Oblomov (74 page)

She nodded assent.

‘Because he possesses something that is worth more than any amount of intelligence – an honest and faithful heart! It is the matchless treasure that he has carried through his life unharmed. People knocked him down, he grew indifferent and, at last, dropped asleep, crushed, disappointed, having lost the strength to live; but he has not lost his honesty and his faithfulness. His heart has never struck a single false note; there is no stain on his character. No well-dressed-up lie has ever deceived him and nothing will lure him from the true path. A regular ocean of evil and baseness may be surging round him, the entire world may be poisoned and turned upside down – Oblomov will never bow down to the idol of falsehood, and his soul will always be pure, noble, honest…. His soul is translucent, clear as crystal. Such people are rare; there aren’t many of them; they are like pearls in a crowd! His heart cannot be bribed; he can be relied on always and anywhere. It is to this you have remained faithful, and that is why nothing I do for him will ever be a burden to me. I have known lots of people possessing high qualities, but never have I met a heart more pure, more noble, and more simple. I have loved many people, but no one so warmly and so firmly as Oblomov. Once you know him, you cannot stop loving him. Isn’t that so? Am I right?’

Olga was silent, her eyes fixed on her work. Andrey pondered.

‘Is that all? What else is there? Oh,’ he added gaily as he came to himself, ‘I quite forgot his “dove-like tenderness ”…’

Olga laughed, quickly threw down her sewing, and, running
up to Andrey, flung her arms round his neck, gazed for a few minutes with shining eyes into his eyes, then, putting her head on her husband’s shoulder, sank into thought. There rose in her mind Oblomov’s gentle, dreamy face, his tender look, his submissiveness, then his pitiful, shamefaced smile with which he answered her reproach at parting – and she felt so unhappy, so sorry for him.

‘You won’t leave him?’ she said with her arms still round her husband’s neck. ‘You won’t abandon him, will you?’

‘Never! Not unless a gulf opens suddenly, or a wall rises between us.’

She kissed her husband.

‘Will you take me to him in Petersburg?’

He hesitated and was silent.

‘Will you? Will you?’ she asked, insisting on an answer.

‘Listen, Olga,’ he said, trying to free his neck from her embrace; ‘we must first – –’

‘No, say – yes! Promise, or I won’t leave you alone!’

‘All right,’ he replied, ‘only not the first, but the second time. I know very well what you will feel like if he – –’

‘Don’t say another word!’ she interrupted. ‘Yes, you will take me: together we shall do everything. Alone you won’t be able to – you won’t want to!’

‘Perhaps you’re right, only I’m afraid you will be upset, and perhaps for a long time,’ he said, not altogether pleased that Olga had forced him to consent.

‘Remember, then,’ she concluded, resuming her seat, ‘you will only give him up if “a gulf opens up or a wall rises between us.” I won’t forget those words.’

9

P
EACE
and quiet reigned over Vyborg, its unpaved streets, wooden pavements, meagre gardens, and ditches overgrown with nettles, where a goat with a frayed rope round its neck was busily grazing or drowsing dully beside a fence; at midday a clerk’s elegant high heels clattered along the pavement, a muslin curtain in some window moved aside, and the wife of some civil servant peeped out from behind the geraniums; or a girl’s fresh face suddenly appeared above the fence in some garden and at once disappeared again, followed by another girl’s face,
which also disappeared, then again the first appeared, and was followed by the second; then the shrieks and laughter of the girls on the swings could be heard.

All was quiet in Mrs Pshenitzyn’s house. You walked into the small courtyard and you were in the midst of a living idyll: cocks and hens were thrown into a commotion and ran off to hide in the corners; the dog began jumping on its chain and barking at the top of its voice; Akulina stopped milking the cow, and the caretaker left off chopping wood, and both eyed the visitor with interest. ‘Who do you want?’ the caretaker asked, and on being given the name of Oblomov or the landlady, he pointed silently to the front steps and started chopping wood again. The visitor walked down a clean, sand-strewn path to the front steps, covered with a plain, clean carpet, pulled the brightly polished brass handle of the bell, and the door was opened by Anisya, the children, and sometimes by the landlady herself or Zakhar – Zakhar being always the last.

