Oblomov (75 page)

Suddenly all this was changed.

One day, when he had had his after-dinner nap, he wanted to get up from the sofa and could not; he wanted to say something, but his tongue would not obey him. Terrified, he just waved his hand, calling for help. Had he been living with Zakhar alone, he could have gone on telegraphing with his hand till the morning and in the end died, and have been discovered only on the following day; but the landlady’s eye watched over him like Providence: it was her intuition rather than her intelligence that told her that there was something seriously wrong with Oblomov. And as soon as it had dawned on her, Anisya was sent off posthaste in a cab for a doctor, and Agafya Matveyevna put ice round his head and emptied her medicine cupboard of all its lotions and decoctions – of everything, in fact, that habit and hearsay prompted her to use in the emergency. Even Zakhar managed to put on one of his boots during that time and, forgetting all about his other boot, helped the doctor, Agafya Matveyevna, and Anisya to attend on his master.

Oblomov was brought round, bled, and then told that he had had a stroke and that he would have to lead quite a different kind of life in future. Vodka, beer, wine, and coffee were forbidden him, except on a few rare occasions, as well as meat and all rich and spicy food; instead he was ordered to take exercise every day and sleep in moderation only at night.

Without Agafya Matveyevna’s constant supervision, nothing of this would ever have been carried out, but she knew how to introduce this regime by making the whole household submit to it, and by cunning and affection distracted Oblomov from being tempted by wine, rich fish pies, and after-dinner naps. The moment he dropped off, a chair fell in the room, without apparently any reason whatever, or some old and useless crockery was smashed noisily in the next room, or the children would raise a clamour enough to drive one out of the house. If that did not help, her gentle voice was heard calling him and asking him some question. The garden path was extended into the kitchen garden, and Oblomov walked on it for two hours every morning and evening. Agafya Matveyevna walked with him, or, if she could not, Vanya or Masha, or his old friend Alexeyev, meek, submissive, and always ready to comply with any request.

Here Oblomov was slowly walking down the path, leaning on
Vanya’s shoulder. Vanya, almost a youth by now, wearing his school uniform, could hardly control his quick brisk steps and was trying hard to keep pace with Oblomov, who found it rather difficult to move one of his legs – an after-effect of the stroke.

‘Let’s go back to my room, Vanya, old man,’ Oblomov said.

They set off towards the front door. Agafya Matveyevna met them on the doorstep.

‘Where are you going so soon?’ she asked, not letting them in.

‘It isn’t soon at all I We’ve walked twenty times up and down the path, and there’s about one hundred and thirty yards from here to the fence, so we must have done well over a mile.’

‘How many times have you walked?’ she asked Vanya, who seemed to hesitate with his reply. ‘Don’t you dare lie to me!’ she cried menacingly, looking into his eyes. ‘I can tell at once. Remember Sunday; I won’t let you go out.’

‘Really, Mummy, we did walk – about twelve times!’

‘Oh, you rascal,’ said Oblomov; ‘you kept tearing off the acacia leaves, but I counted every time…’

‘No, you’d better walk a little longer,’ Agafya Matveyevna decided. ‘The fish soup isn’t ready yet, anyway,’ and she slammed the door in their faces.

Oblomov had willy-nilly to count another eight times, and only then went in.

There he found the fish soup steaming on the big round table. Oblomov sat down in his usual place, alone on the sofa; to the right of him sat Agafya Matveyevna on a chair, to the left a child of about three on a small baby chair with a safety-catch. Masha, a girl of about thirteen by now, sat next to the child, then Vanya, and, finally, on that particular day, Alexeyev, who sat facing Oblomov.

‘Let me give you another helping of fish: I’ve found such a fat one!’ said Agafya Matveyevna, putting the fish on Oblomov’s plate.

‘A bit of pie would go down well with this,’ said Oblomov.

‘Dear me, I forgot all about it! I thought of it last night, but it went clean out of my mind! ‘Agafya Matveyevna said craftily. ‘And I’m afraid I forgot to cook some cabbage for your cutlets, Ivan Alexeyevich,’ she added, turning to Alexeyev. ‘I hope you don’t mind.’

That, too, was just a trick.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Alexeyev; ‘I can eat anything.’

‘Why don’t you have some ham with green peas or a beefsteak cooked for him?’ asked Oblomov. ‘He likes it.’

