Oblomov (41 page)

‘Why don’t you wash your hands?’ Oblomov cried angrily, pointing to a stain. ‘Look at it!’

‘My hands are clean, sir,’ Zakhar replied, looking away.

‘Anisya! Anisya!’ cried Oblomov.

Anisya thrust her head and shoulders in at the door.

‘Look what Zakhar has done!’ he complained to her. ‘Take this letter and give it to the maid or the man-servant who calls from the Ilyinskys, for the young lady. Do you hear?’

‘Yes, sir. Let me have it, I’ll see that it’s delivered.’

But as soon as she left the room Zakhar snatched the letter out of her hands.

‘Go along,’ he shouted, ‘and mind your own business.’

Soon the maid came again. Zakhar was opening the door to her, and when Anisya was about to go up to it, he glared furiously at her.

‘What do you want here?’ he asked hoarsely.

‘I’ve just come to hear what you – –’

‘All right, all right,’ he thundered, threatening her with his elbow. ‘Out you go!’

She smiled and went out, but watched through a crack in the door to see if Zakhar was carrying out his master’s orders.

Hearing the noise, Oblomov himself rushed out into the hall.

‘What is it, Katya?’ he asked.

‘My mistress, sir, sent me to ask where you have gone but it seems you haven’t gone anywhere. You’re at home. I’ll run and tell her,’ she said, turning to go.

‘Of course I’m at home,’ said Oblomov. ‘Zakhar is always talking nonsense. Here, give this letter to your mistress.’

‘Yes, sir, I will.’

‘Where is she now?’

‘She’s gone for a walk in the village, sir. She asked me to tell you, sir, if you’d finished the book, to come to the park at two o’clock.’

Katya went away.

‘I won’t go,’ Oblomov thought, walking towards the village. ‘Why exacerbate one’s feelings when all should be over?’

From a distance he saw Olga walking up the hill; he watched Katya overtaking her and giving her the letter; he saw Olga stop for a moment, glance at the letter, think it over, then nod to Katya and turn into the avenue leading to the park.

Oblomov made a detour, and walking past the hill, entered the same avenue from the other end and, half-way down it, sat down on the grass among the bushes and waited.

‘She’s bound to pass here,’ he thought. ‘I’ll just peep at her unobserved, see how she is, and then go away for ever.’

He listened for the sound of her footsteps with a sinking heart. No – all was quiet. Nature carried on with her never-ceasing work: all around him unseen, tiny creatures were busy while everything seemed to be enjoying a solemn rest. In the grass everything was moving, creeping, bustling. Ants were running in different directions, looking very busy and engrossed in their work, running into one another, scampering about, hurrying – it was just like looking from a height at a busy marketplace: the same small crowds, the same crush, the same bustle. Here a bumble-bee was buzzing about a flower and crawling into its calyx; here hundreds of flies were clustering round a drop of resin running out of a small crack in a lime-tree; and somewhere in the thicket a bird had long been repeating one and the same note, perhaps calling to its mate. Two butterflies, flying round and round one another, danced off precipitately as in a waltz among the tree trunks. The grass exuded a strong fragrance; an unceasing din rose from it.

‘What a row is going on here,’ he thought, watching intently
all this bustle and listening to the faint noises of nature. ‘And outside everything is so still, so quiet.’

But there was no sound of footsteps. At last – yes! ‘Oh,’ Oblomov sighed, quietly parting the branches, ‘it is she – she… But what’s this? She’s crying! Good heavens!’

Olga walked slowly along, wiping her tears with a handkerchief; but no sooner had she wiped them, than fresh tears came. She was ashamed of them, she tried to swallow them, to hide them from the very trees, but she could not. Oblomov had never seen Olga cry; he did not expect it, and her tears seemed to burn him, but in a way that made him feel warm, not hot. He walked quickly after her.

‘Olga, Olga!’ he called tenderly, as he followed her.

She gave a start, looked round, gazed at him in surprise, then turned away and walked on.

He walked beside her.

‘You’re crying?’ he said.

Her tears flowed faster than ever. She could no longer keep them back and, pressing her handkerchief to her face, she burst into sobs and sat down on the nearest seat.

‘What have I done!’ he whispered in dismay, taking her hand and trying to draw it away from her face.

‘Leave me, please!’ she said. ‘Go away. Why are you here? I know I ought not to cry. For what is there to cry about? You are right: yes, anything might happen!’

