Summary

Gismondi arrives in a village and notes that it is “odd” that the “children and the dogs didn’t run out to greet him when he arrived” (131). He has been dropped off at a poor village in order to distribute food to its residents. He walks around, looking inside of houses, but perceives an “absolute stillness” within the community (131). He enters a house and asks to two women and a man to whom he should be talking to. The woman, disinterested, replies “talk?” and Gismondi fears that she did not say anything, that it was merely the heat affecting him (133). Although Gismondi thought he could estimate the population without talking to anyone, the car would not be back to pick him up until the next day, and so he approached the children, hoping they would be easier to talk to. The boy...