“He sings in the morning in the closet. One cannot do without this textbook, which has become a volatile phrase with which Olesha’s novel begins. And it refers to a former revolutionary, a member of the Society of Political Prisoners, now a major Soviet business executive, director of the food industry trust Andrei Babichev. He sees him like this - a powerful giant, the master of life - the main character, a man lost in life, Nikolai Kavalerov.
Andrei Babichev picked up a drunk Kavalerov, lying around near the pub, from which he was thrown out after a quarrel. He took pity on him and gave shelter for a while in his apartment, while his pupil and friend, a representative of the "new generation", an eighteen-year-old student and football player Volodya Makarov, were absent. He has been living with Babichev for two weeks, but instead of gratitude he feels excruciating envy for his benefactor. He despises him, considers himself lower and calls him a sausage maker. After all, he, Kavalerov, has a figurative vision, almost a poetic gift, which he uses to compose pop monologues and verses about the financial inspector, co-ladies, Nepman and alimony. He envies Babichev's prosperity, his health and energy, celebrity and scope. Kavalerov wants to catch him on something, discover the weak side, find a gap in this monolith. Painfully selfish, he feels humiliated by his cohabitation and Babichev’s pity. He is jealous of the unfamiliar Volodya Makarov, whose photograph is on the table at Babichev.
Kavalerov is twenty-seven years old. He dreams of his own glory. He wants more attention, whereas, in his words, "in our country, the roads of glory are barred." He would like to be born in a small French town, to set himself some lofty goal, to one day leave the town and in the capital, working fanatically, to achieve it. In a country where a sober, realistic approach is required from a person, he is suddenly tempted to take and create something ridiculous, to commit some ingenious mischief and say later: “Yes, you are like that, but I am like that”. Kavalerov feels that his life has broken, that he will no longer be either beautiful or famous. Even the extraordinary love that he had been dreaming of all his life would not be. With sadness and horror, he recalls the room at the forty-five-year-old widow Anechka Prokopovich, fat and loose. He perceives the widow as a symbol of his masculine humiliation. He hears her feminine call, but it only wakes him up with rage ("I am not a couple to you, you bastard!").
Kavalerov, so delicate and gentle, is forced to be a "buffoon" under Babichev. He wears sausage made using Babichev’s technology at the indicated addresses, “which does not fail in one day,” and everyone congratulates its creator. The cavaliers proudly refuses her ceremonial eating. Anger takes it apart, because in that new world that the communist Babichev is building, fame “flares up because a new sort of sausage came out of the hands of the sausage maker”. He feels that this new, under construction world is the main, triumphant. And he, Kavalerov, unlike Babichev, is a stranger at this celebration of life. He is constantly reminded of this, either by not letting the airfield of the new design take off on the airfield, then by the construction of yet another Babichov’s brainchild - “Chetvertak”, the giant house, the future greatest dining room, the greatest kitchen, where lunch will cost just a quarter.
Exhausted by envy, Kavalerov writes a letter to Babichev, where he confesses his hatred to him and calls him a dumb dignitary with noble tendencies. He claims that he takes the side of Babichev’s brother, Ivan, whom he once saw in the courtyard, when he threatened Andrei to destroy him with the help of his Ophelia car. Andrei Babichev then said that his brother Ivan is “a lazy person, a harmful, infectious person” who “must be shot”. A little later, Kavalerov accidentally witnesses how this fat man in a bowler hat and with a pillow in his hands asks a girl named Valya to return to him. Valya, the daughter of Ivan Babichev, becomes the subject of his romantic aspirations. Kavalerov declares the Babichev war - "... for tenderness, for pathos, for personality, for names that excite the name of Ophelia, for everything that you suppress, a wonderful person."
