Juraj Herz adapts Bohumil Hrabal's story about a man who works in a junk shop.

When Dr. Hahn is found murdered in the hospital’s inspection room, investigators question several suspects: his colleague and longtime lover Dr. Marie Nováková (whom he cheated on with nurse Jiřina), the nurse herself, Dr. Petera (whose career he stymied), a senile patient named Zima, and the inept clinic head. As police sift through truthful and deceptive testimonies, complex professional rivalries and personal entanglements among the hospital staff come to light.

Radio announcer Petrícek reads the evening news in a studio. Viki, the female editor of a woman's program, is annoyed by the stereotypical information he provides as well as by the speaker's melodious voice and his heart-felt performance. Then she gets an idea for a prank. She calls the speaker from the neighboring room on the phone and pretends to be an unhappily married woman who draws all her strength to live from Petrícek's voice.

A baleful limping man walks through Prague. He is Asmodeus (Juraj Herz), the fiend of lustfulness, entertaining himself by putting together by magic couples of lovers. He only fails at the swimming pool. Zuzana (Jana Sulcová), the good-looking blonde, ignores the men whom the devil foists off onto her. She loves Honza (Václav Neckár) and the boy shares her feelings. The fiend is annoyed by the couple and tries to provoke a row. He sends heavy rain to force them into a hotel and then warns Zuzana's father by phone, but the young lovers manage to get out in time. Then the obstinate Asmodeus takes Honza in his sleep to the Institute for Emotional Disorders, where he shows him the ugly sides of love - hysteria, voyeurism, fetishism, suicide attempts...

More than twenty years after the Second World War, a mining engineer named Fischer is revealed as a former member of the Gestapo, Karel Kraus. He is sentenced for murder to eight years in prison and now works with other prisoners on the renovation of the Convent of St Agnes of Bohemia in Prague. Then a car with a foreign registration begins to park regularly close to the construction site. Its crew, a man and a woman, contact the construction foreman, who probably would not reject a bribe offer to perform some service. The prisoner Bicík is appointed to work with Kraus; Bicík gives him a message from Kraus' brother Bert, who lives abroad, that he wants to help him escape.

Mr. Benda, a married father of two children, works for a company that liquidates old banknotes. After one drunken party, he is visited by a painter who tattooed his back in drunkenness the previous night. The image tattooed on Benda’s back is considered the painter’s best work by the professionals.

A little boy, who has no time for his busy parents, solves his loneliness by befriending a dashing old man whose shed holds many surprising secrets and unseen things.

Twelve-year-old Jana returns from the hospital. She notices some changes at home and is worried that her parents are going to divorce. In reality, however, they are expecting another child.

Françoise, a French sociology student, moves to Czechoslovakia to write her thesis. She falls in love with Pavel, a professor. But the events of the "Prague Spring" begin and Pavel decides to collaborate. Françoise returns to France and meets up with her militant friends on the eve of the events of May 68 in Paris.