestnut trees, she leaves the path and crosses the grass to one of the first trees. From this position she can see the track curve across the meadow and disappear into the woods. She sits on the ground and watches the forest. Pian di Nava is thus rendered through a sequence of distinct thresholds: village and washhouse, cemetery and hollow, open grass beneath the chestnuts, and finally the wood from which Massimo will emerge.

Lelia’s vigil

The meeting is preceded by Lelia’s difficulty in asking after Massimo. She chooses to speak privately with someone from the inn rather than ask in front of its other guests, whom she imagines might be curious. She learns that he has been called to Muzzaglio two hours earlier and is expected back at ten; as it is nearly nine, the young woman suggests that Lelia can intercept him along the route. Once at the meadow, Lelia dismisses the boy who has accompanied her and takes up her place alone.

The location gives her a clear view of the path but no control over what will happen when Massimo arrives. She waits with her eyes on the woods, seated away from the track. The arrangement preserves the asymmetry of the encounter: she has chosen to seek him out, while he approaches without knowing that she is there. The meadow’s open sightline makes recognition possible, but it cannot make recognition immediate.

Massimo’s arrival and the reunion

Massimo comes toward Pian di Nava after a difficult morning shaped by the preparations for Benedetto’s funeral. On his way back from Muzzaglio, he stops at San Rocco, where the green pasture ends against rock and the sound of the river recalls the Posina he heard from his room at Montanina. As he resumes his walk, memories of Lelia return. In the chestnut and walnut woods, he pauses to look at a cluster of flowering cyclamens beside the path, watching until their images sink below conscious memory, and then walks slowly out into the meadow.

He sees a woman in light-colored clothing about two hundred paces away, seated near the upper edge of the grass where it turns left and descends toward Terra Morta. At first he takes no notice of her, supposing her to be one of the holiday visitors who pass through the area. She is sitting about twenty paces to the right of the path. When she rises as he draws level, he looks at her but does not recognize her; her pallor and altered appearance make her almost unrecognizable until he meets her fixed gaze.

Lelia falters, reaches back for the tree beside which she had been sitting, and remains standing with her head lowered. Massimo rushes forward as if to support her, then stops, unable to believe that the woman before him is Lelia. He removes his hat without knowing what else to do. Her face is pale and streaked with tears, and her eyes convey love and pain. He initially misreads her presence, suspecting that Donna Fedele has brought her there, but Lelia signals that this is not so. The meadow’s paths have brought them together, while the scene’s hesitation and misrecognition make the reunion an emotional reversal rather than a simple arrival.

Departure and narrative significance

The reunion does not settle where Lelia will live. After Massimo and Donna Fedele have spoken, he explains that Lelia has written to her father and that a negative answer is not certain; he also hopes to obtain a position as a local doctor in Valsolda. Donna Fedele nevertheless considers it necessary for Lelia to leave with her. Lelia protests: she hopes Donna Fedele might stay in Valsolda to rest and fears returning to Velo, while she is still months short of majority. The place where she has found Massimo is therefore a temporary refuge and meeting ground, not a lasting home.

After discussion, Donna Fedele agrees to rest that day, consult a doctor the next morning, and, if permitted, travel with Lelia to Turin. Lelia is to be received at Santhià by Donna Fedele’s cousin, while Eufemia continues with her. The plan underscores the limits of the reunion: Pian di Nava gives Lelia and Massimo a moment together, but their future remains subject to family arrangements, uncertain permission, and travel. The meadow’s narrative force lies in that contrast between the intense recognition it permits and the provisional departure that follows.