Everything in Mrs Pshenitzyn’s house bore the stamp of such abundance and prosperity as was not to be seen there even when Marfa Matveyevna kept house for herself and her brother. The kitchen, the pantries, the sideboard were full of crockery, large and small, round and oval dishes, sauce-boats, cups, piles of plates, and iron, copper, and earthenware saucepans and pots. In the cupboards was kept Agafya Matveyevna’s silver, redeemed long ago and never pawned since, side by side with Oblomov’s silver. There were whole rows of enormous, tiny and paunchy teapots and several rows of china cups, plain and gilt, painted with mottoes, flaming hearts, and Chinamen; there were huge glass jars of coffee, cinnamon, and vanilla, crystal teacaddies, cruets of oil and vinegar. Whole shelves were loaded with packets, bottles, boxes of household remedies, herbs, lotions, plasters, spirits, camphor, simple and fumigatory powders; there was also soap, material for cleaning lace, taking out stains, etc., etc. – everything, in fact, that a good housewife in the provinces keeps in her house. When Agafya Matveyevna suddenly opened the door of a cupboard full of all these articles, she was herself overcome by the bouquet of all these narcotic smells and had to turn her face away for a moment.

In the larder hams were suspended from the ceiling, so that mice could not get at them, as well as cheeses, sugar-loaves, cured fish, bags of dried mushrooms, and nuts bought from Finnish pedlars. On the floor stood cases of butter, huge, covered earthenware jugs of sour cream, baskets of eggs, and lots of
other things. One would need the pen of a second Homer to describe fully and in detail all that had been accumulated in all the corners and on all the shelves of this small shrine of domestic life. The kitchen was the true scene of action of the great housewife and her worthy assistant, Anisya. Everything they needed was in the house, and everything was handy and in its proper place; indeed, everywhere there was order and cleanliness – at least one might have said so had it not been for one corner in the house where no ray of light, nor breath of fresh air, nor Agafya Matveyevna’s eye, nor Anisya’s quick, all-sweeping hand, had ever penetrated. That was Zakhar’s room or den. His room had no window, and the perpetual darkness helped to turn a human habitation into a dark hole. If Zakhar sometimes found there Agafya Matveyevna with all sorts of plans for improving and cleaning the place, he firmly declared that it was not a woman’s business to decide when and how his brushes, blacking, and boots ought to be kept, that it was nobody’s business why his clothes lay in a heap on the floor and his bed in the corner behind the stove was covered in dust, and that it was
he
and not she who wore the clothes and slept on the bed. As for the besom, some planks, two bricks, the bottom of a barrel, and two logs of wood which he kept in his room, he could not do without them in his work – though he did not explain why; furthermore, dust and spiders did not disturb him, and, in a word, since he never poked his nose into their kitchen, there was no reason why they should interfere with him. When he found Anisya there one day, he treated her with such scorn and threatened her with his elbow so seriously that she was afraid to look in any more. When the case was taken to a higher court and submitted to his master’s decision, Oblomov went to have a look at Zakhar’s room with the intention of taking all the necessary measures and seeing them strictly carried out, but thrusting his head through Zakhar’s door and gazing for a moment at all that was there, he just spat and did not utter a word. ‘Well, have you got what you wanted?’ Zakhar said to Agafya Matveyevna and Anisya, who had come with Oblomov in the hope that his interest might lead to some change. Then he smiled in his own manner across his whole face so that his eyebrows and whiskers moved apart.

All the other rooms were bright, clean, and airy. The old faded curtains had gone and the windows and doors of the drawing-room and study were hung with green and blue draperies and muslin curtains with red festoons – all of it the work of
Agafya Matveyevna’s hands. The pillows were white as snow and rose mountainously almost to the ceiling; the blankets were quilted and of silk. For weeks on end the landlady’s room was crowded with several card-tables, opened up and placed end to end, on which Oblomov’s quilts and dressing-gown were spread out. Agafya Matveyevna did the cutting out and quilting herself, pressing her firm bosom to the work, fastening her eyes and even her teeth upon it when she had to bite the thread off; she laboured with love, with indefatigable industry, comforting herself modestly with the thought that the dressing-gown and the quilted blankets would clothe, warm, caress, and delight the magnificent Oblomov. For days, as he lay on the sofa in his room, he admired the way her bare elbows moved to and fro in the wake of the needle and the cotton. As in the old days at Oblomovka, he more than once dozed off to the regular sound of the needle going in and out of the material and the snapping of the thread when bitten off.

