A young academy soldier, Maciek Chelmicki, is ordered to shoot the secretary of the KW PPR. A coincidence causes him to kill someone else. Meeting face to face with his victim, he gets a shock. He faces the necessity of repeating the assassination. He meets Krystyna, a girl working as a barmaid in the restaurant of the "Monopol" hotel. His affection for her makes him even more aware of the senselessness of killing at the end of the war. Loyalty to the oath he took, and thus the obligation to obey the order, tips the scales.
A man jumps off a moving train and goes to a small town to face its inhabitants, who seem familiar, but odd.
A boy comes of age under an oppressive, cruel socialist government and watches as it slowly but surely distorts his family, his school and even his own thoughts.
