A young fruit breeder Leonid Yets comes to the evacuation to the south in 1943 in order to bring out a new variety of apples. He finds the diaries of a man who recently died with a strange death. A decent woman is accused of the murder, and Yets together with his fellow, a Freudian painter Pierre, is trying to find the true cause of death. To do this, they will not only sink into the memories and dreams of the deceased writer, but also into the history of Russia of 1920s. Leonid is sure that everything has its own reasons, and the world is reasonable and logical. But the world is more complicated.