Oblomov - Ivan Goncharov [196]
His eyes gleamed as they used to do in the park in summer. Pride and strength of will shone in them once more.
‘I am ready to go at once where you tell me, to do what you wish. When you look at me, when you talk or sing, I feel that I am alive.’
Olga listened to these passionate effusions with thoughtful gravity.
‘Listen, Ilya,’ she said, ‘I believe in your love and in my power over you. Why, then, do you frighten me by your indecision? Why do you make me doubt you? You say I am your aim – and you go towards it so slowly and timidly. And you have still far to go, for you must rise above me. I expect it of you! I have watched happy people in love,’ she added with a sigh. ‘Everything they do is full of energy and their rest is not like yours: they do not drop their heads, their eyes are always open, they seem hardly ever to sleep, they act! And you – no, I’m afraid it does not look as if love or I were your aim in life.’
She shook her head doubtfully.
‘You are, my darling, you are!’ he said, kissing her hands again excitedly as he lay at her feet. ‘You alone! Heavens, what happiness!’ he repeated as though in a delirium. ‘And you imagine that it is possible to deceive you, to fall asleep after such an awakening, not to become a hero! You shall see – you and Andrey,’ he went on, looking round with inspired eyes, ‘to what heights the love of a woman like you can raise a man! Look, look at me. Have I not come back to life, am I not alive at this moment? Let us leave this place! Let’s go, let’s go! I can’t stay here for another moment: I feel stifled, rotten!’ he said, looking round him with undisguised disgust. ‘Let me go on feeling like this the whole of to-day…. Oh, if only the fire that burns in me now would go on burning to-morrow and always! But when you are away, it goes out and I sink! Now I am alive, I have come back from the dead. I think I – – Olga, Olga! You’re the most beautiful thing in the world, you’re first among all women, you – you – –’
He pressed his face to her hand and fell silent. He could not bring himself to utter another word. He pressed his hand to his heart to quiet his agitation, fixed his passionate, moist eyes on Olga, and remained motionless.
‘He’s tender, tender, tender!’ Olga kept thinking, but with a sigh, and not as she used to think in the park, and she sank into deep thought.
‘It’s time I went,’ she said affectionately as she recovered from her reverie.
He suddenly came to himself.
‘Oh dear, are you here? At my place?’ he said.
His inspired look disappeared, and instead he began looking round timidly. His tongue uttered no more ardent speeches. He grabbed her hat and coat hurriedly, and in his confusion he tried to put the coat on her head. She laughed.
‘Don’t be afraid for me,’ she calmed him. ‘Auntie has gone out for the whole day. At home Nurse alone knows that I am out, and Katya, of course. Please see me off.’
She allowed him to take her arm and, calmly and without the slightest excitement, in the proud consciousness of her innocence, crossed the yard to the accompaniment of the desperate barking of the dog, jumping on the chain, entered her carriage, and drove away. Heads were peering from the landlady’s windows, and Anisya’s head peeped out of the ditch from behind the fence round the corner. When the carriage had turned into another street, Anisya came back and said she had been all over the market and could find no asparagus.
Oblomov paced the room for a long time, too absorbed in his thoughts to hear that the carriage, which carried away his happiness and everything that was dear to him in life, had stopped crunching on the snow, his nervousness disappeared, his head and back straightened, the look of inspired radiance returned to his face, and his eyes were moist with happiness and emotion. A feeling of warmth, freshness, and high