Oblomov (32 page)

He could not bring himself to lie to her calmly.

‘I’m a little – er – lazy,’ he said, ‘but – –’

He could not help feeling at the same time rather annoyed that she should so easily, almost without saying a word, have extracted from him a confession of laziness. ‘What is she to me? I’m not afraid of her, am I?’ he thought.

‘Lazy?’ she retorted, with hardly perceptible slyness. ‘Is it possible? A man and lazy – I don’t understand it.’

‘What is there not to understand?’ he thought. ‘It seems simple enough.’

‘I sit at home most of the time,’ he said. ‘That is why Andrey thinks that I – –’

‘But,’ she said, ‘I expect you write and read a lot. Have you read – –’ She looked intently at him.

‘No, I haven’t!’ he suddenly blurted out, afraid that she might try to cross-examine him.

‘What?’ she asked, laughing.

He, too, laughed.

‘I thought you were going to ask me about some novel. I don’t read fiction.’

‘You’re wrong. I was going to ask you about books of travel.…’

He looked keenly at her: her whole face was laughing, but not her lips.

‘Oh, but she’s – one must be careful with her,’ Oblomov thought.

‘What do you read?’ she asked curiously.

‘As a matter of fact, I do like books of travel mostly.’

‘To Africa?’ she asked softly and slyly.

He blushed, guessing not without good reason that she knew not only what he read, but also how he read it.

‘Are you a musician?’ she asked, to help him to recover from his embarrassment.

At that moment Stolz came up.

‘Ilya, I’ve told Olga that you’re passionately fond of music and asked her to sing something –
Casta diva.
’

‘Why have you been telling stories about me?’ Oblomov replied. ‘I’m not at all passionately fond of music.’

‘How do you like that?’ Stolz interrupted. ‘He seems offended! I recommend him to you as a decent chap and he hastens to disillusion you.’

‘I merely decline the part of a lover of music: it’s a doubtful and difficult part!’

‘What music do you like best?’ asked Olga.

‘It’s a difficult question to answer. Any music. I sometimes listen with pleasure to a hoarse barrel-organ, some tune I can’t get out of my mind, and at other times I’ll leave in the middle of an opera; Meyerbeer may move me, or even a bargeman’s song: it all depends on what mood I’m in, I’m afraid! Sometimes I feel like stopping my ears to Mozart.’

‘That means that you are really fond of music.’

‘Sing something, Olga Sergeyevna,’ Stolz asked.

‘But if Mr Oblomov is in such a mood that he feels like stopping his ears?’ she said, addressing Oblomov.

‘I suppose I ought to pay some compliment at this point,’ replied Oblomov. ‘I’m afraid I’m not good at it, and even if I were, I shouldn’t have dared to.…’

‘Why not?’

‘Well,’ Oblomov observed ingenuously, ‘what if you sing badly? I’d feel awful afterwards.’

‘As with the biscuits yesterday,’ she suddenly blurted out, and blushed – she would have given anything not to have said it. ‘I’m awfully sorry,’ she said.

Oblomov did not expect that and he was utterly confused.

‘It’s wicked treachery!’ he said in a low voice.

‘No, perhaps just a little revenge and that, too, quite unpremeditated, I assure you – because you hadn’t even a compliment for me.’

‘Maybe I shall have when I hear you.’

‘Do you want me to sing?’ she asked.

‘It’s he who wants you to,’ Oblomov replied, pointing to Stolz.

‘And you?’

Oblomov shook his head.

‘I can’t want what I don’t know.’

‘You’re rude, Ilya,’ Stolz observed. ‘That’s what comes of lying about at home and putting on socks that – –’

‘But, my dear fellow,’ Oblomov interrupted him quickly, not letting him finish, ‘I could easily have said, “Oh, I shall be very glad, very happy, you sing so wonderfully, of course,”’ he went on, addressing Olga, ‘“it will give me,” etcetera. You didn’t really want me to say that, did you?’

‘But you might, I think, have expressed a wish that I should sing – oh, just out of curiosity.’

‘I daren’t,’ Oblomov replied. ‘You’re not an actress.’

‘Very well,’ she said to Stolz, ‘I’ll sing for you.’

‘Ilya,’ said Stolz, ‘have your compliment ready.’

Meanwhile it grew dark. The lamp was lit, and it looked like the moon through the ivy-covered trellis. The dusk had hidden the outlines of Olga’s face and figure and had thrown, as it were, a crêpe veil over her; her face was in the shadow; only her mellow but powerful voice with the nervous tremor of feeling in it could be heard. She sang many love-songs and arias at Stolz’s request; some of them expressed suffering with a vague premonition of happiness, and others joy with an undercurrent of sorrow already discernible in it. The words, the sounds, the pure, strong girlish voice made the heart throb, the nerves tremble, the eyes shine and fill with tears. One wanted to die listening to the sounds and at the same time one’s heart was eager for more life.

