Oblomov - Ivan Goncharov [138]
‘– my lapdog,’ she said with a laugh. ‘You must trust me, then,’ she concluded, ‘as I trust you, and don’t have any doubts, do not disturb this happiness by empty doubts or it will fly away. I shall never give back what I have once called my own, unless it is taken away from me. I know this: I may be young, but – – Do you know,’ she said with confidence in her voice, ‘for the month during which I have known you I have thought and felt a great deal. It is as though I had read a big book all by myself a little at a time.… So, please, don’t have any doubts.…’
‘I can’t help having doubts,’ he interrupted. ‘Don’t ask me that. Now, while I am with you I am certain of everything: your eyes, your voice – everything tells me not to doubt. You look at me as though you wished to say: I do not need words, I can read everything in your eyes. But when you are not with me I am plunged into such agonizing doubts and questions that I have to run to you again just to have a look at you, for otherwise I do not believe. Why is that?’
‘And I believe you: how is that?’
‘I should think so! You have a lunatic before you who has been infected by passion. I expect you can see yourself in my eyes as in a mirror. Besides, you are twenty. Have a good look at yourself: what man could fail to pay you the meed of admiration, though only by a glance? To know you, to listen to you, to look at you for hours, to love you – – Oh, that’s enough to drive one mad! And you are so calm, so placid, and if two or three days pass and I don’t hear you say “I love you,” I feel awful here,’ he pointed to his heart.
‘I love you, I love you, I love you – there’s a three-days’ supply for you!’ she said, getting up from the seat.
‘You’re always joking,’ he said with a sigh, walking down the hill with her, ‘but it’s no joking matter to me.’
So the same motif was played by them in different variations. Their meetings, their conversations – it was all one song, one light which burnt brightly; only its rays were broken up into rose, amber, and green, shimmering in the surrounding atmosphere. Every day and every hour brought new sounds and new colours, but the light and the tune were the same. Both he and she listened to these sounds and, having caught them, hastened to sing to each other what they heard without suspecting that next day new sounds would be heard, new rays would appear, and forgetting the next day that the song was different from that of the day before. She clothed the outpourings of her heart in the colours with which her imagination glowed at the moment, and firmly believed that they were true to nature, and hastened with innocent and unconscious coquetry to appear before her friend in that beautiful guise. He had even greater faith in those magic sounds and the entrancing light, and hastened to appear before her in the full armour of passion, to show her all the splendour and power of the fire that was consuming his soul. They did not lie to themselves or to each other: they were merely expressing what the heart dictated, and its voice was coloured by the imagination. It did not really matter to Oblomov whether Olga appeared as Cordelia and remained true to that image or followed a new path and was transformed into another vision, so long as she appeared in the same colours as those in which she was enshrined in his heart and so long as he was happy. Neither did Olga inquire whether her passionate friend would pick up her glove if she threw it into the mouth of a lion or would jump into an abyss for her, so long as she could see the symptoms of his passion and so long as he remained true to her ideal of a man – and one who awakened to life through her: so long as the light of her eyes and her smile kept alive the flame of courage in him and he did not cease to regard her as the sole purpose of his life. That is why the fleeting image of Cordelia, the fire of Oblomov’s passion reflected only one moment, one ephemeral breath of