Oblomov (52 page)

From that moment Oblomov’s peace of mind and dreams were gone. He slept badly, ate little, and looked at everything absent-mindedly and morosely. He had wanted to frighten Zakhar, but had frightened himself more when he grasped the practical aspect of marriage and saw that it was not only a poetical
but also a practical and official step to important and serious reality and a whole series of stern duties. His conversation with Zakhar turned out differently from what he had imagined. He recalled how solemnly he had intended to break the news to Zakhar, how Zakhar would have shouted with joy and fallen at his feet, how he would have given him twenty-five roubles and Anisya ten….

He remembered everything – his thrill of happiness, Olga’s hand, her passionate kiss – and his heart sank: ‘It’s gone, faded away!’ a voice inside him said.

‘So what now?’

5

O
BLOMOV
did not know how he would face Olga, what she would say to him and what he would say to her, and decided not to go to see her on Wednesday, but to put off their meeting till Sunday, when there would be many visitors there and they would have no chance of talking alone. He did not want to tell her about the stupid stories of the servants so as not to worry her with what could not be remedied. Not to tell her would also be difficult, for he would not be able to pretend to her: she would be sure to get out of him everything he had hidden in the deepest recesses of his heart.

Having arrived at this decision, he calmed down a little and wrote another letter to the neighbour to whom he had entrusted the care of his affairs, in which he asked him to reply as soon as possible, adding that he hoped that his reply would be satisfactory. Then he began thinking how he could spend that long and unendurable day, which would otherwise have been filled with Olga’s presence, the invisible communion of their souls, and her singing. And Zakhar suddenly had to worry him at such an inopportune moment! He decided to dine at Ivan Gerasimovich’s so as to notice that unendurable day as little as possible. By Sunday he would be able to prepare himself and perhaps by then he would already have received the letter from the country.

The next day came. He was awakened by the furious barking of the dog and its desperate jumping on the chain. Someone had come into the yard and was asking for someone. The caretaker called Zakhar: Zakhar brought Oblomov a letter that had been posted in town.

‘From the Ilyinsky young lady,’ Zakhar said.

‘How do you know?’ Oblomov asked angrily. ‘Nonsense!’

‘You always used to get such letters from her in summer,’ Zakhar persisted.

‘Is she well?’ Oblomov thought, opening the letter. ‘What does it mean?’

‘I don’t want to wait for Wednesday’ (wrote Olga) ‘I miss you so much after so long a time that I will expect you tomorrow for certain at three o’clock in the Summer Gardens.’

That was all.

Again he became deeply perturbed; again he grew restless with anxiety at the thought of how he was going to talk to Olga and of how he would look at her.

‘I can’t do it – I don’t know how to,’ he said. ‘I wish I could ask Stolz – –’

But he set his mind at rest with the thought that Olga would most probably come with her aunt or with Maria Semyonovna, who was so fond of her and could not admire her enough. He hoped that in their presence he would be able to disguise his embarrassment, and he prepared himself to be talkative and gallant. ‘And at dinner time, too,’ he thought as he set out, none too eagerly, for the Summer Gardens. ‘What an hour to choose!’ As soon as he entered the long avenue, he saw a veiled woman get up from a seat and walk towards him. He did not think it was Olga: alone! Impossible! She would never do a thing like that and, besides, would have no excuse for leaving home unchaperoned. However – it seemed to be her way of walking: her feet moved so lightly and rapidly that they did not seem to walk but to glide; her head and neck, too, were bent forward as though she were looking for something on the ground at her feet. Another man would have recognized her by her hat or dress, but he could never tell what dress or hat Olga was wearing even after spending a whole morning with her. There was hardly anybody in the garden; an elderly gentleman was walking very briskly, apparently taking his constitutional, and two – not ladies, but women, and a nurse with two children who looked blue with the cold. The leaves had fallen and one could see right through the bare branches; the crows on the trees cawed so unpleasantly. It was a bright and clear day, though, and warm, if one were wrapped up properly. The veiled woman was coming nearer and nearer….

‘It is she!’ said Oblomov, stopping in alarm and unable to believe his eyes.

‘Is it you?’ he asked, taking her hand. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘I’m so glad you’ve come,’ she said without answering his question. ‘I thought you wouldn’t come, and I was beginning to be afraid.’

‘How did you get here? How did you manage it?’ he asked, thrown into confusion.

