Aleksandr Petrov: The Cow (1992)

A peasant family living nearby the railroad track. Trains pass everyday without stopping. Theirs is a tiny station for a tiny village. The father is the station headmaster, and each time a train is passing he salutes it and then he notes the time in the log and reports through an antiquated phone. They have, this family, a cow, used for all burden there.

A bleak universe, but the little boy, Vasya, is fascinated by everything around. The trains with their steam engines are living beings, powerful, somehow mysterious, and serving a purpose. The books Vasya is learning from, he takes them every morning when going to school, he opens them again in the evenings. And the cow: feeding them with milk and helping them with plowing. Everything around is purposeful, engine, books, cow, everything is living, everything deserves awe.

One day Vasya comes back from the village school and discovers a new companion in the barn: the cow has just given birth to a calf. And the boy begins taking great care of the little being, they become close friends.

Well, times are difficult for the family and the father sells the calf to a slaughterhouse. Vasya will find the cow alone. He vainly tries to comfort the animal. After little time the cow will get on the railroad track waiting to be killed by the next train.

Корова (The Cow), a simple story told by Andrei Platonov with a poignant sensibility:

The cow was not eating anything now; she was breathing slowly and silently, and a heavy, difficult grief languished inside her, one that could have no end and could only grow because, unlike a human being, she was unable to allay this grief inside her with words, consciousness, a friend, or any other distraction... she only needed one thing - her son, the calf - and nothing could replace him; neither a human being, nor grass, nor the sun. The cow did not understand that it is possible to forget one happiness, to find another and then live again, not suffering any longer. Her dim mind did not the strength to deceive herself; if something had once entered her heart or her feelings, then it could not be suppressed there or forgotten.

(http://books.google.com/books?id=nVzHSs62NEIC&pg=PR37&lpg=PR37&dq=A.+Platonov+The+Cow&source=bl&ots=ZNw125jdSh&sig=6L7iJ22KY8QAxNyNwYbAzPDswl4&hl=en&ei=ETieTZyjIJGH0QHejqzCBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CDkQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=A.%20Platonov%20The%20Cow&f=false)

Aleksandr Petrov made a short animation movie based on this story: a story retold with his pastel oils on glass plates, in superb dark tones, calling in mind great Dutch masters. He found in this story a religious dimension and made it dominant. Was it also in the text? Maybe it was, among other valences: the stories of Andrei Platonov offer multiple views, as is the case of all great authors; your reading is always filtered by your own expectancies, by your own cultural interests, while they are universal.

The son of Platonov was fifteen when sent to Gulag. He stayed several years imprisoned and got tuberculosis. When he was liberated, his father took care of him and contracted the tuberculosis himself. This caused his death.

And here, in this story, Vasya, the boy, is maybe the image of Platonov's son, while also the image of the writer himself: living in a bleak world, facing terrible challenges, while keeping his vitality and his fascination for life.

(video by Niffiwan)

(Andrei Platonov)

(Aleksandr Petrov)