“It was strange and curious for him to see both a woman and a cow a kilometer from the front line. But the woman was silent, and her entire figure expressed resignation and hopelessness; this soldier who came from nowhere was feeding the horses with her hay, which she saved like bread. <…> He heard horses crunching hay, and saw the hunched figure of his mother and a emaciated cow, near which there was not a scrap of hay. Tomorrow or the day after tomorrow he will be far from this village, and the woman with the girl and the hungry cow will remain here, in an empty yard.”

In a revised form, the story was included in the fifth part of the novel “Humanity.”