During a mining accident, the police arrest the sole survivor on suspicion of murder, whose pickaxe is stained with the blood of one of the victims. The investigation reveals that the identity card found on the victim belongs to another person, that the collapse was deliberate and that the miner believed to be the victim has escaped.

Tivadar Csontváry Kosztka the one-ideaed Hungarian painter was thought to be crazy by his peers, but he eventually became a significant artist.

Vetró János, the lorry driver, is an alcoholic. His marriage is in pieces, his wife has a lover. Their son suffers an accident. The next day his wife moves out. In his desperation, Vetró drinks even more, and leaves his work as well.

The sisters have been living in a Soviet barracks in Hungary for eleven years. They long to go to Moscow, but they are drawn here by habituation and inertia. Their father, the brigade commander, is dead, yet they are unable to act and prefer to remain in the closed world of the barracks. So the plot is the same, only the setting has changed.