Oblomov - Ivan Goncharov [150]
Oblomov did not answer his neighbour’s letter for a fortnight, and in the meantime even Olga asked him if he had been to the courts. A few days earlier Stolz sent a letter to him and one to Olga, asking what he was doing. Olga, no doubt, could keep only a superficial watch over her friend’s doings, and that, too, only in her own sphere. She could tell whether he looked happy, went everywhere readily, came to the woods at the appointed hour, was interested in the latest news or general conversation. She kept a particularly anxious watch that he did not lose sight of his main purpose in life. If she did ask him about the courts, it was only because she had to answer Stolz’s questions about the affairs of their friend.
The summer was at its height; it was the end of July; the weather was excellent. Oblomov hardly ever parted from Olga. On fine days he was in the park with her, in the noonday heat he accompanied her to the woods, where he sat at her feet among the pine-trees, reading aloud; she had started another piece of embroidery – this time for him. In their hearts, too, it was hot summer: clouds sometimes scudded across their sky and passed away. If he had troubled dreams and doubt knocked at his heart, Olga kept watch over him like a guardian angel; she looked with her bright eyes into his face, discovered what was troubling him – and all was well again, and feeling flowed peacefully like a river reflecting the ever new patterns of the sky. Olga’s views on life, love, and everything had grown still clearer and more definite. She looked about her with more confidence and was not worried about the future; her mind had developed and her character had grown in depth and poetic diversity, showed new propensities; it was consistent, clear, steady, and natural. She had a kind of persistence which not only overcame all the storms that lay in wait for her, but also Oblomov’s laziness and apathy. If she decided that something should be done, it was done without delay. You heard of nothing else; and if you did not hear of it, you could see that she had only that one thing in mind, that she would not forget or give up or lose her head, but would take everything into account and get what she was out to get. Oblomov could not understand where she got her strength from nor how she could possibly know what to do and how to do it whatever circumstance might arise. ‘It’s because one of her eyebrows is never straight, but is raised a little, and there is a very thin and hardly perceptible line over it,’ he thought. ‘It’s there – in that crease – that her stubbornness lies concealed.’ However calm and contented her expression might be, this crease was never smoothed out and her eyebrows never lay level. But she was never overbearing in her ways and inclinations and she never exercised her strength crudely. Her stubbornness and determination did not make her less attractive as a woman. She did not want to be a lioness, to put a foolish admirer out of countenance by a sharp remark, or to surprise the whole drawing-room by the smartness of her wit, so that someone in a corner should cry, ‘Bravo! bravo!’ She even possessed the sort of timidity that is peculiar to many women: it is true, she did not tremble at the sight