Leon Tolchinsky is ecstatic.  He's landed a terrific teaching job in an idyllic Russian hamlet. When he arrives, he finds people sweeping dust from the stoops back into their own houses and people milking upside down to get more cream. The town has been cursed with Chronic Stupidity for two hundred years, and Leon's job is to break the curse.  No one tells him that if he stays over twenty-four hours and fails to break the curse, he too becomes Stupid.  But, he has fallen in love with a girl so Stupid that she has only recently learned to sit down.