Oblomov (58 page)

‘I can’t read the writing,’ she said, glancing at it.

He took the letter from her and read it aloud. She became thoughtful.

‘What now?’ she said after a pause.

‘I consulted my landlady’s brother,’ Oblomov replied, ‘and he recommended me as my agent a certain Isay Fomich Zatyorty: I’ll give him the necessary instructions to settle everything.’

‘A perfect stranger!’ Olga objected in surprise. ‘To collect the taxes, to look into the affairs of the peasants, to see to the sale of the corn….’

‘He tells me Zatyorty is the soul of honour, he has been working in the same office with him for twelve years…. The only thing is he stammers a little….’

‘And what is your landlady’s brother like? Do you know him?’

‘No, but he seems to be such a practical, business-like man. Besides, I’m living in his house – he would be ashamed to cheat me!’

Olga said nothing and sat with her eyes fixed on the ground.

‘You see, I should have to go there myself otherwise,’ said Oblomov, ‘and I must say I should not like to do that. I’ve lost the habit of travelling, especially in winter – in fact, I have never done it.’

She was still looking down, tapping the floor with the toe of her shoe.

‘Even if I did go,’ Oblomov went on, ‘nothing would come of it, for I shan’t get what I want. The peasants will cheat me, the bailiff will say what he pleases and I shall have to believe him, and he would give as much money as he liked. Oh, if only Andrey had been here: he’d have settled everything!’ he added sadly.

Olga smiled, that is, she smiled only with her lips and not with her heart: there was bitterness in her heart. She began looking out of the window, screwing up one eye slightly and watching every carriage that passed.

‘It seems Zatyorty managed a big estate once,’ he went on, ‘and the owner dismissed him only because he stammered. I’ll let him have a deed of trust and give him the plans: he will arrange the purchase of the materials for building the house, collect the taxes from the peasants, sell the corn, bring the money, and then – – Oh, dear Olga,’ he went on, kissing her hands, ‘I’m so glad that I haven’t got to leave you! I couldn’t bear to part from you. To be alone without you in the country – oh, that would be awful! Only we must be very careful now.’

She looked at him with wide-open eyes and waited.

‘Yes,’ he began slowly, almost stammering, ‘we mustn’t see each other too often. Yesterday they again started talking about us at the landlady’s and – and I don’t want that. As soon as everything is settled and my agent sees about the building and brings the money – I mean, all this will be finished in about
a year and – and we shan’t have to part any more and – and we’ll tell your aunt – and – and – –’

He looked up at Olga: she had fainted. Her head was bent sideways and her teeth showed from between her lips, which had turned blue. He didn’t notice, while indulging in his dreams of their future happiness, that at the words: ‘As soon as everything is settled, and my agent sees…’ Olga had turned pale and did not hear the end of the sentence.

‘Olga! Good heavens, she has fainted!’ he said and pulled at the bell.

‘Your mistress has fainted,’ he said to Katya, when she ran into the room. ‘Water, quick!… And the smelling salts!’

‘Goodness, sir, she has been so happy all the morning! What’s happened to her?’ she whispered, bringing the smelling-salts from the aunt’s table and bustling over Olga with a glass of water.

Olga came to, got up with the help of Katya and Oblomov and walked unsteadily to her bedroom.

‘It’ll pass,’ she said weakly; ‘it’s just my nerves. I slept badly last night. I’ll feel better presently and come back.’

Left to himself, Oblomov put his ear to the door, tried to look through the keyhole, but heard and saw nothing. Half an hour later he walked down the corridor to the maid’s room and asked Katya how her mistress was.

‘She’s all right,’ said Katya. ‘She lay down and sent me away. I went in later and found her sitting in the arm-chair.’

Oblomov went back to the sitting-room, looked through the keyhole of Olga’s bedroom again, but heard nothing. He tapped on the door with his finger – there was no reply. He sat down and pondered. He did a great deal of thinking in that hour and a half, there were a great many changes in his ideas, and he took many new decisions. At last he made up his mind to go to the country together with his agent, but first to get the consent of Olga’s aunt to the announcement of their engagement, to ask Ivan Gerasimovich to find a flat and even to borrow some money – a little, to cover the expenses of the wedding. This loan he could repay out of the money he would get for the corn. Why, then, was he so dejected? Oh dear, how everything could change in a minute! In the country he and his agent would make all the necessary arrangements for the collection of the taxes, and, besides, he could write to Stolz, who would lend him some money and then come and get everything in Oblomovka ship-shape, make roads, build bridges, and open a school….
And he would be there with Olga! Lord, that was happiness! How was it he had never thought of it before? Suddenly he felt so light-hearted and gay; he began pacing the room, snapping his fingers and almost shouting with joy. He went up to Olga’s door and called to her in a cheerful voice.

