The Giants of Russian Literature: The Greatest Russian Novels, Stories, Plays, Folk Tales & Legends. Максим Горький

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.”

      “Then it shall be for you that I will sing,” she said to Schtoltz.

      “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.

      As Oblomov listened he could scarcely restrain his tears or the cry of ecstasy that was almost bursting from his soul. In fact, he would have undertaken the tour abroad if thereby he could have remained where he was at that moment, and then gone.

      “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.”

      “Why so? You are a friend of Schtoltz’s, and he is a friend of mine, and therefore——”

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

      “No, there is no reason. But at least there is a possibility that I may do so.”

      “Yes—— thanks to his talkativeness! Indeed a poor service!”

      “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.

      “Yes, to put on odd socks is a grave crime,” she remarked with demure timidity. Oblomov seized his hat.

      “I will not stand this!” he cried. “Yet you want me to feel at home here! As for Schtoltz, I detest him! He told you about the socks, I suppose?”

      “Nay, nay,” she said. “Pardon me this once, and I will try to look at you in quite a different way. As a matter of fact, ’tis you who are looking at me in rather an odd fashion.”

      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!”

      “The important question,” she went on, “is how to preserve you from feeling ennuyé.”

      “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!”

      “No—it is not music that I am feeling,” he replied slowly; “but—but love!”

      ‘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.

II

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      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 СКАЧАТЬ