Cheap Labour

Seventeen year old bricklayer apprentice, Eda Mařák, does not go from his Prague vocational school to his mother - an alcoholic. He spends his weekends on the train. The schoolmistress, Smrčková, learns about this from police after a random check. The house owner, Sedlák, is searching among the apprentices for cheap labor to build an extension. The skilful third year student, Eda, who dreams of buying a motorbike, accepts this offer, although the earnings are only twenty crowns per hour or, colloquially, two fivers, because he likes Sedlák's daughter, Eliška. The boy does not feel the disdain with which the family takes his rather uncultivated behaviour. Eliška is at a school for window dressers, but she plans to study at art school. Her ambitious parents hinder the relation between them. Eda buys expensive winter shoes for Eliška's birthday, but her parents don't allow her to accept them. The Sedláks are gone and Eliška invites Eda to a party. He is surprised that the house is full of Eliška's self-confident friends. He becomes a target of their impertinent jokes. The bunch of her friends find him even at the extension, where the angry Eda had gone to "his right place". In order to get rid of the unwanted suitor, Sedlák wants to hire more expensive bricklayers, who will also probably finish the job sooner. Eda pretends in the vocational school that he is ill and he allegedly goes to cure himself at home. Now he can work at the Sedláks whole days, but at the same time he has to overnight there too. By chance, he overhears a dialogue between the Sedlaks and it finally opens his eyes. Troubles are awaiting him at the boarding house. They disclosed he was lying about his illness. Although the master praises him for his job, he tells him that he will be expelled from the vocational school. But Eda minds more about Eliška, who became cold to him. The schoolmistress tries in vain to have a serious talk with him. The boy is no longer naive. Eliška definitely refused him and he knows that the school lets him finish his education only because society has already invested three years of education in him.