Oblomov - Ivan Goncharov [52]
The crestfallen expression on Zakhar’s face was immediately softened by a ray of repentance that appeared on his features. Zakhar felt the first symptoms of awakening reverence for his master and he suddenly began to look straight in his eyes.
‘Are you sorry for your misdemeanour?’ asked Oblomov.
‘Why, what “misdemeanour” is this?’ Zakhar thought bitterly. ‘Something awful, I’ll be bound. I shall burst into tears if he goes on lecturing me like this.’
‘Well, sir,’ Zakhar began on the lowest note of his register, ‘I haven’t said nothing except that – –’
‘No, wait!’ Oblomov interrupted. ‘Do you realize what you’ve done? Here, put the glass on the table and tell me.’
Zakhar said nothing, being completely at a loss to understand what he had done, but that did not prevent him from looking with reverence at his master; he even hung his head a little, conscious of his guilt.
‘Well, aren’t you a venomous creature?’ Oblomov said.
Zakhar still said nothing, and only blinked slowly a few times.
‘You’ve grieved your master!’ Oblomov declared slowly, looking fixedly at Zakhar and enjoying his embarrassment.
Zakhar felt so miserable that he wished he could sink through the floor.
‘You have grieved him, haven’t you?’ asked Oblomov.
‘Grieved!’ Zakhar whispered, utterly bewildered by that new, pathetic word. He glanced wildly from the right to the left, looking in vain for some deliverance, and again all he saw was the spider’s web, the dust, and his own and his master’s reflections in the looking-glass.
‘Oh, I wish I could sink through the ground! Oh, why aren’t I dead?’ he thought, seeing that, try as he might, he could not avoid a pathetic scene. He felt that he was blinking more and more and that any moment tears would start in his eyes. At last he regaled his master with his familiar song, except that it was in prose.
‘How have I grieved you, sir?’ he asked, almost in tears.
‘How?’ Oblomov repeated. ‘Why, did it occur to you to think what other people are?’
He stopped, still looking at Zakhar.
‘Shall I tell you what they are?’
Zakhar turned like a bear in its lair and heaved a loud sigh.
‘The other people you’re thinking of are poor wretches, rough, uncivilized people who live in dirt and poverty in some attic; they can sleep comfortably on a felt mat somewhere in the yard. What can happen to such people? Nothing. They guzzle potatoes and salt herrings. Poverty drives them from one place to another, and so they rush about all day long. They, I’m sure, wouldn’t mind moving to a new flat. Lyagayev, for instance. He would put his ruler under his arm, tie up his two shirts in a handkerchief, and go off. “Where are you going?” “I’m moving,” he would say. That’s what other people are like. Aren’t they?’
Zakhar glanced at his master, shifted from foot to foot, and said nothing.
‘What are other people?’ Oblomov went on. ‘They are people who do not mind cleaning their boots and dressing themselves, and though they sometimes look like gentlemen, it’s all a put-up show; they don’t know what a servant looks like. If they have no one to send out on an errand, they run out themselves. They don’t mind stirring the fire in the stove or dusting their furniture.…’
‘There are many Germans who are like that,’ Zakhar said gloomily.
‘No doubt there are! And I? What do you think? Am I like them?’
‘You’re quite different, sir,’ Zakhar said piteously, still at a loss to know what his master was driving at. ‘What has come over you, sir?’
‘I’m quite different, am I? Wait, think carefully what you’re saying. Just consider how the “others” live. The “others” work hard, they rush about, they’re always busy,’ Oblomov went on. ‘If they don’t work, they don’t eat. The “others” bow and scrape, beg, grovel. And I? Well, tell me, what do you think: am I like “other people”?’
‘Please, sir, don’t go on torturing me with pathetic words,’ Zakhar implored. ‘Oh dear, oh dear!’
‘I am like the “others”, am I? Do