Read Ebook: Oblomov by Goncharov Ivan Aleksandrovich Hogarth C J Translator

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 578 lines and 30868 words, and 12 pages

r, and stored in the three rooms until its owner's return.

Without looking, he could tell that Olga had risen from her seat and moved to another corner. This helped to relieve his breast of a certain amount of weight. None the less she continued to contemplate him, in order to see what he would do with the confectionery.

"Probably I had best eat them as quickly as possible," he thought; with which he fell to hurriedly selecting one after another. Luckily all were of the sort which melts in the mouth. When only two of them remained he heaved a sigh of relief, and decided to glance towards the corner where he knew Olga to be seated. Horrors! She was standing by a bust, with one hand resting on its pedestal, and her eyes closely observing him! Nay, she had even come out of her corner to get a closer view of him! Without doubt she must have noted his awkwardness with the biscuits!

True, at supper she sat at the other end or the table, and ate and talked as though she were in no way concerned with him; yet never once did he throw a timid glance in her direction but straightway he encountered her gaze--a gaze which, though good-humoured, was also charged with curiosity. That was enough. He hastened to take leave of her aunt, who invited him to come and dine another day. He bowed, and moved away across the drawing-room without raising his eyes. Presently he encountered a screen, with behind it, the grand piano. He looked again--and behold, behind the screen was seated Olga! She was still gazing at him with intent curiosity. Also, she seemed to him to be smiling.

"Certainly Andrei has often told me that I put on pairs of odd socks, and my shirt inside out," he reflected as he drove home. From that moment he could not get Olga's glance out of his head. In bed he lay on his back and tried to adopt the most comfortable attitudes; yet still he could not sleep....

One fine morning Tarantiev came and carried off the rest of Oblomov's furniture; with the result that its owner spent three such days as he had never before experienced--days during which he was bedless and sofa-less, and therefore driven to dine at the house of Olga's aunt. Suddenly he noticed that opposite the aunt's house there stood an untenanted villa. Consequently he hired it at sight, and went to live there. Thereafter he spent his whole time with Olga--he read with her, he culled flowers with her, he walked by the lake and over the hills with her. Yes, he, Oblomov! How came this about? It came about thus.

On the evening of the fateful dinner-party at the aunt's house Oblomov experienced the same torture during the meal as he had done on the previous occasion. Every word that he spoke he uttered with an acute sense that over him, like a searchlight, there was hovering that glance, and that it was burning and irritating him, and that it was stimulating his nerves and blood. Surely, on the balcony, he thought, he would be able, when ensconced behind a cloud of tobacco smoke, to succeed in momentarily concealing himself from that silent, that insistent gaze?

"What does it all mean?" he said to himself as he rocked himself to and fro. "Why, it is sheer torture! Have I made myself ridiculous? At no one else would she dare to stare as she does at me. I suppose it is because I am quieter than the rest. However, I will make an agreement with her. I will tell her, in so many words, that her eyes are dragging my very soul out of my body."

Suddenly she appeared on the threshold of the balcony. He handed her a chair, and she took a seat beside him.

"Ah? Schtoltz tells me that you are engaged in drawing up a scheme of some sort?"

"Yes. I want to live upon my estate, and am making a few preparations for doing so."

"And you are going abroad?"

"Undoubtedly--as soon as ever Schtoltz is ready to accompany me."

"Shall you be very glad to go?"

"Yes, very."

He looked at her. A smile wras hovering on her face, and illuminating her eyes, and gradually spreading over her cheeks. Only her lips remained as pressed together as usual. He lacked the spirit to continue his lies calmly.

"Lazy?" she exclaimed with a scarcely perceptible touch of archness. "What? A man be lazy? That passes my comprehension."

"But I expect you write a great deal?" she went on. "And have you read much?" Somehow her gaze seemed very intent.

"No, I cannot say that I have." The words burst from him in a sudden fear lest she should see fit: to put him through a course of literary examination.

"What do you mean?" she inquired, laughing. Then he too laughed.

"I thought that you were going to crossquestion me about some novel or another," he explained. "But, you see, I never read such things."

"Then you thought wrong. I was only going to ask you about a few books of travel."

He glanced at her quickly. Her lips were still compressed, but the rest of her face was smiling.

"I must be very, careful with her," he refleted.

"It happens that I am particularly fond of books of travel," he replied.

"And are you also musical?" she continued, in order to relieve him of his embarrassment. At this moment Schtoltz appeared on the scene.

"Ha, Ilya!" he cried. "I have told Olga Sergievna that you adore music, and that to-night she must sing something--'Casta Diva,' for example."

"Why did you speak for me at all?" protested Oblomov. "I am by no means an adorer of music."

"What?" Schtoltz exclaimed. "Why, the man is offended! I introduce him as a person of taste, and here is he stumbling over himself to destroy his good reputation!"

"I am only declining the r?le of connoisseur," said Oblomov. "'Tis too difficult and risky a r?le. Sometimes I can listen with pleasure to a cracked barrel-organ, and its tunes stick in my memory; while at other times I leave the Opera before the piece is half over. It all depends upon the mood in which I am. In fact, there are moments when I could close my ears even to Mozart."

"Sing him something," requested Schtoltz.

"But suppose that Monsieur Oblomov were, at this very moment, to be feeling inclined to close his ears?" she said as she turned to him.

"I suppose I ought to utter some compliment or another," he replied. "But I cannot do so, and I would not, even if I could."

"Why?"

"Because," was Oblomov's na?ve rejoinder, "things would be so awkward for me if I were to find that you sing badly."

"Even as, the other day, you found things awkward with the biscuits?" she retorted before she could stop herself. The next moment she reddened as though she would have given worlds to have been able to recall her words. "Pardon me," she added. "I ought not to have said that."

Oblomov had been unprepared, and was quite taken aback.

"That was a cruel advantage," he murmured.

"No--only a small revenge for your failure to have had a compliment ready."

"Then perhaps I will have one ready when I have heard you sing."

"'You wish me to sing, then?"

"But what of yourself?"

Oblomov shook his head deprecatingly.

"I could not wish for what I have not yet experienced," he said.

"You are very rude, Ilya," put in Schtoltz. "See what comes of lolling about at home and confining your efforts to having your socks put on for you."

"Pardon me," said Oblomov quickly, and without giving him time to finish. "I should find it no trouble to say: 'I shall be most glad, most delighted, to hear you sing, for of course you sing perfectly.' So," he went on, "'it will afford me the very greatest possible pleasure.' But do you really think it necessary?"

"At least you might express a desire that I should sing--if only out of curiosity."

"I dare not do so," replied Oblomov. "You are not an actress."

"While you, Ilya," he added, "can be getting your compliment ready."

Evening was closing in, and the lamp had been lit. Moonlike, it cast through the ivy-covered trellis a light so dim that the dusk still veiled the outlines of Olga's face and figure--it still shrouded them, as it were, in crepe; while the soft, strong voice, vibrating with nervous tension, came ringing through the darkness with a note of mystery. At Schtoltz's prompting she sang several arias and romances, of which some expressed suffering, with a vague forecast of joy, while others expressed joy, coupled with a lurking germ of sorrow.

"Have I pleased you to-night?" she inquired of Schtoltz.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet