In April 1958, the narrator meets a mysterious man in Leningrad who calls himself Leo Nilheim and works as an interpreter. For one night, the Russian tells the tragicomic story of his life: of the Jewish mother he never knew and the revolutionary father who died so young, of a senile teacher he saves by spontaneously intoning the Internationale and the wild boar Rasputin who is deported to Siberia, of a far too short childhood and the first unrequited love.
He tells of the absurdity of war on the Russian-Finnish front and survival in a prison camp, of Bibles, heroic crosses, of a new home in enemy territory and the man who first wants to shoot him and later saves his life. And he describes the point in a person's life when he has to decide who he wants to be.
