Rudolf, the narrator of this book published in 1982, has been passionately preparing a larger scholarly work on his favorite composer Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy for a decade. Initially hindered from writing the first sentence of his study by the visit of his sister and later, after her departure, by the tormenting fear that she might return, he is tortured by the hell of loneliness. Therefore, he packs his bags, takes only the most important of his documents, and goes to Palma to focus on his work. In a café there, he remembers a young woman who had approached him during his last stay in Palma a year and a half ago. She was desperate; her husband had jumped from the balcony of the Hotel Paris at night. In the cemetery of Palma, in one of the seven-story high concrete burial boxes, he finds her.