Gustav lives with his grandmother in a house called Fischtal and is surrounded by a society whose biggest concern seems to be that the cleaning lady is secretly eating the sweets. However, the more he learns about his family in Fischtal, the clearer it becomes to him that the mental state of this family is not in good shape. There is a price to pay for maintaining the facade. When his grandmother dies years later, Gustav returns to Fischtal to assess the inheritance. It is his last visit to the fortress of a world where a cool sense of reality, a smooth surface, and puritanical strictness are preached, and where judgment is harshly passed on others. But always at hand in the crocodile leather handbag: the silver flask and the pillbox from Cartier.