Meanwhile, on the lip of the grave, Lipiczany was clutching his head of hair. “What are we going to do? We have to do something!”

Julius Szypper and Nachman Kipnis were pulling on the rope that still encircled the animal’s head. The cow’s tongue came out. “Moooo!” it repeated.

“In my opinion, this is not a difficult problem. It’s a matter of physics. Of pulleys and levers.” The speaker was Professor Zygmunt, a former scholar. “Over the load we erect a block and tackle. Underneath we establish a fulcrum. And then, all together! Alley oop!”

Bettsack, the Hatters’ schoolmaster, ventured to make a suggestion. “Why not fill the grave with water? Then we could buoy the cow with corks.”

A man wearing earmuffs looked at the cow shivering in the bottom of the tomb. “We don’t have any corks,” he said.

Kornischoner, the rabbi, spoke up. “Maybe we could cut her into pieces. Not so it hurt. Humanely. Then not only could we lift her out, but everybody would have something to eat.”

Muszkat on his own hitched both horses to the Holstein. Then he backed up ten meters and called to his team. “Come! You darlings!” The mare surged in the direction of Tsarkoye Selo, but the white stallion veered toward the marsh. This created a situation in which the cow was about to be strangled. Muszkat cut one rope, the other snapped by itself. The two steeds disappeared.

The sons of the dead man were still trying to revive their mother from her swoon. They kept patting her cheek and her hand. “What a fortune this funeral is costing,” one of them said.

Kornischoner began to talk to himself like a madman. “Why don’t we bury the cow?” he mumbled. “And cook Fiebig instead.”

Professor Zygmunt, the university man, resumed his theme. “Let us return to the science of physics. We don’t have a block and tackle. We don’t have corks. But we possess picks, and many shovels. If we start to dig here, point X, and proceed gradually deeper, to there, point Y, the result will be an inclined plane. The animal can simply walk up from one spot to another.”

“What a good idea!” the mourners declared, and at once set about digging into the hard-packed ground.

The plan worked to perfection. The Holstein, blue-lipped, her udder drawn upward, strolled up the ramp and into the back of the funeral wagon. Then Fiebig’s friends lowered the corpse into its grave. They poured earth upon him, along with the petals of flowers.

The only way to get the hearse up the slope and out the gate of Tsarskoye Selo was for the Red partisans to push it by hand. More easily said than done. The boys were wet, cold, and weary; the hill slippery and steep. At one point they stopped, stuck. Muszkat cracked his whip, exactly as if there had been horses; Kipnis uttered the cry, “Forward, Comrades! Let us accomplish the task!” Painfully, the wagon moved upward again.