On arriving at his rooms again, Oblomov never noticed that Zakhar gave him a cold dinner, or that, after it, he rolled into bed and slept heavily and insensibly; like a stone. Next day he received a letter in which Olga said that she had spent the whole night weeping.
“She has been unable to sleep!” he thought to himself. “Poor angel! Why does she care for me so much? And why amIso fond ofher? Would we had never met! It is all Schtoltz’s fault. He shed love over us as he might have shed a disease. What sort of a life is this? Nothing but anxiety and emotion! How can it ever lead to peaceful happiness and rest?”
Sighing deeply, he threw himself upon the sofa—then rose again, and went out into the street, as though seeking the normal existence which pursues a daily, gradual course of contemplation of nature, and constitutes a series of calm, scarcely perceptible phenomena of family life. Of existence as a spacious, a turbulent, a billowing river, as Schtoltz always conceived it to be, he could form no conception whatever.
He wrote to Olga that he had taken a slight chill in the Summer Gardens—wherefore he must stay at home for a couple of days; but that he hoped soon to be better, and to see her on the following Sunday. In reply she wrote that he must take the greatest care of himself; that even on Sunday he must not come should he not be well enough; and that a whole week’s separation would be bearable to her if thereby he were enabled to avoid risking his health. This excuse for omitting the Sunday visit Oblomov gladly seized upon; wherefore he sent back word that, as a matter of fact, a few days’ additional convalescencewouldbe no more than prudent.
Day succeeded day throughout the week. He read, he walked about the streets, and, occasionally, he looked in upon his landlady for the purpose of exchanging a couple of words and drinking some of her excellent coffee. So comfortable did she make him that he even thought of giving her a book to read; but when he did so she merely read the headings of a chapter or two, and then returned him the volume, saying that later she would get her little girl to read the work to her.
Meanwhile Olga received unexpected news. This was to the effect that a lawsuit with regard to her property had ended in her favour, and that within a month’s time she would be able, should she wish, to enter into actual possession. But of this, and of her other plans for the future, she decided not to tell Oblomov, but to spend the present hour in dreams of the happiness that was to be hers and his when she had seen love complete its revolution in his apathetic soul, and the slothfulness fall from his shoulders.
That very day he was to come. Yet three o’clock arrived—four o’clock—and no Oblomov. By half-past five the beauty and the freshness of her features had begun to fade. Insensibly her form assumed a drooping posture, and as she sat at the table her face was pale. Yet no one noticed this. The rest of the guests consumed the dishes which she had prepared for him alone, and carried on a desultory, indifferent chatter of conversation. Until ten o’clock she vacillated between hope and despair. Then, on the arrival of that hour, she withdrew to her room. At first she showered upon his head all the resentment that was seething within her. Not a word of mordant sarcasm in her vocabulary would she not have devoted to his punishing, had he been present. But after a while her mind passed from fierceness to a thought which chilled it like ice.
“He is sick,” was that thought. “He is lonely and ill, and unable even to write.” So much did the idea gam upon her that she passed a sleepless night, and rose pale, quiet, and determined. The same morning—it was Monday—the landlady informed Oblomov that a visitor desired to see him.
“To seeme?Surely not?” he exclaimed. “Where isshe?”
“Outside. Shall I send her away?” Oblomov was about to assent when Olga’s maid, Katia, entered the room. Oblomov changed countenance. “How come you to be here?” he asked.
“My mistress is outside,” she replied, “and has sent me in to bid you go to her.” There was no help for it, so he went out, and found Olga alone.
“Are you quite well?” she exclaimed. “What has been the matter with you?” With that they entered his: study.
“I am better now—the sore throat is almost gone,” he replied; and as he spoke he touched the part mentioned, and coughed slightly.
“Then why did you not come last night?” She raked him with a glance so keen that for the moment he found himself tongue-tied.
“And why haveyoutaken such a step as this?” he countered. “Surely you know what you are doing?”
“Never mind,” she retorted impatiently. “I do not believe you have been ill at all.”
“No—I have not,” he confessed.
“You have been deceiving me? Why so?”
“I will explain later. Important reasons have kept me away from you for a fortnight.”
“What are they?”
“I—I am afraid of scandal, of people’s tongues.”
“And not of the fact that possibly I might pass sleepless nights—that possibly I might be so anxious as to be unable to rest?”
“You cannot think what is passing within me,” he said, pointing to his head, and then to his heart. “I am all on edge, all on fire.”
