What happens when the universe of rules, reason, order and controlled disorder comes apart? How do intellectuals — devoted to inquiry and reflection, offering work and refuge to the displaced — react when they are displaced themselves? Losing their certainties, they are forced to return to an environment rich in its alien culture, but threatening and indecipherable. This novella travels with two sophisticates and their company to this new, alarming context, where there's only a wavering refrain from an ambiguous past.