Cows

Cows in Stealing Horses give Trond shelter during a night of emotional upheaval and become the still, living center of the early-morning scene that follows. Their warmth and steady sounds first offer refuge; the dairymaid’s milking then holds his attention as he struggles with an unexpected physical response. When he leaves, the farm’s ordinary work has brought him to the riverbank, where he sees his father with Jon’s mother. The cows are not merely background to that discovery: their routine carries Trond through the interval between private confusion and a changed understanding of his family.

The cowshed as shelter

After walking down the path toward the river, Trond hears the nearby dairy. Behind the timber walls, cows chew cud, lie in straw, and shift in their stalls. Their bells sound faintly from the road. The scene is neither wholly silent nor fully awake: the cows fall quiet and begin moving again, while the night’s sounds gather around the byre.

Trond enters because he wants to feel the warmth he has imagined inside. He finds a milking stool in the passage between the gutters, shuts the door, and sits near it. The cows breathe behind their stalls; their jaws work, bells clank, and the timbers creak. With the night’s combined hum overhead, the cowshed becomes a place where he can stop and rest. He falls asleep there, among the animals whose presence makes the building warm and calming.

Milking at dawn

At five in the morning, Trond wakes to someone stroking his cheek. Still half asleep, he mistakes the touch for his mother’s and briefly feels caught between that remembered childhood and the face actually before him: the dairymaid. He knows her from previous visits and remembers her singing the cows home. The encounter quickly returns him to the present, where the cowshed is beginning its morning work.

The dairymaid lets Trond keep the stool and takes another for herself. She has already mucked out and spread sawdust across the floor. The eight spotted cows stand in two rows, four on each side, waiting to be milked. Under a lamp, she washes an udder and works the teats with practiced gentleness; milk spurts into a metal pail. Trond has tried milking several times without producing a drop. The contrast between his failed attempts and her effortless skill makes the process, though routine for her, a scene he watches closely.

Trond’s attention and restraint

Watching the dairymaid, Trond experiences a sudden physical response that he had not anticipated. He grips the stool and fears that even a small movement will betray him. His concern is not only that she might notice: he also feels unfaithful to the person already on his mind. The cows continue to be milked as he tries to govern his body without drawing attention to himself.

He attempts to distract himself first by recalling horses running through the village, then by turning to memories of swimming in Bunnefjord with his sister. Their annual first swim, on May 1, was deliberately cold and painful: one child entered the water while the other held a rope at the shore in case of cramp. Remembering the freezing water also brings back the German soldiers’ arrival in Oslo in 1940, the silent crowd, and his father leading him away. These memories cool him enough to release his grip and stand without incident. The recollection moves far beyond the cowshed, but its immediate effect is practical: it allows him to leave the dairymaid undisturbed.

Milk, departure, and discovery

As Trond prepares to go, the dairymaid offers him fresh milk. He has avoided it for a long time because its warmth and thickness make him feel sick, yet he accepts the ladle and swallows its contents in one gulp. He thanks her and says that his father will have breakfast ready. Her calm look leaves him unsure how much she understands about the boy sitting in her cowshed, and he departs quickly.

Before he reaches the road, Trond vomits onto the ground. He covers the white spill with heather and moss so the dairymaid will not find it after finishing the milking and bringing the cows up the path. The act extends his concern beyond his own embarrassment: he does not want her to discover the mess and feel bad about what happened. The cowshed has provided comfort, but leaving it exposes the limits of that refuge; the bodily evidence of the night follows him outside.

Trond continues down to a jetty on the river. Across the water, at the farm where Jon lives—or may have lived—he sees Jon’s mother seated close beside Trond’s father. The cows’ morning routine thus stands immediately before a consequential sight: after sleeping among the animals and watching them milked, Trond crosses from the enclosed warmth of the byre into a view of an intimacy he had not witnessed between the two adults. The cows do not explain what he sees, but their steady, ordinary work gives the preceding hours a distinct frame: a child wakes, watches, tries to compose himself, and leaves the farm changed by what is waiting beyond it.