Oblomov (26 page)

Once in three years this big mansion suddenly filled with people and overflowed with life – fêtes and balls followed each other, and in the long galleries lights burned at nights. The prince and the princess arrived with their family: the prince – a grey-haired old man, with a faded, parchment-like face, dull, protruding eyes and a large, bald head; he had three stars on his coat, wore velvet boots, and carried a gold snuff-box and a cane with a sapphire top; the princess was a handsome woman of majestic size and height, whom no one, not even the prince himself, it would appear, had ever approached closely or embraced or kissed, though she had five children. She seemed to be above the world into which she descended once in three years; she did not speak to anyone or go anywhere, but spent her time in the green corner room with three old ladies, and walked to church under an awning across the garden and sat there on a chair behind a screen.

In addition to the prince and the princess, there was a whole gay and lively world in the house, so that little Andrey looked with his childish green eyes at three or four different social sets, and eagerly and unconsciously absorbed with his quick mind the different types of this motley crowd as one does the gaily-dressed people at a fancy-dress ball. There were the young princes, Pierre and Michel, the first of whom at once showed Andrey how they sound the reveille in the cavalry and the infantry, what sabres and spurs the hussars and the dragoons wear, what the colour of the horses of the different regiments is, and what regiment one has to join on leaving school so as not to disgrace oneself.

As soon as Michel made the acquaintance of little Andrey, he put him in position and began performing wonderful tricks with his fists, hitting Andrey on the nose or in the stomach, and telling him afterwards that it was English boxing. Three days later Andrey, without any special training, smashed his nose for him both in the English and the Russian fashion, merely with the aid
of a pair of muscular arms and rude country health, and gained the respect of both young princes. Then there were the two princesses, tall and slender girls of eleven and twelve, who were smartly dressed, who spoke and bowed to no one, and who were afraid of peasants. Their governess, Mademoiselle Ernestine, who used to take coffee with Andrey’s mother, and who taught her how to curl his hair, would sometimes put his head on her lap, twisting his hair in paper curlers till it hurt, then take his cheeks in her white hands and kiss him affectionately! Then there was their German tutor who made snuff-boxes and buttons on a turner’s wheel; their teacher of music, who was drunk from one Sunday to another; and a whole bevy of maids and, finally, a pack of big and little dogs. All this filled the house and the village with noise, uproar, clatter, shouts, and music.

Oblomovka, on the one hand, and the prince’s mansion with its life of ease and luxury, on the other, clashed with the German element, and Andrey grew up to be neither a good
Bursch
nor a philistine.

Andrey’s father was an agronomist, a technologist, and a teacher. He had received his training in agronomy on his father’s farm, he had studied technology in Saxon factories, and in the neighbouring university, where there were about forty professors, he had received his calling for teaching what the forty wise men had succeeded in expounding to him. He did not go any farther, but turned back stubbornly, having made up his mind to do something practical. He returned to his father, who gave him a hundred thalers and a new knapsack and sent him out into the world. Since that day he had never seen his father or his native country. For six years he had wandered about in Switzerland and Austria, and for twenty years he had lived in Russia, blessing his lucky stars. He had been to a university and made up his mind that his son should go to a university, although it could not be a German university, although a Russian university was bound to revolutionize his son’s life and take him a long way off the track his father had mentally marked out for him. And he had done it all so simply: he drew a straight line from his grandfather to his future grandson and did not worry any more, and it never occurred to him that Herz’s variations, his wife’s stories and dreams, the galleries and drawing-rooms in the prince’s mansion would transform the narrow German track into a road wider than his grandfather, his father, and himself ever dreamed of. However, he was no pedant, and in this instance he would not have insisted on his own plan; he merely
could not conceive of any other road in his son’s life. It did not worry him, either. When his son returned from the university and spent three months at home, he told Andrey that he had nothing more to do at Verkhlyovo, that even Oblomov had been sent to Petersburg, and that it was therefore time for him to go too. He did not ask himself why his son had to go to Petersburg and why he could not stay in Verkhlyovo and help with the management of the estate: he merely remembered that when he had finished his course at the university, his own father had sent him away; so he, too, sent away his son – such was the custom in Germany. His wife was dead and there was no one to oppose him.