‘Please, don’t! What does it matter? Why all these questions? It’s so silly! I wanted to see you and I came – that’s all!’

She pressed his hand warmly and looked at him gaily and light-heartedly, so openly and obviously enjoying the moment stolen from fate that he envied her for not sharing her playful mood. However troubled he was, he could not help forgetting himself for a moment when he saw her face showing no trace of the concentrated thought that could be discerned in the play of her eyebrows and in the crease on her forehead; this time she appeared to be without that wonderful maturity that so often disturbed him in her features. At that moment her face expressed such childlike confidence in their future happiness and in him…. She was very charming.

‘Oh, I’m so glad! I’m so glad!’ she went on repeating, smiling and looking at him. ‘I didn’t think I’d see you to-day. I felt so terribly depressed yesterday – I don’t know why, and I wrote to you. Are you glad?’

She looked at his face.

‘Why are you so sullen to-day? Won’t you tell me? Aren’t you glad? I thought you’d be mad with joy, and you seem to be asleep. Wake up, sir, Olga is with you!’

She pushed him away a little reproachfully.

‘Aren’t you well? What is the matter with you?’ she persisted.

‘No, I’m well and happy,’ he hastened to say, to make quite sure that she was not driven to wring the innermost secrets of his heart from him. ‘I’m only worried about your coming alone – –’

‘That’s my worry,’ she said impatiently. ‘Would you have liked it better if I had come with my aunt?’

‘Yes, I would, Olga.’

‘Had I known I’d have asked her,’ Olga interrupted in an injured voice, letting go his hand. ‘I thought there was no greater happiness for you than being with me.’

‘And so there isn’t and there cannot be!’ Oblomov replied. ‘But how could you come alone – –’

‘Let us not waste our time discussing it,’ she said light-heartedly. ‘Let’s talk of something else. Listen. Oh, I was going to tell you something…. I’m afraid I’ve forgotten….’

‘Not how you came here alone?’ he said, looking round anxiously.

‘Oh no! Aren’t you tired of repeating the same thing over and over again? What was I going to say? Oh, never mind. I’m sure to remember it later. Oh, how lovely it is here! The leaves have all fallen,
feuilles d’automne
– remember Victor Hugo? Look at the sunshine there – there’s the Neva…. Come, let’s go to the Neva and take a boat….’

‘Good Lord, what are you talking about? It’s so cold, and I’ve only a quilted coat on.’

‘I, too, have a quilted dress. What does it matter? Come along, let’s go.’

She ran and dragged him after her. He resisted and grumbled. However, he had to get into a boat and go for a row on the river.

‘How did you get here by yourself alone?’ Oblomov kept asking anxiously.

‘Shall I tell you?’ she teased him roguishly when they got to the middle of the river. ‘I can now: you won’t run away from here, as you would have done there….’

‘Why?’ he asked fearfully.

‘Are you coming to-morrow?’ she asked instead of an answer.

‘Oh dear,’ thought Oblomov, ‘she seems to have read in my thoughts that I did not mean to come.’

‘Yes,’ he said aloud.

‘In the morning, for the whole day.’

He hesitated.

‘Then I won’t tell you,’ she said.

‘Yes, I’ll come for the day.’

‘Well, you see,’ she began gravely, ‘I asked you to come here to-day to tell you – –’

‘What?’ he asked in a panic.

‘To come – to us to-morrow.’

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake!’ he interrupted impatiently. ‘But how did you get here?’

‘Here?’ she repeated absent-mindedly. ‘How did I get here? Why, I just came. Wait – but why talk about it at all?’

She put her hand into the river and took a handful of water and threw it in his face. He screwed up his eyes and gave a start. She laughed.

‘How cold the water is – my hand feels frozen! Goodness, how lovely it is here! Oh, I am so happy!’ she went on, looking about her. ‘Let’s come again to-morrow, but straight from home.’

‘Haven’t you come straight from home now? Where have you come from then?’ he asked hastily.

‘From a shop,’ she replied.

‘What shop?’

‘What shop? I told you in the garden – –’

‘You didn’t,’ he cried impatiently.

‘Didn’t I? How strange! I’ve forgotten! I left home with a footman to go to the jeweller’s – –’

‘Well?’

‘Well, that’s all. What church is this?’ she suddenly asked the boatman, pointing at a church in the far distance.

