Respectable schoolmaster returns from work on the eve of a wedding anniversary holiday to find a strange man dead in their bathroom and his wife missing.
Jean Wells believes she kills a man during a hit-and-run one evening. A man named Joe appears and, in exchange for keeping silent about the murder, blackmails Wells.
A group of boys playing near the seashore in Tokyo find a goat, kill it in a tug of war for ownership, bury it with ceremony, and, except for one boy, run off in heedless laughter ready for more games.
A king Parthiban (Ramadas) gifts a rare anklet (salangai) to a dancer Aparajita (Kumari Madhuri). She begets the king's son, Amarendran and hands him over to a priest along with the anklet.
A powerful man posing as a gladiator in Rome's fourth century discovers a plan to put the beautiful Queen in prison, which he thwarts by exposing a sinister duke as a traitor.
Five short stories.
(1) “Czas przybliża, czas oddala” – Edward recalls his unfulfilled love for Anna and, years later, writes to her sister Zofia, mistaking her for Anna.