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

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СКАЧАТЬ you must go and do some more walking,” decided the landlady. “Besides, the fish soup is not yet ready.” And she closed the door upon the pair.

      Oblomov, much against his will, completed another eight pacings of the path, and then entered the dining-room. On the large round table the fish soup was now steaming, and all hastened to take their usual seats—Oblomov in solitary state on the sofa, the landlady on his right, and the rest in due sequence.

      “I will help you to this herring, as it is the fattest,” said Agafia Matvievna.

      “Very well,” he remarked. “Only, I think that a pie would go well with it.”

      “Oh dear! I have forgotten the pies! I meant to make some last night, but my memory is all gone to pieces!” The artful Agafia Matvievna! “Besides, I am afraid that I have forgotten the cutlets and the cabbage. In fact, you must not expect very much of a dinner to-day.” This was addressed ostensibly to Alexiev.

      “Never mind,” he replied. “I can eat anything.”

      “But why not cook him some pork and peas, or a beef-steak?” asked Oblomov.

      “I did go to the butcher’s for a beefsteak, but there was not a single morsel of good beef left. However, I have made Monsieur Alexiev a cherry compote instead. I know he likes that.” The truth was that cherry compote was not bad for Oblomov; wherefore the complacent Alexiev had no choice but both to eat it and to like it.

      After dinner no power on earth could prevent Oblomov from assuming a recumbent position; so, to obviate his going to sleep, the landlady was accustomed to place beside him his coffee, and then to inspire, her children to play games on the floor, so that, willy-nilly, Oblomov should be forced to join in their sport. Presently she withdrew to the kitchen to see if the coffee was yet ready, and, meanwhile, the children’s clatter died away. Almost at once a gentle snore arose in the room—then a louder one—then one louder still; and when Agafia Matvievna returned with the steaming coffee-pot she encountered such a volume of snoring as would have done credit to a post-house.

      Angrily she shook her head at Alexiev.

      “It is not my fault,” he said deprecatingly. “I tried to stir up the children, but they would not listen to me.”

      Swiftly depositing the coffee-pot upon the table, she caught up little Andriusha from the floor, and gently seated him upon the sofa by Oblomov’s side; whereupon the child wriggled towards him, climbed his form until he had reached his face, and grasped him firmly by the nose.

      “Hi! Hullo I Who is that?” cried Oblomov uneasily as he opened his eyes.

      “You had gone to sleep, so Andriusha climbed on to the sofa and awoke you,” replied the landlady kindly.

      “I had gone to sleep, indeed?” retorted Oblomov, laying his arm around the little one. “Do you think I did not hear him creeping along on all fours? Why, I hear everything. To think of the little rascal catching me by the nose! I’ll give it him! But there, there.” Tenderly embracing the child, he deposited him on the floor again, and heaved a profound sigh. “Tell us the news, Ivan Alexiev,” he said.

      “You have heard it all. I have nothing more to tell.”

      “How so? You go into society, and I do not. Is there nothing new in the political world?”

      “It is being said that the earth is growing colder every day, and that one day it will become frozen altogether.”

      “Away with you! Is that politics?”

      A silence ensued. Oblomov quietly relapsed into a state of coma that was neither sleeping nor waking. He merely let his thoughts wander at will, without concentrating them upon anything in particular as calmly he listened to the beating of his heart and occasionally blinked his eyes. Thus he sank into a vague, enigmatical condition which partook largely of the nature of hallucination. In rare instances there come to a man fleeting moments of abstraction when he seems to be reliving past stages of his life. Whether he has previously beheld in sleep the phenomena which are passing before his vision, or whether he has gone through a previous existence and has since forgotten it, we cannot say; but at all events he can see the same persons around him as were present in the first instance, and hear the same words as were uttered then.

      So was it with Oblomov now. Gradually there spread itself about him the hush which he had known long ago. He could hear the beating of the well-known pendulum, the snapping of the thread as it was bitten off, and the repetition of familiar whispered sentences like “I cannot make the thread go through the eye of the needle. Pray do it for me, Masha—your eyesight is keener than mine.”

      Lazily, mechanically he looked into his landlady’s face; and straightway from the recesses of his memory there arose a picture which, somewhere, had been well known to him.

      To his vision there dawned the great, dark drawing-room in the house of his youth, lit by a single candle. At the table his mother and her guests were sitting over their needlework, while his father was silently pacing up and down. Somehow the present and the past had become fused and interchanged, so that, as the little Oblomov, he was dreaming that at length he had reached the enchanted country where the rivers run milk and honey, and bread can be obtained without toil, and every one walks clad in gold and silver.

      Once again he could hear the old legends and the old folk-tales, mingled with the clatter of knives and crockery in the kitchen. Once again he was pressing close to his nurse to listen to her tremulous, old woman’s voice. “That is Militrissa Kirbitievna,” she was saying as she pointed to the figure of his landlady. Also, the same clouds seemed to be floating in the blue zenith that used to float there of yore, and the same wind to be blowing in at the window, and ruffling his hair, and the same cock of the Oblomovkan poultry-yard to be strutting and crowing below. Suddenly a dog barked. Some other guest must be arriving! Would it be old Schtoltz and his little boy from Verklevo? Yes, probably, for to-day is a holiday. And in very truth it is they—he can hear their footsteps approaching nearer and nearer! The door opens, and “Andrei!” he exclaims excitedly, for there, sure enough, stands his friend—but now grown to manhood, and no longer a little boy!...

IV

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      Oblomov recovered consciousness. Before him Schtoltz was standing—but the Schtoltz of the present, not the Schtoltz of a daydream.

      Swiftly the landlady caught up the baby Andriusha, swept the table clear of her work, and carried off the children. Alexiev also disappeared, and Schtoltz and Oblomov found themselves alone. For a moment or two they gazed at one another amid a tense silence.

      “Is that really you. Schtoltz?” asked Oblomov in tones scarcely audible for emotion—such tones as a man employs only towards his dearest friend and after a long separation.

      “Yes, it is I,” replied Schtoltz quietly. “And you—are you quite well?”

      Oblomov embraced him heartily. In that embrace were expressed all the long-concealed grief and joy which, fermenting ever in his soul, had never, since Schtoltz’s last departure, been expressed to any human being. Then they seated themselves, and once more gazed at one another.

      “Are you СКАЧАТЬ