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By Root 2195 0

and more seldom, and roused the slumbering powers only for a moment. His mind and will had long been paralysed and, it seemed, irretrievably. The events of his life had dwindled to microscopic dimensions, but even so he could not cope with them; he did not pass from one to another, but was tossed to and fro by them as by waves; he was powerless to oppose one by the resilience of his will or to follow another by the force of his reason. He felt bitter at having to confess it all to himself in secret. Fruitless regrets for the past, burning reproaches of his conscience pricked him like needles, and he tried hard to throw off the burden of those reproaches, to find someone else to blame and turn their sting against. But who?

‘It’s all – Zakhar’s fault,’ he whispered.

He recalled the details of the scene with Zakhar, and his face burned with shame. ‘What if someone had overheard it?’ he wondered, turning cold at the thought. ‘Thank goodness Zakhar won’t be able to repeat it to anyone, and no one would believe him, either.’

He sighed, cursed himself, turned from side to side, looked for someone to blame and could not find anyone. His moans and groans even reached Zakhar’s ears.

‘It’s that kvas that’s given him wind,’ Zakhar muttered angrily.

‘Why am I like this?’ Oblomov asked himself almost with tears, hiding his head under the blanket again. ‘Why?’

After seeking in vain for the hostile source that prevented him from living as he should, as the ‘others’ lived, he sighed, closed his eyes, and a few minutes later drowsiness began once again to benumb his senses.

‘I, too, would have liked – liked,’ he murmured, blinking with difficulty, ‘something like that – has nature treated me so badly – no, thank God – I’ve nothing to complain of – –’ There followed a resigned sigh. He was passing from agitation to his normal state of calm and apathy. ‘It’s fate, I suppose – can’t do anything about it,’ he was hardly able to whisper, overcome by sleep. ‘Some two thousand less than last year,’ he said suddenly in a loud voice, as though in a delirium. ‘Wait – wait a moment – –’ And he half awoke. ‘Still,’ he whispered again, ‘it would be interesting – to know why – I am like that!’ His eyelids closed tightly. ‘Yes – why? Perhaps it’s – because – –’ He tried to utter the words but could not.

So he never arrived at the cause, after all; his tongue and lips stopped in the middle of the sentence and remained half open. Instead of a word, another sigh was heard, followed by the sound of the even snoring of a man who was peacefully asleep.

Sleep stopped the slow and lazy flow of his thoughts and instantly transferred him to another age and other people, to another place, where we, too, gentle reader, will follow him in the next chapter.

9

OBLOMOV’S DREAM

WHERE ARE WE? In what blessed little corner of the earth has Oblomov’s dream transferred us? What a lovely spot!

It is true there is no sea there, no high mountains, cliffs or precipices, no virgin forests – nothing grand, gloomy, and wild. But what is the good of the grand and the wild? The sea, for instance? Let it stay where it is! It merely makes you melancholy: looking at it, you feel like crying. The heart quails at the sight of the boundless expanse of water, and the eyes grow tired of the endless monotony of the scene. The roaring and the wild pounding of the waves do not caress your feeble ears; they go on repeating their old, old song, gloomy and mysterious, the same since the world began; and the same old moaning is heard in it, the same complaints as though of a monster condemned to torture, and piercing, sinister voices. No birds twitter around; only silent sea-gulls like doomed creatures, mournfully fly to and fro near the coast and circle over the water.

The roar of a beast is powerless beside these lamentations of nature, the human voice, too, is insignificant, and man himself is so little and weak, so lost among the small details of the vast picture! Perhaps it is because of this that he feels so depressed when he looks at the sea. Yes, the