The first of two more Chekhov stories tonight after my first missed day of writing yesterday (due to extenuating but pleasant circumstances). “Sleepy” was written in 1888 and tells the story of Varka, a young girl who is forced to work as a nanny for an abusive master and his wife.
Varka sits by the side of the baby’s cradle and tries to soothe him by singing so he’ll fall asleep. As the story continues, Varka fades in and out of sleep as she is too exhausted to stay awake any longer. Although she’s afraid to sleep out of fear of being beaten, her drowsiness overcomes her and she dreams of her mother and her dead father. In the dream, she recalls (or imagines?) her mother’s futile attempt to save her dying father. The story weaves in and out of Varka’s consciousness as the baby begins to cry and wake Varka up once again.
The mistress and master cruelly order Varka around telling her to perform various tasks such as lighting a fire, washing her master’s galoshes, washing the steps, getting some beer, and continuing to rock the baby. We feel the overwhelming urge to sleep overcome her as she washes the galoshes,
Suddenly, the galosh grows, swells, fills the whole room. Varka drops the brush, but immediately shakes her head, rolls her eyes, and tries to look at things in such a way that they do not grow and move as she looks.
One powerful aspect of this story is how far Chekhov takes it in so few pages. We feel sympathy for Varka’s plight from the first words of the story. At the end, however, Varka decides, “The enemy is the baby.” She decides her only way out is to kill him, and so;
Laughing, winking, and shaking her finger at the green spot, Varka steals up to the cradle and bends over the baby. After strangling him, she quickly lies down on the floor, laughing with joy that she can sleep, and a moment later is already fast asleep, like the dead…
Failed Poetry 