Vitangelo Moscarda recounts, from an almshouse, how his wife's remark about his nose undid his idea of being one, and what he did to recover it. The story runs through eight Books and sixty-three short chapters, along a simple line: the discovery, in Books I to III; the experiment that tests it against his acquaintances, in Books IV and V; the emptied house and the decision to go all the way, in Books VI and VII; and the price, in Book VIII.
Book I: The nose and the mirror
One morning, in front of the mirror, Vitangelo, twenty-eight years old, rich, idle, and married to Dida, hears from his wife that his nose leans to the right. He checks, with astonishment, that it is true, and that his eyebrows, ears, little finger, and leg are not what he assumed either (chapter I of Book I). The same day he asks a friend whether he is looking at his nose, discovers that the friend had already noticed it and, for revenge, points out a dimple in his chin; within a few days the whole town is going from shop window to shop window examining its own face (chapter II of Book I). He starts wanting to be alone, which Dida, who calls him Gengè every minute, will not allow (chapter III of Book I), and explains to the reader that he wants to be without himself, alone with the stranger he is (chapter IV of Book I). He makes faces in front of the mirrors in the house and sees that no emotion can withstand being seen (chapter V of Book I). He pretends to forbid Dida to go out so that she will go out (chapter VI of Book I) and, alone, goes with his eyes closed to the wardrobe mirror, sees a body with no name and no owner, and lets out the first madman's laugh when that body sneezes (chapter VII of Book I). The Book closes with seven reflections and two conclusions: to understand why Dida calls him Gengè, and to find out who he is for his acquaintances, deliberately dismantling the self they have of him (chapter VIII of Book I).
Book II: The reader and the house
Imagining the reader's objections, Vitangelo replies that each person's consciousness is not enough, because there is also that of others (chapter I of Book II), and tells how the retired neighbor, so courteous to him on the stairs, saw him from the inside as a perfect imbecile (chapter II of Book II). He sits in the reader's armchair and shows that the reader's beloved cypresses are a cemetery to his friend, and would be one to the reader too if another relative of his died (chapter III of Book II); that words are empty and each person fills them with their own meaning (chapter IV of Book II); and that no one is one alone, because everything is fixations (chapter V of Book II). Through the mountain that turns into a house, he shows that man takes everything as building material (chapter VI of Book II, chapter VII of Book II); he takes the reader for a walk in the countryside, where peace lies in the one who feels it (chapter VIII of Book II, chapter IX of Book II); he explains, with a little bird and an airplane, why man wants to fly (chapter X of Book II); and concludes, on the way back to town, that man builds himself the way a house is built (chapter XI of Book II). He closes with the wedding scene: Dida knows the Gengè better than he does, because she built him, and she truly loves him; she undoes the young woman's hairstyle to please this husband, and Vitangelo is jealous of an imbecile who came between him and his wife (chapter XII of Book II).
Book III: The father and the hundred thousand
Resolved to destroy the Moscardas who live in his acquaintances, Vitangelo warns that the madnesses to come are necessary, because he never built a Moscarda of his own and can only act by showing himself the opposite of what each one supposes (chapter I of Book III). He discovers that the name, which buzzes like a fly, the body, and even the idleness were given to him by others (chapter II of Book III), and then his father appears to him, seen from outside, with too many rings and a cold grimace in his smile (chapter III of Book III, chapter IV of Book III). The banker whom his son loved is, in town, the usurer, and the son, who never looked into the business, lives off it (chapter V of Book III). He asks Dida what his profession is, and her laughter dispels the horror without giving him anything back: to the town he is a usurer, to her a fool, the Gengè (chapter VI of Book III). A long parenthesis shows that facts, forms, and acts are prisons (chapter VII of Book III) and invites the reader to go with five people to the house where Vitangelo was born, to see five different imbeciles in one Moscarda (chapter VIII of Book III). With the parenthesis closed, the reader sends away an old friend when a new one arrives, and Vitangelo shows him that he has sent himself away (chapter IX of Book III, chapter X of Book III).
Book IV: The first experiment
Vitangelo chooses as his guinea pig Marco di Dio, a former sculptor's apprentice, condemned for an act of a single instant, who lives rent-free in a little house of his and hates Vitangelo's father (chapter I of Book IV). The experiment, which he calls total, aims to make him seem another to just one of the hundred thousand, and ends up changing all of them (chapter II of Book IV). In the office of the notary Stampa, he tells the notary the act he intends to commit and is disturbed by the look of the other, who sees something else (chapter III of Book IV); to fetch the house papers from the bank, he walks with full awareness down the royal road of madness (chapter IV of Book IV). At the bank he quarrels with Firbo, kneels on the floor before him, and orders Marco di Dio's eviction (chapter V of Book IV); he steals the papers from the cabinet and sees himself as a thief (chapter VI of Book IV). He watches the eviction in the rain, guarded by police; the donation of a house, announced by a clerk from the notary's office, does not transfigure him, and Marco di Dio leaps at him shouting «madman!», the same cry as the crowd (chapter VII of Book IV).
