Oblomov - Ivan Goncharov [137]
‘What is the difference?’ he tried to get her to answer. ‘Do you feel anything special?’
‘Do you want to know?’ she asked slyly.
‘Yes, yes, yes! Have you no desire to talk about it?’
‘But why do you want to know?’
‘So as to be able to live by it every minute: to-day, all night, to-morrow – till I meet you again. This is the only thing I live for.’
‘Well, you see, you have to renew the supply of your tenderness every day! This is the difference between the person who is in love and the person who loves. I – –’
‘Yes?’ He waited impatiently.
‘I love differently,’ she said, leaning back on the seat and gazing vacantly at the moving clouds. ‘I am bored without you, I feel sorry to part from you for a short time, and it would grieve me if I were to part from you for a long time. I know and believe, once and for all, that you love me, and I am happy, though you may never tell me again that you love me. I cannot love more or better than this.’
‘It might be – Cordelia speaking,’ thought Oblomov, looking passionately at Olga.
‘If you – died,’ she went on hesitantly, ‘I’d wear mourning for you all my life and I’d never smile again. If you fell in love with another, I should not blame or curse you, but wish you happiness in my heart.… For me this love is the same as – life, and life – –’
She was looking for a word.
‘Well, what is life, do you think?’
‘Life is duty, obligation, and hence love is duty, too: I feel as though God has sent it me,’ she concluded, raising her eyes to the sky, ‘and commanded me to love.’
‘Cordelia!’ Oblomov cried aloud. ‘And she is twenty-one! So that is love in your opinion!’ he added thoughtfully.
‘Yes, and I think I shall have enough strength to live and love all my life.’
‘Who could have suggested such an idea to her?’ Oblomov thought, gazing at her almost with veneration. ‘She could not have reached this clear and simple understanding of love and life through experience, torture, fire, and smoke.’
‘But have you no intense joys – have you no passions?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I have not experienced them and I don’t understand them.’
‘Oh, how I understand it now!’
‘Perhaps I, too, will feel it in time, perhaps I, too, will feel the same powerful emotions as you, and I shall look at you as you do at me, as though I did not believe that it was really you.… That must be awfully funny, I expect!’ she added gaily. ‘How you look at me sometimes! I’m sure Auntie notices it.’
‘Then what happiness do you find in love if you don’t feel the intense joy I feel?’
‘What happiness! Why, this!’ she said, pointing to him, to herself, and to the solitude around them. ‘Isn’t that happiness? Have I ever lived like that? Before I should not have sat here among these trees for a quarter of an hour alone without a book or without music.… Talking to any man except Mr Stolz used to bore me. I had nothing to say to them. All I wanted was to be left alone. But now – why, I am happy even if we never say a word to each other.’
She looked round at the trees and the grass, then fixed her gaze on him, smiled and held out her hand to him.
‘Won’t I feel awful when you go away?’ she added. ‘Won’t I be glad to hurry off to bed and go to sleep so as not to see the tedious night? Won’t I send a message to you in the morning? Won’t I – –’
With every ‘won’t I’ Oblomov’s face beamed more and more and his eyes shone more brightly.
‘Yes, yes,’ he echoed; ‘I, too, wait for the morning, and the night is tedious to me, and I, too, will send a message to you tomorrow not because I have anything to tell you, but just for the sake of uttering your name another time and hearing the sound of it, of learning something about you from the servants and envying them for having seen you already. We think, live, and hope in the same way. I’m sorry