Plot Summary

Mihai Toth worked for forty years as a watchman in a timber warehouse. On his last watch, there was a fire: the warehouse burned to the ground. The damage amounted to one and a half million forints. It was a terrible blow to Mihai, who had worked honestly all his life. Suddenly it turns out that Mihai has won one and a half million forints in a lottery. Wanting to save his good name, he wants to deposit this sum in the state treasury. But it turned out to be not so easy: the cause of the fire has not been established and Mihai's guilt has not been proved. That's why nobody had the right to take money from him. For a long time Mihai wandered from one institution to another with a request to accept money from him, but everything was in vain. Then the old man tried a trick...