Oblomov - Ivan Goncharov [262]
‘What trouble we have with him!’ Andrey said, walking up and down the room. ‘There’s no end to it!’
‘You don’t find it a burden, do you?’ said Olga. ‘That is news! It’s the first time I’ve heard you grumble about it.’
‘I’m not grumbling,’ replied Andrey. ‘I’m just thinking aloud.’
‘And why should you do that? You haven’t come to the conclusion that it is a bore and a nuisance, have you?’
She looked searchingly at him. He shook his head.
‘No, not a nuisance, but a waste of time. I can’t help thinking that sometimes.’
‘Don’t say it, please!’ she stopped him. ‘I shall think of it all day again, as I did last week, and feel miserable. If your friendship for him is dead, you must try to do your best for him out of human feeling. If you grow tired, I’ll go to him myself, and I shan’t leave without him. I’m sure he will be moved by my entreaties. I can’t help feeling that I shall cry bitterly if I find him broken-down or dead. Perhaps, my tears – –’
‘Will bring him back to life, you think?’ Andrey interposed.
‘Well, if they don’t bring him back to active life, they might at least make him look round him and change his way of living for something better. He won’t live in squalor, but near those who are his equals, with us. I only saw him for a moment that time, and he at once came to himself and was ashamed.’
‘You don’t love him still, do you?’ Andrey asked, jestingly.
‘No!’ Olga replied in good earnest, thoughtfully, as though looking into the past. ‘I don’t love him still, but there is something in him that I love, something to which, I believe, I have remained faithful, and shall not change as other people do….’
‘Oh? Who are those other people? You aren’t thinking of me, are you? But you are mistaken. And if you want to know the truth, it is I who taught you to love him and nearly got you into trouble. But for me you would have passed him by without noticing him. It was I made you realize that he possessed no less intelligence than other people, only it was buried under a rubbish-heap and asleep in idleness. Shall I tell you why he is dear to you and what you still love in him?’
She nodded assent.
‘Because he possesses something that is worth more than any amount of intelligence – an honest and faithful heart! It is the matchless treasure that he has carried through his life unharmed. People knocked him down, he grew indifferent and, at last, dropped asleep, crushed, disappointed, having lost the strength to live; but he has not lost his honesty and his faithfulness. His heart has never struck a single false note; there is no stain on his character. No well-dressed-up lie has ever deceived him and nothing will lure him from the true path. A regular ocean of evil and baseness may be surging round him, the entire world may be poisoned and turned upside down – Oblomov will never bow down to the idol of falsehood, and his soul will always be pure, noble, honest…. His soul is translucent, clear as crystal. Such people are rare; there aren’t many of them; they are like pearls in a crowd! His heart cannot be bribed; he can be relied on always and anywhere. It is to this you have remained faithful, and that is why nothing I do for him will ever be a burden to me. I have known lots of people possessing high qualities, but never have I met a heart more pure, more noble, and more simple. I have loved many people, but no one so warmly and so firmly as Oblomov. Once you know him, you cannot stop loving him. Isn’t that so? Am I right?’
Olga was silent, her eyes fixed on her work. Andrey pondered.
‘Is that all? What else is there? Oh,’ he added gaily as he came to himself, ‘I quite forgot his “dove-like tenderness ”…’
Olga laughed, quickly threw down her sewing, and, running up to Andrey, flung her arms round his neck, gazed for a few minutes with shining eyes into his eyes, then, putting her head on her husband’s shoulder, sank into thought. There rose in her mind Oblomov’s gentle, dreamy face, his tender look, his submissiveness, then his pitiful, shamefaced smile with which he answered