An attempt to reconcile and unify the conventions of naturalism and metaphorical drama in a tragicomic story set beside a canal in winter. A woman's struggle to care for her sick husband is aggravated by her unhinged mother-in-law and the return of an old lover; two boys fight over a girl they once rescued from drowning; an old man, sightless and bearing the scars of terrible burns, comes to the canal to remember his past, perhaps to die.