Oblomov - Ivan Goncharov [257]
Her heart missed a beat, as it did every time he began asking her questions that affected her closely.
‘Not yet,’ she answered with feigned cheerfulness. ‘Why?’
‘You’re not feeling ill?’ he asked again.
‘No. What makes you think so?’
‘Well, then, you must be bored!’
She pressed his shoulder tightly with both her hands.
‘No, no!’ she declared in an exaggeratedly cheerful voice, which certainly sounded rather bored.
He led her out of the avenue and turned her face to the moonlight.
‘Look at me!’ he said, gazing intently into her eyes. ‘One might think that you were – unhappy! Your eyes are so strange to-day, and not only to-day – – What is the matter with you, Olga?’
He put his arm round her waist and took her back into the avenue.
‘You know,’ she said, trying to laugh, ‘I’m famished!’
‘Don’t tell stories! I don’t like it!’ he added, with feigned severity.
‘Unhappy!’ she repeated, reproachfully, stopping him in the avenue. ‘Yes, I am unhappy because – I am too happy!’ she concluded in such a soft and tender voice that he kissed her.
She grew bolder. The assumption, though made light-heartedly and in jest, that she was unhappy, unexpectedly made her wish to speak frankly.
‘I am not bored – I couldn’t be, you know that perfectly well yourself – and I’m not ill, but – I can’t help feeling sad – sometimes. There, you insufferable man, if you must know! Yes, I feel sad, and I don’t know why!’
She put her head on his shoulder.
‘I see! But why on earth?’ he asked softly, bending over her.
‘Don’t know,’ she repeated.
‘But there must be a reason, if not in me, or in your surroundings, then in yourself. Sometimes such sadness is merely the first symptom of an illness… are you well?’
‘Yes, perhaps it is something like that,’ she said earnestly, ‘though I don’t feel ill at all. You see how I eat, sleep, work, and go for walks. Then suddenly something comes over me – a sort of depression. I can’t help feeling that something is lacking in my life. But no, don’t listen to me! It’s all nonsense!’
‘Please go on,’ he insisted. ‘You say you feel there’s something lacking in your life – what else?’
‘Sometimes I seem to be afraid that things will change or come to an end – I don’t know myself,’ she went on. ‘Or I’m worried by the silly thought – what else is going to happen? What is happiness? What is the meaning of life?’ she said, speaking more and more softly, ashamed of these questions. ‘All these joys, sorrows, nature,’ she whispered, ‘it all seems to make me long to go somewhere, and I become dissatisfied with everything. Oh dear, I’m so ashamed of all this foolishness – this day-dreaming…. Don’t take any notice, don’t look,’ she asked in an imploring voice, snuggling up to him. ‘This melancholy fit of mine soon passes, and I feel gay and light-hearted again, as I do now!’
She pressed close to him timidly and tenderly, feeling really ashamed and as though asking forgiveness for her ‘foolishness’.
Her husband questioned her a long time and it took a long time to tell him, as a patient does a doctor, the symptoms of her sadness, to put into words all the vague questions that worried her, to describe the confusion in her mind, and then – as soon as the mirage disappeared – everything she could remember and observe.
Stolz walked along the avenue in silence, his head bowed, pondering, anxious and perplexed by his wife’s vague confession.
She peered into his eyes, but saw nothing, and when they reached the end of the avenue for the third time, she would not let him turn round, but herself now took him out into the moonlight and gazed questioningly into his eyes.
‘What are you thinking of?’ she asked shyly. ‘You’re laughing at my foolishness, aren’t you? It is very silly, this sadness of mine, isn’t it?’
He made no answer.
‘Why are you silent?’ she asked impatiently.
‘You’ve been silent for a long time, although you knew, of course, that I’ve been watching you for some time, so let me be silent and think it over. You’ve set me no easy task.’
‘Well,