Rendered impotent by the stress of being in a strange city, Paris, trying to cope with a strange language, Polish hairdresser Karol is divorced by his frustrated wife, who burns down his salon. Unable to use his credit cards, he resorts to begging, when he meets a fellow countryman, Mickolaj, who offers to help him return to Poland by hiding him in a trunk on a flight to Warsaw. However the trunk is stolen by thieves at the airport and Karol ends up being beaten up in a rubbish tip. Deciding to try and win back his wife, Karol takes a job at his brother Jurek's hairdressing salon, as well as working as a security card at a bureau de change. He meets up again with Mikolaj, who tells him a story about a man who is willing to pay someone to help him commit suicide. It transpires the story refers to himself. Karol agrees to help, but loads the gun with blanks. This scares Mikolaj enough to bring him to his senses and he gratefully pays Karol the money, which he invests in a land deal he happened to overhear his employer discussing. This proves a shrewd investment, with Karol receiving a 10-fold return when he resells his share to his employer. Building on this sudden change in his fortunes, Karol soon heads an international trading company. However, his ex-wife still refuses to talk to him. He devises a plan with Mikolaj involving buying a corpse and burying it under his name, leaving all his fortune to his ex-wife. She returns from France to claim her inheritance only to find Karol in her hotel room. What's more, he is no longer impotent. However the next morning he has disappeared and when the police arrive, she can not prove he is still alive.