Dawn breaks over Lisbon one mid-20th century morning. The novelist looks out the window in a neighborhood; there is nothing to indicate this day will be any different: Silvestre, the shoe-maker, opens the door to his workshop, Adriana leaves for work while in her home three woman begin another full day of sewing, Justina is looking at another long bout of fighting with her brutal husband; Lidia, the kept woman, and Carmen, the Spaniard, lost in nostalgic thoughts. Discreetly, the novelist's gaze travels downward. Suddenly, he stops being a humble witness to become each one of the neighborhood's characters. With each chapter he jumps from one house to the next, from one person to another, to reveal a world ruled by need, by great frustrations and small illusions, by a longing for a time that wasn't any better than this one. Everything is cloaked by the dreary silence of the dictatorship, Beethoven's symphonies, and a question from Pessoa: Should all of us be married, futile, and taxable