between Veneto and Friuli wrapped in an almost perfect silence
STALIS in the places told by Nievo
A girl on a bicycle says she has cycled to the mill to check for dragonflies. The blue ones, she argues, seem to have deserted this year. Yet, she says, they have been spotted in Boldara, a couple of kilometers downstream. A man, sitting on a bench placed in the shade of a large tree, leafs thorough the pages of a newspaper.
It is a calm afternoon in the middle of summer. The rustle of the newspaper sheets propagates (I presume) to the horizon above the motionless countryside. Few sounds are heard, clearly distincted from each other: the water pours from the wheel blades; the brook gurgles between the river bank and the mill. In the shadow of the forest, a chirping. The pounding of the heels of two women crossing the small wooden bridge. A distant tractor, at the end of a long dirt road, dictates the time with the rhythmic sound of its engine.
The dirt road that from the mill leads north-east is Venchiaredo road. The place (Venchiaredo) and its fountain are two of the many places told by Ippolito Nievo in le confessioni di un italiano “confessions of an Italian”. The places are, in part, just all around: the towns of Condovado and Teglio; the castle of Fratta. Portogruaro. An information plaque next to the mill invites you to consider the mill itself as a stop along a historical and cultural itinerary. It provides two references for those interested in getting to know the itinerary: the Fossalta di Portogruaro library (telephone +39 0421-789513) and the Cordovado library (telephone +39 0434-690265).
The sun hardly filters through the dense vegetation of the river bank
the Eagle and the Lion
To reach the mill you go along flat roads that cross a lush, well-kept, lonely countryside. The girl with the bicycle claims that the mill is in Friuli; the man sitting on the bench lowers the newspaper and agrees. However, it must be right on the border: two high wooden bolts driven into the ground aside the dirt road which brushes the mill bear the eagle of Friuli on one side and, on the opposite one, the lion of Saint Mark, emblem of Veneto.
In many cases, the wheels of the mills no longer drag the millstones. They are like gears of a clock; rotating, mark the passing of time.
The Stalis mill remained in business until the 1960s.