The father meets with dubious Russians on the black market, while the mother is an actress in Pigalle. The son, left to fend for himself in Paris, interacts with enigmatic women: he shares a love for certain books with Madeleine Péraud, an esotericism specialist, who offers him to move in with her. Madame Hubersen takes him to Versailles in the evenings. With a third woman, who has shot a man in a stranger's apartment, he will flee and help her cover up the traces. Fifty years later, the narrator tries to piece together his childhood memories like parts of a puzzle. Nobel Prize winner Modiano uniquely blends dream and reality in this narrative.