Oblomov - Ivan Goncharov [126]
‘My dear child,’ the aunt said, ‘green ribbons do not suit you at all. Why not take straw-coloured ones?’
‘But, Auntie dear, I’ve worn straw-coloured ones six times already: people will get tired of it.’
‘Well, take pensée.’
‘And do you like these?’
The aunt looked at them carefully and shook her head slowly.
‘As you like, my dear, but if I were you I’d take straw-coloured or pensée.’
‘No, Auntie, I’d rather take these,’ Olga said gently, and took what she wanted.
Olga asked her aunt’s advice not because she regarded her as an authority whose word was law, but as she would have asked any woman more experienced than she.
‘You’ve read this book, Auntie,’ she used to say. ‘What is it like?’
‘Oh, it’s horrible!’ said the aunt, pushing the book away, but not hiding it or taking any other measures to prevent Olga from reading it.
And it would never have occurred to Olga to read it. If neither knew what the book was like, they asked Baron von Landwagen or Stolz, if he was available, and the book was read or not, according to their verdict.
‘My dear,’ the aunt might say sometimes, ‘I was told something yesterday about the young man who often talks to you at the Zavadskys’ – a rather silly story.’
And that was all. She left it to Olga to decide whether to talk to him or not.
Oblomov’s appearance in the house gave rise to no questions and attracted no particular attention on the part of the aunt, the baron, or Stolz himself. Stolz wanted to introduce his friend to a house where a certain decorum was observed, where people were not only not supposed to have a nap after their dinner, but where it was not considered proper to cross one’s legs, where one was expected to change for dinner and remember what one was talking about – in short, where one could not doze off or sink idly into a chair and where there was always lively conversation on some topic of general interest. Stolz, besides, thought that the presence of a sympathetic, intelligent, lively, and a little ironical young woman in Oblomov’s somnolent life would be like bringing into a gloomy, dark room a lamp that would shed an even light into all corners, raise its temperature by a few degrees and make it much more cheerful. That was all he tried to achieve in introducing his friend to Olga. He did not foresee that he was introducing a bomb that was liable to explode – neither did Olga, nor Oblomov.
Oblomov spent two hours with Olga’s aunt, taking care to be on his best behaviour, without crossing his legs once and talking with the utmost decorum about everything; he even succeeded in twice pushing the footstool under her feet very dexterously. The baron arrived, smiled politely, and shook hands affably. Oblomov behaved still more decorously, and all three were extremely pleased with one another. Olga’s aunt had considered Olga’s walks and private talks with Oblomov as – or rather, she did not consider them at all. To go out for walks with a young man, a dandy, would have been quite a different matter: she would not have said anything even then, but with her usual tact would have imperceptibly arranged things differently: she would have accompanied them herself once or twice, sent someone else to chaperon her niece another time, and the walks would have come to an end by themselves. But to go out for a walk with ‘Mr Oblomov’, to sit with him in the corner of the large drawing-room or on the balcony – what did that matter? He was over thirty, and he was the last person in the world to talk sweet nothings to her or give her any improper books to read. Such a thing never occurred to any of them. Besides, the aunt had heard Stolz ask Olga on the eve of his departure not to let Oblomov doze, not to allow him to sleep in the daytime, but to worry him, make him do things, give him all sorts of commissions – in short, to take charge of him. And she, too, was asked not to lose sight of Oblomov, to invite him as often as possible, to see that he joined them in their walks and excursions, to rouse him in every possible way,