Oblomov (37 page)

‘Zakhar!’ he said.

‘Yes, sir?’ Zakhar responded listlessly.

‘I’m thinking of moving to town.’

‘To town, sir? But we have no flat.’

‘Why, we have one in Vyborg.’

‘But, sir, that’ll only mean moving from one summer cottage to another,’ Zakhar said. ‘Who do you want to see there? Not Mr Tarantyev, sir?’

‘But it’s not comfortable here.’

‘So it’s moving again, is it, sir? Good Lord, haven’t we had enough trouble as it is? Can’t find two cups and the broom, and I daresay they’re lost unless Mr Tarantyev has taken them off.’

Oblomov said nothing. Zakhar went out and came back at once, dragging a trunk and a travelling bag.

‘And what are we to do with this, sir?’ he asked, kicking the trunk. ‘We might as well sell it.’

‘Have you gone off your head, man?’ Oblomov interrupted angrily. ‘I shall be going abroad in a few days.’

‘Abroad, sir?’ Zakhar said with a sudden grin. ‘You’ve been talking about it, that’s true enough, but going abroad, sir, is a different matter.’

‘Why do you think it so strange? I’m going, and that’s that. My passport is ready.’

‘And who’ll take your boots off there?’ Zakhar remarked ironically. ‘Not the maid-servants by any chance? Why, sir, you’ll be lost without me there!’

He grinned again, his whiskers and eyebrows moving in opposite directions.

‘You’re talking a lot of nonsense!’ Oblomov said with vexation. ‘Take this out and go!’

Next morning, as soon as Oblomov woke up at about nine o’clock, Zakhar, who had brought him his breakfast, told him that he had met the young lady on his way to the baker’s.

‘What young lady?’ asked Oblomov.

‘What young lady? Why, the Ilyinsky young lady, Olga Sergeyevna.’

‘Well?’ Oblomov asked impatiently.

‘Well, sir, she sent you her greetings, and asked how you were and what you were doing.’

‘What did you say?’

‘Me, sir? I said you were all right – what could be wrong with you?’

‘Why do you add your idiotic reflections?’ Oblomov remarked. ‘What could be wrong with him! How do you know what’s wrong with me? Well, what else?’

‘She asked where you had dinner yesterday.’

‘Well?’

‘I said, sir, you had dinner at home, and supper at home, too. Why, the young lady asked, does he have supper? Well, sir, I told her you only had two chickens for supper.’

‘Id-i-ot!’ Oblomov said with feeling.

‘Why idiot, sir?’ said Zakhar. ‘Isn’t it true? I can show you the bones if you like.’

‘You
are
an idiot!’ Oblomov repeated. ‘Well, what did she say?’

‘She smiled, sir. Why so little? she asked.’

‘Oh dear, what an idiot!’ Oblomov repeated. ‘You might as well have told her that you put on my shirt inside out.’

‘She didn’t ask, so I didn’t tell her,’ Zakhar replied.

‘What else did she ask you?’

‘She asked me what you’d been doing all these days.’

‘Well, what did you say?’

‘I said you did nothing but just lay about.’

‘Oh Lord!’ Oblomov cried in great vexation, raising his fists to his temples. ‘Get out!’ he added sternly. ‘If ever again you dare to tell such stories about me you’ll see what I shall do to you! What a venomous creature this man is!’

‘You don’t expect me to go about telling lies at my age, do you, sir?’ Zakhar tried to justify himself.

‘Get out!’ Oblomov repeated.

Zakhar did not mind abuse so long as his master did not use ‘pathetic words’.

‘I told her that you thought of moving to Vyborg,’ Zakhar concluded.

‘Go!’ Oblomov cried imperiously.

Zakhar went out, heaving a loud sigh that could be heard all over the passage, and Oblomov began drinking tea. He drank his tea, and out of the large supply of rolls of different shapes he ate only one, fearful of some new indiscretion on Zakhar’s part. Then he lit a cigar, sat down at the table, opened a book, read a page, and was about to turn it over when he discovered that the pages had not been cut. He tore the pages with his finger, which left festoons round the edges. It was not his book but Stolz’s, and Stolz was so absurdly fussy about things, and especially about his books! Every little thing – papers, pencils, and so on – had to remain exactly as he had put them down. He should have taken a paper-knife, but it was not there; he could of course have asked for a paper-knife, but he preferred instead to replace the book and go to the sofa; he had no sooner put his head on the embroidered cushion so as to lie down more comfortably than Zakhar came into the room.

