Oblomov - Ivan Goncharov [218]
‘She has not forgotten me yet!’ Oblomov cried with emotion. ‘Do I deserve it?’
‘No, she hasn’t forgotten you and, if you ask me, she never will: she is not that kind of a woman. She expects you to pay her a visit on her estate.’
‘Not now, for goodness’ sake, not now, Andrey! Let me forget. Oh, here there’s still – –’
He pointed to his heart.
‘What is there still? Not love, surely?’ Stolz asked.
‘No, shame and grief!’ Oblomov replied with a sigh.
‘All right, in that case let’s go to your estate. You must get on with your building now. It’s summer and precious time is being wasted.’
‘No, I have an agent. He is there now, and I can go later when I am ready and have thought it over.’
He began boasting to Stolz how excellently he had settled his affairs without stirring from the house. His agent was collecting information about the runaway peasants and selling his corn at a good price. He had already sent him 1,500 roubles, and he would probably collect and send him the peasants’ tax this year.
Stolz gasped with amazement at this tale.
‘Why, you’ve been robbed all round!’ he said. ‘Fifteen hundred from three hundred peasants! Who’s your agent? What kind of a man is he?’
‘More than fifteen hundred,’ Oblomov corrected him. ‘I paid him his fee out of the money he received for the sale of corn.’
‘How much?’
‘I’m afraid I don’t remember. But I’ll show you. I have his accounts somewhere.’
‘Well, Ilya, you really are dead – you’re done for!’ he concluded. ‘Get dressed and come along to my place.’
Oblomov began to object, but Stolz took him away almost by force, wrote out a deed of trust in his own name, made Oblomov sign it, and told him that he would take Oblomovka on lease until Oblomov himself came to the country and got accustomed to farming.
‘You will be getting three times as much,’ he said, ‘only I shan’t be your tenant for long – I have my own affairs to manage. Let us go to the country now, or you can come after me. I shall be at Olga’s estate: it’s about three hundred miles from yours. I’ll call at your place, too. Get rid of your agent, make all the necessary arrangements, and then you must come yourself. I won’t leave you in peace.’
Oblomov sighed. ‘Life!’ he said.
‘What about life?’
‘It keeps disturbing you. Gives you no peace! I wish I could lie down and go to sleep – for ever!’
‘What you mean is that you would like to put out the light and remain in darkness! Fine sort of life! Oh, Ilya, why don’t you at least indulge in a little philosophy? Life will flash by like an instant, and you’d like to lie down and go to sleep! Let the flame go on burning! Oh, if only I could live for two or three hundred years!’ he concluded. ‘How much one could do then!’
‘You are quite a different matter, Andrey!’ replied Oblomov. ‘You have wings: you don’t live, you fly. You have gifts, ambition. You’re not fat. You don’t suffer from styes. You’re not overcome by constant doubts. You’re differently made, somehow.’
‘Don’t talk rubbish! Man has been created to arrange his own life and even to change his own nature, and you’ve grown a big belly and think that nature has sent you this burden! You had wings once, but you took them off.’
‘Wings? Where are they?’ Oblomov said gloomily. ‘I don’t know how to do anything.’
‘You mean you don’t want to know,’ Stolz interrupted. ‘A man who can’t do something doesn’t exist, I assure you.’
‘Well, I can’t,’ said Oblomov.
‘To listen to you one would think you couldn’t write an official letter to the town council or a letter to your landlord, but you wrote a letter to Olga, didn’t you? You didn’t mix up who and which in it, did you? And you found excellent note-paper and ink from the English shop, and your handwriting,