Oblomov - Ivan Goncharov [113]
His thoughts went whirling through his mind and he was looking at her as into an endless distance, a bottomless abyss, with self-oblivion and delight.
‘Really, Mr Oblomov, see how you are looking at me now yourself,’ she said, turning her head away shyly, but her curiosity got the better of her and she could not take her eyes off him.
He heard nothing. He really did look at her without hearing her words, and silently listened to what was happening inside him: he touched his head – there, too, something was stirring uneasily, rushing about with unimaginable swiftness. He could not catch his thoughts: they seemed to scurry away like a flock of birds, and there seemed to be a pain in his left side, by the heart.
‘Don’t look at me so strangely,’ she said. ‘It makes me, too, uncomfortable. I expect you also want to extract something from my soul.’
‘What can I get from you?’ he asked mechanically.
‘I, too, have plans, begun and unfinished,’ she replied.
He recovered his senses at this hint at his unfinished plan.
‘Strange,’ he said, ‘you’re spiteful, but you have kind eyes. It’s not for nothing people say that one must never believe women: they lie intentionally with their tongue and unintentionally with their eyes, smile, blushes, and even fainting fits.’
She did not let this impression get stronger, took his hat from him quietly and sat down on a chair herself.
‘I won’t, I won’t,’ she repeated quickly. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have said that! But I swear I wasn’t trying to be sarcastic at all!’ She almost sang, and in the singing of those words emotion stirred.
Oblomov calmed down.
‘Oh that Andrey!’ he said reproachfully.
‘Well, secondly, tell me what I have to do so that you shouldn’t be bored?’ she asked.
‘Sing!’ he said.
‘There, that’s the compliment I was waiting for,’ she said joyfully, flushing. ‘Do you know,’ she went on with animation, ‘if you hadn’t cried “Oh!” after my singing that night, I don’t think I could have slept – I should have cried, perhaps.’
‘Why?’ Oblomov asked in surprise.
She pondered. ‘I don’t know myself,’ she said, after a pause.
‘You’re vain. That’s why.’
‘Yes, of course,’ she said, musing and touching the keys with one hand, ‘but everyone is vain, and very much so. Mr Stolz claims that vanity is almost the only thing that controls a man’s will. I expect you haven’t any, and that is why you’re – –’
She did not finish.
‘I’m what?’ he asked.
‘Oh, nothing,’ she said, changing the subject. ‘I’m fond of Mr Stolz,’ she went on, ‘not only because he makes me laugh – sometimes his words make me cry – and not because he likes me, but I believe because – he likes me more than he likes other people: you see, my vanity betrays me!’
‘You are fond of Mr Stolz?’ Oblomov asked, looking intently and searchingly into her eyes.
‘Why, of course, if he likes me more than he likes other people, then it’s only fair that I should be,’ she replied seriously.
Oblomov looked at her in silence: she answered him with a frank, silent look.
‘He likes Anna Vassilyevna, too, and Zinaida Mikhailovna, but not as much as me,’ she went on. ‘He won’t sit with them for two hours, or make them laugh, or talk frankly to them; he talks about business, about the theatre, the news, but he talks to me as to a sister – no,’ she corrected herself quickly, ‘as to a daughter. Sometimes he even scolds me if I am too slow to understand something, or if I refuse to do as he wishes, or if I do not agree with him. But he never scolds them, and I think I like him all the more because of it. Vanity!’ she added, pensively. ‘But I don’t know how it could have got into my singing. People have often praised it, but you wouldn’t even listen to me – you had almost