Synopsis

Philippe Ravassard needs time. A mysterious syndrome has placed an expiration date on his life. Fernando Ramirez y Nebòd is a notary who can't sleep. Every night he reviews his memories, but they end before sleep arrives. The two meet in L., a remote colony where Philippe has gone to manage the branch of the naval supply agency for which he works. The contract that will bind them will be perfect, formally flawless: Philippe will give the notary the time of his past, rich in memories and adventures, and Fernando will repay him with an equivalent amount of new time, fully to be lived, the time he has in abundance and Philippe no longer has. The exchange takes place in the notary's office. In that dim light, Philippe recounts the parts of his life that occupy precisely the time he wishes to acquire. These are stories in which nothing is as it seems: there is a canal in the peaceful French countryside inhabited by a monstrous fish; There's a sea captain who desires a young girl so much that he kidnaps her, only to suffer the terrible power of her innocence; there's an ancient brotherhood of provincial officials who have understood that bureaucracy can create living, real people simply by inventing names and surnames and writing them down in a register.