Just at that moment when Kavalerov, intending to finally leave Babichev’s house, collects his belongings, student and football player Volodya Makarov returns. Confused and jealous, Kavalerov is trying to slander Babichev in front of him, but Makarov does not react, and calmly takes his place on the Cavalerov’s favorite sofa. The letter of the Cavaliers hesitates to leave, but then suddenly discovers that he mistakenly seized someone else's, and he still remained on the table. He is desperate. Again he returns to Babichev, he wants to fall at the feet of the benefactor and, repenting, pleading for forgiveness. But instead, he only sores, and when he sees Valya appearing from the bedroom, he falls into a trance altogether - begins to slander again and finally gets thrown out the door. “It's over,” he says. “Now I will kill you, Comrade Babichev.”
From that moment, Kavalerov in alliance with the “modern sorcerer” Ivan Babichev, a teacher and a comforter. He listens to his confession, from which he learns about Ivan's extraordinary inventive abilities, which from childhood surprised others and was nicknamed the Mechanic. After the Polytechnic Institute, he worked for some time as an engineer, but this stage in the past, now he staggers around for beer houses, draws portraits of those who wish for a fee, composes impromptu, etc. But the main thing is to preach. He suggests organizing a “conspiracy of feelings” as opposed to the soulless era of socialism, which denies the values of a century past: pity, tenderness, pride, jealousy, honor, duty, love ... He convenes those who have not yet freed themselves from human feelings, even if not the most exalted, who did not become a machine. He wants to arrange "the last parade of these feelings." He burns with hatred for Volodya Makarov and his brother Andrei, who took his daughter Valya from him. Ivan tells his brother that he loves Volodya not because Volodya is a new person, but because Andrey himself, as a simple layman, needs a family and a son, fatherly feelings. In the person of Kavalerov, Ivan finds his adherent.
The Wizard intends to show Kavalerov his pride - a machine called Ophelia, a universal apparatus in which hundreds of different functions are concentrated. According to him, she can blow mountains, fly, lift weights, replace a baby carriage, serve as a long-range weapon. She knows how to do everything, but Ivan forbade her. Deciding to avenge his era, he corrupted the car. He, according to him, endowed her with vulgar human feelings and thereby dishonored her. Therefore, he gave her the name of Ophelia - a girl who went crazy with love and despair. His machine, which could make the new century happy, is "a dazzling cookie that the dying century will show to the born." Kavalerov feels that Ivan is really talking to someone through a crack in the fence, and right there hears a piercing whistle in horror. With a gasping whisper: "I'm afraid of her!" - Ivan rushes away from the fence, and together they flee.
The cavaliers are ashamed of their cowardice; he saw only a boy whistling with two fingers. He doubts the existence of the machine and reproaches Ivan. Between them there is a quarrel, but then the Cavaliers surrenders. Ivan tells him a tale about the meeting of two brothers: he, Ivan, sends his formidable car to the Chetvertak under construction, and she destroys it, and the defeated brother crawls to it. Soon Kavalerov is present at a football match in which Volodya takes part. He jealously monitors Volodya, Valya, and Andrey Babichev, surrounded, as it seems to him, by universal attention. He is hurt that they do not notice him, do not recognize him, and the charm of Vali torments him with his inaccessibility.
At night, Kavalerov returns home drunk and finds himself in the bed of his mistress, Anechka Prokopovich. Happy Anechka compares him with her late husband, which infuriates Kavalerov. He beats Anechka, but this only delights her. He falls ill, the widow takes care of him. Kavalerov has a dream in which he sees the “Quartet”, the happy Valya, together with Volodya, and right there with horror notices Ophelia, who catches Ivan Babichev and pins a needle against the wall, and then pursues Kavalerov himself.
Having recovered, Kavalerov flees from the widow. A lovely morning fills him with the hope that now he will be able to break with his former ugly life. He understands that he lived too easily and presumptuously, too high an opinion about himself. He sleeps on the boulevard, but then returns again, firmly deciding to put the widow "in place." At home, he finds Ivan sitting on the bed and drinking Ivan's wine in a businesslike way. In response to the amazed question of Kavalerov: "What does this mean?" - he offers him a drink for indifference as “the best of the states of the human mind” and says “pleasant”: “... today, Kavalerov, it's your turn to sleep with Anechka. Hooray!"
