The film takes place in a small abandoned monastery, standing on a high, steep bank of the Volga. The hero of the film, the architect, having learned that the empty monastery is facing a thorough reconstruction, decides to capture it alone and prepare design documentation for the restoration of this monument of history and culture. But the monastery turns out to be far from empty. Besides him, a strange old woman also lives in the house. At night, members of the society "Informal Word" gather in the church of the monastery and hold discussions about the historical and spiritual paths of Russia. When drawing up a detailed plan of the monastery, the hero manages to discover hidden voids, similar to the voids of the pyramid of Cheops, and the cell of another mysterious inhabitant of the monastery — Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol. The architect witnesses the re-burning of the second volume of "Dead Souls".