Konstantin Afanasiev

It is the spring of 1948. The joy of peace has not yet faded, and both East and West are already afraid of World War III. Both worlds are separated from each other by the deep forests of Šumava. Twenty-four-year-old cook Josef Hasil serves in the kitchen of the National Security Corps in Zvonková. Wild boy. He had already experienced the war in a German labor camp and as a link between partisans. Now he longs above all for fun, adventure, freedom. The last thing he cares about is politics.

In a small Ukrainian village in the 1830s, a youthful Kateryna leaves her fioncee Myron for Ivan, a soldier in the Russian imperial army, who promises to make her his wife after returning from his draft in the Russo-Ottoman War. However, he never returns and Kateryna soon grows desperate.