‘The young lady, sir, asked you to come to – oh dear, what do you call it?’ he announced.

‘Why didn’t you tell me about it two hours ago?’ Oblomov asked hastily.

‘You ordered me out of the room, sir,’ Zakhar replied. ‘You never let me finish.…’

‘Oh, you’ll be the death of me, Zakhar,’ Oblomov cried pathetically.

‘Oh dear, he’s starting again,’ Zakhar thought, turning his left whisker towards his master and gazing at the wall. ‘Just as he did the other day – sure to say something horrible.’

‘Where am I supposed to go?’ asked Oblomov.

‘Well, sir, that what-d’you-call-it – the garden, is it?’

‘The park?’ asked Oblomov.

‘Yes, sir, the park. She said to me, sir, would your master like to go for a walk, she said. I’ll be there, she said.’

‘Help me to dress!’

Oblomov ran all over the park, looked round all the flowerbeds, glanced into the summer-houses – not a sign of Olga. He walked along the avenue where they had had their talk, and found her there on a seat near the place where she had plucked and thrown away the sprig of lilac.

‘I thought you would never come,’ she said in a kindly voice.

‘I’ve been looking for you all over the park,’ he replied.

‘I knew you would be looking for me and sat down in this avenue on purpose. I thought you would be quite sure to walk through it.’

He was about to ask her what made her think so, but glancing at her, he said nothing. She looked different, not as she had been when they walked here, but as he had left her last time, when her expression had so greatly alarmed him. Even her kindness seemed somehow restrained, and her expression so concentrated and so definite; he saw that she would no longer be put off with guesses, hints, and naïve questions, that she had left that gay and childish moment behind her. Much of what had remained unsaid between them, and that might have been approached with a sly question, had been settled without words or explanations, goodness knows how, and there was no going back on it.

‘Why haven’t you been to see us all this time?’ she asked.

He made no answer. He would have liked to make her feel somehow or other that the secret charm of their relations had gone, that he was oppressed by the air of concentration which seemed to envelop her like a cloud. She seemed to have withdrawn within herself and he did not know how to behave towards her. But he felt that the slightest hint of this would make her look surprised and grow still colder towards him, and perhaps even altogether extinguish the spark of sympathy that he had so carelessly damped at the very beginning. He had to blow it into a flame again, slowly and carefully, but he had not the slightest idea how it was to be done. He felt vaguely that she
had grown up and was almost superior to him, that henceforth there could be no question of a return to child-like confidence, that a Rubicon lay between them and that his lost happiness had been left on the opposite bank: he simply had to cross over to it. But how? And what if he crossed over alone? She understood better than he what was passing in his mind, and she had therefore the advantage over him. His soul lay wide open to her and she could see how feeling was born in it, how it stirred within him and at last revealed itself; she saw that feminine guile, cunning, and coquetry – Sonia’s weapons – were of no avail with him because there would be no struggle. She even realized that in spite of her youth it was she who had to play the chief role in their relations, for all she could possibly expect from him was that he would be deeply impressed, passionately but languidly devoted, in perpetual harmony with every beat of her pulse, but show no will of his own, nor any active thought. In an instant the power she wielded over him became clear to her and she liked her role of a guiding star, the ray of light she would shed over the stagnant pool and that would be reflected in it. She was already exulting over her supremacy in this duel in various ways. In this comedy, or perhaps tragedy, the protagonists almost invariably appear in the characters of tormentor and victim. Like every woman in the leading part – that is, in the part of tormentor – Olga could not deny herself the pleasure of playing cat and mouse with Oblomov, though perhaps unconsciously and not as much as other women: sometimes she would reveal her feeling in a momentary and unexpectedly capricious outburst, but would then immediately withdraw into herself again; mostly, though, she drove it farther and farther forward, knowing that he would not take a single step by himself and remain motionless where she left him.

‘Have you been busy?’ she asked, embroidering some piece of canvas.

‘I’d have said I was busy but for that Zakhar,’ thought Oblomov, groaning inwardly.

‘Yes,’ he said casually. ‘I’ve been reading a book.’

‘A novel?’ she asked, raising her eyes to see his expression when telling a lie.

