A man who is socially inept and out of touch with the world lives with his sister in a small farmhouse. The overly sensitive man lives off his hard-working sibling, taking odd jobs as he gets them to secure his meager earnings. When he brings home a woodcutter from the forest, the sister and the newcomer fall in love. Terrified over a life without his sister, the man can't cope.

Jerzy Szajnowicz-Ivanov, the son of a Polish mother and a Russian father, raised in Greece, reports to the Carpathian Brigade in the spring of 1941. While the Poles are wary of him at first, he proves his worth by taking part in several sabotage actions against the Nazis.

Shortly after World War 2 a conflict between cousins, a Polish major and a former SS soldier arises on the Recovered Territories.

Markheim impulsively kills an elderly antique dealer during an attempted robbery. From there Markheim’s sense of reality steadily dissolves in a morass of guilt and shame, until a spectral dog leads him to a shadowy figure who seems to know an awful lot about Markheim and his problems.

After his parents go away in the mountains, young Fortunato Falcone decides to shelter a fugitive for a price of a silver coin.

Tadeusz documents his work as a driver by writing short stories to papers.