The backdrop for the life and loves of a member of the small-town upper class is a village, population 13. With his feelings strangled by the snobbish standards set for him by his mother, all he can do is rebel on the inside. His only friend and drinking buddy is a retired sailor named Ismael. Ismael, no longer able to work and tired out by all the things he has done in his life, has returned to his home to die. But life, through the skills of an old witch, offers him one shady chance to become young again, which Ismael turns down. Hidden feelings in the heart of people who have felt how bitter it can be to be alive, experience forged by time in an unknown, unhappy backwater where all it seems people can do is to trudge through their gloriless youth.