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

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

"Ask, rather, Oblomov," he replied. "Confess now, Ilya: how long is it since you felt as you are feeling at this moment?"

"Yet he might have felt like that this morning if 'a cracked barrel-organ' had happened to pass his window," put in Olga--but so kindly as to rob the words of their sarcasm.

"He never keeps his windows open," remarked Schtoltz. "Consequently, he could not possibly hear what is going on outside."

That night Oblomov was powerless to sleep. He paced the room in a mood of thoughtful despondency, and at dawn left the house to roam the city, with his head and his heart full of God only knows what feelings and reflections!

Three days later he called again at the aunt's.

"I want you," said Olga, "to feel thoroughly at home here."

"Then pray do not look at me as you are doing now, and as you have always done."

Instantly her glance lost its usual expression or curiosity, and became wholly softened to kindness.

"Why do you mind my looking at you so much?" she asked.

"I do not know. Somehow your gaze seems to draw from me everything that I would rather people did not learn--you least of all."

"And therefore there is no reason why you should know as much about me as he does," concluded Oblomov.

"Have you, then, any secrets to conceal--or even crimes?" With a little laugh she edged away from him.

"Perhaps," he said with a sigh.

True enough, he was gazing into her kindly, grey-blue eyes--he was doing so simply because he could not help it--and thinking to himself that never in all the world had he seen a maiden so beautiful.

"Something seems to pass from her into myself," he reflected. "And that something is making my heart beat and boil. My God, what a joy to the eye she is!"

"You can do that by singing to me again."

"Ah, I was expecting that compliment!" The words came from her in a sudden burst as of pleasure. "Do you know, had you not uttered that gasp after I had finished singing the other evening, I should never have slept all night--I should have cried my very eyes out."

"Why?" he asked.

"I do not know. I merely know that that time I sang as I had never done before. Do not ask me to sing now, however--I could not do it."

Nevertheless she did sing to him again; and, ah! what did that song not voice? It seemed to be charged with her very soul.

As she finished, his face was shining with the happiness of a spirit which has been moved to its utmost depths.

"Come!" she said. "Why do you look at me like that?"

"Yet she knew why he was doing so, and a modest touch of triumph that she could so greatly have affected him filled her soul.

"Look at yourself in the mirror," she went on, "and you will see that your eyes are shining, and that--yes, really!--they have tears in them. How deeply you must feel music!"

'Her glance met his, and instantly she saw that he had uttered the word in spite of himself, that the word had got him in its power, and that the word had voiced the truth.

Recovering himself, he picked up his hat, and left the room. When he had gone she remained standing like a statue by the piano--her eyes cast down, and her breast rising and falling tumultuously.

From that time forth she lived in him alone, while he, for his part, racked his brains to avoid incurring the loss of her esteem. Whenever she detected in his soul--and she could probe that soul very deeply--the least trace of its former characteristics, she would work for him to heap himself with reproaches for his lethargy and fear of life. Just as he was about to yawn, as he was actually opening his mouth for the purpose, her astonished glance would transfix him, and cause his mouth to snap with a click which jarred his teeth. Still more did he hasten to resume his alacrity whenever he perceived that his lassitude was communicating itself to her, and threatening to render her cold and contemptuous. Instantly he would undergo a revival of strenuous activity; and then the shadow between them would disappear, and mutual sympathy once more beat in strong, clear accord. Yet this solicitude on his part had not, as yet, its origin in the magic ring of love. Indeed, the effect of his charmed toils was negative rather than positive. True, he no longer slept all day--on the contrary, he rode, read, walked, and even thought of resuming his writing and his agricultural schemes; yet the ultimate direction, the inmost significance, of his life still remained confined to the sphere of good intentions. Particularly disturbing did he find it whenever Olga plied him with some particular question or another, and demanded of him, as of a professor, full satisfaction of her curiosity. This occurred frequently, and arose not out of pedantry on her part, but out of a desire to know the right and the wrong of things.