Oblomov was enchanted, overcome; he could hardly hold back his tears or stifle the shout of joy that was ready to escape from his breast. He had not for many years felt so alive and
strong – his strength seemed to be welling out from the depths of his soul ready for any heroic deed. He would have gone abroad that very moment if all he had to do was to step into a carriage and go off.

In conclusion she sang
Casta diva
: his transports, the thoughts that flashed like lightning through his head, the cold shiver that ran through his body – all this crushed him; he felt completely shattered.

‘Are you satisfied with me to-day?’ Olga asked Stolz suddenly as she finished singing.

‘Ask Oblomov what he thinks,’ said Stolz.

‘Oh!’ Oblomov cried, snatching Olga’s hand suddenly and letting it go at once in confusion. ‘I’m sorry,’ he murmured.

‘Do you hear?’ Stolz said to her. ‘Tell me honestly, Ilya, how long is it since this sort of thing happened to you?’

‘It could have happened this morning if a hoarse barrel-organ had passed by Mr Oblomov’s windows,’ Olga interposed, but she spoke so kindly and gently that she took the sting out of the sarcasm.

He gave her a reproachful look.

‘He hasn’t yet taken out the double windows, so he can’t hear what’s happening outside,’ Stolz added.

Oblomov gave Stolz a reproachful look.

Stolz took Olga’s hand.

‘I don’t know why, but you sang to-day as you have never sung before, Olga Sergeyevna – at any rate, I’ve not heard you sing like that for a long time. This is my compliment,’ he said, kissing every finger of her hand.

Stolz was about to say good-bye. Oblomov, too, wanted to go, but Stolz and Olga insisted that he should stay.

‘I have some business to attend to,’ Stolz observed, ‘but you’d merely go to lie down – and it’s still too early.’

‘Andrey! Andrey!’ Oblomov said imploringly. ‘No,’ he added, ‘I’m afraid I can’t stay – I must go!’ And he went.

He did not sleep all night; sad and thoughtful, he walked up and down the room; he went out at daybreak, walked along the Neva and then along the streets, and goodness only knows what he was feeling and thinking. Three days later he was there again, and in the evening, when the other visitors had sat down to play cards, he found himself at the piano alone with Olga. Her aunt had a headache and she was sitting in her study sniffing smelling-salts.

‘Would you like me to show you the collection of drawings
Mr Stolz brought me from Odessa?’ Olga asked. ‘He didn’t show it to you, did he?’

‘You’re not trying to entertain me like a hostess, are you?’ asked Oblomov. ‘You needn’t trouble.’

‘Why not? I don’t want you to be bored. I want you to feel at home here. I want you to be comfortable, free, and at your ease, so that you shouldn’t go away – to lie down.’

‘She’s a spiteful, sarcastic creature,’ Oblomov thought, admiring, in spite of himself, her every movement.

‘You want me to be free and at ease and not be bored, do you?’ he repeated.

‘Yes,’ she answered, looking at him as she had done before, but with an expression of still greater curiosity and kindness.

‘If you do,’ Oblomov said, ‘you must, to begin with, not look at me as you are looking now and as you did the other day – –’

She looked at him with redoubled curiosity.

‘For it is this look that makes me feel uncomfortable.… Where’s my hat?’

‘Why does it make you feel uncomfortable?’ she asked gently, and her look lost its expression of curiosity, becoming just kind and affectionate.

‘I don’t know. Only I can’t help feeling that with that look you are trying to extract from me everything that I don’t want other people to know – you, in particular.’

‘But why not? You are a friend of Mr Stolz and he is my friend, therefore – –’

‘– therefore,’ he finished the sentence for her, ‘there is no reason why you should know all that Mr Stolz knows about me.’

‘There is no reason, but there is a chance.’

‘Thanks to my friend’s frankness – a bad service on his part.’

‘You haven’t any secrets, have you?’ she asked. ‘Crimes, perhaps?’ she added, laughing and moving away from him.

‘Perhaps,’ he answered, with a sigh.

‘Oh, it is a great crime,’ she said softly and timidly, ‘to put on odd socks.’

Oblomov grabbed his hat.

‘I can’t stand it!’ he said. ‘And you want me to be comfortable? I’ll fall out with Andrey. Did he tell you that too?’

‘He did make me laugh terribly at it to-day,’ Olga added. ‘He always makes me laugh. I’m sorry, I won’t, I won’t, and I’ll try to look at you differently.…’ She looked at him with a mock-serious expression.