‘Olga, Olga!’ he cried, putting his lips to the keyhole. ‘I’ve something to tell you! I’m sure you don’t know what it is!’

He even decided not to leave her that day, until after her aunt returned. ‘We’ll tell her to-day and I’ll go home as Olga’s fiancé!’

The door opened quietly and Olga appeared: he looked at her and suddenly his heart sank. His joy vanished: Olga seemed to have aged. She was pale, but her eyes glittered; an intense inner life was hidden in her tightly closed lips and in every feature of her face, a life bound, as with ice, by her enforced calm and immobility. In her eyes he read a decision, but what kind of a decision he could not yet tell, though his heart pounded as it had never done before. Such moments he had not experienced in his life before.

‘Listen, Olga. Please don’t look at me like that – it frightens me!’ he said. ‘I’ve changed my mind, I’ll have to arrange it all quite differently,’ he went on, gradually lowering his voice, pausing and trying to grasp the meaning of the new expression of her eyes, lips, and eloquent eyebrows. ‘I’ve decided to go to the country myself together with my agent – so that I – I could – –’ he finished almost inaudibly.

She was silent, looking at him intently, like a phantom. He guessed vaguely the verdict that awaited him, and picked up his hat, but hesitated to ask: he was afraid of hearing the fatal decision against which there might be no appeal. At last he mastered himself.

‘Have I understood you aright?’ he asked her in a changed voice.

She slowly and gently bowed her head in assent. Though he had guessed her thought already, he turned pale and remained standing before her. She looked a little languid, but seemed as calm and immobile as a stone statue. It was the preternatural calm when a concentrated intention or a wounded feeling gives one the power of complete self-control, but only for one moment. She was like a wounded man who closes his wound with his hand so that he can say all that he has to say and then die.

‘You won’t hate me?’ he asked.

‘Whatever for?’ she said weakly.

‘For everything I’ve done to you.’

‘What have you done?’

‘I’ve loved you: that’s an insult!’

She smiled pityingly.

‘For having made a mistake,’ he said, bowing his head. ‘Perhaps you will forgive me if you recall that I warned you how ashamed you would be, how you would be sorry – –’

‘I am not sorry. I feel so miserable, so miserable – –’ she said, stopping short to take breath.

‘I feel worse,’ Oblomov replied, ‘but I deserve it. Why should you torture yourself?’

‘For my pride,’ she said. ‘I am punished, I had relied too much on my own powers – that was where I was mistaken, and not what you feared. It was not of youth and beauty that I dreamed; I had thought that I’d bring you back to life, that you could still live for me – whereas you died long ago. I had not foreseen that mistake, but kept waiting and hoping and – now!’ she concluded with a sigh, barely able to speak.

She fell silent and then sat down.

‘I can’t stand: my legs tremble. A stone would have come to life from what I have done,’ she went on in a languid voice. ‘Now I won’t do anything, I won’t go anywhere, not even to the Summer Gardens: it’s no use – you are dead ! You agree with me, Ilya, don’t you?’ she added after a pause. ‘You won’t ever reproach me for having parted from you out of pride or caprice, will you?’

He shook his head.

‘Are you convinced that there is nothing left for us – no hope at all?’

‘Yes, he said, ‘that’s true, but,’ he added irresolutely, ‘perhaps in a year’s time – –’

He had not the heart to deal a decisive blow to his happiness.

‘Do you really think that in a year’s time you would put your affairs and your life in order?’ she asked. ‘Think!’

He sighed and pondered, struggling with himself. She read the struggle in his face.

‘Listen,’ she said, ‘I’ve been looking at my mother’s portrait and, I believe, I obtained advice and strength from her eyes. If, like an honourable man, you will now – – Remember, Ilya, we’re not children and we’re not joking: it is a matter that concerns our whole life! Ask yourself conscientiously and tell me – I will believe you, I know you: would you be able to keep it up all your life? Would you be for me what I want you to be? You know me,
you therefore understand what I want to say. If boldly and deliberately you say, ‘yes,’ I take back my decision: here is my hand, and let us go where you will – abroad, to the country, even to Vyborg!’