On the day of Andrey’s departure his father gave him a hundred roubles in notes.

‘You’ll ride to the town,’ he said, ‘and there Kalinnikov will give you three hundred and fifty roubles. You can leave the horse with him. If he isn’t in town, you can sell the horse. There is going to be a fair there soon and you’ll easily get four hundred roubles for it from anyone. Your fares to Moscow will be about forty roubles and from there to Petersburg, seventy-five. You will have enough left. After that you can do as you like. You have been in business with me and so you know that I have a small capital, but don’t count on getting any of it before my death. I’ll probably live for another twenty years, unless a stone falls on my head. The lamp still burns brightly and there is plenty of oil in it. You have received a good education and all careers are open to you. You can enter the Civil Service, or become a business man, or even a writer, if you like – I don’t know the one you will choose, which you feel most attracted to.…’

‘I’ll see whether I can’t do all at once,’ said Andrey.

His father burst out laughing with all his might and began patting his son’s shoulders so vigorously that a horse would not have stood it, but Andrey did not mind.

‘Well, and if your ability should not be equal to the task, and if you should find it difficult to strike the right road all at once and would like to ask someone’s advice, go and see Reinhold – he’ll tell you. Oh,’ he added, rubbing his hands and shaking his head, ‘he is – he is – –’ he wanted to say something in Reinhold’s praise, but could not find the right words; ‘We came together from Saxony. He owns a house of four stories. I’ll give you his address – –’

‘Don’t bother, I don’t want it,’ said Andrey. ‘I’ll go and see him when I have a house of four stories, and at present I shall do without him.’

There was more patting on the shoulder.

Andrey jumped on to his horse. Two bags were tied to the saddle: one had an oilskin cape, a pair of thick, nail-studded boots, and a few shirts made of Verkhlyovo linen – things he had bought and taken at his father’s insistent request; in the other was an elegant dress-coat of fine cloth, a thick overcoat, a dozen fine shirts, and shoes that had been ordered from Moscow, in memory of his mother’s admonitions.

‘Well?’ said the father.

‘Well?’ said the son.

‘Is that all?’ asked the father.

‘All!’ replied the son.

They looked at each other in silence, as though trying to pierce each other with their eyes.

Meanwhile, a small group of curious neighbours had collected and were gazing open-mouthed at the way the steward was taking leave of his son.

Father and son shook hands. Andrey rode off at a gallop.

‘How do you like the young puppy?’ the neighbours were saying to one another. ‘He hasn’t shed a tear! Those two crows on the fence are cawing as though their throats would burst. Mark my words, that bodes no good – he’d better look out!’

‘What are crows to him? He’s not afraid of walking in the woods alone on St John’s Eve. All that means nothing to Germans. A Russian would have paid dearly for it!’

‘And the old infidel is a fine fellow, too!’ a mother observed. ‘He threw him out into the street like a kitten: never embraced or wailed over him.’

‘Stop, stop, Andrey!’ the old man shouted.

Andrey stopped his horse.

‘Oh, so his heart misgave him, after all,’ people in the crowd said with approval.

‘Well?’ asked Andrey.

‘The saddle-strap is loose – let me tighten it.’

‘I’ll tighten it myself when I get to Shamshevka. It’s no use wasting time; I want to be there before dark.’

‘All right,’ said the father with a wave of the hand.

‘All right,’ the son repeated with a nod and, bending down a little, he was about to spur his horse.

‘Just like dogs – the two of them,’ said the neighbours. ‘They might be strangers!’

Suddenly a loud wail was heard in the crowd: some woman could bear it no longer.

‘Oh, you poor darling,’ she said, wiping her tears with a corner of her kerchief. ‘Poor little orphan! You have no mother, you have no one to bless you.… Let me at least make the sign of the cross over you!’

