Sometimes a person can behave in one way one day and in the opposite way the next, and there is no tension between the two poles. It’s just life.
That’s the takeaway of “The Album,” a very, very short story, just three pages long.
The plot: A high-ranking bureaucrat is presented with a photo album from his subordinates, with their portraits collected between covers. He is touched by the gesture and brings the album home.
His children take the album, slice it up for their own use, and disfigure the little cut-out photos.
The bureaucrat sees what they have done… and laughs.
And so we have the polarity: Tearful gratitude on one day. Disinterest the next. That’s really the way life is, sometimes.
READ THIS? READ THAT!
This slight tale is unusual for its treatment of an upper class character: The bureaucrat protagonist, though high ranking and relatively powerful, is not a figure of fun or of fear. He’s presented as fully human, not a bully or a sycophant or a pompous ass.
(The fact that he is unconcerned when his children mishandle a gift from his staff is, I think, a very nice slice of reality. From a different viewpoint, it could be seen as the act of a cold, thoughtless person. But it’s not handled that way.)
The generous, gentle portrait of a rich man is noteworthy given Chekhov’s background and his tendency (especially in his early years as a writer) to skewer easy targets. As the child of a man who was actually born a serf, Chekhov was generally happy to satirize wealth, and he particularly disliked the stuffy bureaucrats who clogged up life in Moscow and Petersburg, where a man like him could not even get an apartment without someone pulling strings so as to attach a fake designation of low-level royalty. You can find plenty of satiric portrayals of low-level wealth in stories like “Anna on the Neck” and “At a Country House.” But “The Album” has a different message: The rich are people, too, just like the rest of us.
For another relatively human portrayal of a high-ranking bureaucrat, check out “The Death of a Government Clerk.” In this story, Chekhov aims a poison pen not at the boss but at a sycophantic underling.
A Chekhov Circus 