Ivan, who left Hungary during the revolution fresh out of jail as a political prisoner, returns to his birthplace after living abroad for more than forty years. He lives in comfortable retirement in Lugano with his British wife and receives a strange phone call early morning one day that his old love Mari is very ill. In spite of all his misgivings and suspicions, he flies to Budapest to see her and face the past. Mari, on her sickbed, confesses to Ivan and confronts him with her betrayal and secrets. She can no longer contain within herself the degrading compromises and painful memories of the past--the greatest shock to Ivan being the discovery of a grown-up daughter, who thinks her father was dead. He now has to decide what to do with the rest of his life, choose between his wife, his old love and his daughter.