Franta Louka is a concert cellist in Soviet-occupied Czechoslovakia, a
confirmed bachelor and a lady's man. Having lost his place in the state
orchestra, he must make ends meet by playing at funerals and painting
tombstones. But he has run up a large debt, and when his friend, the grave-
digger Mr. Broz, suggests a scheme for making a lot of money by marrying
a
Russian woman so that she can get her Czech papers, he reluctantly
agrees. She takes advantage of the situation to emigrate to West Germany, to
her lover; and leaves her five-year-old son with his grandmother; when the
grandmother dies, Kolya must come and live with his stepfather - Louka.