Oblomov (21 page)

Sometimes, it is true, other cares were thrust upon them, but the inhabitants of Oblomovka met them for the most part with stoic impassivity, and after circling over their heads, the troubles flew past them like birds which, coming to a smooth wall and finding no shelter there, flutter their wings in vain near the hard stones and fly away. Thus, for instance, a part of the gallery round the house suddenly collapsed one day, burying under its ruins a hen with its chicks; Aksinya, Antip’s wife, who had sat down under the gallery with her spinning, would have been badly injured had she not gone to fetch some more flax. There was a great commotion in the house: everyone, big and small, rushed to the spot and expressed dismay at the thought that instead of the hen and chicks the mistress herself might have been walking under the gallery with Oblomov. They all gasped with horror and began reproaching one another that it had never occurred to them before to remind each other to order someone to repair the gallery. They were all astonished that it should have collapsed, although only the day before they were surprised at its having stood so long! They began discussing how to repair the damage; they expressed regret about the hen and her chicks and then slowly dispersed to where they had come from, having first been strictly forbidden to take Oblomov anywhere near the gallery. Three weeks later, orders were given to Andrushka, Petrushka, and Vaska to take the fallen planks and banisters out of the way and put them near the barn, where they remained till the spring. Every time Oblomov’s father caught sight of them out of the window, he would think of having the gallery repaired: he would call for the carpenter and consult him as to whether it would be better to build a new gallery or break down what remained of the old, then he would let him go home, saying, ‘You can go now and I’ll think it over.’ That went on till Vaska or Motka told his master that, having climbed on to what remained of the gallery that morning, he noticed that the corners had broken away from the walls and might collapse any moment. Then the carpenter was called for a final consultation, as a result of which it was decided to prop up the part of the gallery that was still standing with the fragments of the old, which was actually done at the end of the month.

‘Why,’ said Oblomov’s father to his wife, ‘the gallery is as good as new. Look how beautifully Fyodor has fixed the planks, just like the pillars of the Marshal’s house! It’s perfectly all right now: it will last for years!’

Someone reminded him that it would be a good opportunity for repairing the gate and the front steps, for the holes between them were so big that pigs, let alone cats, got through them into the cellar.

‘Yes, yes, to be sure,’ Oblomov’s father replied, looking worried, and went at once to inspect the front steps.

‘Yes, indeed, look how rickety they are,’ he said, rocking the steps with his foot like a cradle.

‘But it rocked like that when it was made,’ someone observed.

‘Well, what about it?’ Oblomov’s father replied. ‘They haven’t fallen down, though they have stood there for sixteen years without any repairs. Luka made a good job of it. He was a real carpenter, Luka was! He’s dead, may his soul rest in peace. They’ve got spoilt now – no carpenter could do such a job now!’

He turned his eyes away and, they say, the steps still rock but have not fallen to pieces yet. Luka, it would seem, was indeed an excellent carpenter!

One must do the Oblomovs justice, though: sometimes when things went wrong, they would take a great deal of trouble and even flew into a temper and grew angry. How could one thing or another have been neglected for so long? Something must be done about it at once! And they went on talking interminably about repairing the little bridge across the ditch or fencing off part of the garden to prevent the cattle from spoiling the trees because the wattle fence had collapsed in one place.

One day, while taking a walk in the garden, Oblomov’s father had even gone so far as to lift, groaning and moaning, the fence off the ground with his own hands and told the gardener to prop it up at once with two poles; thanks to his promptness, the fence remained standing like that all through the summer, and it was only in winter that the snow brought it down again. At last even the bridge had three new planks laid across it after Antip had fallen through it with his horse and water-barrel. He had not had time to recover from his injuries before the bridge was as good as new. Nor did the cows and goats profit much from the fresh fall of the wattle fence in the garden: they had only had time to eat the currant bushes and to start stripping the bark off the tenth lime-tree, and never reached the appletrees,
when an order was given to put the fence right and even to dig a ditch round it. The two cows and a goat which were caught in the act had received a good beating!

