Oblomov - Ivan Goncharov [205]
‘Listen, Olga. Please don’t look at me like that – it frightens me!’ he said. ‘I’ve changed my mind, I’ll have to arrange it all quite differently,’ he went on, gradually lowering his voice, pausing and trying to grasp the meaning of the new expression of her eyes, lips, and eloquent eyebrows. ‘I’ve decided to go to the country myself together with my agent – so that I – I could – –’ he finished almost inaudibly.
She was silent, looking at him intently, like a phantom. He guessed vaguely the verdict that awaited him, and picked up his hat, but hesitated to ask: he was afraid of hearing the fatal decision against which there might be no appeal. At last he mastered himself.
‘Have I understood you aright?’ he asked her in a changed voice.
She slowly and gently bowed her head in assent. Though he had guessed her thought already, he turned pale and remained standing before her. She looked a little languid, but seemed as calm and immobile as a stone statue. It was the preternatural calm when a concentrated intention or a wounded feeling gives one the power of complete self-control, but only for one moment. She was like a wounded man who closes his wound with his hand so that he can say all that he has to say and then die.
‘You won’t hate me?’ he asked.
‘Whatever for?’ she said weakly.
‘For everything I’ve done to you.’
‘What have you done?’
‘I’ve loved you: that’s an insult!’
She smiled pityingly.
‘For having made a mistake,’ he said, bowing his head. ‘Perhaps you will forgive me if you recall that I warned you how ashamed you would be, how you would be sorry – –’
‘I am not sorry. I feel so miserable, so miserable – –’ she said, stopping short to take breath.
‘I feel worse,’ Oblomov replied, ‘but I deserve it. Why should you torture yourself?’
‘For my pride,’ she said. ‘I am punished, I had relied too much on my own powers – that was where I was mistaken, and not what you feared. It was not of youth and beauty that I dreamed; I had thought that I’d bring you back to life, that you could still live for me – whereas you died long ago. I had not foreseen that mistake, but kept waiting and hoping and – now!’ she concluded with a sigh, barely able to speak.
She fell silent and then sat down.
‘I can’t stand: my legs tremble. A stone would have come to life from what I have done,’ she went on in a languid voice. ‘Now I won’t do anything, I won’t go anywhere, not even to the Summer Gardens: it’s no use – you are dead ! You agree with me, Ilya, don’t you?’ she added after a pause. ‘You won’t ever reproach me for having parted from you out of pride or caprice, will you?’
He shook his head.
‘Are you convinced that there is nothing left for us – no hope at all?’
‘Yes, he said, ‘that’s true, but,’ he added irresolutely, ‘perhaps in a year’s time – –’
He had not the heart to deal a decisive blow to his happiness.
‘Do you really think that in a year’s time you would put your affairs and your life in order?’ she asked. ‘Think!’
He sighed and pondered, struggling with himself. She read the struggle in his face.
‘Listen,’ she said, ‘I’ve been looking at my mother’s portrait and, I believe, I obtained advice and strength from her eyes. If, like an honourable man, you will now – – Remember, Ilya, we’re not children and we’re not joking: it is a matter that concerns our whole life! Ask yourself conscientiously and tell me – I will believe you, I know you: would you be able to keep it up all your life? Would you be for me what I want you to be? You know me, you therefore understand what I want to say. If boldly and deliberately you say, ‘yes,’ I take back my decision: here is my hand, and let us go where you will – abroad, to the country, even to Vyborg!’
He said nothing.
‘If you knew how I love you –