“Hello? Anyone home?” Flavio arrived at the front door. He was peering around in search of some cat, any sign of the presence of the mistress of the house, but nothing met his eye. There wasn’t even the stench of cat urine, or any old bowls with remnants of food or water. An old doorbell had popped out of its hole in the wall, dangling in precarious equilibrium at the end of a pair of red electric wires. He didn’t feel safe touching it. He rapped sharply on the wood with his knuckles. The door shook, and flakes of old paint showered to the ground. He waited a few seconds, then knocked a second time. Harder, this time. No good. He decided to walk over to the nearby window. He placed his hands against the glass and peered in. A room with a dusty floor and cracked terra-cotta tiles. There was a green velvet armchair, an old smoke-blackened fireplace. On the walls, small picture frames or photographs had left shadows of their presence on the wallpaper that was peeling away here and there. Some crumpled papers. A dust-covered table with chunks of plaster littering it, plaster that had dropped straight down off the ceiling. The state of neglect and abandonment was unmistakable. He moved away from the pane of glass and went back to looking at the house as a whole. He decided to walk around it—maybe there would be some sign of life in the back. Taking long strides in order to avoid stepping on dandelions and underbrush, he noticed a small building with the door torn off its hinges. He went over to it. Inside were two rusty shovels, a deflated wheelbarrow tire, and a saw hanging on a nail. A veil of cobwebs covered a series of empty bottles standing on a shelf made of crumbling, rotten wood. On the back of the house there were two windows. One had the shutters nailed closed; the other had its glass smeared with bird droppings and a crack running right down the middle. He tried to peer in, but all he could make out was an old bathroom, consisting of a toilet black with mold and a small bathtub streaked with rust. All that was left was the window with the shutters nailed closed. But there was no way to see inside that window. He didn’t notice the fact, but the nails that held the boards in place over the shutters were bright and brand-new.