Picking up where "God Does Not Believe In Us Anymore" leaves off, Freddy struggles to find work after arriving in New York in 1940. His world of refugee acquaintances includes the depressed daughter of a poet/delicatessen owner, an aging surgeon who cannot find work, and a lovable charlatan photographer. Corti's trilogy continues with "Welcome in Vienna"
A year on an Alpine farm: an older couple have two children, Belli, who wanted to be a teacher, and the younger Franzi, deaf, and although he works like a man, child-like. Belli teaches him. In his work, he can become frustrated, so when he throws an expensive mower over a cliff in a fit of pique, his father banishes him to the outskirts of the farm, where he uses pubescent energy to break rocks and build walls and cairns. (It's the tradition of the father's family, called "The Irascibles" by neighbors, to spend puberty doing this.) Belli visits him and they begin sleeping together. By winter, the boy is back in the house and Belli is pregnant. Soon her parents must know.
Adapted from the novel Die Döppelgänger by Theodor Storm, this black-and-white drama tells the tragic story of a war veteran who, in 1860, returns to his home in Schleswig Holstein after serving a term for robbery. There he finds nothing but hardship and rejection, save from the town's mayor and a young servant girl, whom he marries. Ridiculed and abused, with practically no work, he turns to drink and one night accidentally kills his wife. The child of their marriage is taken away from him, and at this point he is left with the options of becoming a robber, starving to death, or emigrating.
A young, easygoing pilot discovers the mutual attraction between his chief pilot's wife and himself. The two become lovers, and are nearly discovered on several occasions. However, when the wife becomes pregnant, her husband has reason to believe he is not the father and, indeed, that the culprit is the young pilot. He arranges for the young man to have an unfortunate accident, and all proceeds as if nothing had happened.
