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

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СКАЧАТЬ 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?”

      She looked at him with a smile of happiness which nothing could disturb. Evidently no weight was pressing upon her heart.

      “Shall I tell you?” she said. “Yes.”

      “You are in love.”

      He kissed her hand.

      “And you?” he asked. “Are you in love?”

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

      “‘I like you’?” he re-echoed. “But a mother or a father or a nurse or even a dog may be liked: the phrase may be used as a garment, even as can, can—”

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

      “Whether I am actually in love with you or not I hardly know. Perhaps it is a stage that has not yet arrived. All I know is that I have never liked father or mother or nurse or dog as I like you. I feel lost without you. To be parted from you for a short while makes me sorry; to be parted from you for a long while makes me sad; and, were you to die, I should wear mourning for the rest of my life, and never again be able to smile. To me such love is life, and life is——”

      “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.”

      “But how well I understand it!”

      “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?”

      “What?” she replied with a glance at the scene around her. “Is not all this so much ecstatic delight?” She looked at him, smiled, and gave him her hand. “Do you think,” she continued, “that presently I shall not be sorry when you take your leave? Do you think that I shall not go to bed the earlier in order that I may the sooner fall asleep, and cheat the wearisome night, and be able to see you again in the morning?” The light in Oblomov’s face had become brighter and brighter with each successive question, and his gaze more and more suffused with radiance.

III

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      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.

      “To live as God wills, and not as oneself wills, is a wise rule,” he murmured. “Nevertheless———”

      “Clearly that is so,” presently he went on. “Otherwise, one would fall into a chaos of contradictions such as no human mind, however daring and profound, could hope to resolve. Yesterday one has wished, to-day one attains the madly longed-for object, and tomorrow one will blush to think that one ever desired it. Therefore one will fall to cursing life. And all because of a proud, independent striding through existence and a wilful ‘I will’! No; rather does one need to feel one’s way, to close one’s eyes, to avoid becoming either intoxicated with happiness or inclined to repine because it has escaped one. Yes, that is life. Who was it first pictured life as happiness and gratification? The fool! ‘Life is a duty,’ says Olga. ‘Life is a grave obligation which must be fulfilled as such.’” He heaved a profound sigh.

      “No, I cannot visit Olga to-day,” he went on. “My eyes are now open, and I see my duty before me. Better part with her now, while it is still possible, than later, when I shall have sworn to part with her no more.”

      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 СКАЧАТЬ