The story is set in a filtration camp in November 1920, in the Crimea, after the evacuation of the White Army, when several dozen thousands of White officers were left behind on the peninsula. The officers are oblivious of their impending destiny, waiting for the resolution by the hands of the Red Army officials.[2] One of them —an unnamed captain (Mārtiņš Kalita) —is haunted by the memories of a dramatic and brief romance of 1907 and tries to understand how the Russian Empire fell apart and who is to blame. His laceration stops when all White officers get aboard an old barge, which the Reds drown in the Black Sea, and all officers perish.