dark and damp. Not only lilac, but lime blossom was over, the berries had been gathered. Oblomov and Olga saw each other every day. He had caught up with life – that is, he mastered all the facts he had neglected for years; he knew why the French ambassador had left Rome, why the English were sending troopships to the East, and he was interested in the new roads being made in France and Germany. But he gave no thought to the road from Oblomovka to the large village, he had not had the deed of trust witnessed in the courts, and had not answered Stolz’s letter. The only subjects he mastered were those mentioned in the daily conversations at Olga’s house, or read in the newspapers received there, and thanks to Olga’s insistence he made a point of following current foreign literature. Everything else dissolved in pure love. In spite of the frequent changes in the rosy atmosphere, its main characteristic was a cloudless horizon. If Olga sometimes wondered about Oblomov and her love for him, if that love left her any free time or any free place in her heart, if not all her questions found a complete and ready answer in his mind, and his will did not respond to hers and he replied only by a long, passionate glance to her high spirits and bounding energy – if that happened, she sank into desolate brooding: something cold as a snake crept into her heart, wakened her from her day-dreams, and the warm, fairytale world of love was transformed into a grey autumn day. She wondered why she was dissatisfied, why her happiness was incomplete. What was lacking? What more did she want? Was it not her fate, her mission in life, to love Oblomov? That love was justified by his gentleness, by his pure faith in goodness, and above all by his tenderness, a tenderness she had never seen in a man’s eyes. What did it matter if he did not always respond to her glance, if his voice sounded differently from what she had seemed to hear once – was it in her dreams or in reality?… It was her imagination, her nerves: why listen to it and complicate matters unnecessarily? And, besides, if she wanted to escape this love – how was she to do it? The thing was done: she was already in love, and to discard love at will, like a dress, was impossible. ‘You can’t love twice in your life,’ she thought. ‘People say it is immoral.’ That was how she was studying love, greeting every fresh step with a tear or a smile and pondering over it. It was afterwards that the concentrated expression appeared under which both tears and smiles were hidden and which alarmed Oblomov so much. But she never even hinted to Oblomov about her thoughts and struggles.
Oblomov did not study love; he gave himself up to the sweet drowsiness which he had once described in such glowing terms to Stolz. At times he began to believe in a life that was for ever cloudless, and once again he dreamt of Oblomovka, full of kind, friendly, and untroubled faces, of sitting on the verandah, of meditations that arise from perfect happiness. He sometimes indulged in these meditations even now, and twice without Olga’s knowledge he even fell asleep in the woods while waiting for her. Then, suddenly, a cloud appeared unexpectedly.…
One day they were returning slowly and silently from a walk, and just as they were about to cross the high road, they saw a cloud of dust coming towards them, followed by a carriage in which Sonia and her husband and another lady and gentleman were driving.
‘Olga! Olga! Olga Sergeyevna!’ they cried.
The carriage stopped. The ladies and gentlemen alighted, surrounded Olga, and began to exchange greetings and kisses. They all spoke together, and for some time did not notice Oblomov. Then they all looked at him suddenly, one gentleman through a lorgnette.
‘Who is this?’ Sonia asked quietly.
‘Ilya Ilyich Oblomov,’ Olga introduced him.
They all walked to Olga’s house. Oblomov felt uncomfortable: he lagged behind the company and had already raised his foot over a fence to escape home through the rye when a look from Olga made him come back. He would not have minded if