‘Do stop working, please; you’ll be tired,’ he besought her.

‘The Lord loves work,’ she answered, never taking her hands and eyes off her work.

His coffee was as carefully and nicely served and as well made as at the beginning, when he had moved into the house several years before. Giblet soup, macaroni and parmesan cheese, meat or fish pie, cold fish and vegetable soup, home-grown chicken – all this followed each other in strict rotation and introduced pleasant variety into the monotonous life of the little house. From morning till evening bright sunshine filled the house, streaming in at the windows on one side and then on the other, there being nothing to impede it, thanks to the kitchen gardens all round. The canaries trilled gaily; the geraniums and the hyacinths the children occasionally brought from the count’s garden exuded a strong scent in the small room, blending pleasantly with the smoke of a pure Havana cigar and the cinnamon or vanilla which the landlady pounded, energetically moving her elbows. Oblomov lived, as it were, within a golden framework of life, in which, as in a diorama, the only things that changed were the usual phases of day and night and the seasons; there were no other changes, no serious accidents to convulse one’s whole life, often stirring up a muddy and bitter sediment. Ever since Stolz had saved Oblomovka from the fraudulent debts of the landlady’s brother, and Ivan Matveyevich and Tarantyev had completely disappeared, everything of a hostile nature had disappeared from Oblomov’s life, too. He was now surrounded by
simple, kind, and loving people who all conspired to do their best to make his life as comfortable as possible, to help him not to notice it, not to feel. Agafya Matveyevna was in the prime of her life. She lived feeling that her life was full as it had never been before; but, as before, she would never be able to express it in words or, rather, it never occurred to her to do so. She merely prayed that God would prolong Oblomov’s life and save him from ‘sorrow, wrath, and want’, committing herself, her children, and her entire household to God’s will. But, as though to make up for it, her face always wore the same expression of complete and perfect happiness, without desires and therefore rare, and, indeed, impossible for a person of a different temperament. She had put on weight; there was a feeling of contentment about her ample bosom and shoulders, her eyes glowed with gentleness, and if there was an expression of solicitude in them, it concerned merely her household duties. She regained the calm and dignity with which she had ruled her house in the old days with obedient Anisya, Akulina, and the caretaker ready to take her orders. As before, she seemed to sail along rather than walk from the cupboard to the kitchen, and from the kitchen to the pantry, giving her orders in an unhurried, measured tone of voice, fully conscious of what she was doing.

Anisya had grown livelier than before because there was more work for her to do; she was always on the run, moving and bustling about, working, carrying out Agafya Matveyevna’s orders. Her eyes had grown even brighter, and her nose, that speaking nose of hers, was thrust forward, glowing with cares, thoughts, and intentions, seeming to speak though her tongue was silent.

Both women were dressed in accordance with the dignity of their several positions and their duties. Agafya Matveyevna had now a big wardrobe with a row of silk dresses, cloaks, and fur coats; she ordered her bonnets on the other side of the river, almost in Liteyny Avenue; she bought her shoes not in the market but in one of the fashionable shopping arcades, and her hat – just think of it! – in Morskaya Street. Anisya, too, having finished her work in the kitchen, put on a woollen dress, especially on Sundays. Akulina alone still walked about with her skirt tucked up at the waist, and the caretaker could not bring himself to do without his sheepskin even in the summer holidays. Zakhar, too, was of course as bad as ever: he had made himself a jacket out of his grey frock-coat, and it was impossible to say what colour his trousers were or of what material his tie was
made. He cleaned boots, then went to sleep, or sat at the gates, gazing dully at the few passers-by, or, finally, spent his time sitting at the nearest grocery shop, where he did the same things and in the same way as he had done before, first at Oblomovka and then in Gorokhovaya Street.

