Chapter 6 Summary

"The Fire - Gavran Gaile"

Natalia describes her grandfather's participation in regular luncheon meetings of retired doctors, meetings that continued even during the war (see "Quotes," p. 149-50). She also describes her early years at medical school, and how she and Zora, as both young and female, struggled for respect. She narrates a trip to illegally purchase skulls for research, how the two of them were nearly arrested at the border, and how a phone call to her grandmother revealed that her grandfather was visiting the tigers at the reopened zoo. Her grandfather, she says, eventually arrived and had to bribe a customs official in order to gain their release. Meanwhile, she says, learning he was at the zoo without her devastated her. She also describes her decision to major in children's medicine which led her grandfather to give her an important lesson...