With that he told her what Zakhar had said to him, and ended with a statement that, like herself, he could not sleep, and that in every glance he saw a question, or a sneer, or a veiled hint at the relations which might be existing between her and himself.
“Let us decide to tell my aunt this week,” she replied, “and at once this chatter will cease. Had I not known you so well, I should scarcely have been able to understand the fact that you can be afraid of servants’ gossip, yet not of making me anxious. Really I cannot understand you.”
“Listen,” presently she went on. “There is more in this than meets the eye. Tell me all that is in your mind. What does it mean?”
He looked at her—then kissed her hand and sighed.
“What have you been doing during the past week or so?” she persisted as she glanced round the room. “What a wretched place you have got! The windows are small, and the curtains dirty. Where are yourotherrooms?”
He hastened to show her them, in the hope that he might divert her mind from the question of his late doings; but she only repeated the question.
“I have been reading,” he replied, “and writing, and thinking of you.”
“Have you yet readmybooks?” she inquired. “Where are they? I will take them back with me.”
One of them happened to be lying on the table. She looked at the page at which it was open, and saw that the page was covered with dust.
“You have not read them!” she exclaimed.
“No,” he confessed.
Once more she looked at the mess and disorder in the room, and then inquired: “Then whathaveyou been doing? You have neither been writing nor reading.”
“No; I have not had time to do so.. In this place, as soon as one rises, the rooms need to be swept, and other interruptions occur afterwards. Next, when dinner is over——”
“When dinner is over you need to go to sleep.”
So positive in its assurance was her tone that after a moment’s hesitation he replied that her conjecture was correct.
“Why do you do that?”
“In order to pass the time. You are not here with me, Olga, and life is wearisome and unbearable without you.”
Her gaze became so stern that he broke off abruptly.
“Listen, Ilya,” she said very gravely. “Do you remember saying in the park that at length your life had been fired to flame, and that you believed me to be the aim, the ideal, of your life?”
“How should Inotremember it, seeing that it has revolutionized my whole existence? Cannot youseehow happy I am?”
“No, I donotsee it,” she replied coldly. “Not only have you deceived me, but also you are letting yourself relapse into your former ways.”
“Deceived you? I swear to God that, were that so, I would leap into the pit of Hell!”
“Yes—if the pit of Hell were just beneath your feet; but, were you to put off doing so, even for a day or two, you would straightway change your mind, and become nervous about the deed—more especially should Zakhar and the rest begin gossiping on the subject!Thatis not love.”
“Ah, you have no idea how these cares and distractions have injured my health!” he exclaimed. “Ever since I have known you, nothing but anxiety has been my lot. Yet deprivation of you would cause me to die or to go out of my mind. Only through you can I breathe or feel or see. Is it, then, wonderful that, when you are not with me, I fall ill? Without you everything is wearisome and distasteful. I feel like a machine, I walk and act without knowing ever what I am doing. Yes, I am like a machine whereof only you are the fuel, the motive power....”
When she had gone he trod the floor as on air. “How clearly she sees life!” he reflected. “How unerringly from that book of wisdom is she able to divine her road!” Yes, his life and hers had been bound to come together like two rivers, for she, and only she, was his true guide and instructor.
Next day there arrived a letter from the lawyer on his estate. He read it through—then let it slip from his fingers to the ground. The gist of the document was that his property was greatly involved, and that, if he wished matters to be set in order, he must hasten to take up his residence on the spot.
“Then marriage is not to be thought of for at least another year,” he reflected with dismay. “First of all I shall need to complete my plans for the estate, and then to consult an architect, and then, and then——”
He broke off with a sigh.
Are you certain that nothing remains to you of your properly—that there is no hope of anything?” asked Olga a few days later.
“Yes, I am certain,” he replied—then added with a touch of hesitation in his tone: “But perhaps within a year or so——”
“Within a year or so you may be able to order your life and your affairs? Reflect a moment.”
He sighed, for he was fighting a battle with himself, and the battle was reflected in his face.
“Listen,” she went on. “Remember that you and I are no longer children, and that we are not jesting, and that the matter may affect our whole lives. Inquire sternly of your conscience, therefore, and tell me (for I know you, as well as trust you) whether you can stand by me your life long, and be to me all that I need? You know me as I know you: consequently you understand what it is that I am trying to say. Should you return me a bold, a considered ‘Yes,’ I will cancel a certain decision of mine—I will give you my hand, and together we will go abroad, or to your estate, or to the Veaborg Quarter.”
