Oblomov (16 page)

‘How have I grieved you, sir?’ he asked, almost in tears.

‘How?’ Oblomov repeated. ‘Why, did it occur to you to think what
other people
are?’

He stopped, still looking at Zakhar.

‘Shall I tell you what they are?’

Zakhar turned like a bear in its lair and heaved a loud sigh.

‘The
other people
you’re thinking of are poor wretches, rough, uncivilized people who live in dirt and poverty in some attic; they can sleep comfortably on a felt mat somewhere in the yard. What can happen to such people? Nothing. They guzzle potatoes and salt herrings. Poverty drives them from one place to another, and so they rush about all day long. They, I’m sure, wouldn’t mind moving to a new flat. Lyagayev, for instance. He would put his ruler under his arm, tie up his two shirts in a handkerchief, and go off. “Where are you going?” “I’m moving,” he would say. That’s what
other people
are like. Aren’t they?’

Zakhar glanced at his master, shifted from foot to foot, and said nothing.

‘What are
other people?
’ Oblomov went on. ‘They are people who do not mind cleaning their boots and dressing themselves, and though they sometimes look like gentlemen, it’s all a put-up show; they don’t know what a servant looks like. If they have no one to send out on an errand, they run out themselves. They don’t mind stirring the fire in the stove or dusting their furniture.…’

‘There are many Germans who are like that,’ Zakhar said gloomily.

‘No doubt there are! And I? What do you think? Am I like them?’

‘You’re quite different, sir,’ Zakhar said piteously, still at a loss to know what his master was driving at. ‘What has come over you, sir?’

‘I’m quite different, am I? Wait, think carefully what you’re saying. Just consider how the “others” live. The “others” work hard, they rush about, they’re always busy,’ Oblomov went on. ‘If they don’t work, they don’t eat. The “others” bow and scrape, beg, grovel. And I? Well, tell me, what do you think: am I like “other people”?’

‘Please, sir, don’t go on torturing me with pathetic words,’ Zakhar implored. ‘Oh dear, oh dear!’

‘I am like the “others”, am I? Do I rush about? Do I work? Have I not enough to eat? Do I look thin and wretched? Do I go short of things? It seems to me I have someone to wait on
me and do things for me! Never in my life, thank God, have I had to pull a sock on my foot myself! Why should I worry? Whatever for? And who am I saying this to? Haven’t you looked after me since I was a child? You know all this; you’ve seen how tenderly I’ve been brought up; you know that I’ve never suffered from hunger or cold, that I’ve never lacked anything, that I haven’t had to earn my living and never done any heavy work. So how did you have the heart to compare me to “others”? Do you think I am as strong as those “others”? Can I do and endure what they can?’

Zakhar was no longer capable of understanding what Oblomov was talking about. But his lips were blown up with emotion: the pathetic scene was raging like a storm-cloud over his head. He was silent.

‘Zakhar!’ Oblomov repeated.

‘Yes, sir?’ Zakhar hissed in a barely audible whisper.

‘Give me some more
kvas
’

Zakhar brought the
kvas,
and when Oblomov had drunk it and handed him back the glass, he made a dash for the door.

‘No, no, wait!’ said Oblomov. ‘I’m asking you how you could so terribly insult your master whom you carried in your arms as a baby, whom you have served all your life, and who has been your benefactor?’

Zakhar could not bear it any more. The word ‘benefactor’ finished him! He began blinking more and more. The less he understood what Oblomov was saying to him in his pathetic speech, the sadder he became.

‘I’m very sorry, sir,’ he began to wheeze penitently. ‘It was out of foolishness, sir, out of foolishness that I – –’

Not understanding what he had done, Zakhar did not know what verb to use at the end of his speech.

‘And I,’ went on Oblomov in the voice of a man who had been insulted and whose merits had not been sufficiently appreciated, ‘and I go on working and worrying day and night, sometimes with a burning head and a sinking heart. I lie awake at night, toss about, always thinking how to improve things – and for whom? Who is it I’m worrying about? All for you, for the peasants, and that means you, too… I daresay when you see me pull my blankets over my head you think I lie there asleep like a log. But no, I don’t sleep, I keep thinking all the time what I can do that my peasants should not suffer any hardships, that they should not envy the peasants belonging to other people, that they should not complain against me to God on the Day of
Judgement, but should pray for me and remember me for the good I had done them. Ungrateful ones!’ Oblomov concluded bitterly.