‘I went to the shops myself, Ilya Ilyich, but I couldn’t find any good beef. I had some cherry-juice jelly made for you, though,’ she said, turning to Alexeyev; ‘I know you like it.’

Fruit jelly could do no harm to Oblomov, and that was why Alexeyev, who was always ready to oblige, had to eat it and like it.

After dinner nothing and no one could prevent Oblomov from lying down. He usually lay down on the sofa in the dining-room, but only to rest for an hour. To make sure that he did not fall asleep, Agafya Matveyevna poured out coffee sitting on the sofa beside him, the children played on the carpet, and Oblomov had willy-nilly to take part in it.

‘Don’t tease Andrey,’ he scolded Vanya, who had been teasing the little boy. ‘He’s going to cry any minute.’

‘Masha, my dear, mind Andrey doesn’t knock himself against the chair,’ he warned solicitously, when the child crawled under a chair.

And Masha rushed to rescue her ‘little brother’, as she called him.

All was quiet for a moment while Agafya Matveyevna went to the kitchen to see if the coffee was ready. The children grew quiet. A sound of snoring was heard in the room, first gentle and as though on the sly, then louder, and when Agafya Matveyevna appeared with a steaming coffee-pot, she was met by a snoring as loud as in a coachman’s shelter. She shook her head reproachfully at Alexeyev.

‘I tried to wake him, but he paid no attention,’ Alexeyev said in self-defence.

She quickly put the coffee-pot on the table, seized Andrey from the floor, and put him quietly on the sofa beside Oblomov. The child crawled up to him, reached his face, and grabbed him by the nose.

‘What is it? Who’s this? Eh?’ Oblomov cried in alarm, waking up.

‘You dozed off and little Andrey climbed on the sofa and wakened you,’ Agafya Matveyevna said affectionately.

‘I never dozed off,’ Oblomov protested, taking the little boy in his arms. ‘Do you think I did not hear him crawling up to me on his little arms? I hear everything. Oh, you naughty boy! So you’ve caught me by the nose, have you? I’ll give you such a hiding! You just wait!’ he said, fondling and caressing the
child. He then put him down on the floor and heaved a loud sigh. ‘Tell me something, Alexeyev,’ he said.

‘We’ve discussed everything, Ilya Ilyich. I’ve nothing more to tell you,’ Alexeyev replied.

‘Nothing more? Why, you always go about and meet people. Are you sure there isn’t any news? You read the papers, don’t you!’

‘Yes, sir, I do sometimes – or other people read and talk and I listen. Yesterday at Alexey Spiridonovich’s his son, a university student, read aloud.’

‘What did he read?’

‘About the English, who seem to have sent rifles and gunpowder somewhere. Alexey Spiridonovich said there was going to be a war.’

‘Where did they send it to?’

‘Oh, to Spain or India – I don’t remember, but the ambassador was very much displeased.’

‘What ambassador?’ asked Oblomov.

‘Sorry, I’ve clean forgotten!’ said Alexeyev, raising his nose to the ceiling in an effort to remember.

‘With whom is the war going to be?’

‘With a Turkish pasha, I believe.’

‘Well,’ Oblomov said after a pause, ‘what other news is there in politics?’

‘They write that the earth is cooling down: one day it will be all frozen.’

‘Will it indeed? But that is not politics, is it?’ said Oblomov.

Alexeyev was completely put out.

‘Dmitry Alexeyich,’ he said apologetically, ‘first mentioned politics and then went on reading without saying when he had come to an end with them. I know that after that he went on reading about literature.’

‘What did he read about literature?’ asked Oblomov.

‘Well, he read that the best authors were Dmitriyev, Karam-zin, Batyushkov, and Zhukovsky.’

‘What about Pushkin?’

‘Never mentioned him. I, too, wondered why he wasn’t mentioned. Why, he was a genius!’ said Alexeyev, pronouncing the g in genius hard.

There was a silence. Agafya Matveyevna brought her sewing and began plying her needle busily, glancing now and then at Oblomov and Alexeyev, and listening with her sharp ears for any commotion or noise in the house, to make sure Zakhar was
not quarrelling with Anisya in the kitchen, that Akulina was washing up, that the gate in the yard had not creaked – that is, that the porter had not gone out to the ‘tavern’ for a drink.