“Ah, if you knew how much I love you!” he began.
“I desire no protestations of love.—only a brief answer.”
“Do not torture me, Olga,” he cried with weariness in his tone.
“Then am I right in what I suppose?” she asked.
“Yes—you are right,” was the firm, but significant, reply.
There followed a long pause.
“Shall I tell you what you would have done had we married?” at length she said. “Day by day you would have relapsed farther and farther into your slough. And I? You see what I am—that I am not yet grown old, and that I shall never cease tolive. But you would have taken to waiting for Christmas, and then for Shrovetide, and to attending evening parties, and to dancing, and to thinking of nothing at all. You would have retired to rest each night with a sigh of thankfulness that the day had passed so quickly; and each morning you would have awakened with a prayer that to-day might be exactly as yesterday.Thatwould have been our future. Is it not so? Meanwhile I should have been fading away. Do youreallythink that in such a life you would have been happy?”
He tried to rise and leave the room, but his feet refused their office. He tried to say something, but his throat seemed dry, and no sound would come. All he could do was to stretch out his hand.
“Forgive me!” he murmured.
She too tried to speak, but could not. She too tried to extend her hand, but it fell back. Finally, her face contracted painfully, and, sinking forward upon his shoulder, she burst into a storm of sobbing. It was as though all her weapons had slipped from her grasp, and once more she was just a woman—a woman defenceless in her fight with sorrow.
“Good-bye, good-bye!” she said amid her spasms of weeping. He sat listening painfully to her sobs, but felt as though he could say nothing to check them. Sinking into a chair, and burying her face in her handkerchief, she wept bitter, burning tears, with her head bowed upon the table.
“Olga,” at length he said, “why, torture yourself in this way? You love me, and could never survive a parting. Take me, therefore, as I am, and love in me just so much as may be worthy of it.”
Without raising her head, she made a gesture of refusal.
“No, no,” she forced herself to gasp. “Nor need you fear for me and my grief. I know myself. I am merely weeping my heart out, and shall then weep no more. Do not hinder me, but go. God has punished me. Yet how it hurts, how it hurts!”
Her sobs redoubled.
“But suppose the pain shouldnotpass?” he said. “Suppose it should wreck your health? Tears like these are tears of poison. Olga, darling, do not weep. Forget the past.”
“No, no; let me weep. I am weeping not so much for the future as for the past.” She could scarcely utter the words. “It was all so bright—but now it is gone! It is not I that am weeping; it is my memory—my memory of the summer, of the park—that is pouring out its grief. Do you remember those things? Yes, I am yearning for the avenue, and for the lilac that you gave me... They had struck their roots into my heart, and—and the plucking of them up is painful indeed!”
In her despair she bowed her head, and sobbed again—repeating: “Oh, how it hurts! Oh, how it hurts!”
“But suppose you were to die of this?” he said in sudden alarm. “Olga, Olga! Think a moment!”
“No, no,” she interrupted, raising her head, and striving to look at him through her tears. “Not long ago I realized that I was loving in you only what I wished you to contain—that it was only the future Oblomov of my dreams that was so dear to me. Ilya, you are good and honourable and tender; but you are all this only as is a dove which, with its head hidden under its wing, wishes to see nothing better. All your life you would have sat perched beneath the eaves. But I am different—I wish for more than that; though what it is I wish for even I myself could scarcely say. On the other hand, do you think thatyoucould have taught me what that something is, thatyoucould have supplied me with what I lack, thatyoucould have given me all that I——?”
Oblomov’s legs were tottering under him. Sinking into a chair, he wiped his hands and forehead with his handkerchief. The words had been harsh—they had stung him to the quick. Somehow, too, they had seared him inwardly, while outwardly, they had chilled him as with a breath of frost. No more could he do than smile the sort of pitiful, deprecating smile which may be seen on the face of a beggar who is being rated for his sorry clothing—the sort of smile which says: “I am poor and naked and hungry. Beat me, therefore—beat me.”
Suddenly Olga realized the sting which her words had contained, and threw herself impetuously upon him.
“Forgive me, my friend,” she said tenderly and with tears in her voice. “I did not think what I was saying, for I am almost beside myself. Yes, forget all that has happened, and let us be as formerly—let all remain unchanged.”
