Events unfold in 1957. Walter Faber, a fifty-year-old engineer, Swiss by birth, works at UNESCO and is engaged in the establishment of production equipment in industrially backward countries. He has to travel often for work. He flies from New York to Caracas, but his plane is forced to make an emergency landing in Mexico, in the Tamaulipas desert, due to engine problems.
In the four days that Faber spends with the rest of the passengers in the hot desert, he draws close to the German Herbert Henke, who flies to his brother, the manager of the Henke-Bosch tobacco plantation, in Guatemala. In a conversation, it suddenly turns out that Herbert’s brother is none other than Joachim Henke, a close friend of Walter Faber's youth, whom he had not heard about for about twenty years.
Before the Second World War, in the mid-thirties, Faber met with a girl named Gann. A strong feeling connected them in those years, they were happy. Ganna became pregnant, but for personal reasons and, to a certain extent, because of the unstable political situation in Europe, she told Faber that she would not give birth. Faber’s friend, doctor Joachim, had to undergo Gann’s abortion operation. Soon after, Ganna fled from the city hall, where she was supposed to register her marriage with Faber. Faber left Switzerland and left for work in Baghdad on a long business trip. This happened in 1936. In the future, he did not know anything about the fate of Gann.
Herbert reports that after the departure of Faber, Joachim married Gann and they had a baby. However, after a few years they divorced. Faber makes some calculations and concludes that the child born to them is not his. Faber decides to join Herbert and visit his longtime friend in Guatemala.
Having reached the plantation after a two-week trip, Herbert and Walter Faber find out that a few days before their arrival Joachim hanged himself. They betray his body to the earth, Faber leaves back to Caracas, and Herbert remains on the plantation and instead of his brother becomes its manager. After completing the equipment setup in Caracas, before flying to the colloquium in Paris, Faber returns to New York, where he lives most of the time and where Ivy is waiting for him, his mistress, a very obsessive married young lady, to whom Faber does not have strong feelings. Satisfied with her company for a short period of time, he decides to change his plans and, contrary to custom, to leave Ivy as soon as possible, leaves New York a week ahead of schedule and gets to Europe not by plane, but by boat.
On board the ship, Faber meets a young red-haired girl. After studying at Yale, Sabet (or Elizabeth - that's the name of the girl) returns to her mother in Athens. She plans to get to Paris, and then hitchhikes to travel around Europe and end her journey in Greece.
On the boat, Faber and Sabet communicate a lot and, despite the big difference in age, a feeling of affection arises between them, which later develops into love. Faber even offers Sabet to marry him, although before he did not think to connect his life with any woman. Sabet does not take his proposal seriously, and after the arrival of the ship at the port, they part.
In Paris, they accidentally meet again, visit the opera, and Faber decides to accompany Sabet on a trip to the south of Europe and thereby relieve her of possible unpleasant accidents associated with hitchhiking. They call in Pisa, Florence, Siena, Rome, Assisi. Despite the fact that Sabet drags Faber to all museums and historical sites, to which he is not a hunter, Walter Faber is happy. A feeling hitherto unknown to him was revealed. Meanwhile, from time to time he has unpleasant sensations in the stomach. At first, this phenomenon almost does not bother him.
Faber is unable to explain to herself why, after meeting with Sabet, looking at her, he increasingly begins to recall Gann, although there is no obvious external similarity between them. Sabet often tells Walter about his mother. From the conversation that took place between them at the end of their journey, it turns out that Gann is the mother of Elizabeth Piper (the name of the second husband of Gann). Walter gradually begins to suspect that Sabet is his daughter, that child whom he did not want to have twenty years ago.
Not far from Athens, on the last day of their journey, Sabet, lying on the sand by the sea, while Faber swims fifty meters from the shore, a snake stings. She gets up, goes forward and, falling from the slope, hits her head with stones. When Walter runs to Sabet, she is already unconscious. He brings her to the highway and first on a wagon, and then on a truck takes the girl to the hospital in Athens. There he meets a slightly aged, but still beautiful and intelligent Gann. She invites him to her house, where she lives alone with her daughter, and almost all night long they tell each other about those twenty years that they spent separately.
The next day, they go together to the hospital to Sabet, where they are informed that the timely injection of serum has paid off and the girl’s life is safe. Then they go to the sea to pick up Walter's things that he left there the day before. Walter is already thinking about finding a job in Greece and living with Ghana.
On the way back, they buy flowers, return to the hospital, where they are informed that their daughter died, but not from a snakebite, but from a fracture of the skull base that occurred at the time of the fall on a rocky slope and was not diagnosed. With a correct diagnosis, it would not be difficult to save her with surgical intervention.
After the death of his daughter, Faber for some time flies to New York, then to Caracas, calls in on a plantation to Herbert. In the two months since their last meeting, Herbert has lost all interest in life, has changed a lot both internally and externally.
After visiting the plantation, he again visits Caracas, but cannot take part in the installation of equipment, because he has to spend all this time in the hospital due to severe pain in his stomach.
Passing from Caracas to Lisbon, Faber is in Cuba. He is admired by the beauty and open temper of the Cubans. In Dusseldorf, he visits the board of Henke-Bosch and wants to show her the film he shot about the death of Joachim and the state of the plantation. Coils with films have not yet been signed (there are many of them, since he does not part with his camera), and during the show to him now and again, instead of the necessary fragments, films from Sabet come to hand, evoking bittersweet memories.
Having reached Athens, Faber goes to the hospital for an examination, where he is left until the operation itself. He understands that he has stomach cancer, but now he, like never before, wants to live. Gann was able to forgive Walter for his twice-warped life. She regularly visits him at the hospital. Ganna tells Walter that she sold her apartment and was planning to leave Greece forever to live a year on the islands where life is cheaper. However, at the very last moment, she realized how senseless her departure was, and got off the ship. She lives in a boarding school, does not work at the institute anymore, because when she was about to leave, she quit, and her assistant took her place and is not going to leave him voluntarily. Now she works as a guide in the archaeological museum, as well as in the Acropolis and Sounion.
Gann always asks Walter why Joachim hanged himself, tells him about his life with Joachim, about why their marriage broke up. When her daughter was born, she did not resemble Ganne Faber, it was only her child. She loved Joachim precisely because he was not the father of her child. Ganna is convinced that Sabet would never have been born if she and Walter had not parted. After Faber left for Baghdad, Ganna realized that she wanted to have a child alone, without a father. When the girl grew up, the relationship between Gannah and Joachim began to become more complicated, because Ganna considered herself the last resort in all matters relating to the girl. He dreamed more and more about a common child who would return to him the position of head of the family. Ganna was planning to go with him to Canada or Australia, but, being a semi-Jew of German descent, did not want to give birth to children anymore. She did herself a sterilization operation. This accelerated their divorce.
Having parted with Joachim, she wandered with her child in Europe, worked in different places: in publishing houses, on the radio. Nothing seemed difficult to her when it came to her daughter. However, she did not spoil her, for this Gann was too smart.
It was quite difficult for her to let Sabet travel alone, albeit only for a few months. She always knew that someday her daughter would still leave her home, but she could not even foresee that on this trip Sabet would meet her father, who would destroy everything.
Before Walter Faber was taken away for an operation, she apologizes with tears. More than anything, he wants to live, for existence has been filled with a new meaning for him. Alas, it's too late. He was no longer destined to return from the operation.
