The hero of the story addresses his drinking companion: “Come on, Kolya, let's start in order, although it’s completely not clear to me what order can be in this ridiculous story.” Once, in 1949, a hero rings a telephone. State Security Lieutenant Colonel Kidall threateningly summoned citizen Teda (this is the hero’s last criminal name). Without expecting anything good, a citizen of Tede sets up a table for two, thinking how many stars will be added to the brandy bottle on his return, looks out the window at the schoolgirl with whom he hopes to drink this cognac in the future, removes the bug from the wall, throws him under the door Zoyka’s neighbors and goes to the Lubyanka. "Hello to the cold mind and warm heart!" - Greets Tede Kidalla, who once let go of Tede, promising to save him for a particularly important business. On the anniversary of the very First Cause, the authorities decide to conduct a show trial. Kidalla offers Taede, as the defendant in this process, one of ten cases to choose from. All things are fantastic in their design and content, which is not surprising for Teda. He dwells on the “Case of the atrocious rape and murder of the oldest kangaroo in the Moscow Zoo on the night of July 14, 1789, on January 9, 1905.”
Tede is placed in a comfortable cell so that he composes a process scenario according to the Stanislavsky system. In the cell there are flowers, lovely air, on the walls there are photographs with pictures showing the whole history of the party struggle and the Soviet regime. “Radishchev goes from Leningrad to Stalingrad”, “Childhood of Plekhanov and Stakhanov”, “Mama Misha Botvinnik at a reception at the gynecologist” are just some of the many signatures and photos. Taede calls on the very schoolgirl whom she saw from the window of her house, but gets to Kidall. “This phone is for recognition and rationalization. Rise, bastard! Stop scratching your eggs when the counterintelligence officer is talking to you! ” - screams Kidalla. It turns out that the lieutenant colonel sees on his screen the “disgusting mug” of Tede. After the toilet and breakfast, a biology professor comes to consult on marsupials. Kidalla monitors classes in the camera on the monitor, occasionally rudely intervening. Teda has been studying with the professor for a month and learns everything about the kangaroo. Kidalla sends to the cell a lot of infamous snitches, representatives of all professions, who are provided with especially “valuable information” by a professor - a sex maniac. With professor Teda breaks up like a friend ..
For a better understanding of the challenges ahead, Tede also wants Valery Chkalovich Kartser, the inventor of the Chekist computer, who is able to simulate fantastic crimes against the Soviet system, to visit the camera.
The conversations that Tede conducts with visitors to his cell, negotiations with Kidalla, heard and seen at the same time, all consist of grotesquely selected fragments of phrases and slogans of Soviet reality. The process itself, in which representatives of fraternal communist parties and subsidiary MGBs, writers, generals, and violinists appear, also becomes a phantasmagoria. Politburo led by Stalin, collective farmers with sickles and pioneers. Despite the fantastic nature of what is happening, the life of the state machine, in which the main part is the internal affairs bodies, is strikingly recognizable.
At the trial, Tadé passes under another nickname - Hariton Ustinych York. The hero calls himself another nickname: Fan Fanych. Defendant X. at. York is sentenced to receive capital punishment, but in fact - twenty-five years. Fan Fanych describes the camp as a nightmare with instant changes in time and place of action, with a variety of characters from the overseer to Stalin. Six years later, rehabilitated, he returns to Moscow.
In the apartment, a neighbor Zoyka in a gas mask poisons hordes of bugs. In the room, Fan Fanycha is waiting for cognac, aged six years. Sparrows flying into the once open window, lit numerous offspring in the nests. Fan Fanych sees a girl through the window - the very schoolgirl whom she admired six years ago. He calls the girl Ira into the room and uncovers with her the bottle that had been waiting for her. After a short conversation, Ira leaves. Fan Fanych goes to Lubyanka, but there he is informed that a citizen of Kidall does not work in the bodies and never worked, and that Fan Fanych did not rape the kangaroo, but was arrested on false charges of attempting to assassinate Kaganovich and Beria. Fan Fanych, respecting the “deaf unconscious”, sends his regards to Kidalle and leaves the building on Lubyanka. Two days later, Ira comes to him again, and for several weeks they make love.
Fan Fanych visits the zoo and sees the kangaroo Gemma, born in 1950, the daughter of the one killed in the script of the show trial in the aviary. Fan Fanycha causes an inurcollegia, - it turns out that the Australian millionaire bequeathed an inheritance to someone who rapes and brutally kills a kangaroo, since kangaroos made wild raids on the fields of a millionaire. Fan Fanych refuses, explaining that he was convicted on a completely different charge, but they explain to him that the country needs currency and is obliged to accept the inheritance. After deducting all interest and taxes, Fan Fanych receives two thousand seven hundred and one ruble in certificates for the Birch shop. He asks his interlocutor: “Well, was it worth it to slap sixty million people to open this store, which sells rubbish, which in normal countries is sold at every corner for normal money?” Fan Fanych promises Kolya to buy jeans and a fur coat for his wife, Vlada Yurievna. He reports that Ira is due to return soon from Crimea, by the arrival of which all empty bottles must be brought into the yard, and offers the last toast - for Freedom.
