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By Root 2267 0

next three or four days, or at most a week, had a profound effect on her and moved her a long way forward. Only women are capable of such a rapid expansion of all their powers and development of all sides of their nature. She seemed to be going through the course of life by hours rather than by days. And every hour the smallest and barely perceptible experience or incident that flashes past a man’s nose like a bird, is seized with inexpressible quickness by a young girl: she follows its flight in the distance, and the curve it describes remains indelibly engraved on her memory as a sign or a lesson. Where a man needs a signpost with an inscription, a girl is satisfied with a faint rustle of the wind or a hardly audible tremor of the air. Why does a girl, whose face was so care-free and so ridiculously naïve, suddenly look so grave? What is she thinking of? It seems everything is contained in this thought of hers, the whole of man’s logic, of his speculative and experimental philosophy, the whole system of life! The cousin who not so long ago left her a little girl has finished his course, put on his epaulettes, runs up to her gaily, intending to pat her as before on the shoulder, to spin her round by the hands, to jump with her over chairs and sofas – but after one intent look at her face, he suddenly grows timid, walks away confused, realizing that he is still a boy while she is already a woman! Why? What has happened? A drama? Some great event? Some news that the whole town knows? Nothing has happened – mother, uncle, aunt, nurse, maid know nothing about it. Nor has there been time for anything to happen: she has danced two mazurkas and a few quadrilles and she had a headache for some reason: she spent a sleepless night.… And then it all passed off, except that there was something new in her face: she looked differently, she stopped laughing aloud, she did not eat a whole pear at one go, or tell how ‘at school they used to – –’. She, too, had finished her course.

The next day, and the day after, Oblomov, like the cousin, hardly recognized Olga, and looked at her timidly, while she looked at him simply, just as at other people, without her former curiosity or kindliness.

‘What is the matter with her? What is she thinking or feeling now?’ he tormented himself with questions. ‘I’m hanged if I can make head or tail of it.’ And how indeed could he grasp the fact that what had happened to her, happens to a man of twenty-five with the help of twenty-five professors and libraries, after roaming about the world, and sometimes even at the cost of the loss of some of his moral freshness and physical and intellectual fitness – that is, that she had become a fully conscious human being. This she had achieved easily and practically at no cost at all.

‘No,’ Oblomov decided, ‘this is awfully boring. I’ll move to Vyborg, I’ll work, read, then go to Oblomovka – alone!’ he added with profound dejection. ‘Without her! Farewell, my paradise, my bright and peaceful ideal of life!’

He did not go to Olga’s on the fourth or the fifth day; he did not read or write; he tried to go for a walk, but on coming out on to the dusty road going uphill, he said to himself: ‘Why should I drag myself out in such a heat?’ He yawned, went back home, lay down on the sofa, and sank into a heavy sleep as he used to in Gorokhovaya Street, in his dusty room, with the curtains drawn. His dreams were confused. Waking up, he saw the table set for dinner: cold fish and vegetable soup, Vienna steak. Zakhar stood looking sleepily out of the window; in the next room Anisya was rattling the plates. He had his dinner and sat down by the window. It was so boring, so absurd – always alone! Again he did not want to do anything or go out anywhere.

‘Have a look, sir, at the kitten our neighbours have given us,’ Anisya said, hoping to distract him and putting the kitten on his knee. ‘Would you like it? You asked for one yesterday.’

He began stroking the kitten, but that, too, was boring.

‘Zakhar!’ he said.

‘Yes, sir?’ Zakhar responded listlessly.

‘I’m