"Does that look like your house?" I said.
She looked at me over the bun. "This one?" I said, pointing.
She just chewed, but it seemed to me that I discerned something affirmative, acquiescent even if it wasn't eager, in her air. "This one?" I said.
"Come on, then." I entered the broken gate.
I looked back at her. "Here?" I said.
"This look like your house?"
She nodded her head rapidly, looking at me, gnawing into the damp halfmoon of the bread.
We went on.
A walk of broken random flags, speared by fresh coarse blades of grass, led to the broken stoop.
There was no movement about the house at all, and the pink garment hanging in no wind from the upper window.
There was a bell pull with a porcelain knob, attached to about six feet of wire when I stopped pulling and knocked.
The little girl had the crust edgeways in her chewing mouth.
A woman opened the door.
She looked at me, then she spoke rapidly to the little girl in Italian, with a rising inflexion, then a pause, interrogatory.
She spoke to her again the little girl looking at her across the end of the crust, pushing it into her mouth with a dirty hand
"She says she lives here." I said. "I met her down town.
Is this your bread?
"No spika," the woman said.
She spoke to the little girl again.
The little girl just looked at her.
"No live here?" I said.
I pointed to the girl, then at her, then at the door.
The woman shook her head.
She spoke rapidly.
She came to the edge of the porch and pointed down the road, speaking.
I nodded violently too.
"You come show?" I said.
I took her arm, waving my other hand toward the road.
She spoke swiftly, pointing. "You come show," I said, trying to lead her down the steps.
"Si, si," she said, holding back, showing me whatever it was.
I nodded again.
"Thanks.
Thanks. Thanks." I went down the steps and walked toward the gate, not running, but pretty fast.
I reached the gate and stopped and looked at her for a while.
The crust was gone now, and she looked at me with her black, friendly stare.
The woman stood on the stoop, watching us.
"Come on, then," I said. "We'll have to find the right one sooner or later."
She moved along just under my elbow.
We went on.
The houses all seemed empty.
Not a soul in sight.
A sort of breathlessness that empty houses have.
Yet they couldn't all be empty.
All the different rooms, if you could just slice the walls away all of a sudden.
Madam, your daughter, if you please.
No.
Madam, for God's sake, your daughter.
She moved along just under my elbow, her shiny tight pigtails, and then the last house played out and the road curved out of sight beyond a wall, following the river.
The woman was emerging from the broken gate, with a shawl over ner head and clutched under her chary.
The road curved on, empty.