Partos Alekseevich Paramonov (Paramosha) worked in the circus as a clown. His wife died and he began to drink too much. Paramoshi left a porcelain figurine on a golden pedestal from a past life. Once there was a phone call and a woman's voice, invited the old man to speak at the bottom of the city. Paramosha went to a stop and waited a long time for the coveted black Mercedes from the city hall, but the call was just an insidious ploy of friends who wanted to lure Paramosha out of the apartment and take possession of the figurine.
Dovlatov charts six days in the life of a brilliant, ironic writer who saw far beyond the rigid limits of 70s Soviet Russia. Sergei Dovlatov fought to preserve his own talent and decency with poet and writer Joseph Brodsky, while watching his artist friends got crushed by the iron-willed state machinery.