 In the Russian countryside, a family lives next to a railroad track. A boy remembers when he and his parents had a cow, living off its milk and using it as a beast of burden. The cow has a calf that the boy s father sells. The cow, perhaps grieving for its lost calf, acts strangely, bolts from the boy, and meets with disaster. The boy dreams of calf, cow, train, and plow in a phantasmagoric collision. Later, the boy s remembrance of things past becomes sweet and elegiac.