Oblomov (63 page)

‘Don’t be an ass! You tell him that I am going to lodge a complaint against him, that I have had him watched, that I have witnesses….’

‘Well?’

‘Well, if he gets thoroughly frightened, you can tell him that the whole thing can be settled in a friendly way by his sacrificing a small sum.’

‘But where will he get the money?’ asked Tarantyev. ‘If he is frightened, he’ll promise anything you like, even ten thousand.’

‘You just give me a wink, I’ll have an IOU ready – in my sister’s name, to the effect that he, Oblomov, had borrowed ten thousand from widow So-and-so, to be repaid within – and so on.’

‘What’s the use of that, old man? I don’t understand: the money will go to your sister and her children. What do we get out of it?’

‘And my sister will give me an IOU for the same amount. I’ll make her sign it.’

‘But what if she doesn’t? What if she refuses?’

‘Who? My sister?’

And Ivan Matveyevich burst into a shrill laugh.

‘She’ll sign, old man, don’t you worry. She’d sign her own death warrant without asking what it was. She’ll just smile. She’ll put down her name, Agafya Pshenitzyn, write it across the page crookedly, and never know what she has signed. You see, you
and I will have nothing to do with it at all. My sister will have a claim against the Collegiate Secretary Oblomov, and I against the widow of the Collegiate Secretary Pshenitzyn. Let the German fly into a temper – it’s all perfectly legal!’ he said, raising his trembling hands. ‘Let’s have a drink, old man!’

‘Perfectly legal!’ Tarantyev cried delightedly. ‘Let’s have a drink!’

‘And if it comes off without a hitch, we can have another try in two years’ time. It’s perfectly legal!’

‘Perfectly legal!’ Tarantyev cried again, nodding approvingly. ‘Let’s have another!’

‘Another? I don’t mind if I do.’

And they drank.

‘The only thing I’m afraid of,’ said Ivan Matveyevich, ‘is that Oblomov may refuse and write first to the German. If he does that, we’re sunk! We can’t bring an action against him: she’s a widow, after all, not a spinster.’

‘Write?’ said Tarantyev. ‘Of course he’ll write – in two years’ time. And if he refuses, I’ll tell him off properly!’

‘No, no, heaven forbid! You’ll spoil it all, old man. He’d say we forced him, he might even mention blows – and that would be a criminal offence. No, that won’t do. What we could do, though, is to have a friendly collation with him first – he’s very partial to currant vodka. As soon as he gets a little tipsy, you give me the wink and I’ll come in with the IOU. He won’t even look at the sum, and sign as he signed the agreement, and after it has been witnessed at the notary’s it will be too late for him to do anything. Besides, a gentleman like him will be ashamed to admit that he signed it when he was not sober. It’s perfectly legal!’

‘Perfectly legal!’ Tarantyev repeated.

‘Let his heirs have Oblomovka then!’

‘Aye, let them! Let’s have a drink, old man!’

‘To the health of all blockheads!’ said Ivan Matveyevich.

They drank.

4

W
E
must now go back a little to the time before Stolz’s arrival on Oblomov’s name-day and to another place, far from Vyborg. There the reader will meet people he knows, about whom stolz
did not tell Oblomov all he knew, either for some special reasons of his own or, perhaps, because Oblomov did not ask all there was to ask – also, no doubt, for special reasons of his own.

One day Stolz was walking down a boulevard in Paris, glancing absent-mindedly at the passers-by and the shop signboards without pausing to look at anything in particular. He had not had any letters from Russia for some time, neither from Kiev, nor from Odessa, nor from Petersburg. He was bored and, having posted three more letters, he was on his way home. Suddenly his eyes lighted on something with amazement and then assumed their usual expression. Two ladies crossed the boulevard and went into a shop. ‘No, it can’t be,’ he thought. ‘What an idea! I’d have known about it! It can’t be them.’ All the same, he went up to the shop window and examined the ladies through the glass. ‘Can’t see a thing! They are standing with their backs to the windows!’ Stolz went into the shop and asked for something. One of the ladies turned to the light and he recognized Olga Ilyinsky – and did not recognize her! He was about to rush up to her, but stopped and began watching her narrowly. Good Lord, what a change! It was she and not she. The features were the same as hers, but she was pale, her eyes seemed a little hollow, there was no childish smile on her lips, no naivety, no placidity. Some grave, sorrowful thought was hovering over her eyebrows, and her eyes said a great deal they had not known and had not said before. She did not look as she used to – frankly, calmly, and serenely – a cloud of sorrow or perplexity lay over her face.

He went up to her. Her eyebrows contracted a little; for a moment she looked at him in bewilderment, then she recognized him; her eyebrows parted and lay symmetrically, and her eyes shone with the light of a calm and deep, not an impulsive, joy. A brother would be happy if his favourite sister had been as glad to see him.