Oblomov also dreamt of the big, dark drawing-room in his parents’ house, with its ancient ashwood arm-chairs, which were always covered, a huge, clumsy and hard sofa, upholstered in faded and stained blue barracan and one large leather arm-chair. A long winter evening; his mother sat on the sofa with her feet tucked under her, lazily knitting a child’s stocking, yawning, and occasionally scratching her head with a knitting-needle. Nastasya Ivanovna and Pelageya Ignatyevna sat beside her and, bending low over their work, were diligently sewing something for Oblomov for the holidays or for his father or for themselves. His father paced the room with his hands behind his back, looking very pleased with himself, or sat down in the arm-chair, and after a time once more walked up and down the room, listening attentively to the sound of his own footsteps. Then he took a pinch of snuff, blew his nose and took another pinch. One tallow candle burned dimly in the room, and even this was permitted only on autumn and winter evenings. In the summer months everyone tried to get up and go to bed by daylight. This was done partly out of habit and partly out of economy. Oblomov’s parents were extremely sparing with any article which was not produced at home but had to be bought. They gladly killed an excellent turkey or a dozen chickens to entertain a guest, but they never put an extra raisin in a dish, and turned pale when their guest ventured to pour himself out another glass of wine. Such depravity, however, was a rare occurrence at Oblomovka: that sort of thing would be done only by some desperate character, a social outcast, who would never be invited to the house again. No, they had quite a different code of behaviour there: a visitor would never dream of touching anything before he had been asked at least three times. He knew very well that if he was asked only once to savour some dish or drink some wine, he was really expected to refuse it. It was not for every visitor, either, that two candles were lit: candles were bought in town for money and, like all purchased articles, were kept under lock and key by the mistress herself. Candle-ends were carefully counted and safely put away. Generally speaking, they did not like spending money at Oblomovka, and however necessary a purchase might be, money for it was issued with the greatest regret and that, too, only if the sum was insignificant. Any considerable expense was accompanied
by moans, shrieks, and abuse. At Oblomovka they preferred to put up with all sorts of inconveniences, and even stopped regarding them as such, rather than spend money. That was why the sofa in the drawing-room had for years been covered in stains; that was why the leather arm-chair of Oblomov’s father was leather only in name, being all rope, a piece of leather remaining only on the back, the rest having all peeled off five years before; and that was perhaps why the gate was lopsided and the front steps rickety. To pay 200, 300, or 500 roubles all at once for something, however necessary it might be, seemed almost suicidal to them. Hearing that a young local landowner had been to Moscow and bought a dozen shirts for 300 roubles, a pair of boots for twenty-five roubles, and a waistcoat for his wedding for forty roubles, Oblomov’s father crossed himself and said, with a look of horror on his face, that ‘such a scamp must be locked up’. They were, generally speaking, impervious to economic truths about the desirability of a quick turnover of capital, increased production, and exchange of goods. In the simplicity of their souls they understood and put into practice only one way of using capital – keeping it under lock and key – in a chest.

The other inhabitants of the house and the usual visitors sat in the arm-chairs in the drawing-room in different positions, breathing hard. As a rule, deep silence reigned among them: they saw each other every day, and had long ago explored and exhausted all their intellectual treasures, and there was little news from the outside world. All was quiet; only the sound of the heavy, home-made boots of Oblomov’s father, the muffled ticking of a clock in its case on the wall, and the snapping of a thread by the teeth or the hands of Pelageya Ignatyevna or Nastasya Ivanovna broke the dead silence from time to time. Half an hour sometimes passed like that, unless of course someone yawned aloud and muttered, as he made the sign of the cross over his mouth, ‘Lord, have mercy upon us!’ His neighbour yawned after him, then the next person, as though at a word of command, opened his mouth slowly, and so the infectious play of the air and lungs spread among them all, moving some of them to tears.

Oblomov’s father would go up to the window, look out, and say with mild surprise:

‘Good Lord, it’s only five o’clock, and how dark it is outside!’

‘Yes,’ someone would reply, ‘it is always dark at this time of the year: the evenings are drawing in.’

And in the spring they would be surprised and happy that the days were drawing out. But if asked what they wanted the long days for, they did not know what to say.