Zakhar was completely overcome by the last
pathetic
words. He began to whimper quietly.

‘Please, sir,’ he implored, ‘don’t carry on like that! What are you saying, sir? Oh, Blessed Virgin, Mother of God, what a terrible calamity has befallen us!’

‘And you,’ Oblomov went on, without listening to him – ‘you ought to be ashamed to say such things. That’s the sort of snake I’ve warmed in my bosom!’

‘Snake!’ Zakhar repeated, throwing up his hands and bursting out sobbing so loudly that it sounded as though two dozen beetles had flown into the room and begun buzzing. ‘When have I mentioned a snake?’ he said amidst his sobs. ‘Why, I never even dream of the cursed things!’

Each had ceased to understand the other and, at last, they no longer understood themselves.

‘How could you have brought yourself to say a thing like that?’ Oblomov went on. ‘And in my plan I had assigned you a house of your own, a kitchen garden, a quantity of corn, and a regular wage! I had appointed you my steward, my butler, and my business manager! The peasants would bow low to you, they would all call you Zakhar Trofimych, Zakhar Trofimych! And you’re still dissatisfied, you put me on the same level as the “others”! That’s how you reward me! That’s how you abuse your master!’

Zakhar continued to sob, and Oblomov himself was moved. While admonishing Zakhar, he was filled with the consciousness of the benefits he had conferred on his peasants, and he uttered his last reproaches in a trembling voice and with tears in his eyes.

‘Well, you can go now,’ he said to Zakhar in a conciliatory tone of voice. ‘Wait, give me some more
kvas
! My throat is parched. You might have thought of it yourself – can’t you hear your master is hoarse? That’s what you have brought me to! I hope,’ he went on when Zakhar had brought him the
kvas,
‘you’ve understood your misdemeanour and that you won’t ever again compare your master to “other people”! To atone for your guilt, you must make some arrangement with the landlord so that we have not got to move. This is how much you care for your master’s peace of mind: you have thoroughly upset me and made it impossible for me to think of any new and
useful idea. And who will suffer from it? You will. It is to my peasants that I have devoted all my life, it is for all of you that I have resigned from the service and sit shut up in my room. Well, never mind! There, it’s striking three. Only two hours left before dinner, and what can one do in two hours? Nothing. And there’s lots to be done. Oh well, I shall have to put off my letter till the next post and jot down the plan to-morrow. And now I’ll lie down for an hour: I’m worn out. Draw the blinds, shut the door, and be sure I’m not disturbed. Wake me at half-past four.’

Zakhar began to seal up his master in the study; first he covered him up and tucked the blanket under him, then he drew the blinds, closed the doors tightly, and retired to his own room.

‘May you never get up again, you devil,’ he growled, wiping away the traces of tears and climbing on the stove. ‘A devil he is, and no mistake! A house of your own, a kitchen garden, wages!’ Zakhar, who had understood only the last words, muttered. ‘He knows how to talk, he does, just like cutting your heart with a knife! This is my house and my kitchen garden, and this is where I’ll peg out!’ he said, hitting the stove furiously. ‘Wages! If I didn’t pick up a few coppers now and then, I shouldn’t have anything to buy tobacco with or to treat my friend. Curse you!… I wish I was dead and buried!’

Oblomov lay on his back, but he did not fall asleep at once. He kept thinking and thinking, and got more and more agitated.

‘Two misfortunes at once!’ he said, pulling the blanket over his head. ‘How is one to stand up to it?’

But actually those two
misfortunes
– that is, the bailiff’s ominous letter and the moving – no longer worried Oblomov and were already becoming mere disturbing memories.

‘The troubles the bailiff is threatening me with are still far off,’ he thought. ‘All sorts of things can happen before that: the rains may save the crops, the bailiff may make good the arrears, the runaway peasants may be returned to their “place of domicile” as he writes.… And where could those peasants have gone to?’ he thought, getting more and more absorbed in an artistic examination of that circumstance. ‘They could not have gone off at night, in the damp and without provisions. Where would they sleep? Not in the woods, surely? They just can’t stay there! There may be a bad smell in a peasant’s cottage but at least it’s warm.… And what am I so worried about?’ he thought. ‘Soon my plan will be ready – why be frightened before I need to? Oh, you – –’

He was a little more troubled by the thought of moving. That was the new and the latest
misfortune
. But in his present hopeful mood that fact, too, was already pushed into the background. Though he vaguely realized that he would have to move, particularly as Tarantyev had taken a hand in this business, he postponed it in his mind for at least a week, and thus gained a whole week of peace! ‘And
perhaps
Zakhar will succeed in coming to some arrangement so that it will not be necessary to move at all. Perhaps it could be arranged
somehow
! They might agree to put it off till next summer or give up the idea of conversion altogether; well, arrange it
in one way or another
! After all, I really can’t – move!’