‘What can I do to make you stop crying?’ he asked, going down on his knees before her. ‘Tell me, command me. I am ready for anything.’

‘You’ve made me cry, but it’s not in your power to stop my tears. You’re not so strong as all that! Let me go, sir!’ she said, fanning her face with her handkerchief.

He looked at her and cursed himself inwardly.

‘The stupid letter!’ he said penitently.

She opened her work-basket, took out the letter and gave it him.

‘Take it,’ she said, ‘and carry it away with you so that I don’t cry any longer looking at it.’

He put it in his pocket silently and sat beside her, hanging his head.

‘At any rate you will do justice to my intention, Olga, won’t you?’ he said softly. ‘It proves how dear your happiness is to me.’

‘Yes, it does,’ she said, sighing. ‘I’m afraid, Mr Oblomov, you
must have begrudged me my peaceful happiness and you hastened to destroy it.’

‘Destroy it! So you haven’t read my letter? I’ll repeat it to you…’

‘I haven’t read it to the end because I could not see it for tears: I’m still so silly. But I guessed the rest. Please, don’t repeat it, for you will only make me cry again.’

Her tears began to flow again.

‘But,’ he began, ‘am I not giving you up because of your future happiness? Am I not sacrificing myself? Do you think I am doing this cold-bloodedly? Am I not weeping inwardly? Why do you think I am doing it?’

‘Why?’ she repeated, turning to him and leaving off crying suddenly. ‘For the same reason that you hid in the bushes to see whether I would cry and how I would cry – that’s why! Had you sincerely meant what you have written, had you been convinced that we ought to part, you would have gone abroad without seeing me.’

‘What an idea!…’he said reproachfully, and fell silent.

He was struck by her suggestion because he suddenly realized that it was true.

‘Yes,’ she confirmed, ‘yesterday you wanted me to say “I love you,” to-day you wanted to see me cry, and to-morrow you may want to see me die.’

‘Olga, how can you say a thing like that! Surely, you must know that I’d gladly give half my life now to hear you laugh and not to see your tears.’

‘Yes, perhaps now when you have already seen a woman weeping for you, No,’ she added, ‘you have no pity. You say you didn’t want my tears. Well, if you really meant it, you wouldn’t have made me cry.’

‘But I didn’t know, did I?’ he cried, pressing both his hands to his chest.

‘A loving heart has its own way of reasoning,’ she replied. ‘It knows what it wants, and knows what is going to happen. Yesterday I shouldn’t have come here because we had some visitors who arrived suddenly, but I knew how upset you would have been waiting for me and that you might have slept badly: so I came because I did not want you to suffer.… And you – you are glad because I am crying. Well, look at me and be happy!’

And she began to cry again.

‘I have slept badly as it is, Olga. I had an awful night.…’

‘So you were sorry that I slept well, that I didn’t have an
awful night, were you?’ she interrupted. ‘Had I not been crying now, you would have slept badly to-night, wouldn’t you?’

‘What am I to do now?’ he said with submissive tenderness. ‘Say I am sorry?’

‘Only children do that, or people who tread on a person’s toes in a crowd – it’s no good your being sorry,’ she said, fanning her face with her handkerchief again.

‘But what if it’s true, Olga? I mean, what if I am right and our love is a mistake? What if you fall in love with another and blush when you look at me?’

‘Well, what if I do?’ she asked, looking at him with such deep, piercing, ironical eyes that he felt embarrassed.

‘She is out to get something from me!’ he thought. ‘Take care, Oblomov!’

‘What do you mean – “if I do?”’ he repeated mechanically, looking at her anxiously and at a loss to know what was at the back of her mind and how she would explain her question, since it was obvious that it was impossible to justify their love if it was a mistake.

She looked at him with such conscious deliberation and confidence that it was clear that she knew what she was talking about.

‘You are afraid,’ she replied bitingly, ‘of falling “to the bottom of the abyss”. You are afraid of being made a fool of if I should cease loving you. “It will go badly with me,” you write.’

He still did not quite understand her.

‘But don’t you see if I fell in love with another man, I should be happy, shouldn’t I? And don’t you say that you know I shall be happy in future and that you are ready to sacrifice everything, even your life, for me?’

He looked intently at her, blinking from time to time.

‘So that’s her logic!’ he whispered. ‘I must say I didn’t expect that.…’

And she looked him up and down with such annihilating irony.

