Ivan Vasilyevich is in love with Varenka and is admired by her father, Colonel. But the transformation of a tender loving father from a good-natured colonel into a cruel and ruthless tormentor shocked Ivan so much that his feelings for Varenka quickly cooled.

In 1919, on the tow boat Komsomol went to beat the whites. During the Second World War, during the heroic battle on the Volga on this boat were transporting wounded soldiers and children

In the wealthy noble family of Popelsky, the only son Petrik is blind from birth. His mother Anna Mikhailovna, infinitely loving and pitying the boy, educates him as a rare fragile flower. And only Uncle Maxim, who fought under the banner of Garibaldi in his youth, is trying to accustom the boy to independence. The boy begins to recognize the world by touch, and one day his fingers find the keys of a piano. But, still not knowing the price of his talent, he leaves with the tramps "to seek the truth." And now only love can reconcile him with the world of the sighted.