Oblomov - Ivan Goncharov [223]
‘Goodness, is it you?’ she cried in a voice that penetrated to the very soul and that was joyful to the point of ecstasy.
Her aunt turned round quickly, and all three of them began speaking at once. He reproached them for not having written to him, and they made excuses. They had arrived in Paris only two days before and had been looking for him everywhere. At one address they were told that he had gone to Lyons, and they did not know what to do.
‘But what made you come? And not a word to me!’ he reproached them.
‘We made up our minds so quickly,’ said Olga’s aunt, ‘that we didn’t want to write to you. Olga wanted to give you a surprise.’
He glanced at Olga: her face did not confirm her aunt’s words. He looked at her more closely, but she was impervious, inaccessible to his scrutiny.
‘What is the matter with her?’ Stolz thought. ‘I used to guess her thoughts at once, but now – what a change!’
‘How you have grown up, Olga Sergeyevna!’ he said aloud. ‘I don’t recognize you. And it’s scarcely a year since we met. What have you been doing? Tell me!’
‘Oh, nothing special,’ she said, examining some material.
‘How is your singing?’ Stolz asked, continuing to study his new Olga and trying to read the unfamiliar expression on her face; but her expression flashed and disappeared like lightning.
‘I haven’t sung for ages,’ she said in a casual tone of voice. ‘For two months or more.’
‘And how is Oblomov?’ he asked suddenly. ‘Is he alive? Does he write to you?’
At this point Olga might have betrayed her secret had not her aunt come to her rescue.
‘Just fancy,’ she said, walking out of the shop, ‘he used to visit us every day, then he suddenly vanished. After we had made our arrangements for going abroad, I sent a message to him, but was told that he was ill and received no one; so we did not see him again.’
‘Didn’t you know anything, either?’ Stolz asked Olga solicitously.
Olga was examining through her lorgnette a carriage that was driving past.
‘He really had fallen ill,’ she said, looking with feigned attention at the carriage. ‘Look, Auntie, it’s our travelling companions that have just driven past.’
‘No, you must give me a full account of my Ilya,’ Stolz insisted. ‘What have you done to him? Why haven’t you brought him with you?’
‘Mais ma tante vient de dire,’ she said.
‘He’s frightfully lazy,’ the aunt observed, ‘and so shy that as soon as three or four visitors arrived he went home. Just fancy, he booked a seat at the opera for the season and did not hear half the operas!’
‘He did not hear Rubini,’ Olga added.
Stolz shook his head and sighed.
‘How is it you made up your minds to go abroad? Is it for long? What gave you the idea so suddenly?’ Stolz asked.
‘It’s for her,’ the aunt said, pointing to Olga. ‘On the doctor’s advice. Petersburg was having a distinctly bad effect on her health, and we went away for the winter, but haven’t decided yet where to spend it – at Nice or in Switzerland.’
‘Yes, you have certainly changed a lot,’ Stolz said, looking closely at Olga and scrutinizing every line on her face.
The Ilyinskys spent six months in Paris; Stolz was their daily and only companion and guide. Olga’s health began perceptibly to improve; her brooding gave way to calm and indifference, outwardly at any rate. It was impossible to say what was going on inside her, but she gradually became as friendly to Stolz as before, though she no longer burst into her former loud, child-like, silvery laughter, but only smiled with restraint when Stolz tried to amuse her. Sometimes she seemed to be annoyed at not being able to laugh. He at once realized that she was not to be amused any more: she often listened to some amusing sally of his with a frown between her unsymmetrically-lying eyebrows, looking silently at him, as though reproaching him for his frivolity, or impatient with him; or instead of replying to his joke, she would suddenly ask him some serious question and follow it up with so insistent