Gustav Perle grows up in a small town in 'neutral' Switzerland, where the horrors of the Second World War seem a distant echo. But Gustav's childhood is spent in lonely isolation, his widowed mother strangely indifferent to him. As time goes on, an intense friendship with a boy his own age, Anton Zwiebel, begins to define his life. Jewish and mercurial, a talented pianist tortured by nerves when he has to play in public, Anton fails to understand how deeply and irrevocably his life and Gustav's are entwined. Ultimately, Gustav must discover what it does to a person, or a country, to pursue an eternal quest for neutrality, and self-mastery, while all life's hopes and passions continually press upon the borders and beat upon the gate...