The capitulation is signed, the lilacs smell. The war is over, but the world will never be the same again.

The third part of the tetralogy intended by the author. Freaks don't disappear, but rather inhabit humans, often in elaborate disguises. Czechoslovaks welcome freedom and peace, but knowingly and unknowingly put their heads in the noose of new unfreedoms. Months full of happy returns, new beginnings, but also raw revenges, camouflaging post-war careers, suicides and disappointments. The dramatic story of the Šamalov family and their found children intersects with the story of the doctor and Cossack Nikolai Kelin, who once escaped from Russia only to be arrested by the NKVD after the war and only miraculously escaped deportation to Siberia. The robbery murders of the German priests in Broumovsk "meet" with the story of a rescued camel, which is taken by scouts to the Prague zoo. Václav Černý travels through his native Náchodsk, an honorary unit of "partisans" during the unveiling of a memorial plaque shoots through high-voltage wires, which then kill the crowd. After all, it is Professor Černý who writes at one point in his memoirs: "Historians, know that you will have to begin the history of our contemporary national crisis with the scattered and thankless hangover of Czech minds in the second half of the year forty-five."