Chapters 3 and 4 Summary

"The Diggers"

Back in the present, Natalia sleeps for a short while and then wakes, partly because of the intense heat and partly because of the steady, loud coughing of the digger child downstairs. Natalia again tries to telephone the Zdrevkov clinic where her grandfather died, but gets no answer. She then looks in on the child, who is awake and looks at her with calm unconcern. Unable to sleep, unable to face once again calling the clinic and getting no answer, Natalia goes to the vineyard where the diggers are working. She slips and falls into an open hole, her unexpected emergence startling one of the diggers into yelling and causing several others to come running. Natalia explains and apologizes, and the diggers all go back to work - all but one, Dure, whom she follows as he goes back...