Oblomov - Ivan Goncharov [239]
Oblomov had given the landlady all the money her brother had left him to live on, and for three or four months she went on as before as if nothing had happened, ground pounds of coffee, pounded cinnamon, roasted veal and turkey, and went on doing it to the last day on which she spent her last seventy copecks and came to tell him that she had no more money left. He turned over three times on the sofa at the news, then looked into the drawer of his desk; he had not any either. He tried to remember where he had put it and could not; he fumbled on the table for some coppers and asked Zakhar, who replied that he had not the faintest idea. She went to see her brother and naïvely told him that there was no money in the house.
‘And what did you and his lordship squander the thousand roubles I gave him for living expenses on?’ he asked. ‘Where am I to get the money from? You know I am going to be married. I can’t provide for two families, and you and your gentleman had better cut your coat according to your cloth.’
‘Why are you reproaching me with him?’ she said. ‘What has he done to you? He doesn’t harm anyone. He keeps to himself. It wasn’t I who enticed him to our house. You and Tarantyev did that.’
He gave her ten roubles and told her that he had no more. But having discussed the matter afterwards with Tarantyev at the ‘tavern’, he decided that it was impossible to abandon Oblomov and his sister in this way, for the news of it might reach Stolz, who would turn up unexpectedly, find out what was happening, and quite likely do something so that they would not have time to collect the debt in spite of its being ‘perfectly legal’. He was a German and, therefore, a crafty old rascal!
He agreed to give her an additional fifty roubles a month, intending to recover that money from Oblomov’s income three years hence; but he made it absolutely clear to his sister, and even declared his readiness to take an oath on it, that he would not let them have another farthing; he calculated how much they would have to spend on food, how they ought to cut down their expenses, and even told her what dishes she had to cook and when; having, finally, ascertained how much she could get for her chickens and cabbage, he declared that with all this she could live on the fat of the land.
For the first time in her life Agafya Matveyevna thought not of housekeeping but something else; for the first time she burst into tears, not because she was vexed with Akulina for breaking the crockery and not because her brother had scolded her for not doing the fish long enough; for the first time she was faced with the threat of privation, a threat directed not against her, but against Oblomov.
‘How can a gentleman like him’ she mused, ‘start eating buttered turnips instead of asparagus, mutton instead of hazel-grouse, salted pike-perch and, perhaps, brawn from the little shop instead of Gatchina trout and amber-coloured sturgeon….’ The horror of it! She did not think it out to the end, but dressed hurriedly, took a cab, and went to see her husband’s relatives – not at Easter or Christmas to a family dinner, but early in the morning, greatly worried, to tell them a strange tale and to ask them what she was to do and to get some money from them; they had plenty of money: they would give it to her at once when they knew it was for Oblomov. If she had wanted money for tea or coffee, for her children’s clothes and shoes and other similar luxuries, she would never have dreamt of asking for it, but she wanted it for some pressing need: she simply had to have it to get asparagus for Oblomov, to buy hazel-grouse and French peas which he liked so much…. But her relatives were surprised, gave her no money, but told her that if Oblomov had any gold or, perhaps, silver articles, or even furs, they could be pawned and that there were such nice people who would give him a third of their value and wait