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By Root 2335 0

Oblomov did not walk like her husband, the late Collegiate Secretary Pshenitzyn, with small, quick, business-like steps, he did not write endless documents, he did not shake with fear at being late at the office, he did not look at people as though begging them to saddle him and ride on his back, but he looked at everything and everybody openly and fearlessly, as though expecting them to obey him. His face was not coarse nor ruddy, but white and tender; his hands were hot like her brother’s hands – they did not shake, they were not red, but white and small. When he sat down, crossed his legs, leaned his head on his hand, he did it all with such effortless ease, so calmly and so beautifully; he spoke in a way that was different from her brother and Tarantyev and not as her husband used to speak; a great deal of what he said she did not even understand, but she felt that it was clever, excellent, and extraordinary; and even the things she did understand he spoke differently from other people. He wore fine linen, he changed it every day, he washed with scented soap, he cleaned his fingernails – he was all so nice and so clean, there was no need for him to do anything – other people did everything for him: he had Zakhar and 300 other Zakhars! He was a gentleman: he dazzled, he scintillated! And, besides, he was so kind; he walked so softly, his movements were so exquisite; if he touched her hand, it was like velvet, and whenever her husband had touched her, it was like a blow! And he looked and talked so gently, with such kindness…. She did not think all these things, nor was she consciously aware of it all, but if anyone had tried to analyse and explain the impression made on her mind by Oblomov’s coming into her life, he would not be able to give any other explanation.

Oblomov understood what he meant to all of them in the house, from the landlady’s brother down to the watchdog, which was now getting three times as many bones as before; but he did not understand how much he meant to them and what an unexpected conquest he had made of his landlady’s heart. In her bustling solicitude for his meals, linen, and rooms he saw a manifestation of the main trait of her character he had noticed already during his first visit when Akulina suddenly brought into the room the fluttering cock and the landlady, though embarrassed by the cook’s misplaced zeal, managed to tell her not to give the shopkeeper that cock but the grey one. Agafya Matveyevna herself was not only incapable of flirting with Oblomov and revealing to him by some sign what was going on inside her, but, as has already been said, she was never aware of it or understood it herself; she had, in fact, forgotten that a short time ago nothing of the sort had been happening to her, and her love only found expression in her absolute devotion to him. Oblomov was blind to the true nature of her attitude towards him, and he went on thinking that it was her character. Mrs Pshenitzyn’s feeling, so normal, natural, and disinterested, remained a mystery to Oblomov, to the people around her, and to herself. It was, indeed, disinterested because she put up a candle in the church and had prayers said for his health because she wanted him to recover, and he knew nothing of it. She had sat by his bedside at night and left it at dawn, and nothing was said about it afterwards. His attitude towards her was much simpler: he saw in Agafya Matveyevna, with her regularly moving elbows, her watchful, solicitous eyes, her perpetual journeys from the cupboard to the kitchen, from the kitchen to the pantry, and from there to the cellar, her thorough knowledge of housekeeping and all home comforts, the embodied ideal of a life of boundless and inviolate repose, the picture of which had been ineradicably imprinted on his mind in childhood, under his father’s roof. As in Oblomovka his father, his grandfather, the children, the grandchildren, and the visitors sat or lay about in idle repose, knowing that there were in the house unsleeping eyes that watched over them continually and never-weary hands