Oblomov - Ivan Goncharov [222]
‘Perfectly legal!’ Tarantyev cried delightedly. ‘Let’s have a drink!’
‘And if it comes off without a hitch, we can have another try in two years’ time. It’s perfectly legal!’
‘Perfectly legal!’ Tarantyev cried again, nodding approvingly. ‘Let’s have another!’
‘Another? I don’t mind if I do.’
And they drank.
‘The only thing I’m afraid of,’ said Ivan Matveyevich, ‘is that Oblomov may refuse and write first to the German. If he does that, we’re sunk! We can’t bring an action against him: she’s a widow, after all, not a spinster.’
‘Write?’ said Tarantyev. ‘Of course he’ll write – in two years’ time. And if he refuses, I’ll tell him off properly!’
‘No, no, heaven forbid! You’ll spoil it all, old man. He’d say we forced him, he might even mention blows – and that would be a criminal offence. No, that won’t do. What we could do, though, is to have a friendly collation with him first – he’s very partial to currant vodka. As soon as he gets a little tipsy, you give me the wink and I’ll come in with the IOU. He won’t even look at the sum, and sign as he signed the agreement, and after it has been witnessed at the notary’s it will be too late for him to do anything. Besides, a gentleman like him will be ashamed to admit that he signed it when he was not sober. It’s perfectly legal!’
‘Perfectly legal!’ Tarantyev repeated.
‘Let his heirs have Oblomovka then!’
‘Aye, let them! Let’s have a drink, old man!’
‘To the health of all blockheads!’ said Ivan Matveyevich.
They drank.
4
WE must now go back a little to the time before Stolz’s arrival on Oblomov’s name-day and to another place, far from Vyborg. There the reader will meet people he knows, about whom stolz did not tell Oblomov all he knew, either for some special reasons of his own or, perhaps, because Oblomov did not ask all there was to ask – also, no doubt, for special reasons of his own.
One day Stolz was walking down a boulevard in Paris, glancing absent-mindedly at the passers-by and the shop signboards without pausing to look at anything in particular. He had not had any letters from Russia for some time, neither from Kiev, nor from Odessa, nor from Petersburg. He was bored and, having posted three more letters, he was on his way home. Suddenly his eyes lighted on something with amazement and then assumed their usual expression. Two ladies crossed the boulevard and went into a shop. ‘No, it can’t be,’ he thought. ‘What an idea! I’d have known about it! It can’t be them.’ All the same, he went up to the shop window and examined the ladies through the glass. ‘Can’t see a thing! They are standing with their backs to the windows!’ Stolz went into the shop and asked for something. One of the ladies turned to the light and he recognized Olga Ilyinsky – and did not recognize her! He was about to rush up to her, but stopped and began watching her narrowly. Good Lord, what a change! It was she and not she. The features were the same as hers, but she was pale, her eyes seemed a little hollow, there was no childish smile on her lips, no naivety, no placidity. Some grave, sorrowful thought was hovering over her eyebrows, and her eyes said a great deal they had not known and had not said before. She did not look as she used to – frankly, calmly, and serenely – a cloud of sorrow or perplexity lay over her face.
He went up to her. Her eyebrows contracted a little; for a moment she looked at him in bewilderment, then she recognized him; her eyebrows parted and lay symmetrically, and her eyes shone with the light of a calm and deep, not an impulsive, joy. A brother