‘No, I hardly ever read novels,’ he replied very calmly. ‘I’ve been reading
The History of Inventions and Discoveries.’

‘Thank goodness,’ he thought, ‘I’ve read through a page of the book to-day.’

‘In Russian?’ she asked.

‘No, in English.’

‘So you read English?’

‘I do, though with difficulty. And you haven’t been to town at all?’ he asked chiefly in order to change the subject.

‘No, I was at home all the time. I usually do my work here – in this avenue.’

‘Always here?’

‘Yes, I like this avenue very much. I’m very grateful to you for having shown it to me. No one ever comes here – –’

‘I did not show it to you,’ he interrupted. ‘You remember we met here accidentally.’

‘Yes, of course.’

Both were silent.

‘Your stye has quite gone, hasn’t it?’ she asked, looking straight at his right eye.

He flushed.

‘Yes, thank goodness,’ he said.

‘When your eye begins to itch bathe it with vodka and you won’t get a stye,’ she went on. ‘My nurse taught me that.’

‘Why does she keep on talking about styes?’ Oblomov thought.

‘And don’t have any supper,’ she added seriously.

‘Zakhar!’ he thought furiously, a silent imprecation rising to his lips.

‘You’ve only to take a heavy supper,’ she went on without raising her eyes from her work, ‘and spend two or three days lying on your back, and you’re sure to get a stye.’

‘Id-i-ot!’ Oblomov swore inwardly at Zakhar.

‘What are you embroidering?’ he asked, to change the subject.

‘A bell-pull for the baron,’ she said, unfolding the roll of canvas, and showing him the pattern. ‘Nice?’

‘Yes, very nice. The pattern is very charming. This is a sprig of lilac, isn’t it?’

‘Yes – I believe so,’ she answered casually. ‘I chose it at random. The first that turned up.’

And, blushing a little, she quickly rolled up the canvas.

‘It’s awfully boring if it goes on like this and I can’t get anything out of her,’ he thought. ‘Another man – Stolz, for instance – could, but I cannot.’

He frowned and looked sleepily around him. She glanced at him and put her work into a basket.

‘Let’s walk as far as the road,’ she said, and letting him carry
the basket, she straightened her dress, opened her parasol, and walked on. ‘Why are you so gloomy?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know, Olga Sergeyevna. And why should I be happy? And how?’

‘Find something to do and spend more time with other people.’

‘Find something to do! I could do that if I had some aim in life. But what is my aim? I haven’t one.’

‘The aim is to live.’

‘When you don’t know what to live for, you live anyhow – from one day to another. You are glad the day is over, that the night has come, and in your sleep you can expunge from your mind the wearisome question why you have lived this day and are going to live the next.’

She listened in silence, with a stern look: severity was hidden in her knit brows and incredulity, or scorn, coiled like a serpent in the line of her lips.

‘Why you have lived!’ she repeated. ‘Why, can anyone’s life be useless?’

‘It can. Mine, for instance,’ he said.

‘You don’t yet know what the aim of your life is, do you?’ she asked, stopping. ‘I don’t believe it: you’re maligning yourself; if not, you are not worthy of life.’

‘I have already passed the place where it can be found, and there is nothing more ahead of me.’

He sighed, and she smiled.

‘Nothing more?’ she repeated questioningly, but gaily and laughingly, as though she did not believe him and foresaw that there was something before him.

‘You may laugh,’ he went on, ‘but it is so.’

She walked on slowly with a lowered head.

‘What am I to live for?’ he said, walking after her. ‘Who for? What am I to seek? What am I to turn to? What am I to strive for? The flowers of life have fallen and only the thorns remain.’

They walked along slowly; she listened absent-mindedly and, in passing, tore off a sprig of lilac and gave it to him without looking.

‘What’s this?’ he asked, taken aback.

‘You see, it’s a twig.’

‘What kind of a twig?’ he asked her, looking at her open-eyed.

‘Lilac.’

‘I know. But what does it mean?’

‘The flower of life and – –’

He stopped and she stopped too.

‘And?’ he repeated questioningly.

‘My vexation,’ she said, looking straight at him with a concentrated gaze, and her smile told him that she knew what she was doing.

The cloud of impenetrability round her had dispersed. The look in her eyes was clear and intelligible. She seemed to have opened a certain page of a book on purpose and let him read the secret passage.