As a boy Egon visits a cave that determines the rest of his life. The excursion provides him with a lifelong fascination for stones, a subconscious longing for Marjoke (with whom he met in the cave) and his friendship with Axel. Whereas Egon is to become a geologist, Axel is a criminal and a show-off. Their friendship is a continuous power struggle that will prove fatal for Egon.

As Egon loses the struggle with Axel he wins back Marjoke. As in The Vanishing, the lovers’ reunion is fatal, which is not necessarily an unhappy ending. The novel is woven around Krabbé’s favourite theme: the difficulty of realising love, a feat that may only be possible in an imaginary world. Or, as the cave itself had revealed to the young Egon and Marjoke: ‘A little cone on the roof, a baby column on the floor. How many thousands, hundreds of thousands of years will it take before they reach each other and form one column?’