‘All this is to begin with,’ she went on. ‘Very well, I’m not
looking at you as I did the other day, so that you ought to feel comfortable and at ease now. Now, what must I do secondly so that you shouldn’t be bored?’

He looked straight into her grey-blue, tender eyes.

‘Now you, too, are looking strangely at me,’ she said.

He really was looking at her not so much with his eyes as with his mind, with all his will, like a magnetizer, but involuntarily, being quite incapable of not looking.

‘Heavens, how pretty she is!’ he thought, looking at her almost with terrified eyes. ‘And to think that such wonderful girls actually exist! This white skin, these eyes which are as dark as deep pools and yet there is something gleaming in them – her soul, no doubt! Her smile can be read like a book, disclosing her beautiful teeth and – and her whole head – how tenderly it rests on her shoulders, swaying, like a flower, breathing with fragrance.… Yes,’ he thought, ‘I am extracting something from her – something is passing from her into me. Here – close to my heart – something is beginning to stir and flutter – I feel a new sensation there – something that was not there before.… Oh dear, what a joy it is to look at her! It takes my breath away!’

His thoughts went whirling through his mind and he was looking at her as into an endless distance, a bottomless abyss, with self-oblivion and delight.

‘Really, Mr Oblomov, see how you are looking at me now yourself,’ she said, turning her head away shyly, but her curiosity got the better of her and she could not take her eyes off him.

He heard nothing. He really did look at her without hearing her words, and silently listened to what was happening inside him: he touched his head – there, too, something was stirring uneasily, rushing about with unimaginable swiftness. He could not catch his thoughts: they seemed to scurry away like a flock of birds, and there seemed to be a pain in his left side, by the heart.

‘Don’t look at me so strangely,’ she said. ‘It makes me, too, uncomfortable. I expect you also want to extract something from my soul.’

‘What can I get from you?’ he asked mechanically.

‘I, too, have
plans
, begun and unfinished,’ she replied.

He recovered his senses at this hint at his unfinished plan.

‘Strange,’ he said, ‘you’re spiteful, but you have kind eyes. It’s not for nothing people say that one must never believe women: they lie intentionally with their tongue and unintentionally with their eyes, smile, blushes, and even fainting fits.’

She did not let this impression get stronger, took his hat from him quietly and sat down on a chair herself.

‘I won’t, I won’t,’ she repeated quickly. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have said that! But I swear I wasn’t trying to be sarcastic at all!’ She almost sang, and in the singing of those words emotion stirred.

Oblomov calmed down.

‘Oh that Andrey!’ he said reproachfully.

‘Well, secondly, tell me what I have to do so that you shouldn’t be bored?’ she asked.

‘Sing!’ he said.

‘There, that’s the compliment I was waiting for,’ she said joyfully, flushing. ‘Do you know,’ she went on with animation, ‘if you hadn’t cried “Oh!” after my singing that night, I don’t think I could have slept – I should have cried, perhaps.’

‘Why?’ Oblomov asked in surprise.

She pondered. ‘I don’t know myself,’ she said, after a pause.

‘You’re vain. That’s why.’

‘Yes, of course,’ she said, musing and touching the keys with one hand, ‘but everyone is vain, and very much so. Mr Stolz claims that vanity is almost the only thing that controls a man’s will. I expect you haven’t any, and that is why you’re – –’

She did not finish.

‘I’m what?’ he asked.

‘Oh, nothing,’ she said, changing the subject. ‘I’m fond of Mr Stolz,’ she went on, ‘not only because he makes me laugh – sometimes his words make me cry – and not because he likes me, but I believe because – he likes me more than he likes other people: you see, my vanity betrays me!’

‘You are fond of Mr Stolz?’ Oblomov asked, looking intently and searchingly into her eyes.

‘Why, of course, if he likes me more than he likes other people, then it’s only fair that I should be,’ she replied seriously.

Oblomov looked at her in silence: she answered him with a frank, silent look.

‘He likes Anna Vassilyevna, too, and Zinaida Mikhailovna, but not as much as me,’ she went on. ‘He won’t sit with them for two hours, or make them laugh, or talk frankly to them; he talks about business, about the theatre, the news, but he talks to me as to a sister – no,’ she corrected herself quickly, ‘as to a daughter. Sometimes he even scolds me if I am too slow to understand something, or if I refuse to do as he wishes, or if I do not agree with him. But he never scolds them, and I think I
like him all the more because of it. Vanity!’ she added, pensively. ‘But I don’t know how it could have got into my singing. People have often praised it, but you wouldn’t even listen to me – you had almost to be forced to. And if you had gone away without saying a word to me, if I hadn’t noticed anything in your face – I think I’d have fallen ill. Yes, I must admit, that is vanity all right!’ she concluded decisively.