Milan Veber, a 40-year-old unemployed art teacher, has long been jobless and close to penniless. He lives in a cheap small studio that he rents in what used to be a lively working-class neighbourhood of an industrial city, feeling too young to grow old and too old to start over – until one morning after a night of drinking. Just when he is about to open a can of beef stew, he looks through the window and sees a bull in the street. A bull that has just escaped from the slaughterhouse.