Oblomov - Ivan Goncharov [209]
The agent had also taken steps with regard to the building of the house: having estimated with the help of the provincial architect the quantity of the materials required, he left an order with the bailiff to begin carting timber early in spring and to build a shed for bricks, so that all that remained for Oblomov to do was to arrive in the spring and, with God’s blessing, start building. By that time the taxes were to be collected and the estate mortgaged – there would be enough money therefore to cover expenses.
After his illness Oblomov was for a long time gloomy; he sat brooding for hours and sometimes did not answer Zakhar’s questions, did not notice his dropping cups on the floor or his failing to dust the table, or, coming in with the pie on feast-days, the landlady would find him in tears. Then gradually dumb indifference took the place of deep grief. Oblomov gazed for hours at the snow falling and forming snowdrifts in the yard and in the street, covering the stacks of logs, the hen-houses, the kennel, the little garden, and the kitchen garden; he watched the posts of the fence being transformed into pyramids of snow and everything around dying and being wrapped in a shroud. He listened for hours to the rattling of the coffee-mill, the barking of the dog and its jumping on the chain, to Zakhar polishing boots, and the measured ticking of the clock. The landlady came into his room as before to ask if he would like to buy something or if he would have something to eat; the landlady’s children ran in; he spoke to her with kindly unconcern, set lessons for the children, listened to their reading, and smiled rather listlessly and reluctantly at their childish prattle.
But the mountain gradually crumbled away, the sea receded from the shore or encroached upon it, and Oblomov was gradually resuming his normal life. Summer, autumn, and winter passed dully and listlessly, but Oblomov was again waiting for spring and dreamed about his departure for the country. In March fancy rolls in the shape of larks were baked, and in April the double windows were taken out in his rooms, and he was told that the ice on the Neva had broken up and that spring had come. He walked in the garden. Then vegetables were planted in the kitchen garden; the different feast-days came and went: Whitsuntide, Commemoration Thursday, and the first of May – all these were marked by the traditional birches and wreaths; they had their tea in the copse. At the beginning of summer they began talking in the house about the two great festivals to come: St John’s Day, the name-day of the landlady’s brother, and St Elijah’s Day – Oblomov’s name-day; these were the two important dates to bear in mind. When the landlady happened to buy or see in the market an excellent quarter of veal, or whenever her pies turned out to be particularly good, she said: ‘Oh, if only I could find such veal or bake such a pie on St John’s or St Elijah’s Day!’ They talked of St Elijah’s Friday and the annual outing to the Powder Works, and of the festival at the Smolensk Cemetery at Kolpino. The deep clucking of the broody hen and the chirping of a new generation of chicks were heard under the windows again; chicken pies with fresh mushrooms and freshly salted cucumbers were served at dinner once more; soon strawberries and raspberries appeared on the table. ‘Giblets aren’t good now,’ the landlady told Oblomov. ‘Yesterday they asked seventy copecks for two lots of small ones, but there is fresh salmon – we could have cold fish and vegetable soup every day, if you like.’ The meals in Mrs Pshenitzyn’s house were so excellent not only because Agafya Matveyevna was such a model housewife or because that was her vocation, but also because her brother, Ivan Matveyevich Mukhoyarov, was a great epicure in affairs of gastronomy. He was more than careless about his clothes and linen: he wore a suit for years and was highly annoyed when he had to spend money on a new one; nor did he hang