There is a couple in the Golden Corner in 1970 who would actually prefer to be alone; there is a young woman in a city by the Rhine in present times who moves into an empty apartment and has left everything behind; there is a man who, in 1964, has already picked up sixteen different fountain pens to write down how it all began. They are all part of a story, and they all struggle to tell it. It begins in 1955, in poor Switzerland, where a family shares a single bed, a family that will soon no longer be one because the children are sent away. A house burns down and is rebuilt elsewhere. A woman loses a finger in a fall down the stairs but gains the love of a man. On the neck of a newborn, a stork bite appears after birth, and the father recognizes something true in this redness.