For eight years, Ferdinando has stopped speaking with people. In the solitude of his Milan apartment, he cooks, practices singing, and does an improbable form of gymnastics. He is paid to keep company to Genziana, a wealthy and cultured lady, who needs to connect with a deep soul akin to her own. Ferdinando reads her passages of literature. She narrates the happy fragments of her life, now vanished: she is a widow, her children are far away, the house is empty and silent. In his free time, Ferdinando visits modernist architecture and spiritual places. His isolation is interrupted by calls from Domenico, an eccentric who rambles about lofty subjects, aware that he cannot break his friend's mutism.