Oblomov - Ivan Goncharov [145]
‘But I didn’t know, did I?’ he cried, pressing both his hands to his chest.
‘A loving heart has its own way of reasoning,’ she replied. ‘It knows what it wants, and knows what is going to happen. Yesterday I shouldn’t have come here because we had some visitors who arrived suddenly, but I knew how upset you would have been waiting for me and that you might have slept badly: so I came because I did not want you to suffer.… And you – you are glad because I am crying. Well, look at me and be happy!’
And she began to cry again.
‘I have slept badly as it is, Olga. I had an awful night.…’
‘So you were sorry that I slept well, that I didn’t have an awful night, were you?’ she interrupted. ‘Had I not been crying now, you would have slept badly to-night, wouldn’t you?’
‘What am I to do now?’ he said with submissive tenderness. ‘Say I am sorry?’
‘Only children do that, or people who tread on a person’s toes in a crowd – it’s no good your being sorry,’ she said, fanning her face with her handkerchief again.
‘But what if it’s true, Olga? I mean, what if I am right and our love is a mistake? What if you fall in love with another and blush when you look at me?’
‘Well, what if I do?’ she asked, looking at him with such deep, piercing, ironical eyes that he felt embarrassed.
‘She is out to get something from me!’ he thought. ‘Take care, Oblomov!’
‘What do you mean – “if I do?”’ he repeated mechanically, looking at her anxiously and at a loss to know what was at the back of her mind and how she would explain her question, since it was obvious that it was impossible to justify their love if it was a mistake.
She looked at him with such conscious deliberation and confidence that it was clear that she knew what she was talking about.
‘You are afraid,’ she replied bitingly, ‘of falling “to the bottom of the abyss”. You are afraid of being made a fool of if I should cease loving you. “It will go badly with me,” you write.’
He still did not quite understand her.
‘But don’t you see if I fell in love with another man, I should be happy, shouldn’t I? And don’t you say that you know I shall be happy in future and that you are ready to sacrifice everything, even your life, for me?’
He looked intently at her, blinking from time to time.
‘So that’s her logic!’ he whispered. ‘I must say I didn’t expect that.…’
And she looked him up and down with such annihilating irony.
‘And what about the happiness that is driving you mad?’ she went on. ‘And these mornings and evenings, this park, my “I love you” – isn’t this all worth something, some sacrifice, some pain?’
‘Oh, I wish I could sink through the ground!’ he thought, feeling miserable, as he grasped Olga’s meaning more and more.
‘And what if you grew tired of this love,’ she began warmly with another question, ‘as you have grown tired of books, of your work at the Civil Service, of society? What if in due course, even if I have no rival, if you don’t fall in love with some other woman, you just drop asleep beside me as on your sofa, and even my voice won’t waken you? If that lump in your heart disappears, if not even another woman, but your dressing-gown becomes dearer to you than I?’
‘Olga, that’s impossible!’ he interrupted, displeased, and drew away from her.
‘Why is it impossible?’ she asked, ‘You say that I am mistaken, that I will fall in love with somebody else, and I can’t help feeling sometimes that you will simply fall out of love with me. And what then? How shall I justify myself for what I am doing now? What shall I say to myself, let alone to other people or society? I, too, sometimes spend sleepless nights because of this, but I do not torture you with conjectures about the future because I believe that everything will be for the best. With me happiness overcomes fear. I think it is something if your eyes begin to shine because of me, when you climb hills in search