Ing. Bernard announces that his wife has not returned from visiting relatives in Berlin. Lieutenant Tereza Machátová, who together with Captain Landa is investigating the matter, puts the facts into connection with the discovery of the drowned woman's body.

In Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia, a doctor-turned-warehouse employee reluctantly agrees to treat a gravely wounded political fugitive, putting himself and everyone living in his building complex in danger.

Middle-aged Antonin and his friends, the major, now retired, and the canon, are in the river, swimming and philosophizing. Then it starts to rain. It just seems to be that sort of summer. Antonin runs the swimming bath with his portly wife Katherine... A man appears with his horse-drawn caravan. He lays a striped pole across the river and walks over. With a handstand and a magic trick, Ernie the Conjuror invites everyone to that evening's performance... Ernie is a tightrope walker of only modest skill, but with a slim and beautiful assistant, Anna. Antonin speaks to her. The two spend the night in the change room by the river, Antonin massaging her feet all night long. Katherine decides to move into the caravan with Ernie. But now the major and even the canon sense Anna's attractiveness...

An aristocratic woman suffers a severe nervous breakdown and is subsequently institutionalized following a disastrous infidelity. She descends into madness while grappling with intense psychological torment and the fallout of her social and personal life.