Oblomov - Ivan Goncharov [244]
‘The wine is no good at all,’ said Stolz.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Oblomov. ‘I’m afraid they were too busy to go over to the other side of the river for it. Won’t you have some currant vodka? It’s nice. Try it, Andrey.’
He poured himself out another glass and drank it. Stolz looked at him in surprise, but let it pass.
‘Agafya Matveyevna makes it herself. She’s a nice woman,’ said Oblomov, slightly drunk. ‘I must say I don’t know how I shall be able to live in the country without her: you won’t find such a housekeeper anywhere.’
Stolz listened to him with a slight frown.
‘Who do you think does all the cooking? Anisya? No, sir!’ Oblomov went on. ‘Anisya looks after the poultry, weeds the cabbage patch, and scrubs the floors. Agafya Matveyevna does all this.’
Stolz did not eat the mutton or the curd dumplings; he put down his fork and watched with what appetite Oblomov ate it all.
‘Now you won’t see me wearing a shirt inside out,’ Oblomov went on, sucking a bone with great relish. ‘She examines everything and misses nothing – all my socks are darned – and she does it all herself. And the coffee she makes! You’ll see for yourself when you have some after dinner.’
Stolz listened in silence with a worried expression.
‘Now her brother has gone to live in a flat of his own – he took it into his head to get married – so, of course, things are not on such a big scale as before. In the old days she had not a free minute to herself. She used to be rushing about from morning till night, to the market, to the shopping arcade…. Tell you what,’ concluded Oblomov, having all but lost the use of his tongue, ‘let me have two or three thousand and I’d have offered you something better than tongue and mutton – a whole sturgeon, trout, first-class fillet of beef. And Agafya Matveyevna would have worked wonders without a cook – yes, sir!’
He drank another glass of vodka.
‘Do have a drink, Andrey; there’s a good chap – lovely vodka! Olga Sergeyevna won’t make you any vodka like this,’ he said, speaking rather thickly. ‘She can sing Casta diva but doesn’t know how to make such vodka! Nor how to make a chicken-and-mushroom pie! Such pies they used to make only in Oblomovka and now here! And what’s so splendid about it is that it isn’t done by a man cook: you never know what his hands are like when he makes the pie, but Agafya Matveyevna is cleanliness itself.’
Stolz listened attentively, taking it all in.
‘And her hands used to be white,’ Oblomov, now well and truly befuddled, went on. ‘So white you could not help wishing to kiss them! But now they’re very rough, because, you see, she has to do everything herself. Starches my shirts herself!’ Oblomov cried with feeling, almost with tears. ‘Indeed, she does – seen it myself. I tell you many wives don’t look after their husbands as she does after me – yes, sir! A nice creature, Agafya Matveyevna, a nice creature! Look here, Andrey, why not come to live here with Olga Sergeyevna? I mean, get yourself a summer cottage here. You’d love it! We’d have tea in the woods, go to the Gunpowder Works on St Elijah’s Day, with a cart laden with provisions and a samovar following us. We’d lie down on the grass there – on a rug! Agafya Matveyevna would teach Olga Sergeyevna how to run a house, I promise you she would! Only, you see, things are rather tight now, her brother has moved out, and if we had three or four thousand, we’d get you such turkeys – –’
‘But you’re getting five thousand from me,’ Stolz said suddenly. ‘What do you do with it?’
‘And my debt?’ Oblomov blurted out suddenly.
Stolz jumped up from his seat.
‘Your debt?’ he repeated. ‘What debt?’
And he looked at Oblomov like a stern teacher at a child trying to hide something from him.
Oblomov suddenly fell silent. Stolz sat down beside him on the sofa.
‘Whom do you owe money to?’ he asked.
Oblomov sobered down a little and came to his senses.
‘I don’t owe anything to anyone,’ he said.