Oblomov slowly sank into silence and a reverie: he was neither asleep nor awake, but let his thoughts roam at will light-heartedly, without concentrating them on anything, listening quietly to the regular beating of his heart and blinking from time to time like a man who was not looking at anything in particular. He fell into a vague, mysterious state, a sort of hallucination. There are rare and brief and dream-like moments when a man seems to be living over again something he has been through before at a different time and place. Whether he dreams of what is going on before him now, or has lived through it before and forgotten it, the fact remains that he sees the same people sitting beside him again as before and hears words that have already been uttered once: imagination is powerless to transport him there again and memory does not revive the past, and merely brings on a thoughtful mood. The same thing happened to Oblomov now. A stillness he had experienced somewhere before descended upon him; he heard the ticking of a familiar clock, the snapping of a bitten-off thread; the familiar words were repeated once more, and the whisper: ‘Dear me, I simply can’t thread the needle: you try it, Masha, your eyes are sharper!’ Lazily, mechanically, almost unconsciously he looked into Agafya Matveyevna’s eyes, and out of the depths of his memory there arose a familiar image he had seen somewhere before. He tried to think hard where and when he had heard it all… and he saw before him the big, dark drawing-room in his parents’ house, lighted by a tallow candle, and his mother and her visitors sitting at a round table; they were sewing in silence; his father was walking up and down the room in silence. The present and the past had merged and intermingled. He dreamt that he had reached the promised land flowing with milk and honey, where people ate bread they had not earned and wore gold and silver garments…. He heard the stories of dreams and signs, the clatter of knives, and the rattle of crockery. He clung to his nurse and listened to her old shaky voice: ‘Militrissa Kirbityevna!’ she said, pointing to Agafya Matveyevna. It seemed to him that the same cloud was sailing in the blue sky as then, the same breeze was blowing in at the window and playing with his hair; the Oblomovka turkey cock was strutting about and raising a great clamour under the window. Now a dog was barking: a visitor must have arrived. Was it Andrey and his father
who had come from Verkhlyovo? It was a great day for him. It really must be he: his footsteps were coming nearer and nearer, the door opened…. ‘Andrey!’ he cried. Andrey was, indeed, standing before him, but no longer a boy – he was a middle-aged man.

Oblomov came to: before him stood the real Stolz, not a hallucination, but large as life.

Agafya Matveyevna quickly seized the baby, grabbed her sewing from the table, and took the children away; Alexeyev, too, disappeared. Stolz and Oblomov were left alone, looking silently and motionlessly at each other. Stolz seemed to pierce him with his gaze.

‘Is it you, Andrey?’ asked Oblomov in a voice that was almost inaudible with emotion, as a lover might ask his sweet-heart after a long separation.

‘It’s me,’ Andrey said softly. ‘Are you all right?’

Oblomov embraced him and clung closely to him.

‘Ah!’ he said in reply in a drawn-out voice, putting into that
Ah
all the intensity of the sorrow and gladness that had lain hidden in his heart for a great many years and that had never, not perhaps since their parting, been released by anyone or anything.

They sat down and again looked intently at each other.

‘Are you well?’ asked Andrey.

‘Yes, I’m all right now, thank God.’

‘But you’ve been ill, have you?’

‘Yes, Andrey; I had a stroke.’

‘Really? Good Lord!’ Andrey cried with alarm and sympathy. ‘No after effects?’

‘No, except that I can’t use my left leg freely,’ replied Oblomov.

‘Oh, Ilya, Ilya! What is the matter with you? You’ve gone to seed completely. What have you been doing all this time? Do you realize we haven’t seen each other for almost five years?’

Oblomov fetched a sigh.

‘Why didn’t you come to Oblomovka? Why didn’t you write?’

‘What shall I say to you, Andrey? You know me, so don’t, please, ask me any more,’ Oblomov said sadly.

‘And all the time here in this flat?’ Stolz said, looking round the room. ‘You never moved?’

‘No, I’ve lived here all the time. I’ll never move now.’

‘Do you really mean it? Never?’

‘I really do mean it, Andrey.’

Stolz looked at him intently, fell into thought, and began pacing the room.

‘And Olga Sergeyevna? Is she all right? Where is she? Does she still remember me?’

He broke off.

‘She’s all right, and she remembers you just as though you had parted only yesterday. I’ll tell you presently where she is…’

‘And your children?’

‘They are well too. But tell me, Ilya, are you serious about staying here? You see, I’ve come for you, to take you to us, to the country….’

‘No, no!’ Oblomov cried, lowering his voice and glancing apprehensively at the door, as though he were alarmed. ‘No, please don’t mention it – don’t talk of it.’