To take a breather and recover after a dark stretch of harsh censorship, Dovlatov comes over from Leningrad and stays with the poet Aleinikov. In the street they run into the painter Zverev; later the writer Erofeev turns up at Aleinikov’s place. Chance, with a touch of magic, gathers a variety of underground figures so that together they can show Dovlatov the feast of Moscow’s bohemian intelligentsia.