And again they were silent. Then someone snuffed the candle and suddenly extinguished it, and they all gave a start.

‘An unexpected guest!’ someone was sure to say. Sometimes this would serve as topic for conversation.

‘Who would that be?’ the mistress would ask. ‘Not Nastasya Faddeyevna? I wish it was! But no, she won’t come before the holiday. That would have been nice! How we should embrace each other and have a good cry! And we should have gone to morning and afternoon Mass together.… But I’m afraid I couldn’t keep up with her! I may be the younger one, but I can’t stand as long as she can!’

‘When was it she left here?’ Oblomov’s father asked. ‘After St Elijah’s Day, I believe.’

‘You always get the dates mixed up,’ his wife corrected him. ‘She left before Whitsun.’

‘I think she was here on the eve of St Peter’s Fast,’ retorted Oblomov’s father.

‘You’re always like that,’ his wife said reprovingly. ‘You will argue and make yourself ridiculous.’

‘Of course she was here. Don’t you remember we had mushroom pies because she liked them?’

‘That’s Maria Onisimovna: she likes mushroom pies – I do remember that! And Maria Onisimovna did not stop till St Elijah’s Day, but only till St Prokhov’s and Nikanor’s.’

They reckoned the time by holy-days, by the seasons of the years, by different family and domestic occurrences, and never referred to dates or months. That was perhaps partly because, except for Oblomov’s father, they all got mixed up with the dates and the months. Defeated, Oblomov’s father made no answer, and again the whole company sank into drowsiness. Oblomov, snuggled up behind his mother’s back, was also drowsing and occasionally dropped off to sleep.

‘Aye,’ some visitor would then say with a deep sigh, ‘Maria Onisimovna’s husband, the late Vassily Fomich, seemed a healthy chap, if ever there was one, and yet he died! Before he was fifty, too! He should have lived to be a hundred!’

‘We shall all die at the appointed time – it’s God’s will,’ Pelageya Ignatyevna replied with a sigh. ‘Some people die, but the Khlopovs have one christening after another – I am told Anna Andreyevna has just had another baby – her sixth!’

‘It isn’t only Anna Andreyevna,’ said the lady of the house. ‘Wait till her brother gets married – there’ll be one child after another – there’s going to be plenty of trouble in that family! The young boys are growing up and will soon be old enough to marry; then the daughters will have to get married, and where is one to find husbands for them? To-day everyone is asking for a dowry, and in cash, too.’

‘What are you saying?’ asked Oblomov’s father, going up to them.

‘Well, we’re saying that – –’

And they told him what they were talking about.

‘Yes,’ Oblomov’s father said sententiously, ‘that’s life for you! One dies, another one is born, a third one marries, and we just go on getting older. There are no two days that are alike, let alone two years. Why should it be so? Wouldn’t it have been nice if one day were just like the day before, and yesterday were just like to-morrow? It’s sad, when you come to think of it.’

‘The old are ageing and the young are growing up,’ someone muttered sleepily in a corner of the room.

‘One has to pray more and try not to think of anything,’ the lady of the house said sternly.

‘True, true,’ Oblomov’s father, who had meant to indulge in a bit of philosophy, remarked apprehensively and began pacing the room again.

There was another long silence; only the faint sound made by the wool as it was pulled through the material by the needles could be heard. Sometimes the lady of the house broke the silence.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘it is dark outside. At Christmas time, when our people come to stay, it will be merrier and we shan’t notice the evenings pass. If Malanya Petrovna comes, there will be no end of fun! The things she does! Telling fortunes by melting down tin or wax, or running out of the gate; my maids don’t know where they are when she’s here. She’d organize all sorts of games – she is a rare one!’

‘Yes,’ someone observed, ‘a society lady! Two years ago she took it into her head to go tobogganing – that was when Luka Savich injured his forehead.’

They all suddenly came to life and burst out laughing as they looked at Luka Savich.

‘How did you manage to do that, Luka Savich?’ said Oblomov’s father, dying with laughter. ‘Come on, tell us!’

And they all went on laughing, and Oblomov woke up, and he, too, laughed.