“No,” he replied, as abruptly he rose to his feet and checked her outburst with a decisive gesture. “Allcannotremain unchanged. Nor need you regret that you have told me the truth. I have well deserved it.”
She burst into a renewed fit of weeping.
“Go!” she said, twisting her tear-soaked handkerchief in her hands. “I cannot bear this any longer. Tomeat least the past is dear.”
She covered her face, and the sobs poured forth afresh.
“Why has everything thus come to rack and ruin?” she cried. “Who has put a curse upon you, Ilya? Why have you done this? You are clever and kind and good and noble; yet you can wreck our lives in this way! What nameless evil has undone you?”
“It has a name,” he said almost inaudibly. She looked at him questioningly with tear-filled eyes.
“That name,” he added, “is ‘The Disease of Oblomovka.’”
Turning with bowed head, he departed.
Whither he wandered, or what he did, he never afterwards knew. Late at night he returned home. His landlady, hearing his knock, awoke Zakhar, who undressed his master, and wrapped him in the old dressing-gown.
“How comes that to be here?” asked Oblomov, glancing at the garment.
“I was given it by the landlady to-day,” replied Zakhar. “She has just cleaned and mended it.”
Sinking into an arm-chair, Oblomov remained there. All around was growing dim and dreamlike. As he sat there with his head resting on his hand he neither remarked the dimness nor heard the striking of the hours. All his mind was plunged in a chaos of formless, indefinite thoughts which, like the clouds in the sky, passed aimlessly, disconnectedly athwart the surface of his brain. Of none of them could he catch the actual substance. His heart felt crushed, and for the moment the life in it was in abeyance. Mechanically he gazed in front of him without even noticing that day was breaking, or that his landlady’s dry cough was once more audible, or that thedvornikwas beginning to cut firewood in the courtyard, or that the usual clatter in the house had begun again. At length he went to bed, and fell into a leaden, an uncomfortable sleep....
“To-day is Sunday,” whispered the kindly voice of the landlady, “and I have baked you a pie. Will you not have some?”
He returned no answer, for he was in a high fever.
For many a day after his illness Oblomov’s mood was one of dull and painful despondency; but gradually this became replaced with a phase of mute indifference, in which he would spend hours in watching the snow fall and listening to the grinding of the landlady’s coffee-mill, to the barking of the housedogs as they rattled at their chains, to the creaking of Zakhar’s boots, and to the measured tick of the clock’s pendulum. As of old, Agafia Matvievna, his landlady, would come and propose one or another dish for his delectation; also her children would come running to and fro through his rooms. To the landlady he returned kindly, indifferent answers, and to the youngsters he gave lessons in reading and waiting, while smiling wearily, involuntarily at their playfulness. Little by little he regained his firmer mode of life.
One day Schtoltz walked into his room.
“Well, Ilya?” he said, with a questioning sternness which caused Oblomov to lower his eyes and remain silent.
“Then it is to be ‘never’?” went on his friend.
“‘Never’?” queried Oblomov.
“Yes. Do you not remember my saying to you, ‘Now or never’?”
“I do,” the other returned. “But I am not the man I then was. I have now set my affairs in order, and my plans for improving my estate are nearly finished, and I write regularly for two journals, and I have read all the books which you left behind you.”
“But why have you never come to join me abroad?” asked Schtoltz.
“Something prevented me.”
“Olga?”
Oblomov gathered animation at the question.
“Where is she?” he exclaimed. “I heard that she had gone abroad with her aunt—that she went there soon after, after——”
“Soon after she had recognized her mistake,” concluded Schtoltz.
“You know the story, then?” said Oblomov, scarcely able to conceal his confusion.
“Yes, the whole of it—even to the point of the sprig of lilac. Do you not feel ashamed of yourself, Ilya? Does it not hurt you? Are you not consumed with regret and remorse?”
“Yes; please do not remind me of it,” interrupted Oblomov hurriedly. “So great was my agony when I perceived the gulf set between us that I fell ill of a fever. Ah, Schtoltz, if you love me, do not torture me, do not mention her name. Long ago I pointed out to her her mistake, but she would not listen to me. Indeed I am not so much to blame.”
“I am not blaming you,” said Schtoltz gently; “for I have read your letter. It is I that am most to blame—then she—then you least of all.”
“How is she now?”
“How is she? She is in great distress. She weeps, and will not be comforted.”
Mingled anguish, sympathy, and alarm showed themselves on Oblomov’s features.
