Oblomov - Ivan Goncharov [53]
Zakhar was no longer capable of understanding what Oblomov was talking about. But his lips were blown up with emotion: the pathetic scene was raging like a storm-cloud over his head. He was silent.
‘Zakhar!’ Oblomov repeated.
‘Yes, sir?’ Zakhar hissed in a barely audible whisper.
‘Give me some more kvas’
Zakhar brought the kvas, and when Oblomov had drunk it and handed him back the glass, he made a dash for the door.
‘No, no, wait!’ said Oblomov. ‘I’m asking you how you could so terribly insult your master whom you carried in your arms as a baby, whom you have served all your life, and who has been your benefactor?’
Zakhar could not bear it any more. The word ‘benefactor’ finished him! He began blinking more and more. The less he understood what Oblomov was saying to him in his pathetic speech, the sadder he became.
‘I’m very sorry, sir,’ he began to wheeze penitently. ‘It was out of foolishness, sir, out of foolishness that I – –’
Not understanding what he had done, Zakhar did not know what verb to use at the end of his speech.
‘And I,’ went on Oblomov in the voice of a man who had been insulted and whose merits had not been sufficiently appreciated, ‘and I go on working and worrying day and night, sometimes with a burning head and a sinking heart. I lie awake at night, toss about, always thinking how to improve things – and for whom? Who is it I’m worrying about? All for you, for the peasants, and that means you, too… I daresay when you see me pull my blankets over my head you think I lie there asleep like a log. But no, I don’t sleep, I keep thinking all the time what I can do that my peasants should not suffer any hardships, that they should not envy the peasants belonging to other people, that they should not complain against me to God on the Day of Judgement, but should pray for me and remember me for the good I had done them. Ungrateful ones!’ Oblomov concluded bitterly.
Zakhar was completely overcome by the last pathetic words. He began to whimper quietly.
‘Please, sir,’ he implored, ‘don’t carry on like that! What are you saying, sir? Oh, Blessed Virgin, Mother of God, what a terrible calamity has befallen us!’
‘And you,’ Oblomov went on, without listening to him – ‘you ought to be ashamed to say such things. That’s the sort of snake I’ve warmed in my bosom!’
‘Snake!’ Zakhar repeated, throwing up his hands and bursting out sobbing so loudly that it sounded as though two dozen beetles had flown into the room and begun buzzing. ‘When have I mentioned a snake?’ he said amidst his sobs. ‘Why, I never even dream of the cursed things!’
Each had ceased to understand the other and, at last, they no longer understood themselves.
‘How could you have brought yourself to say a thing like that?’ Oblomov went on. ‘And in my plan I had assigned you a house of your own, a kitchen garden, a quantity of corn, and a regular wage! I had appointed you my steward, my butler, and my business manager! The peasants would bow low to you, they would all call you Zakhar Trofimych, Zakhar Trofimych! And you’re still dissatisfied, you put me on the same level as the “others”! That’s how you reward me! That’s how you abuse your master!’
Zakhar continued to sob, and Oblomov himself was moved. While admonishing Zakhar, he was filled with the consciousness of the benefits he had conferred on