Chapter 10 Summary

The endless days in the mine continue. Shurik and the rest of the members of Work Unit 8 have lengthened the mole hole by seventy-nine meters over the course of three months. During a break one day, Shurik is lying on his back and notices the perfect outline of a leaf on the tunnel ceiling. It is a fossilized leaf. The others gather around to look at it. Shurik goes miles away in his mind, dreaming that he is in a garden in ancient Greece. He sees a statue of a beautiful young girl carved in marble. He reaches out his hand to touch it and it is still warm, as if the girl had only a moment ago been changed to marble from flesh and blood. He thinks how unlikely that is, however, because in that beautiful garden there can exist no evil...