“What?” he cried, rising to his feet. “Come, Schtoltz! We must go to her at once, in order that I may beg her pardon on my knees.”
Schtoltz thought it well to change his tactics.
“Do you sit still,” he said with a laugh. “I have not been telling you the exact truth. As a matter of fact, she is well and happy, and bids me give you her greeting. Also, she wanted to write to you, but I dissuaded her on the ground that it would only cause you pain.”
“Thank God for that!” cried Oblomov, almost with tears of joy. “Oh, I am so glad, Schtollz! Pray let me embrace you, and then let us drink to her happiness!”
“But why are you hidden away in this corner?” asked Sehtoltz after a pause.
“Because it is quiet here—there is no one to disturb me.”
“I suppose so,” retorted Sehtoltz. “In fact, you have here—well, Oblomovka over again, only worse.” He glanced about him. “And how are you now?”
“I am not very well. My breathing is bad, and spots persist in floating before my eyes. Sometimes, too, when I am asleep, some one seems to come and strike me a blow upon the back and head, so that I leap up with a start.”
“Listen, Ilya,” said Schtoltz gravely. “I tell you, in all seriousness, that if you do not change your mode of life you will soon be seized with dropsy or a stroke. As for your future, I have no hopes of it at all. If Olga, that angel, could not bear you from your swamp on her wings, neither shall I succeed in doing so. However, to the end I shall stand by you: and when I say that, I am voicing not only my own wish, but also that of Olga. For she desires you not to perish utterly, not to be buried alive; she desires that at least I shall make an attempt to dig you from the tomb.”
“Then she has not forgotten me?” cried Oblomov with emotion—adding: “As though I were worthy of her remembrance!”
“No, she has not forgotten you, and, I think, never will. Indeed, she is not the sort of person to forget you. Some day you must go and pay her a visit in the country.”
“Yes, yes—but not now,” urged Oblomov.
“Even at this moment I—I——” He pointed to his heart.
“What does it contain?” asked Sehtoltz. “Love?”
“No, shame and sorrow. Ah, life, life!”
“What of it?”
“It disturbs me—it allows me no rest.”
“Were it to do so, the flame of your candle would soon go out, and you would find yourself in darkness. Ah, Ilya, Ilya! Life passes too swiftly for it to be spent in slumber. Would, rather, it were a perpetual fire!—that one could live for hundreds and hundreds of years!Thenwhat an immensity of work would one not do!”
“You and I are of different types,” said Oblomov. “Youhave wings; you do not merely exist—you also fly. You have gifts and ambition; you do not grow fat; specks do not dance before your eyes; and the back of your neck does not need to be periodically scratched. In short, my organism and yours are wholly dissimilar.”
“Fie, fie! Man was created to order his own being, and even to change his own nature; yet, instead, he goes and develops a paunch, and then supposes that nature has laid upon him that burden. Once upon a time you too had wings. Now you have laid them aside.”
“Where are they?” asked Oblomov. “I am powerless, completely powerless.”
“Rather, you aredeterminedto be powerless. Even during your boyhood at Oblomovka, and amid the circle of your aunts and nurses and valets, you had begun to waste your intellect, and to be unable to put on your own socks, and so forth. Hence your present inability to live.”
“All that may be so,” said Oblomov with a sigh; “but now it is too late to turn back.”
“And what am I to say to Olga on my return?”
Oblomov hung his head in sad and silent meditation.
“Say nothing,” at length he said. “Or say that you have not seen me....”
A year and a half later Oblomov was sitting in his dull, murky rooms. He had now grown corpulent, and from his eyesennuipeered forth like a disease. At intervals, too, he would rise and pace the room, then lie down again, then take a book from the table, read a few lines of it, yawn, and begin drumming with his fingers upon the table’s surface. As for Zakhar, he was more seedy and untidy than ever. The elbows of his coat were patched, and he had about him a pinched and hungry air, as though his appetite were bad, his sleep poor, and his work three times as much as it ought to have been. Oblomov’s dressing-gown also was patched: yet, carefully though the holes had been mended, the seams were coming apart in various places. Likewise the coverlet of the bed was ragged, while the curtains, though clean, were faded and hanging in strips.
Suddenly the landlady entered to announce a visitor, and also to say that it was neither Tarantiev nor Alexiev.
“Then it must be Schtoltz again!” thought Oblomov, with a sense of horror. “What can he want with me? However, it does not matter.”
