Marat, the main character of this comedy, works as a photographer on a beach of a small seaside resort. But it is the least important part of his life. Marat is famous for his extravagant, almost unbelievable romantic feats. No woman can resist the overwhelming passionate onslaught of the local Casanova: not a snake-charmer from a travelling circus, nor a lady-soloist of a lilliputian band, not even a mistress of Lavrenty Beria, the omnipotent chief of Stalin’s secret police.But one day Marat vanishes from town. His mysterious disappearance gives birth to wild rumours. Some think Marat has defected to Turkey and now lives in Istanbul with his seven wives and thirty-odd kids; others claim he settled in New York, where he has just one wife, a daughter of a multimillionaire newspaper tycoon; still others insist that Marat never left Russia, that now he lives in far North and has a Yakut wife and two flocks of reindeer.No one suspects that a meek old man in a wheelchair is Marat, who has finally returned to the town. The attractive young nurse who wheels him along the sea-front promenade is also unaware of that, until she finds herself on the old man’s lap and discovers that years could not diminish Marat’s inexhaustible amorous vigour and insatiable vitality.
