Oblomov - Ivan Goncharov [116]
But let us see what sort of a woman Olga was.
For many days after his sudden avowal they did not see each other alone. He hid like a schoolboy as soon as he caught sight of Olga. She had changed towards him, but did not avoid him and was not cold to him, but had merely grown more thoughtful. He could not help feeling that she was sorry something had happened that prevented her from tormenting him with her inquisitive glances and teasing him good-humouredly for his lying about, his laziness, and his clumsiness. She would have liked to make fun of him, but it was the sort of fun enjoyed by a mother who cannot help smiling at her son’s comic get-up. Stolz had gone away, and she was bored to have no one to sing to; her piano was closed – in short, both felt constrained and awkward. And how wonderfully it had all gone at first! How simply had they come to know each other! How easily they had become friends! Oblomov was much more simple than Stolz, and more kind, too, though he did not amuse her so well – or rather he amused her by being what he was, and forgave her mockery so easily. Besides, before leaving, Stolz put Oblomov in her charge; he asked her to keep an eye on him and prevent him from stopping at home. In her clever, pretty little head she had devised a detailed plan of how she would break Oblomov of his habit of sleeping after dinner – and not only of sleeping but also of lying down on the sofa in the daytime; she would make him promise her. She dreamed of how she would ‘tell him’ to read the books Stolz had left behind, to read the newspapers every day and tell her the news, to write letters to his estate, to finish his plan of estate management, to get ready to go abroad – in a word, she would not let him drowse; she would show him his aim in life, make him love once more the things he cared for no longer, and Stolz, when he returned, would not recognize him. And she – the silent, shy Olga – would perform this miracle, she, who had not yet begun to live and whom no one had even obeyed so far! She would be the cause of this transformation! It had begun already; the moment she began singing, Oblomov was a different person.… He would live, work, and bless life and her. To restore a man to life – why, think of the glory a doctor won when he restored a hopeless invalid to health! And what about saving a man whose mind and soul were facing moral ruin? The very thought of it made her tremble with pride and joy; she looked upon it as a task assigned to her from above. In her mind she made him her secretary, her librarian. And suddenly all that had come to an end! She did not know what she ought to do and that was why she was silent when she met Oblomov.
Oblomov was tortured by the thought that he had shocked and offended her and he was expecting annihilating glances and cold severity, and he trembled when he caught sight of her, hastening to turn aside. In the meanwhile he had already moved to the country villa, and for three days walked alone over marshy ground to the forest, or went to the village and sat idly by the gates of some peasant’s cottage watching the children and the calves run about and the ducks swimming around in the pond. There was a lake and a huge park near his house: he did not go there because he was afraid of meeting Olga by herself. ‘What did I want to blurt it out for?’ he thought, without even asking himself whether the words he had uttered were true, or were due to the momentary action of the music on his nerves. The feeling of awkwardness, shame, or ‘disgrace’, as he called it, which he had brought on himself, prevented him from examining the nature of that outburst and, generally, what Olga meant to him. He no longer analysed the new thing that had entered his heart – a sort of lump that had not been there before. All his feelings coiled up into a huge ball of shame. And when she appeared for a moment before his imagination, there rose simultaneously that image, too, that ideal of incarnate peace, happiness, life: this ideal was the exact copy of – Olga. The two images