The Return and Other Stories by Andrey Platonov

Author:Andrey Platonov
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781448104598
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2016-05-27T16:00:00+00:00

THE COW

THE GREY CHERKASSIAN cow from the steppe lived alone in a shed; the shed, made of boards and painted on the outside, stood in the small yard by the house of the level crossing keeper. In the shed, beside the firewood, the hay, the millet straw and the household things that had seen better days – a trunk without a lid, a burnt-out samovar flue, some old rags, a chair without legs, – there was space for the cow to lie down in at night, and for her to live in during the long winters.

In the afternoons and evenings, Vasya Rubtsov, her owner’s son, would come and visit her, and stroke the soft hair around her head. He came this day too.

“Cow, cow,” he said, since the cow did not have a name of her own and he called her what was written in his reading book. “Yes, you’re a cow! Don’t fret, your son will get better, my father will be bringing him back right away.”

The cow had a little bull calf; he had choked on something the day before, and spittle and bile had begun to dribble out of his mouth. Vasya’s father was afraid the calf would die, and he had taken him along to the station today to see the vet.

The cow looked sideways at the boy and remained silent, chewing a blade of withered grass that had long ago been worn out by death. She always recognized the boy, and he loved her. He liked everything about the cow: her warm kind eyes, framed by dark circles – as if she were continually exhausted or lost in thought –, her horns, her brow, and her large, thin body which was the way it was because, instead of saving her strength for herself in fat and meat, the cow gave it all away in milk and work. The boy also looked at her tender, quiet udder with its small shrivelled teats that fed him with milk, and he touched her short, firm dewlap and the strong bones that jutted out in front.

After looking at the boy for a while, the cow lowered her head and took a few blades of grass from the trough with her ungreedy mouth. She could not rest or look around for long, she had to chew without interruption, since she gave birth to her milk without interruption and her food was thin and monotonous; the cow had to labour at it for a long time in order to get enough nourishment.

Vasya went out of the shed. Autumn was in the air outside. Round the crossing-keeper’s house stretched level, empty fields which had borne corn and rustled with life during the summer but were now mown flat, sad and deserted.

Twilight was setting in; the sky, wrapped in cool grey fog, was already being closed off by darkness; and the wind, after spending all day rustling stubble and bare bushes that had gone dead in preparation for winter, now itself lay down

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