Chapters 8 and 9 Summary

"The Heart"

In the middle of her drive back to Brejevina, Natalia stops at a payphone and calls her grandmother, saying she has retrieved the grandfather's belongings and asking whether she should open the bag into which they've been placed. The grandmother loses her temper, saying that opening the bag is part of the family ritual, and that in no circumstances should Natalia open it. When she gets back to the orphanage, Natalia discovers that the diggers are ready to perform their ritual on the recently discovered body which, it turns out, was dismembered and buried in a suitcase. As it unfolds, Zora passes on a reminder from the grandmother that Natalia is not to open the bag, to which Natalia says that her grandfather would have told Zora to testify in the lawsuit. Zora says by the time they got...