‘And what about the happiness that is driving you mad?’ she went on. ‘And these mornings and evenings, this park, my “I love you” – isn’t this all worth something, some sacrifice, some pain?’

‘Oh, I wish I could sink through the ground!’ he thought, feeling miserable, as he grasped Olga’s meaning more and more.

‘And what if you grew tired of this love,’ she began warmly with another question, ‘as you have grown tired of books, of your work at the Civil Service, of society? What if in due course,
even if I have no rival, if you don’t fall in love with some other woman, you just drop asleep beside me as on your sofa, and even my voice won’t waken you? If that lump in your heart disappears, if not even another woman, but your dressing-gown becomes dearer to you than I?’

‘Olga, that’s impossible!’ he interrupted, displeased, and drew away from her.

‘Why is it impossible?’ she asked, ‘You say that I am mistaken, that I will fall in love with somebody else, and I can’t help feeling sometimes that you will simply fall out of love with me. And what then? How shall I justify myself for what I am doing now? What shall I say to myself, let alone to other people or society? I, too, sometimes spend sleepless nights because of this, but I do not torture you with conjectures about the future because I believe that everything will be for the best. With me happiness overcomes fear. I think it is something if your eyes begin to shine because of me, when you climb hills in search of me, when you forget your indolence and rush off in the heat to town for some flowers or a book for me, when I see that I make you smile and wish to live.… I am waiting and searching for one thing – happiness, and I believe I have found it. If I am making a mistake, if it is true that I shall weep over it, at any rate I feel here’ (she put her hand to her heart) ‘that I am not to blame for it; it will mean that it was not to be, that it was not God’s will. But I am not afraid of having to shed tears in the future; I shall not be weeping for nothing: I still have bought something for them.… I was so happy – till now!’ she added.

‘Do go on being happy!’ Oblomov besought her.

‘And you see nothing but gloom ahead; happiness is nothing to you. This,’ she went on, ‘is ingratitude. It isn’t love, it is – –’

‘– egoism!’ Oblomov finished the sentence for her, not daring to look at Olga or to speak or to ask her forgiveness.

‘Go,’ she said softly, ‘where you wanted to go to.’

He looked at her. Her eyes were dry. She was looking down thoughtfully and drawing in the sand with her parasol.

‘Lie down on your back again,’ she added, ‘You won’t be making a mistake then, you won’t “fall into an abyss”.’

‘I’ve poisoned myself and poisoned you instead of being happy simply and openly,’ he murmured penitently.

‘Drink
kvas:
it won’t poison you,’ she taunted him.

‘Olga, that’s not fair!’ he said. ‘After I’ve been punishing myself with the consciousness of – –’

‘Yes, in words you punish yourself, throw yourself into an
abyss, give half your life, but when you are overwhelmed by doubt and spend sleepless nights how tender you become with yourself, how careful and solicitous, how far-seeing!’

‘How true and simple it is!’ thought Oblomov, but he was ashamed to say it aloud. Why had he not understood it himself, but had to wait for a woman who had scarcely begun to live to explain it to him? And how quickly she had grown up! Only a short time ago she had seemed such a child!

‘We’ve nothing more to say to each other,’ she concluded, getting up. ‘Good-bye, and keep your peace of mind. That’s your idea of happiness, isn’t it?’

‘Olga, no, for God’s sake, no! Don’t drive me away now everything has become clear again,’ he said, taking her hand.

‘But what do you want of me? You are not sure whether my love for you is a mistake and I cannot dispel your doubts. Perhaps it is a mistake – I don’t know.’

He let go her hand. Again the knife was raised over him.

‘You don’t know? But don’t you feel?’ he asked, looking doubtful once more. ‘Do you think – –’

‘I don’t think anything. I told you yesterday what I felt, but I don’t know what’s going to happen in a year’s time. And do you really think that one happiness is followed by another and then by a third just like it?’ she asked, looking open-eyed at him. ‘Tell me, you’ve had more experience than I.’

But he was no longer anxious to confirm her in the idea, and he was silent, shaking an acacia branch with one hand.

‘No,’ he said, like a schoolboy repeating a lesson, ‘one only loves once!’

‘There, you see: I believe it too,’ she added. ‘But if it is not so, then perhaps I shall fall out of love with you, perhaps I shall suffer from my mistake and you too, perhaps we shall part!… To love two or three times – no.… I don’t want to believe it!’