Oblomov - Ivan Goncharov [130]
‘The young lady, sir, asked you to come to – oh dear, what do you call it?’ he announced.
‘Why didn’t you tell me about it two hours ago?’ Oblomov asked hastily.
‘You ordered me out of the room, sir,’ Zakhar replied. ‘You never let me finish.…’
‘Oh, you’ll be the death of me, Zakhar,’ Oblomov cried pathetically.
‘Oh dear, he’s starting again,’ Zakhar thought, turning his left whisker towards his master and gazing at the wall. ‘Just as he did the other day – sure to say something horrible.’
‘Where am I supposed to go?’ asked Oblomov.
‘Well, sir, that what-d’you-call-it – the garden, is it?’
‘The park?’ asked Oblomov.
‘Yes, sir, the park. She said to me, sir, would your master like to go for a walk, she said. I’ll be there, she said.’
‘Help me to dress!’
Oblomov ran all over the park, looked round all the flowerbeds, glanced into the summer-houses – not a sign of Olga. He walked along the avenue where they had had their talk, and found her there on a seat near the place where she had plucked and thrown away the sprig of lilac.
‘I thought you would never come,’ she said in a kindly voice.
‘I’ve been looking for you all over the park,’ he replied.
‘I knew you would be looking for me and sat down in this avenue on purpose. I thought you would be quite sure to walk through it.’
He was about to ask her what made her think so, but glancing at her, he said nothing. She looked different, not as she had been when they walked here, but as he had left her last time, when her expression had so greatly alarmed him. Even her kindness seemed somehow restrained, and her expression so concentrated and so definite; he saw that she would no longer be put off with guesses, hints, and naïve questions, that she had left that gay and childish moment behind her. Much of what had remained unsaid between them, and that might have been approached with a sly question, had been settled without words or explanations, goodness knows how, and there was no going back on it.
‘Why haven’t you been to see us all this time?’ she asked.
He made no answer. He would have liked to make her feel somehow or other that the secret charm of their relations had gone, that he was oppressed by the air of concentration which seemed to envelop her like a cloud. She seemed to have withdrawn within herself and he did not know how to behave towards her. But he felt that the slightest hint of this would make her look surprised and grow still colder towards him, and perhaps even altogether extinguish the spark of sympathy that he had so carelessly damped at the very beginning. He had to blow it into a flame again, slowly and carefully, but he had not the slightest idea how it was to be done. He felt vaguely that she had grown up and was almost superior to him, that henceforth there could be no question of a return to child-like confidence, that a Rubicon lay between them and that his lost happiness had been left on the opposite bank: he simply had to cross over to it. But how? And what if he crossed over alone? She understood better than he what was passing in his mind, and she had therefore the advantage over him. His soul lay wide open to her and she could see how feeling was born in it, how it stirred within him and at last revealed itself; she saw that feminine guile, cunning, and coquetry – Sonia’s weapons – were of no avail with him because there would be no struggle. She even realized that in spite of her youth it was she who had to play the chief role in their relations, for all she could possibly expect from him was that he would be deeply impressed, passionately but languidly devoted, in perpetual harmony with every beat of her pulse, but show no will of his own, nor any active thought. In an instant the power she wielded over him became clear to her