“How are you?” inquired Schtoltz when he entered the room. “You have grown stout, yet your face is pale.”
“Yes, I am not well,” agreed Oblomov. “Somehow my left leg has lost all feeling.” Schtoltz threw at him a keen glance, and then eyed the dressing-gown, the curtains, and the coverlet.
“Never mind,” said Oblomov confusedly. “You know that never at any time do I keep my place tidy. But how is Olga?”
“She has not forgotten you. Possibly you will end by forgettingher?”
“No, never! Never could I forget the time when I was really alive and living in Paradise. Where is she, then?”
“In the country.”
“With her aunt?”
“Yes—and also with her husband.”
“So she is married? Has she been married long? And is she happy?” Oblomov had quite sloughed his lethargy. “I feel as though you had removed a great burden from my mind. True, when you were last here, you assured me that she had forgiven me; but all this time I have been unable to rest for the gnawing at my heart.... Tell me who the fortunate man is?”
“Who he is?” repeated Schtoltz. “Why, cannot you guess, Ilya!”
Oblomov’s gaze grew more intent, and for a moment or two his features stiffened, and every vestige of colour left his cheeks.
“Surely it is not yourself?” he asked abruptly.
“It is. I married her last year.”
The agitation faded from Oblomov’s expression, and gave place to his usual apathetic moodiness. For a moment or two he did not raise his eyes; but when he did so they were full of kindly tears.
“Dear Schtoltz!” he cried, embracing his friend. “And dear Olga! May God bless you both! How pleased I am! Pray tell her so.”
“I will tell her that in all the world there exists not my friend Oblomov’s equal.” Schtoltz was profoundly moved.
“No, tell her, rather, that I was fated to meet her, in order that I might set her on the right road. Tell her also that I bless both that meeting and the road which she has now taken. To think that that road might have been different! As it is, I have nothing to blush for, and nothing of which to repent. You have relieved my soul of a great burden, and all within it is bright. I thank you, I thank you!”
“Iwilltell her what you have said,” replied Schtoltz. “She has indeed reason for never forgetting you, for you would have been worthy of her—yes, worthy of her, you who have a heart as deep as the sea. You must come and visit us in the country.”
“No,” replied the other. “It is not that I am afraid of witnessing your married happiness, or of becoming jealous of her love for you. Yet I will not come.”
“Then of what are you afraid?”
“Of growing envious of you. In your happiness I should see, as in a mirror, my own bitter, broken life. Yet no life but this do I wish, or have it in my power, to live. Do not, therefore, disturb it. Memories are the height of poetry only when they are memories of happiness. When they graze wounds over which scars have formed they become an aching pain. Let us speak of something else. Let me thank you for all the care and attention which you have devoted to my affairs. Yet never can I properly requite you. Seek, rather, requital in your own heart, and in your happiness with Olga Sergievna. Likewise, forgive me for having failed to relieve you of your duties with regard to Oblomovka. It is my fixed intention to go there before long.”
“You will find great changes occurred in the place. Doubtless you have read the statements of accounts which I have sent you?”
Oblomov remained silent.
“What? You havenotread them?” exclaimed Schtollz, aghast. “Then where are they?”
“I do not know. Wait a little, and I will look for them after dinner.”
“Ah, Ilya, Ilya! Scarcely do I know whether to laugh or to weep.”
“Never mind. We will attend to the affair after dinner. First let us eat.”
During the meal Oblomov bestowed high encomiums upon his landlady’s cooking.
“She looks after everything,” he said. “Never will you see me either with unmended socks or with a shirt turned inside out. She supervises every detail.”
He ate and drank with great gusto—so much so that Schtoltz contemplated him with amazement.
“Drink, dear friend, drink,” said Oblomov. “This is splendidvodka. Even Olga could not makevodkaor patties or mushroom stews equal to these. They are like what we used to have at Oblomovka. No man could be better looked after by a woman than I am by my landlady, Agafia Matvievna. Nevertheless I, I———” He hesitated.
“Well, what?” prompted Schtoltz.
“I owe her ten thousand roubles on note of hand.”
“Ten thousand roubles? To your landlady? For board and lodging?” gasped Schtoltz, horrified.
“Yes. You see, the sum has gone on accumulating, for I live generously, and the debt includes accounts for peaches, pineapples, and so forth.”
“Ilya,” said Schtoltz, “whatis this woman to you?”
The other made no reply.
