Oblomov - Ivan Goncharov [146]
‘Do go on being happy!’ Oblomov besought her.
‘And you see nothing but gloom ahead; happiness is nothing to you. This,’ she went on, ‘is ingratitude. It isn’t love, it is – –’
‘– egoism!’ Oblomov finished the sentence for her, not daring to look at Olga or to speak or to ask her forgiveness.
‘Go,’ she said softly, ‘where you wanted to go to.’
He looked at her. Her eyes were dry. She was looking down thoughtfully and drawing in the sand with her parasol.
‘Lie down on your back again,’ she added, ‘You won’t be making a mistake then, you won’t “fall into an abyss”.’
‘I’ve poisoned myself and poisoned you instead of being happy simply and openly,’ he murmured penitently.
‘Drink kvas: it won’t poison you,’ she taunted him.
‘Olga, that’s not fair!’ he said. ‘After I’ve been punishing myself with the consciousness of – –’
‘Yes, in words you punish yourself, throw yourself into an abyss, give half your life, but when you are overwhelmed by doubt and spend sleepless nights how tender you become with yourself, how careful and solicitous, how far-seeing!’
‘How true and simple it is!’ thought Oblomov, but he was ashamed to say it aloud. Why had he not understood it himself, but had to wait for a woman who had scarcely begun to live to explain it to him? And how quickly she had grown up! Only a short time ago she had seemed such a child!
‘We’ve nothing more to say to each other,’ she concluded, getting up. ‘Good-bye, and keep your peace of mind. That’s your idea of happiness, isn’t it?’
‘Olga, no, for God’s sake, no! Don’t drive me away now everything has become clear again,’ he said, taking her hand.
‘But what do you want of me? You are not sure whether my love for you is a mistake and I cannot dispel your doubts. Perhaps it is a mistake – I don’t know.’
He let go her hand. Again the knife was raised over him.
‘You don’t know? But don’t you feel?’ he asked, looking doubtful once more. ‘Do you think – –’
‘I don’t think anything. I told you yesterday what I felt, but I don’t know what’s going to happen in a year’s time. And do you really think that one happiness is followed by another and then by a third just like it?’ she asked, looking open-eyed at him. ‘Tell me, you’ve had more experience than I.’
But he was no longer anxious to confirm her in the idea, and he was silent, shaking an acacia branch with one hand.
‘No,’ he said, like a schoolboy repeating a lesson, ‘one only loves once!’
‘There, you see: I believe it too,’ she added. ‘But if it is not so, then perhaps I shall fall out of love with you, perhaps I shall suffer from my mistake and you too, perhaps we shall part!… To love two or three times – no.… I don’t want to believe it!’
He sighed. The perhaps damped his spirits and he walked slowly and thoughtfully after her. But he felt more lighthearted at every step; the mistake he had invented at night seemed so far away. ‘Why,’ it occurred to him, ‘it is not only love, all life is like this. And if every opportunity is to be rejected as a mistake, when is one to be sure that one is not making a mistake? What was I thinking of? I seem to have gone blind.…’
‘Olga,’ he said, barely touching her waist with two fingers (she stopped), ‘you’re wiser than I am.’
She shook her head.
‘No,’ she said, ‘I’m simpler and more courageous. What are you afraid of? Do you seriously think one may fall out of love?’ she asked, with proud confidence.