A fable that might well have been told by an elderly uncle, one of those familiar with the art of good story-telling - like soup seasoned with only salt, not side-tracked by other seasonings, so that we may rediscover the sharpness of salt and, at the same time, satisfy our more basic desires. This is also a fable on the end to the Soviet Union and savage capitalism.

     The hero, a teacher, is a man in his forties working on a children's book - The Flight of the Bee, teaching class in the village of Asht, in Tajikistan. He is a common person, simple, perhaps, though, with a fair sense of justice. A rich snob of a man lives next door. The neighbor's bathroom is too close to the teacher's wall, almost in his yard. Conditions are unbearable, especially because of the disdain with which the millionaire views the issue.

     The teacher decides to go to court but, according to the public prosecutor, has no legal means to demand that the bathroom be removed. He can not accept the situation and decides to take radical measures and to build a public lavatory next to the prosecutor's house. He carries out his plan and, having dug down 20 meters, is taken aback at having stumbled on a spring of water. For years the village has tried in vain to find a natural source and now, quite by chance, the teacher has come accross the water spring.