Mayele, the wet road and the missed appointment

The road that runs from Bardolino towards Verona passes through Bussolengo, we are in the Veneto countryside, there is this large village with twenty thousand inhabitants, a long series of warehouses and silos, here they make shoes and then sell them throughout Italy, there they produce peaches and then – after the umpteenth roundabout – on this side the hydroelectric plant, further on towards Pescantina l’Adige, still beyond the “Casoti”, those solitary shacks that are built in cultivated fields to store tools: the old people of the village say that there were witches once, many years ago, yes, witches. Looking at it from above – that road – it looks like a snake gliding in the countryside, a lowly grass snake appeased – in summer – by the line of vacationers who proceed in columns towards Lake Garda. It’s only sixteen kilometers, but in the summer it can take a couple of years to cover them. But summer – that morning of Saturday 2 March 2022 – is still a distant hypothesis. The road is free, there is no traffic, the people who had to move by car have already gone to work, putting one foot on the accelerator is an almost instinctive, yet dangerous gesture. The night before – as they say in Bussolengo – “ghe xe sta na sguassada”, it rained heavily and the road is wet, you risk a lot going fast.