Mulinelli is the dangerous stretch of sea in front of the Carrera family’s beach hut, a place where turbulent water and currents make drowning a recurring threat. In Irene’s final crisis, it is both the immediate setting of Marco’s attempt to reach her and the site where the sea returns her body. Years later, it also receives the mixed ashes of the family’s parents, binding the location to successive losses and acts of remembrance.

Setting and Reputation

The sea lies beyond the beach and dunes near the family’s summer house in Bolgheri. Its waters are described as turbulent even when there are no waves, with currents capable of dragging people under. Four people associated with the family’s holidays have drowned there before Irene; the deaths are remembered as suicides. The setting thus carries a history that makes Irene’s decision to go toward the water legible to Marco before either parent recognizes the danger.

Irene’s Final Walk

On an August evening, after the weather has broken and the libeccio sweeps the coast, Irene leaves the house with an old hemp rope over her shoulder. She says she is going to secure the family’s Vaurien sailboat to its shed because a storm is expected. The explanation disguises an intention Marco immediately understands: she is heading for Mulinelli to drown herself.

Marco sees that his mother is occupied with the dishes and that Giacomo is drying them; neither tries to stop Irene. He decides that saving his sister is a responsibility between the two of them, slips out through the kitchen, and follows her along the path to the dunes. He catches sight of her white vest and continues toward the shore despite her repeated orders to go home. The sea’s established danger gives this pursuit its urgency: the location is not simply where Irene is walking, but the threat that Marco believes he must confront before she reaches it.

Death and Return to Shore

The account later places Irene’s body back on the shoreline. The waves have returned her to the surface, and the tide will bring her to rest on the coast. The contrast between the turbulent water that takes her and the shore that gives her back makes Mulinelli the scene of both disappearance and bodily return; its familiarity as part of the family’s summer landscape cannot soften the finality of what happens there.

A Place of Family Remembrance

Years later, Marco and Luisa go to Mulinelli to scatter the mixed ashes of Marco’s parents at sunset. Giacomo’s absence weighs on that occasion, and Luisa later recalls that Marco did not know then that Giacomo had always been in love with her. The same sea that holds the memory of Irene’s death therefore becomes a place of family mourning and belated disclosure. Mulinelli gathers distinct losses without making them interchangeable: Irene’s drowning, the parents’ ashes, and the unresolved separation between the brothers remain attached to one coastline.