And Oblomov himself? Oblomov was the complete and natural reflection and expression of that repose, contentment, and serene calm that reigned all around him. Thinking about his way of living, subjecting it to a close scrutiny, and getting more and more used to it, he decided at last that he had nothing more to strive for, nothing more to seek, that he had attained the ideal of his life, though it were shorn of poetry and bereft of the brilliance with which his imagination had once endowed the plentiful and care-free life of a country squire on his own estate, among his peasants and house-serfs. He looked upon his present way of life as a continuation of the same Oblomov-like existence, except that he lived in a different place, and the times, too, were to a certain extent different. Here, too, as at Oblomovka, he managed to strike a good bargain with life, having obtained from it a guarantee of undisturbed peace. He triumphed inwardly at having escaped its annoying and agonizing demands and storms, which break from that part of the horizon where the lightnings of great joys flash and the sudden thunderclaps of great sorrows resound; where false hopes and magnificent phantoms of happiness are at play; where a man’s own thought gnaws at his vitals and finally consumes him and passion kills; where man is engaged in a never-ceasing battle and leaves the battlefield shattered but still insatiate and discontented. Not having experienced the joys obtained by struggle, he mentally renounced them, and felt at peace with himself only in his forgotten corner of the world, where there was no struggle, no movement, and no life. And if his imagination caught fire again, if forgotten memories and unfulfilled dreams rose up before him, if his conscience began to prick him for having spent his life in one way and not in another – he slept badly, woke up, jumped out of bed, and sometimes wept disconsolate tears for his bright ideal of life that had now vanished for good, as one weeps for the dear departed with the bitter consciousness that one had not done enough for them while they were alive. Then he looked at his surroundings, tasted the ephemeral good things of life, and calmed down, gazing dreamily at the evening sun going down slowly and quietly in the fiery conflagration of the sunset; at last he decided that his life had not just turned out to be so
simple and uncomplicated, but had been created and meant to be so in order to show that the ideally reposeful aspect of human existence was possible. It fell to the lot of other people, he reflected, to express its troubled aspects and set in motion the creative and destructive forces: everyone had his own fixed purpose in life! Such was the philosophy that the Plato of Oblomovka had worked out and that lulled him to sleep amidst the stern demands of duty and the problems of human existence! He was not born and educated to be a gladiator for the arena, but a peaceful spectator of the battle; his timid and indolent spirit could not have endured either the anxieties of happiness or the blows inflicted by life – therefore he merely gave expression to one particular aspect of it, and it was no use being sorry or trying to change it or to get more out of it. As years passed, he was less and less disturbed by remorse and agitation, and settled quietly and gradually into the plain and spacious coffin he had made for his remaining span of life, like old hermits who, turning away from life, dig their own graves in the desert. He gave up dreaming about the arrangement of his estate and moving there with all his household. The manager engaged by Stolz sent him regularly every Christmas a very considerable income, the peasants brought corn and poultry, and the house flourished in abundance and gaiety. Oblomov even acquired a carriage and pair, but, with his habitual caution, the horses he bought were so quiet that they only started at the third blow of the whip, while at the first and second blow one horse staggered and stepped aside, then the other horse staggered and stepped aside, and only then, stretching out their necks, backs, and tails, did they move together and trot off, nodding their heads. They took Vanya to school on the other side of the Neva and Agafya Matveyevna to do her shopping. At Shrovetide and Easter the whole family and Oblomov went for a ride and to the fair; occasionally they took a box at the theatre and went there, also all together. In summer they went for a drive in the country, and on St Elijah’s Day they drove to the Powder Works, and life went on peacefully, one ordinary event following upon another, bringing no destructive changes with it, if, that is, its blows had never reached such peaceful corners. Unfortunately, however, the thunderclap that shakes the foundations of mountains and vast aerial spaces reaches also the mousehole, less loudly and strongly, perhaps, but still quite perceptibly. Oblomov ate heartily and with an appetite, as at Oblomovka, walked and worked little and lazily, also as at Oblomovka. In spite of
his advancing years he drank wine and currant vodka with complete unconcern, and he slept for hours after dinner with even greater unconcern.