Book V: The vital point
After the eviction, Firbo wants to lock him up in an asylum or at least have him declared incompetent, and Quantorzo argues for letting it pass (chapter I of Book V). At home, Vitangelo takes on the role of Gengè, the foolish husband, so that the act looks like a whim; Dida laughs, scolds her Gengè, and sits on his lap, and the embrace seems to him that of two strangers (chapter II of Book V). He hides in an empty lot with the bitch Bibi, to whom he confesses that he can no longer bear being looked at (chapter III of Book V); he thinks of killing himself, concludes that consciousness is the others within us, kicks the bitch, and is frightened by his own kick (chapter IV of Book V, chapter V of Book V). On his return, he finds Quantorzo with Dida and counts eight people in a salon where the two of them see three (chapter VI of Book V, chapter VII of Book V). In the final chapter, the longest in the novel, Quantorzo comes, in agreement with Firbo, to threaten to leave the management of the bank if he goes on with arbitrary acts; Vitangelo throws him off balance, Dida laughs, and the laugh wounds him at a vital point: he demands that the bank be closed that night, pushes Dida into the armchair, and shouts that her Gengè is not him (chapter VIII of Book V).
Book VI: Saying "I" to whom
Shut in his room, Vitangelo feels like «one» for the first time, thanks to the violence he has just committed, and sees that this «one» has no content: he is no longer a usurer or Gengè, but he does not know who he is (chapter I of Book VI). Dida has left with Quantorzo and has had her things sent to her father's house; alone, he feels the relief of being free and then the loneliness of having no one to say «I» to (chapter II of Book VI). The next morning he winks at the Moscarda in the mirror and sees, a moment later, that he is already another (chapter III of Book VI). He receives his father-in-law, who comes to demand an accounting, and amuses himself by offering him a son-in-law who is a doctor, a lawyer, a professor, or a deputy, until the father-in-law flees shouting «madman!» (chapter IV of Book VI). He understands that the father-in-law fled less from a madman than from a son-in-law who dismantles the arrangement in which everyone had settled, and concludes that no profession would save him, because every form is a prison (chapter VI of Book VI).
Book VII: The revolver and the bishop
Anna Rosa, a friend of Dida's, calls him to her house by a note (chapter I of Book VII); when he does not find her there, he goes to the Abbey, where she is with her aunt, the nun (chapter II of Book VII), and there the revolver she carries in her purse goes off and wounds her foot; he carries her home (chapter III of Book VII). Anna Rosa explains that she called him so that he would speak to the bishop before Dida, her father, Firbo, and Quantorzo manage to have him declared incompetent, and that Dida considers him a fool; Vitangelo sees a Dida who is an enemy and, at the same time, whole (chapter IV of Book VII). Concluding that the vital point wounded by the laugh was God, he decides to ask for help from the God outside (chapter V of Book VII). Monsignor Partanna, the bishop who comes down on foot, receives him (chapter VI of Book VII); at the audience, Vitangelo sees on a terrace a madman who wants to fly with a red blanket, and says «Like me», and the bishop sends for Canon Sclepis, who promises to take care of the defense (chapter VII of Book VII). While waiting, he is with Anna Rosa, now recovering, and tells her that to know oneself is to die; shortly afterward he falls from the bed, wounded in the chest by the revolver she kept under her pillow (chapter VIII of Book VII).
Book VIII: Nameless and inconclusive
Questioned in the hospital, Vitangelo says the shot was an accident; the court already has the confession of the woman who shot him and, he assumes, Dida's testimony, and the version seems brazen to the man questioning him (chapter I of Book VIII). The judge visits him at home, and Vitangelo, in an armchair with a green blanket over his legs, refuses to repeat his considerations about life and asks whether the blanket is not beautiful (chapter II of Book VIII). Canon Sclepis carries out the plan: Vitangelo gives away everything, the house included, to found, with whatever is left of the bank's liquidation, an almshouse where he will live as a beggar; he accepts and watches the town read as repentance what is, in fact, a handing-over (chapter III of Book VIII). Anna Rosa is acquitted, partly because of the laughter that spread through the courtroom when he appeared in a cap, clogs, and an almshouse smock. The novel ends with Vitangelo nameless, without a mirror and without memory, living at dawn among trees, clouds, and the sound of bells that he hears from outside (chapter IV of Book VIII).