Orléans is a typical provincial Russian town on the banks of a salt lake called Yarovoye. The town is ‘steeped in evil’. But it isn’t some great evil. This evil is of a banal and everyday type: Lida the hairdresser has indiscriminate affairs, followed by numerous abortions; Rudik the doctor enjoys an endless supply of women, thanks to his position, neglecting his paralysed father who lives with him and hoping the old man will die soon; the local officer of the law has no qualms about committing murder; a magician from the local circus might actually be sawing women in half on stage… One day, a mysterious man appears in this quiet backwater town. He goes by the title of the Executor: at least that’s what it says on his business card. He approaches Lida, then Rudik the surgeon, and promises both endless suffering in their lifetimes. He may be the personification of conscience. As the story unfolds, we learn that this newcomer is elusive, possibly immortal, and that the town’s residents are in desperate need of him.