‘Goodness, is it you?’ she cried in a voice that penetrated to the very soul and that was joyful to the point of ecstasy.

Her aunt turned round quickly, and all three of them began speaking at once. He reproached them for not having written to him, and they made excuses. They had arrived in Paris only two days before and had been looking for him everywhere. At one address they were told that he had gone to Lyons, and they did not know what to do.

‘But what made you come? And not a word to me!’ he reproached them.

‘We made up our minds so quickly,’ said Olga’s aunt, ‘that we didn’t want to write to you. Olga wanted to give you a surprise.’

He glanced at Olga: her face did not confirm her aunt’s words. He looked at her more closely, but she was impervious, inaccessible to his scrutiny.

‘What is the matter with her?’ Stolz thought. ‘I used to guess her thoughts at once, but now – what a change!’

‘How you have grown up, Olga Sergeyevna!’ he said aloud. ‘I don’t recognize you. And it’s scarcely a year since we met. What have you been doing? Tell me!’

‘Oh, nothing special,’ she said, examining some material.

‘How is your singing?’ Stolz asked, continuing to study his new Olga and trying to read the unfamiliar expression on her face; but her expression flashed and disappeared like lightning.

‘I haven’t sung for ages,’ she said in a casual tone of voice. ‘For two months or more.’

‘And how is Oblomov?’ he asked suddenly. ‘Is he alive? Does he write to you?’

At this point Olga might have betrayed her secret had not her aunt come to her rescue.

‘Just fancy,’ she said, walking out of the shop, ‘he used to visit us every day, then he suddenly vanished. After we had made our arrangements for going abroad, I sent a message to him, but was told that he was ill and received no one; so we did not see him again.’

‘Didn’t you know anything, either?’ Stolz asked Olga solicitously.

Olga was examining through her lorgnette a carriage that was driving past.

‘He really had fallen ill,’ she said, looking with feigned attention at the carriage. ‘Look, Auntie, it’s our travelling companions that have just driven past.’

‘No, you must give me a full account of my Ilya,’ Stolz insisted. ‘What have you done to him? Why haven’t you brought him with you?’

‘Mais ma tante vient de dire
,’ she said.

‘He’s frightfully lazy,’ the aunt observed, ‘and so shy that as soon as three or four visitors arrived he went home. Just fancy, he booked a seat at the opera for the season and did not hear half the operas!’

‘He did not hear Rubini,’ Olga added.

Stolz shook his head and sighed.

‘How is it you made up your minds to go abroad? Is it for long? What gave you the idea so suddenly?’ Stolz asked.

‘It’s for her,’ the aunt said, pointing to Olga. ‘On the doctor’s advice. Petersburg was having a distinctly bad effect on her health, and we went away for the winter, but haven’t decided yet where to spend it – at Nice or in Switzerland.’

‘Yes, you have certainly changed a lot,’ Stolz said, looking closely at Olga and scrutinizing every line on her face.

The Ilyinskys spent six months in Paris; Stolz was their daily and only companion and guide. Olga’s health began perceptibly to improve; her brooding gave way to calm and indifference, outwardly at any rate. It was impossible to say what was going on inside her, but she gradually became as friendly to Stolz as before, though she no longer burst into her former loud, child-like, silvery laughter, but only smiled with restraint when Stolz tried to amuse her. Sometimes she seemed to be annoyed at not being able to laugh. He at once realized that she was not to be amused any more: she often listened to some amusing sally of his with a frown between her unsymmetrically-lying eyebrows, looking silently at him, as though reproaching him for his frivolity, or impatient with him; or instead of replying to his joke, she would suddenly ask him some serious question and follow it up with so insistent a look that he felt ashamed of his insipid, empty talk. At times she seemed so weary of the daily senseless rushing about and chatter that Stolz had suddenly to discuss some subject which he seldom and reluctantly discussed with women. How much mental resourcefulness and thought he had to spend so that Olga’s deep questioning eyes should grow bright and calm and should not seek for some answer from someone else. How upset he was when, as a result of a careless explanation, her look became dry and stern, her eyebrows contracted, and a shadow of silent but profound dissatisfaction fell over her face. And he had to spend the next two or three days in applying all the subtlety and even cunning of which he was capable, all his fervour and skill in dealing with women, in order to call forth, little by little and not without difficulty, a glimmer of serenity on her face and the gentleness of reconciliation in her eyes and her smile. Sometimes he returned home in the evening worn out by this struggle, and he was happy when he emerged from it victorious.

‘Dear me, how mature she has grown! How this little girl has developed! Who was her teacher? Where did she take her lessons in life? From the baron? But he is so smooth you can learn
nothing from his exquisitely turned phrases! Not from Ilya, surely?’

