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THE STRESS OF STORMS THE HERRING BARREL |
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THE STRESS OF STORMS THE HERRING BARREL |
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ANTON PAVLOVICH CHEKHOV
(1860-1904)
Russian narrator and playwright. He was born in the
town of Taganrog, Caucasus in 1860, and died in
Badenweiler, Germany in 1904.
He was a member of a large and poor family. His father, Pavel Chekhov, was an uneducated, brutal, vain, selfish shopkeeper, who was full of debts and was very religious. Later in his life, Chekhov would write about him: “I remember my father started beating me when I was five years old. He would pull my ears and strike me on the head. The first question I would ask myself when I woke up was: Will I be beaten again today?”
Chekhov moved to Moscow in 1879 to study medicine; he paid for his schooling with the stories he managed to publish in the papers. His works show a great admiration for human and artistic truth; they also show a very personal sense of humour and criticism towards his own society. Chekhov has been called the father of contemporary theatre; many think that the best of his works are the plays in which he incorporated to the scenes a type of realism that was unusual for the time. We can mention the following plays: Uncle Vanya (1899), The Three Sisters (1901) and The Cherry Orchard (1904). Some outstanding short stories are: “The Lady with the Dog” (1898), “Happiness,” “Dreams,” “The Huntsman,” “Three Years,” “His Wife” and “The Teacher of Literature”.
His most famous novels are: A Dreary Story, The Witch, The Steppe (1988) and Ward Number Six (1892).
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THE HERRING BARREL
Southeast of the Imperial Russia, barely touched by the Azov Sea breeze, the forgotten town of Taganrog was bored once again on that ordinary afternoon in 1868.
Far away, in a small village, Pavel Chekhov, a big bellied old man with a red nose as misshapen as his character, puffed and blew and sweated in the turnings and windings of his store. Grasping his discipline stick, he looked for his son Anton so he could strike him again in the name of God.
The barefoot boy was running swift and nervous along the same corridors looking for a place to hide. He tried a drawer but it was already taken by several mice.
“The closet! No, yesterday he caught me in it. I know, under the counter! No,
no, it was bad last time I hid there. That’s it! He won’t find me here.”
Twisting his pale and skinny little body, the eight-year-old managed to squeeze inside a small, foul smelling barrel.
The rotten smell of herrings, onions and parsley made him change his mind but the slime that covered the inner walls of the barrel held him so perfectly that he could not get out. He ended up with his elbow jamming into his groin, one ear pressing down on his knee, his heel spurring his back, his thumb pushing up his nose and the rest of his hand trying to hold the inevitable vomit that complicated things even more inside the barrel.
Forgetting about the beating, he tried to call for help, but the twisted posture did not allow it, and his chronic cough (caused by imminent tuberculosis) was muffled by his father’s yelling. Now he would gladly submit to the daily brutal beating, that yesterday he had received as well, from his father’s violent and religious hand.
“Anton Pavlovich Chekhov—come out wherever you are, you filthy rat—you can’t hide from my rage or from the eyes of God!”
Hearing her husband’s booming voice, Nadia Carlovna ran to help her sick child.
“And now why are you going to hit him? The boy finished all the religious
services this morning, and he kissed the hands of all the clergymen and the priests and I listened as he read the psalms this afterno….“
“Shut up, woman! Haven’t the gospels taught you to be submissive? Everybody in this house knows that I forbid games and fun since it is the work of Satan.”
“Try to be patient….“
“Be quiet! I’ve heard the evil bursts of laughter that snotty little boy provokes among his brothers with those stupid tales that his sick mind makes up constantly. I think it’s the devil who whispers them in his ear. And look, look at the garbage I found underneath his bed.”
“But Pavel, they are only books.”
“Fool! You say that as if they were harmless. Listen to these names: ‘The Devils’ by someone called Dostoyevsky. Come and listen to the heresy that this Tolstoy writes in ‘A Confession.’ And this ‘Queen of Spades’ by Pushkin must be full of obscenities. And what have we here? ‘Dead Souls’ by Gog… Oh my God!” Pavel crosses himself three times in a fraction of a second. “Gogo… Gogol, this must be the name of some kind of demon!” he roared, more enraged than ever, as he tore the books to pieces.
“Come out, Satan’s monster! Come out of your hiding place!” yelled Pavel, “Or
I will strike you for each ruble that I owe!”
“You are going to kill him!” yelled frightened Nadia Carlovna who knew very well the amount of debts her husband had.
“Either he comes out right now or I will divide his beating into cents.”
A pause in breath, between the old man’s yelling and the mother’s cries, was enough to let them hear the muffled coughs that were coming out of the barrel.
The shopkeeper charged like a bull to where the noise was coming from, and with one kick he cracked the barrel open.
Anton, suffocated in a knot of pail and fish-stinking flesh, rolled down the hallway. As he gasped, wheezing for air, he gave thanks for being freed from that foul-smelling prison.
Meanwhile the old man cried and jumped on one foot since he had broken his already painful bunion when he kicked the barrel.
Barely standing up, Pavel lifted his stick to bring it down on Anton’s head. The boy still could not undo himself, but the stick bumped on one of the shelves and bounced against the father’s nose.
Nadia Carlovna ran to the little one’s side and helped him straighten up.
The grumpy old man kept jumping on his foot. With his free hand he tried to stop his nose from bleeding and with the other he grabbed the stick with even more fury.
The knock against the shelf had also tilted over a jar full of candy as round and hard as small marbles, and now their shiny colors were rolling underneath Pavel’s hopping foot.
The Taganrog church rang the dusk bells at six but Pavel’s howls, as his hard body fell, rumbled around the whole neighborhood.
Free at last of the shopkeeper’s hand, the stick Pavel was holding with so much rage flipped freely in the air, as if held by the reflections of the bells, and at last fell hard exactly on his genitals. It was at that moment when the old shopkeeper, like an ox, lost all his courage.
Mother and son, embracing in complicity, could not contain their laughter.
“That, Pavel, is the Biblical law an eye for an eye, that today falls on you,” said Nadia in a soft but vindictive tone.
Twisting on the floor, grabbing his groin with both hands and without any strength to cry out, Pavel looked at the child with the eyes of a gentle lamb and pointed to the bottle of vodka (the only survivor of the melodrama), that was waiting impatiently on the shelf. The sharp little boy, as his writings would show later on, ran to bring it back.
Kneeling down, he placed his father’s hard head on his young lap and helped him to a drink. While the old man drank his numbing vodka, Anton Pavlovich Chekhov’s wicked little eyes sparkled bright and he yelled without any inhibition:
“This I must tell! I must tell it!”
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| ANTERIOR | ÍNDICE | SIGUIENTE |
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© Alberto Sibaja Álvarez. San José, Costa Rica
® The Stress of Storms