“She is robbing him,” thought his friend. “She is wheedling his all out of him. Such things are everyday, occurrences, yet I had not guessed it.”
Desirous of taking Oblomov away with him, he nevertheless found all his efforts in that direction ineffectual.
“I ask you once again,” he said. “In what relation do you stand to your landlady?”
Again Oblomov reddened.
“Why are you desirous of knowing?” he countered.
“Because, on the score of our old friendship, I think it my duty to give you a very serious warning indeed.”
“A warning against what?”
“A warning against a pit into which you may fall, Now I must be going. I will tell Olga that we may expect to see you this summer whether at our place or at Oblomovka.”
Then Schtoltz departed.
Not for some years did he visit the capital again, for Olga’s health necessitated a lengthy sojourn in the Crimea. For some reason or other her recovery after the birth of a child had been slow.
“How happy I am!” was her frequent reflection. Yet, no sooner had she passed her life in admiring review than she would find herself relapsing into a meditative mood. What a curious person she was!—a person who, in proportion as her felicity became more, complete, plunged ever deeper and deeper into a brooding over the past! Delving mto the recesses of her own mind, she began to realize that this peaceful existence, this halting at various stages of felicity, annoyed her. However, with an effort of will she shook her soul clear of this despondency, and quickened her steps through life in a feverish desire to seek noise and movement and occupation. Yet the bustle of society brought her small relief, and she would retire again into her corner—there to rid her spirit of the unwonted sense of depression. Then she would go out once more, and busy herself with petty household cares which confined her to the nursery and the duties of a nurse and a mother, or join her husband in reading and discussing serious books or poetry. Her main fear was lest she should fall ill of the disease, the apathetic malady, of Oblomovka. Yet, for all her efforts to slough these phases of torpor and of spiritual coma, a dream of happiness other than the present used to steal upon her, and wrap her in a haze of inertia, and cause her whole being to halt, as for a rest from the exertions of lire. Again, to this mood there would succeed a phase of torture and weariness and apprehension—a phase of dull sorrowfulness which kept asking itself dim, indefinite questions and ceaselessly pondering upon them. And as she listened to those questions she would examine herself, yet never discover what it was she yearned for, nor why, at times, she seemed to tire of her comfortable existence, to demand of it new and unfamiliar impressions, and to be gazing ahead in search of something.
“What does it all mean?” she would say to herself with a shudder. “Is there really anything more that I require, or that I need wish for? Whither am I travelling? I have no farther to go—my journey is ended. Yet have Ireallycompleted my cycle of existence? Is thisreallyall—all?” Then she would glance timidly around her, and wonder, in doubt and trembling, what such whispers of the soul might portend. With anxious eyes she would scan the earth, the heavens, and the wilds, yet find therein no answer, but merely gloom, profundity, and remoteness. All nature seemed to be saying the same thing; in nature she could perceive only a ceaseless, uniform current of life to which there was neither a beginning nor an ending. Of course, she knew whom she could consult concerning these tremors—she knew who could return the needed answers to her questionings. But what would those answers import? What if Schtoltz should say that her self-questionings represented the murmurings of an unsympathetic, an unwomanly, heart—that his quondam idol possessed but ablasé, dissatisfied soul from which nothing good was to be looked for? Yes, how greatly she might fall in his estimation, were he to discover these new and unwonted pangs of hers! Consequently, whenever, in spite of her best efforts to conceal the fact, her eyes lost their velvety softness, and acquired a dry and feverish glitter; whenever, too, a heavy cloud overspread her face, and she could not force herself to smile, and to talk, and to listen indifferently to the latest news in the political world, or to descriptions of interesting phenomena in some new walk of learning, or to remarks upon some new creation of art—well, then she hid herself away, on the plea of illness.
Yet she felt no desire to give way to tears; she experienced none of those sudden alarms which had been hers during the period when her girlish nerves had been excited even to the point of self-expression. So if, while resting on some calm, beautiful evening, there came stealing upon her, even amid her husband’s talk and caresses, a feeling of weariness and indifference to everything, she would merely ask herself despairingly what it all meant. At one moment she would become, as it were, turned to stone, and sit silent; at another she would make feverish attempts to conceal her strange malady. Finally a headache would supervene, and she would retire to rest. Yet all the while it was a difficult matter for her to evade the keen eyes of her husband. This she knew well, and therefore prepared herself for conversation with him as nervously as she would have done for confession to a priest.