Oblomov - Ivan Goncharov [135]
From time to time she threw a deep glance at him, read the all-too-obvious meaning written on his face, and thought: ‘Dear God, how he loves me! How tender he is to me, how tender!’ and she felt proud and looked with admiration at the man brought to her feet by her own power. The time of symbolic hints, meaningful smiles, and sprigs of lilac had irrevocably passed. Love had become severer, more exacting, and was beginning to be transformed into a sort of duty; they felt that they possessed rights over each other. Both revealed more and more of themselves: misunderstandings and doubts disappeared or gave way to more positive and clearer questions. At first she taunted him with slightly sarcastic remarks for the years he had wasted in idleness; she passed a severe sentence on him and condemned his apathy more deeply and effectively than Stolz; then, as she grew more intimate with him, she gave up taunting him for his flabby and listless existence and began to manifest her despotic will over him, reminding him courageously of the purpose and the duties of life and sternly demanded a change in his state of mind, constantly arousing it from its torpor either by involving him in a subtle discussion of some vital problem that was familiar to her or by approaching him with a problem that was not clear to her and that she could not grasp. He struggled, racked his brains, did his best not to lower himself in her estimation and to help explain some knotty problem to her, or else boldly set it aside. All her feminine tactics were pervaded by tender sympathy; all his attempts to keep in step with the workings of her mind were inspired by passion. But more often he lay down at her feet exhausted, put his hand to his heart and listened to its beating without taking his wide-open, amazed, rapturous eyes from her. ‘How he loves me!’ she kept saying at those moments, looking admiringly at him. If she sometimes noticed some of Oblomov’s old traits still lurking in his soul – and she could look deep into it – such as the least weariness or barely perceptible inertness of spirit, she overwhelmed him with reproaches, in which there was occasionally a touch of bitter regret and fear of having made a mistake. Sometimes, just when he was about to open his mouth in a yawn, he was struck by her look of astonishment and he immediately shut his mouth with a snap. She would not permit the faintest shadow of somnolence on his face. She asked him not only what he had been doing, but also what he was going to do. What made him sit up even more than her reproaches was the realization that his weariness made her weary too, and she became cold and indifferent. Then he became full of life, strength, and activity, and the shadow disappeared once more, and their feeling for one another was again full of strength and vigour. But all these troubles did not so far go beyond the magic circle of love. His activity was of a purely negative character: he did not sleep, he read, he sometimes thought about writing his plan for managing his estate, he walked and drove a lot. But what he was to make of his life, what he was to do with himself – that was still a matter of mere intentions.
‘What other sort of life and activity does Andrey want?’Oblomov said, opening his eyes wide after dinner so as not to fall asleep. ‘Isn’t this life? Isn’t love service? Let him try it! Every day means a good seven-mile walk! I spent last night in a wretched inn in town without undressing, only took off my boots, and Zakhar was not there to help me, either – and all because I had to carry out some commissions for her!’
What he dreaded most was when Olga put some abstruse questions to him and demanded a fully satisfactory answer, as though he were some professor: and that happened often with her, not out of pedantry, but out of a desire to know what it was all