So he kept agitating and composing himself in turn, and, as always, found in the soothing and comforting words
perhaps, somehow, in one way or another,
a whole ark of hope and consolation as in the old ark of the Covenant, and succeeded with their help in warding off the two misfortunes for the time being. Already a slight, pleasant numbness spread over his body and began to cast a mist over his senses with sleep, just as the surface of the water is misted over with the first, timid frosts; another moment and his consciousness would have slipped away heaven only knows where, when suddenly he came to and opened his eyes.

‘But, good Lord, I haven’t washed! I haven’t done a thing!’ he whispered. ‘I was going to put down my plan on paper, and I haven’t done so. I haven’t written to the police inspector or the Governor. I began a letter to the landlord, but haven’t finished it. I haven’t checked the bills – or given Zakhar the money – a whole morning wasted!’

He sank into thought. ‘What’s the matter with me? And would the “others” have done that?’ flashed through his mind. ‘“Others, others” – who are they?’

He became absorbed in a comparison of himself with those ‘others’. He thought and thought, and presently an idea quite different from the one he had been expounding to Zakhar was formed in his mind. He had to admit that another one would have managed to write all the letters so that
which
and
that
would never have clashed with one another, that another would have moved to a new flat, carried out the plan, gone to the country.…

‘Why, I, too, could have done it,’ he reflected. ‘I can write well enough. I have written more complicated things than ordinary letters in my time! What has become of it all? And what is
there so terrible about moving? It’s only a question of making up one’s mind! The “others”,’ he added a further characteristic of those other people, ‘never wear a dressing-gown’ – here he yawned – ‘they hardly ever sleep, they enjoy life, they go everywhere, see everything, are interested in everything.… And I – I am not like them!’ he added sadly and sank into deep thought. He even put his head out from under the blanket.

It was one of the most clear-sighted and courageous moments of Oblomov’s life. Oh, how dreadful he felt when there arose in his mind a clear and vivid idea of human destiny and the purpose of a man’s life, and when he compared this purpose with his own life, and when various vital problems wakened one after another in his mind and began whirling about confusedly, like frightened birds awakened suddenly by a ray of sunlight in some dark ruin. He felt sad and sorry at the thought of his own lack of education, at the arrested development of his spiritual powers, at the feeling of heaviness which interfered with everything he planned to do; and was overcome by envy of those whose lives were rich and full, while a huge rock seemed to have been thrown across the narrow and pitiful path of his own existence. Slowly there arose in his mind the painful realization that many sides of his nature had never been awakened, that others were barely touched, that none had developed fully. And yet he was painfully aware that something good and fine lay buried in him as in a grave, that it was perhaps already dead or lay hidden like gold in the heart of a mountain, and that it was high time that gold was put into circulation. But the treasure was deeply buried under a heap of rubbish and silt. It was as though he himself had stolen and buried in his own soul the treasures bestowed on him as a gift by the world and life. Something prevented him from launching out into the ocean of life and devoting all the powers of his mind and will to flying across it under full sail. Some secret enemy seemed to have laid a heavy hand upon him at the very start of his journey and cast him a long way off from the direct purpose of human existence. And it seemed that he would never find his way to the straight path from the wild and impenetrable jungle. The forest grew thicker and darker in his soul and around him; the path was getting more and more overgrown; clear consciousness awakened more and more seldom, and roused the slumbering powers only for a moment. His mind and will had long been paralysed and, it seemed, irretrievably. The events of his life had dwindled to microscopic dimensions, but even so he could not cope with
them; he did not pass from one to another, but was tossed to and fro by them as by waves; he was powerless to oppose one by the resilience of his will or to follow another by the force of his reason. He felt bitter at having to confess it all to himself in secret. Fruitless regrets for the past, burning reproaches of his conscience pricked him like needles, and he tried hard to throw off the burden of those reproaches, to find someone else to blame and turn their sting against. But who?