At a remote Hungarian military outpost, orderly Morosgoványi Vendel lives a wretched existence of servitude beneath the heel of his lieutenant, Öreg Balatony Kálmán. Condemned to performing menial duties for the officer and his family while sleeping in an unheated shack next to the latrines, Morosgoványi frequently escapes into fantasy. So realistic are these fantasies that in one ambiguous instance, Morosgoványi sleeps with and impregnates the lieutenant's wife and "wakes up" to find himself engaged in an act of sodomy with a slaughtered pig. Upon seeing this, the lieutenant promptly executes Morosgoványi and raises the son, Balatony Kálmán, as his own.