Former pickpocketer Nikolai Nikolayevich, behind a bottle, tells the story of his life to a silent interlocutor.

He was released nineteen years old, immediately after the war. His aunt registered him in Moscow. Nikolai Nikolayevich didn’t work anywhere - he smoked (stole) pockets in a tram carriage and was with money. But then a decree was issued to increase the term for theft, and Nikolai Nikolaevich, on the advice of his aunt, arranged to work in the laboratory with his neighbor in a communal apartment, a biologist named Kimza.

For a week Nikolai Nikolayevich washes bottles and once in a queue at the sideboard, obeying a habit, pulls out a wallet from the personnel manager. In the toilet, he discovers not money in the wallet, but denunciations of the institute’s employees. Nikolai Nikolaevich lowers all this “wealth” into the toilet, leaving only a denunciation to Kimza, to whom he shows it. He turns pale and dissolves the denunciation in acid. The next day, Nikolai Nikolayevich tells Kimze that he is quitting work. Kimza invites him to work in a new capacity - to become a sperm donor for his new experiments, which were unparalleled in the history of biology. They discuss the conditions: daily orgasm in the morning, the working day is not standardized, the salary is eight hundred and twenty rubles. Nikolai Nikolayevich agrees.Just in case, in the evening he is going to consult about his future work with a friend - an international “urka”. He says that Nikolai Nikolaevich cheapened - “I would have sold my livestock to these biologists individually. That's what microscopes are given to them - a little thing to count. It’s a pity, you can’t dilute the little name. Well, sort of like sour cream in a store. It would be a fat too. ” Nikolai Nikolaevich expects to gradually raise the price in the future.

For the first time, he fills the test tube halfway - “the whole milky way,” as his bunker neighbor, an astronomer by profession, once said. Kimza is pleased: "Well, Nikolai, you're superman."

Nikolai Nikolaevich “knocks out” a salary increase of up to two thousand four hundred, specially throws dirt from the heel into the test tube - as a result of this trick, supposedly for sterility of the work process, he receives two liters of alcohol per month. To celebrate, Nikolai Nikolayevich gets drunk with international urka and the next day at the workplace he can’t bring himself to orgasm. He is soaking wet, his hand is trembling, but nothing works. Some academician pokes his head through the door: “Well, my friend, you cannot spew a seed?” Suddenly, one of the younger researchers, Vlada Yurievna, enters the room, turns off the light - and takes Nikolai Nikolaevich with his own hand "for a rude, boorish, stubborn bastard, for a member ...". Nikolai Nikolaevich during an orgasm yells for twenty seconds so that the tubes ring and the bulbs burn out, and faints.

The next time he again fails to cope on his own, but for a different reason.It turns out that Nikolai Nikolaevich fell in love and thinks only about Vlad Yurievna. She comes to the rescue again. After work, Nikolai Nikolayevich hunts down Vlad Yuryevna to find out where she lives. He wants to "just look at her white face ... red hair and green eyes."

The next day, Nikolai Nikolayevich was informed that his bum was placed by Vlad Yurievna and she became pregnant. Nikolai Nikolaevich is upset to tears that in this way he is connected to his lover, but she says: “I understand you ... all this is a little sad. But science is science. ”

The commission, consisting of the leadership of the institute and people "not of biology", closes the laboratory, since genetics is declared pseudoscience. Nikolai Nikolayevich was questioned about what his work consisted of, but, using his camp experience, he throws an inkwell at the deputy director’s snout and simulates an epilepsy seizure. Writhing on the floor, he hears the deputy director abandon his wife - Vlada Yurievna. Nikolai Nikolaevich breaks out of the institute, goes to Vlad Yurievna’s home and carries her to himself, and he goes to spend the night at the international class. In the morning he finds at home a pale Vlad Yurievna lying on the sofa, and Kimsu, who feels her pulse. Vladia Yurievna suffered a miscarriage due to nerves. Nikolai Nikolaevich nurses Vlad Yurievna, sleeps next to her on the floor. He is not able to withstand such a close neighborhood, but she admits her frigidity. When it happens between them that Nikolay Nikolayevich so dreamed about, and when he “cuts like firewood in the movie“ Communist ”, Vlada Yurievna, listening to herself, shouts:“ This cannot be! ” Passion awakens in her.Every night they love each other to a swoon, bringing each other in turn into consciousness with ammonia. Kimza brings home a microscope - to continue the experiments, and Nikolai Nikolaevich once a week gives sperm “for science” - for free.

Life goes on: they have already exposed the organizers and cosmopolitans, Vlada Yuryevna is going to work as a senior nurse, Nikolai Nikolayevich gets a job as a nurse. They are going through hard times. But here Stalin dies. Kimse is returned to the laboratory, he takes Vlad Yuryevna and Nikolai Nikolayevich to his place - the experiments continue. Nikolai Nikolayevich is weighted with sensors, studying the energy that is released during orgasm. Once his sperm is injected into a Swedish lady, and she gives birth to a son who, however, steals - went to dad. During the experiments, Nikolai Nikolaevich reads books and makes a discovery: the degree of excitement depends on the text being read. From socialist realism, for example, even crying, but does not arise, but from reading, for example, Pushkin, Othello or Tsokotuhi flies (especially when the spider flies the fly), the effect is greatest. One academician, having analyzed the data, informs Nikolai Nikolaevich of his conclusion: all Soviet science, especially Marxism-Leninism, is a solid “dry run”. “The party is fingering. The government is masturbating. Science is masturbating, ”- and it seems to everyone that after this, as with orgasm, a bright future will suddenly come. The academician is glad that a man didn’t die in Nikolay Nikolaevich from this dry walk and asks what real business he wants to do after the experiments.Nikolai Nikolaevich recalls one useful book that was published under the tsar, “How to Fix Your Shoes,” from which he “stood like a bayonet,” and decides to go work as a shoemaker. "And how are you here without me?" He asks the academician. “Let's manage. Let the youth masturbate herself. There is nothing to do science in white gloves, ”the academician answers and promises to come to Nikolai Nikolaevich to repair his shoes. And Nikolai Nikolaevich decides to leave a note at work: “I got stuck. Let Fidel Castro jerk off. He has nothing to do ”- and slip away. He imagines how Kimza will rush to Vlad Yurievna in despair: "Science will stop now because of your Kolenka." And Vlad Yurievna will answer: “He will not stop. We have accumulated a lot of unprocessed facts. Let's process them. ”