He could not understand Olga, and he ran to her again the next day; but this time he read her expression cautiously and with fear; he often felt baffled, and it was only his intelligence and knowledge of life that helped him to deal with the questions, doubts, demands, and everything else he divined in Olga’s features. With the torch of experience in his hands, he ventured into the labyrinth of her mind and character, and each day he discovered new facts and new traits, but was still far from fathoming her, merely watching with amazement and alarm how her mind demanded its daily sustenance and how her soul never ceased asking for life and experience. Every day the life and activity of another person attached itself to Stolz’s life and activity. Having surrounded Olga with flowers, books, music, and albums, Stolz stopped worrying in the belief that he had provided plenty of occupation for his friend’s leisure hours, and he went to work, or to inspect some mine or some model farm, or into society to meet and exchange views with new or remarkable men; then he returned to her tired out, to sit by her piano and rest at the sound of her voice. And suddenly he found in her face new questions and in her eyes an insistent demand for an answer. Gradually, imperceptibly and involuntarily, he laid before her what he had seen that day and why. Sometimes she expressed a wish to see and learn for herself what he had seen and learnt. And he went over his work again: went with her to inspect a building or some place, or an engine, or to read some historical event inscribed on stones or walls. Gradually and imperceptibly he acquired the habit of thinking and feeling aloud in her presence; and one day he suddenly discovered, after subjecting himself to a stern self-examination, that he had someone to share his life with him, and that this had started on the day he met Olga. Almost unconsciously, as though talking to himself, he began to estimate aloud in her presence the value of some treasure he had acquired, and was amazed at himself and her; then he checked up carefully to see whether there was still a question left in her eyes, whether the gleam of satisfied thought was reflected in her face, and whether her eyes followed him as a conqueror. If that was so, he went home with pride, with tremulous emotion, and for hours at night he prepared himself for the next day. The most tedious and indispensable work did not seem dry to him, but merely indispensable: it entered deeper into the very foundation and texture of his life;
thoughts, observations, and events were not put away negligently and in silence into the archives of memory, but lent a brilliant colour to every day that passed. What a warm glow spread over Olga’s pale face when, without waiting for her eager questioning glance, he hastened to throw down before her, with fervour and energy, fresh supplies and new material! And how perfectly happy he was when her mind, with the identical solicitude and charming obedience, hastened to catch his every word and every glance; both observed each other keenly: he looked at her to see whether there still was a question in her eyes, and she at him to see whether he had left anything unsaid or forgotten something or, worst of all, whether he had – heaven forbid! – omitted to open up for her some dark corner, which was still inaccessible to her, or to develop his thought completely. The more important and complicated the subject, the more thoroughly he expounded it to her, and the longer and more attentively her appreciative glance was fixed on him, and the warmer, deeper, and more affectionate it became.

‘That child, Olga!’ he thought in amazement. ‘She is outgrowing me!’

He pondered over Olga as he had never pondered over anything.

In the spring they all went to Switzerland, Stolz having decided already in Paris that he could not live without Olga. Having settled this question, he began wondering whether Olga could live without him or not. But that question was not so easy to answer. He approached it slowly, circumspectly, cautiously, now groping his way, now advancing boldly, and thought that he had practically reached his goal whenever he caught sight of some unmistakable sign, glance, word, boredom, or joy: one more step, a hardly perceptible movement of Olga’s eyebrows, a sigh, and to-morrow the mystery would be solved: she loved him! He could read in her face an almost childish confidence in him; she sometimes looked at him as she would not look at anyone, except perhaps at her mother, if she had a mother. She regarded his visits and the fact that he devoted all his leisure time to her and spent days trying to please her, not as a favour, as a flattering present of love, or as an act of gallantry, but simply as an obligation, as though he were her brother, her father, or even her husband: and that is a great deal, that is everything. She herself was so free and sincere with him in every word she uttered and every step she took that he could not help feeling that he exercised undisputed authority over her. He knew he possessed
such an authority; she confirmed it every moment, told him that she believed him alone and could rely on him blindly in life as she could not rely on anyone in the whole world. He was, of course, proud of it, but then any elderly, intelligent, and experienced uncle could be proud of it, even the baron, if he had been a man of intelligence and character. But was that the sort of authority a man exercised over his beloved? That was the question! Did his authority have that seductive deception of love about it, that flattering blindness through which a woman is ready to be cruelly mistaken and be happy in her mistake? No, she submitted to him consciously. It is true her eyes glowed when he developed some idea or laid bare his soul to her; she gazed on him with radiant eyes, but he could always tell why she did it; sometimes she told him the reason herself. But in love merit is acquired blindly and without any conscious reason, and it is in this blindness and unconsciousness that happiness lies. If she was offended, he could see at once what offended her. He had never caught her unawares blushing suddenly, or being overcome with joy bordering on fear, or looking at him with a languishing or ardent glance; if anything of the kind had happened – if he thought she looked upset when he told her that he would be leaving for Italy in a few days and his heart missed a beat in one of those rare and precious moments – everything seemed suddenly to be hidden under a veil once more.