chunk: In the final days of the Italian Campaign of World War II, Hana, a French-Canadian nurse working and living in a bombed Italian monastery, looks after a critically burned man who speaks English but cannot remember his name. They are joined by Kip, a Sikh sapper in the British Army who defuses bombs and has a love affair with Hana before leaving, and David Caravaggio, a Canadian Intelligence Corps operative who was questioned by Germans and has had his thumbs cut off during a German interrogation. He questions the patient, who gradually reveals his past.