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By Root 2256 0

to the landlady, drank coffee, ate hot pie, and sent Zakhar across the river for ice-cream and sweets for the children at dinner. Zakhar returned across the river with some difficulty: the bridges had been removed, the Neva being on the point of freezing. Oblomov could not possibly go to Olga’s on Wednesday, either. Of course, he could have rushed at once across the river, stayed for a few days at Ivan Gerasimovich’s and visited Olga every day, even dined there. He had a quite legitimate excuse: the Neva had caught him while he was on the other side and he could not get across. Oblomov’s first impulse was to do this, and he had already lowered his feet from his bed, but after a moment’s reflection he slowly resumed his recumbent position, with a sigh and a preoccupied air. ‘No, let the gossip die down and let the people who visit Olga’s house forget me a little and meet me there again daily only after the official announcement of our engagement. It’s a bore to wait,’ he added with a sigh, taking up Olga’s books, ‘but it can’t be helped.’ He read some fifteen pages. Masha came to ask whether he would like to come and watch the river freezing over: everyone was going. He went and came back for tea. So the days passed. Oblomov was bored; he read, went for walks, and when he was at home he looked through the landlady’s door to exchange a few words with her to pass the time. He even ground three pounds of coffee for her one day, and with such zeal that his forehead was covered in perspiration. He tried to give her a book to read. She read the title to herself, moving her lips slowly, and returned the book, declaring that she would borrow it at Christmas and make Vanya read it aloud, and then Granny would listen too, but she was too busy at present.

Meanwhile, a plank footway was laid across the Neva, and one day the dog’s desperate barking and jumping on the chain announced Nikita’s second visit, with a note inquiring after Oblomov’s health, and a book. Oblomov, afraid that he might have to cross the river over the planks, hid from Nikita, writing to Olga that he had a small swelling in his throat, that he was still uncertain whether he ought to go out and that ‘cruel fate deprived him of seeing his precious Olga for a few more days’. He gave strict orders to Zakhar not to talk to Nikita and again followed Olga’s footman to the gate with his eyes, and shook a minatory finger at Anisya when she poked her nose out of the kitchen and wanted to ask Nikita something.

7

A WEEK passed. Getting up in the morning, Oblomov first of all inquired anxiously whether the bridges had been put back.

‘Not yet,’ he was told, and he spent the day peacefully listening to the ticking of the clock, the rattling of the coffee mill, and the singing of the canaries. The chicks no longer chirped; they had long ago grown into middle-aged hens and were hiding in their hen-houses. He had not had time to read the books Olga had sent him: having read as far as the hundred and fifth page of one book, he put it away face downwards, and so it lay for several days. Instead he spent more time with the landlady’s children. Vanya was such an intelligent boy, he memorized the capital cities of Europe in three lessons, and Oblomov promised to buy him a small globe as soon as he went to the other side of the river; and little Masha hemmed three handkerchiefs for him – badly, it is true, but how amusingly she worked with her tiny little hands, running to show him every inch of her work. He talked to his landlady incessantly every time he caught sight of her elbows through the half-open door. He could tell by the movements of her elbows what she was doing, whether she was sieving, grinding, or ironing. He even tried to talk to Granny, but she never could finish a conversation: she would stop half-way through a word, lean against a wall with her fist, bent double, and begin coughing, as though she were doing some hard work, then she would utter a groan, and that was the end of the conversation. The landlady’s brother alone he never saw; he caught a glimpse of him