Oblomov - Ivan Goncharov [274]
That was why she had agreed without protest, and even with a certain joy, to Stolz’s proposal to bring up little Andrey with his own children, believing that his proper place was there, and not in her house, among ‘the rabble’, with her dirty nephews, her brother’s children.
For about six months after Oblomov’s death she lived with Zakhar and Anisya in the house, giving herself up to grief. She had trodden a path to her husband’s grave and wept her eyes out, hardly ate or drank anything, and lived chiefly on tea; she scarcely closed her eyes at night and was completely worn out. She never complained to anyone about anything and as time passed she seemed to become more and more absorbed in herself, in her sorrow, and shut everyone out, even Anisya. Nobody knew what she really felt.
‘Your mistress is still weeping for her husband,’ the grocer said to the cook.
‘Still sorrowing for her husband,’ the churchwarden remarked, pointing her out to the woman who baked the host for the cemetery church, where the disconsolate widow came every week to weep and pray.
‘She’s still wasting away with grief,’ they said in her brother’s house.
One day the entire family of her brother’s, the children, and even Tarantyev, suddenly descended upon her house under the pretext of offering condolences. They overwhelmed her with vulgar consolations and entreaties ‘to spare herself for the sake of her children’ – all that had been said to her fifteen years ago, when her first husband had died, and it had had the desired effect at that time; but now, for some reason it made her feel disgusted and wretched. She was relieved when they changed the subject and told her that now they could live together again and that it would be better for her because ‘she would be wretched among her own people’, and for them because no one could look after the house as well as she. She asked for time to think it over, and after grieving for another two months, she at last agreed to share the house with them. It was at that time that Stolz took little Andrey to live with him, and she was left alone.
Wearing a dark dress and with a black woollen shawl round her neck, she would walk from her room to the kitchen like a shadow, opened and closed cupboards as before, sewed, ironed lace, but slowly and without energy; she spoke, as it were, reluctantly, and in a low voice, and she no longer as before looked about her unconcernedly with eyes that never remained fixed in one place, but with an expression of concentration on her face and a hidden meaning in her eyes. This thought seemed to have imperceptibly settled on her face at the moment when she gazed intently and for a long time at her husband’s dead face, and had never left her since. She moved about the house, did all that was necessary, but her mind was not on her work. Over her husband’s dead body, and after she had lost him, she seemed suddenly to have grasped the whole meaning of her life and pondered over it – and ever since that thought lay brooding over her face like a shadow. Having sobbed out her intense grief, she concentrated on the sense of her loss: the rest was dead for her, except little Andrey. It was only when she saw him that she seemed to show signs of life and her features revived, her eyes filled with a joyful light and then with the tears of remembrance. She lost interest in all that happened around her: if her brother was angry because an extra rouble had been spent, or the roast was slightly burnt, or the fish was not quite as fresh as he liked; if her sister-in-law sulked because her petticoat had not been starched stiffly enough or her tea was weak or cold; if the cook was rude to her – Agafya Matveyevna did not notice anything, just as though they were not talking of her, and as though she never heard the sarcastic whisper: ‘A lady, a land-owner!’ Her answer to it all was contained in the dignity of her sorrow and in her resigned silence. On the