Ioanide, an apolitical and misunderstood artist who dreams of "things that are normal abroad but impossible here", led a difficult life as an architect under the old regime. After 1944, his situation improved thanks to the benevolence of an enlightened communist nicknamed Botticelli, whom he once hid from the police in the attic of his house. He receives commissions for large-scale cultural monuments, although he has "on file" the ballast of his children lost in the legionary adventure and continues to accept, in his entourage, a circle of sycophants from the former elite.