At times a given question would absorb her even to the point of forgetting her consideration for Oblomov. For instance, on one occasion, when she had besought his opinion concerning double stars, and he was incautious enough to refer her to Herschel, he was dispatched to purchase the great authority's book, and commanded to read it through, and to explain the same to her full satisfaction. On another occasion he was rash enough to let slip a word or two concerning various schools of painting; wherefore he had to undergo another week's reading and explaining, and also to pay sundry visits to the Hermitage Museum. In the end how he trembled whenever she asked him a question!

"Why do you not say something?" she would say to him. "Surely it cannot be that the subject wearies you?"

"No, but how I love you!" he would reply, as though awakening from a trance; to which she would retort--

"Do you really? But that is not what I have just asked you."

On another occasion he said to her--

"Cannot you see what is taking place in me? To me, speaking is a difficulty. Give me your hand, give me your hand! There seems to be something hindering me, something weighing me down. It is a something that is like the great rock which oppresses a man during deep sorrow. And, strangely enough, the effect of it is the same whether I happen to be sad or gay. Somehow my breath seems to hurt me as I draw it, and occasionally I come near to weeping. Yet, like a man overcome with grief, I feel that I should be lightened and relieved if I could weep. What, think you, is amiss with me?"

"Shall I tell you?" she said. "Yes."

"You are in love."

He kissed her hand.

"In love?" she repeated. "I do not like the term for myself. I like you: that is better."

"Even as can an old dressing-gown," she suggested with a smile. Presently she added--

"Yes?"

"Is a duty, an obligation. Consequently love also is a duty. God has sent me that duty, and has bid me perform it." As she spoke she raised her eyes to heaven.

"Who can have inspired her with these ideas?" Oblomov thought to himself. "Neither through experience nor through trial nor through 'fire and smoke' can she have attained this clear, simple conception of life and of love."

"Then, since there is joy in life, is there also suffering?" he asked aloud.

"I do not know," she replied. "That lies beyond my experience as much as it lies beyond my understanding."

"Ah!" she said merrily. "What glances you throw at me sometimes! Even my aunt has noticed it."

"But how can there be joy in love if it never brings one moments of ecstatic delight?"

Next morning, however, he rose pale and sombre. There were traces of sleeplessness on his features, wrinkles on his brow, and a lack of fire and eagerness in his eyes. Once upon a time he would have sunk back upon the pillow after drinking his tea, but now he had grown out of the habit, and contented himself with resting his elbow where his head had just been lying. Something in him was working strongly; but that something was not love. True, Olga's image was still before him, but only at a distance, and in a mist, and shorn of its rays, like that of some stranger. With aching eyes he gazed at it for a moment or two, and then sighed.

How had this mood of his come about? What wind had suddenly affected him? How had it brought with it these clouds? Wherefore was he now for assuming such a grievous yoke? Only last night he had looked into Olga's soul, and seen there a radiant world and a smiling destiny; only last night he had read both her horoscope and his own. What had since happened?

Frequently, in summer, one goes to sleep while the weather is still and cloudless, and the stars are glimmering softly. "How beautiful the countryside will look to-morrow under the bright beams of morning!" one thinks to oneself. "And how glad one will be to dive into the depths of the forest and seek refuge from the heat!" Then suddenly one awakes to the beating of rain, to the sight of grey, mournful clouds, to a sense of cold and damp.

"Yes, that is how the case stands," he said to himself with an access of revulsion. He rose and lit a candle with a trembling hand. "'Tis just that and nothing more. Her heart was ready to accept love--it was tensely awaiting it--and I happened to fall in her way, and at the same time to fall into a blunder. Only would some one else need to arrive for her to renounce that blunder. As soon as ever she saw that some one else she would turn from me with horror. In fact, I am stealing what belongs to another; I am no better than a thief. My God, to think that I should have been so blind!"

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet