One does not forget beauty because there is war; on the contrary, beauty can be a defiant means in hell against hell. The Cavalry Captain is a story of foreign origins and foreign language, about the stranger between men and women, humans and animals, and about the rift that must remain because the grandmother was active in the resistance and the grandfather belonged to the murderers when it was fashionable to belong to the murderers. It is the story of the Cavalry Captain with his bleak weakness for hostile women, of a dubious treasure he guards, of the propagation of war in subsequent generations; of a child who wants to drink water from a dog bowl and falls asleep in the arms of his helpless comforter, of another child who later swears never to betray his comforter, yet betrays him; of monastery walls, behind.