Andrey rode up to her and jumped off his horse. He embraced the old woman and was about to ride on – when suddenly he burst out crying while she was kissing him and making the sign of the cross over him. In her fervent words he seemed to have heard the voice of his mother, and for a moment his mother’s tender image rose before his mind. He embraced the woman once more with great tenderness, hastily wiped his tears, and jumped on to his horse. He struck it with his crop and disappeared in a cloud of dust; three dogs rushed after him desperately from two sides, barking at the top of their voices.

2

S
TOLZ
was the same age as Oblomov: he, too, was over thirty. He had been a civil servant, retired, gone into business, and had actually acquired a house and capital. He was on the board of some company trading with foreign countries. He was continually on the move: if his company had to send an agent to Belgium or England, they sent him; if some new scheme had to be drafted or a new idea put into practice, he was chosen to do it. At the same time he kept up his social connexions and his reading; goodness only knows how he found time to do it.

He was made of bone, muscle, and nerve, like an English racehorse. He was spare: he had practically no cheeks, that is to say, there was bone and muscle but no sign of fat; his complexion was clear, darkish, and without a sign of red in it; his eyes were expressive, though slightly green. He made no superfluous gestures. If he was sitting, he sat quietly; if he was doing something, he used as few gestures as were necessary. Just as there was nothing excessive in his organism, so in his moral outlook he aimed at a balance between the practical side of life and the finer requirements of the spirit. The two sides ran parallel to each other, twisting and turning on the way, but never getting entangled in heavy, inextricable knots. He went along on his way firmly and cheerfully, lived within his income, and spent every day as he spent every rouble, keeping a firm and unremitting control over his time, his labour, and his mental and
emotional powers. He seemed to be able to control his joys and sorrows like the movements of his hands and feet, and treated them as he did good or bad weather. When it rained, he put up an umbrella – that is to say, he suffered while the sorrow lasted, and even then with vexation and pride rather than timid submission – and bore patiently with it only because he blamed himself for his troubles and did not lay them at other people’s doors. He enjoyed his pleasures as one enjoys a flower plucked by the wayside, until it begins to wilt in your hands, and never drained the cup to the last bitter drop which lies at the bottom of every pleasure. He constantly aimed at a simple, that is, a direct and true view of life, and as he gradually came to achieve it, he understood how difficult it was, and he was proud and happy every time he happened to notice a deviation from his path and put it right. ‘Living simply is a hard and tricky business,’ he often said to himself, and tried to see at once where he went wrong, where the thread of life was beginning to coil up into an irregular, complicated knot. Above everything else he feared imagination, that double-faced companion, friendly on one side and hostile on the other, your friend – the less you believe him, your foe – when you fall trustfully asleep to the sound of his sweet murmur. He was afraid of every dream, and if he ventured to enter the land of dreams, he did so as one enters a grotto inscribed:
ma solitude, mon ermitage, mon repos,
knowing exactly the hour and the minute when one should leave it. There was no room in his soul for a dream, for anything that was enigmatic and mysterious. He regarded everything that would not stand up to the analysis of reason and objective truth as an optical illusion, a particular reflection of the rays and colours on the retina or, at most, as a fact that had not yet been tested by experiment.

He had none of the dilettante’s love for exploring the sphere of the supernatural and indulging in wild guesses about the discoveries of a thousand years hence. He obstinately halted at the threshold of a mystery without showing either a child’s faith or a man of the world’s doubts, but waited for the formulation of a law that would provide a key to it.

He kept as careful and keen a watch over his heart as over his imagination. But he had to admit after frequent retreats that the sphere of emotions was still
terra incognita
to him. He warmly thanked his lucky stars if he managed to distinguish in good time between the painted lie and the pale truth; he did not complain when a lie artfully concealed in flowers caused him
to stumble but not fall, and he was overjoyed if his heart was merely beating fast and feverishly but did not bleed, if his brow did not break out in a cold sweat, and a long shadow was not cast over his life for many years. He thought himself fortunate because he could always keep at a certain height, and while carried along by his emotions, never overstepped the thin line that divides the world of feeling from the world of lies and sentimentality, the world of truth from the world of the ridiculous, or, when going in the opposite direction, he was not swept away to the sandy desert of rigid ideas, pettiness, mistrust, sophistication, and callousness.