‘Which one? That over there?’ the boatman asked.

‘The Smolny,’ Oblomov said impatiently. ‘Well, so you went to the shop and what did you do there?’

‘Oh, there were lovely things there – I saw such a beautiful bracelet!’

‘I’m not interested in bracelets,’ Oblomov interrupted. ‘What happened then?’

‘That’s all,’ she added absent-mindedly, absorbed in looking about her.

‘Where’s the footman?’ Oblomov pestered her.

‘Gone home,’ she replied curtly, examining a building on the opposite bank.

‘And what about you?’

‘Oh, how lovely it is over there! Couldn’t we go there?’ she asked, pointing with her parasol to the opposite bank. ‘You live there, don’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘In which street? Show me!’

‘But what about the footman?’ Oblomov asked.

‘Oh, nothing,’ she replied in a casual tone of voice. ‘I sent him for my bracelet. He went home and I came here.’

‘But how could you do that?’ said Oblomov, staring at her.

He looked alarmed, and she, too, made an alarmed face.

‘Talk seriously, Olga. Stop joking?’

‘I’m not joking,’ she said quietly. ‘That’s exactly what happened. I left my bracelet at home on purpose, and Auntie asked me to go to the jeweller’s. You’d never have thought of anything like that!’ she added with pride, as though she really had done something extraordinary.

‘And if the footman comes back?’ he asked.

‘I asked them to tell him to wait for me because I had had to go to another shop – and I came here – –’

‘And if your aunt asks you in which other shop you went?’

‘I’ll say I was at the dressmaker’s.’

‘And what if she asks the dressmaker?’

‘And what if the Neva flows away into the sea, what if our boat capsizes, what if Morskaya Street and our house sink through the ground, and what if you suddenly fell out of love with me – –’ she said, and threw some water in his face again.

‘But the footman must have returned by now and is waiting,’ he said, wiping his face. ‘Boatman, back to the bank!’

‘Don’t, don’t!’ she told the boatman.

‘To the bank! The footman has returned!’ Oblomov insisted.

‘Let him! Don’t let’s go back!’

But Oblomov insisted on having it his own way and walked hurriedly through the Summer Gardens with her, while she, for her part, walked slowly, leaning on his arm.

‘Why are you in such a hurry?’ she said. ‘Wait, I’d like to be with you a little longer.’

She walked still more slowly, clinging to his shoulder and peering into his face, and he spoke gravely and boringly about duty and obligations. She listened absent-mindedly, with a languid smile, bending her head and looking down or peering into his face again and thinking of something else.

‘Listen, Olga,’ he said at last solemnly, ‘at the risk of making you feel vexed with me and bringing your reproaches down on me, I must tell you definitely that we have gone too far. It is my duty, I – I think it incumbent upon me to tell you so.’

‘Tell me what?’ she asked with impatience.

‘That we are doing wrong by meeting in secret.’

‘You said so when we were in the country,’ she said pensively.

‘Yes, but at the time I was carried away: I pushed you away with one hand and held you back with the other. You were trustful and I – I seemed to deceive you. My feeling for you was still new then – –’

‘And now it is no longer new and you are beginning to be bored.’

‘Oh no, Olga! You’re unjust. I say it was new, and that is why I had no time, why I would not come to my senses. My conscience worries me: you are young, you don’t know the world and people, and, besides, you are so pure, your love is so
sacred, that it never occurs to you what severe censure we are incurring by what we are doing – and I most of all.’

‘But what are we doing?’ she said, stopping.

‘What do you mean? You are deceiving your aunt, leaving home secretly and meeting a man alone…. Try admitting all this on Sunday before your visitors.’

‘Why shouldn’t I admit it?’ she said calmly. ‘I daresay I will.’

‘And you will see,’ he went on, ‘that your aunt will faint, the ladies will rush out of the room, and the men will look at you boldly and knowingly.’

She fell into thought.

‘But,’ she countered, ‘we are engaged, aren’t we?’

‘Yes, yes, dear Olga,’ he said, pressing both her hands, ‘and that is why we ought to be all the more careful and circumspect. I want to lead you down this very avenue proudly and before the eyes of all the world, and not by stealth; I want people to lower their eyes before you respectfully, and not look at you boldly and knowingly; I don’t want anyone to suspect you, a proud girl, of having lost your head and, forgetting all shame and good breeding, being carried away and neglecting your duty – –’