In a mysterious middle-European country, a man identified only as "the commissioner" undertakes what seems to be a banal trip to a nondescript town with his wife - a brief detour on the way to a holiday at the seaside - that turns into something ominous. Something terrible has happened in the town, something that no one wants to discuss. With his wife watching on fearfully, he commences a perverse investigation, rudely interrogating the locals, inspecting a local landmark with a frightening intensity, traveling to an outlying factory where he confronts the proprietors... and slowly revealing a past he's been trying to suppress.