During World War II, a carpenter unwittingly becomes the assistant to a mentally disabled Jewish woman who is being targeted by the Nazis.

Television adaptation of the novel by the Italian writer Italo Svevo. His hero is Zeno Cosini, the son of a merchant in Trieste. He is a type of useless person, defeated by life and incapable of action. The ironic insight with which the author draws a picture of the townspeople of Trieste at the turn of the century sounds like an accurate diagnosis of a social class that is doomed with its entire lifestyle and morality.