He said nothing.

‘If you knew how I love you – –’

‘What I want is not protestations of love but a brief answer,’ she interrupted him almost dryly.

‘Don’t torture me, Olga!’ he implored her disconsolately.

‘Well, Ilya, am I right or not?’

‘Yes,’ he said, distinctly and resolutely, ‘you are right.’

‘In that case we had better part,’ she decided, ‘before anyone finds you here and sees how upset I am.’

But he still did not go.

‘Even if we had married, what would have come of it?’ she asked.

He made no answer.

‘You would sink deeper and deeper into sleep every day, wouldn’t you? And I? You see the sort of person I am, don’t you? I shall never grow old or tire of life. And with you I should be living from day to day, waiting for Christmas, then for Shrovetide, go visiting, dancing, and not thinking of anything. We’d go to bed and thank God that the day had passed so quickly, and in the morning we’d wake up wishing that to-day would be like yesterday. That would be our future, wouldn’t it? Is that life? I’d pine away and die – what for, Ilya? Would you be happy?’

He cast an agonizing look at the ceiling, wanted to move, to run away, but his legs would not obey him. He wanted to say something – his mouth was dry, his tongue would not move, his voice failed him. He held out his hand to her.

‘So – –’ he began in a faint voice, but broke off and finished his sentence with his eyes: ‘Good-bye!’

She, too, wanted to say something, but could not; she held out her hand to him, but the hand dropped before it touched him; she, too, wanted to say ‘good-bye’, but her voice failed her in the middle of the word and broke off on a false note; a spasm passed over her face, she put her hand and head on his shoulder and burst into sobs. It was as though her weapons had been snatched out of her hands. The woman of intelligence was gone and in her place was simply a woman who was powerless against grief.

‘Good-bye, good-bye,’ the words escaped her between her sobs.

He was silent, listening in horror to her weeping and not daring to interfere with it. He did not feel any pity either for her or for himself; he was wretched himself. She sank into an arm-chair and, pressing her handkerchief to her face, leaned against the table and wept bitterly. Her tears flowed not as an irresistible hot stream released by a sudden and temporary pain, as in the park in summer, but coldly and cheerlessly, like autumn rain pitilessly watering the meadows.

‘Olga,’ he said at last, ‘why do you torture yourself? You love me, you won’t be able to bear the parting! Take me as I am, love whatever is good in me.’

She shook her head without raising it.

‘No, no,’ she made an effort to speak, ‘don’t be afraid for me and for my grief. I know myself: I will cry it out and then I will cry no more. And now, don’t interrupt my tears – go away.… No, wait, please! God is punishing me! Oh, it hurts me – it hurts me awfully – here, near my heart….’

Her sobs were renewed.

‘And what if the pain doesn’t stop,’ he said, ‘and your health suffers? Such tears are deadly. Olga, my darling, don’t cry – forget it all….’

‘No, let me cry! I am not crying about the future, but about the past,’ she brought out with difficulty. ‘It has “faded away”, it has “gone”…. It isn’t I who am crying, but my memories! The summer – the park – do you remember? I’m sorry for our avenue, the lilac…. It has all grown into my heart: it hurts me to tear it out!’ She shook her head in despair and sobbed, repeating: ‘Oh, how it hurts – how it hurts!’

‘What if you should die?’ he suddenly cried in horror. ‘Think, Olga – –’

‘No,’ she interrupted, raising her head and trying to look at him through her tears; ‘I have only lately realized that I loved in you what I wanted you to have, what Stolz pointed out to me, what we both invented. I loved the Oblomov that might have been! You are gentle and honest – you are tender like – a dove; you hide your head under your wing – and you want nothing more; you are ready to spend all your life cooing under the roof…. Well, I am not like that; that isn’t enough for me; I want something else, but what it is I don’t know! You cannot tell me, you cannot teach me what it is that I want, give it all to me so that I – – and as for tenderness – you can find it anywhere!’

Oblomov’s legs gave way under him; he sat down in an armchair
and wiped his hands and forehead with his handkerchief. It was a cruel thing to say, and it hurt him deeply: it seemed to have scorched him inwardly, while outwardly it was like the breath of ice-cold air. He smiled pitifully and painfully shamefacedly in reply, like a beggar reproached for his nakedness. He sat there with that helpless smile, weak with agitation and resentment; his eyes, from which the light seemed to have gone, said clearly: ‘Yes, I am poor, pitiful, abject – hit me, hit me!…’