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By Root 2111 0

and she liked her role of a guiding star, the ray of light she would shed over the stagnant pool and that would be reflected in it. She was already exulting over her supremacy in this duel in various ways. In this comedy, or perhaps tragedy, the protagonists almost invariably appear in the characters of tormentor and victim. Like every woman in the leading part – that is, in the part of tormentor – Olga could not deny herself the pleasure of playing cat and mouse with Oblomov, though perhaps unconsciously and not as much as other women: sometimes she would reveal her feeling in a momentary and unexpectedly capricious outburst, but would then immediately withdraw into herself again; mostly, though, she drove it farther and farther forward, knowing that he would not take a single step by himself and remain motionless where she left him.

‘Have you been busy?’ she asked, embroidering some piece of canvas.

‘I’d have said I was busy but for that Zakhar,’ thought Oblomov, groaning inwardly.

‘Yes,’ he said casually. ‘I’ve been reading a book.’

‘A novel?’ she asked, raising her eyes to see his expression when telling a lie.

‘No, I hardly ever read novels,’ he replied very calmly. ‘I’ve been reading The History of Inventions and Discoveries.’

‘Thank goodness,’ he thought, ‘I’ve read through a page of the book to-day.’

‘In Russian?’ she asked.

‘No, in English.’

‘So you read English?’

‘I do, though with difficulty. And you haven’t been to town at all?’ he asked chiefly in order to change the subject.

‘No, I was at home all the time. I usually do my work here – in this avenue.’

‘Always here?’

‘Yes, I like this avenue very much. I’m very grateful to you for having shown it to me. No one ever comes here – –’

‘I did not show it to you,’ he interrupted. ‘You remember we met here accidentally.’

‘Yes, of course.’

Both were silent.

‘Your stye has quite gone, hasn’t it?’ she asked, looking straight at his right eye.

He flushed.

‘Yes, thank goodness,’ he said.

‘When your eye begins to itch bathe it with vodka and you won’t get a stye,’ she went on. ‘My nurse taught me that.’

‘Why does she keep on talking about styes?’ Oblomov thought.

‘And don’t have any supper,’ she added seriously.

‘Zakhar!’ he thought furiously, a silent imprecation rising to his lips.

‘You’ve only to take a heavy supper,’ she went on without raising her eyes from her work, ‘and spend two or three days lying on your back, and you’re sure to get a stye.’

‘Id-i-ot!’ Oblomov swore inwardly at Zakhar.

‘What are you embroidering?’ he asked, to change the subject.

‘A bell-pull for the baron,’ she said, unfolding the roll of canvas, and showing him the pattern. ‘Nice?’

‘Yes, very nice. The pattern is very charming. This is a sprig of lilac, isn’t it?’

‘Yes – I believe so,’ she answered casually. ‘I chose it at random. The first that turned up.’

And, blushing a little, she quickly rolled up the canvas.

‘It’s awfully boring if it goes on like this and I can’t get anything out of her,’ he thought. ‘Another man – Stolz, for instance – could, but I cannot.’

He frowned and looked sleepily around him. She glanced at him and put her work into a basket.

‘Let’s walk as far as the road,’ she said, and letting him carry the basket, she straightened her dress, opened her parasol, and walked on. ‘Why are you so gloomy?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know, Olga Sergeyevna. And why should I be happy? And how?’

‘Find something to do and spend more time with other people.’

‘Find something to do! I could do that if I had some aim in life. But what is my aim? I haven’t one.’

‘The aim is to live.’

‘When you don’t know what to live for, you live anyhow – from one day to another. You are glad the day is over, that the night has come, and in your sleep you can expunge from your mind the wearisome question why you have lived this day and are going to live the next.’

She listened in silence, with a stern look: severity was hidden in her knit brows and incredulity, or scorn, coiled like a serpent in the