Oblomov - Ivan Goncharov [62]
‘Dear me, what an awful child – what a fidget, to be sure!’ his nurse said. ‘Can’t you sit still for a minute, sir? Fie, for shame!’
The nurse’s days – and nights – were one continuous scurrying and dashing about: one moment in agony, another full of joy, afraid that he might fall and hurt himself, deeply moved by his unfeigned childish affection, or vaguely apprehensive about his distant future – this was all she lived for, these agitations warmed the old woman’s blood and sustained her sluggish existence which might otherwise have come to an end long before.
The child, however, was not always so playful; sometimes he suddenly grew quiet and gazed intently at everything as he sat beside his nurse. His childish mind was observing closely all that was going on around him; these impressions sank deeply into his soul, and grew and matured with him.
It was a glorious morning; the air was cool; the sun was still low. Long shadows fell from the house, the trees, the dovecote, and the gallery. The garden and the yard were full of cool places, inviting sleep and day-dreaming. Only the rye-fields in the distance blazed and shimmered, and the stream sparkled and glittered in the sun so that it hurt one’s eyes to look at it.
‘Why, Nanny, is it so dark here and so light there, and why will it be light here soon as well?’
‘Because the sun is going to meet the moon, my dear, and frowns when it can’t find it, but as soon as it sees it in the distance it grows brighter.’
The little boy grew thoughtful and went on looking all about him: he saw Antip going to get water and another Antip, ten times bigger than the real one, walking beside him along the ground, and the water-barrel looked as big as a house, and the horse’s shadow covered the whole of the meadow, and after taking only two steps across the meadow, it suddenly moved across the hill, and Antip had had no time to leave the yard. The child, too, took two steps – another step and he would be on the other side of the hill. He would like to have gone there to see where the horse had disappeared to. He ran to the gate, but his mother’s voice could be heard from the window:
‘Nurse, don’t you see that the child has run out in the sun! Take him where it’s cool. If his head gets hot, he’ll be sick and lose his appetite. If you’re not careful, he’ll run to the ravine.’
‘Oh, you naughty boy!’ the nurse grumbled softly as she took him back to the house.
The boy watched with his keen and sensitive eyes what the grown-ups were doing and how they were spending the morning. Not a single detail, however trifling, escaped the child’s inquisitive attention; the picture of his home-life was indelibly engraved on his memory; his malleable mind absorbed the living examples before him and unconsciously drew up the programme of his life in accordance with the life around him.
The morning could not be said to be wasted in the Oblomov house. The clatter of knives chopping meat and vegetables in the kitchen could be heard as far as the village. From the servants’ hall came the hum of the spindle and the soft, thin voice of a woman: it was difficult to say whether she was crying or improvising a melancholy song without words. As soon as Antip returned to the yard with the barrel of water, the women and the coachmen came trudging towards it from every direction with pails, troughs, and jugs. Then an old woman carried a basinful of flour and a large number of eggs from the storehouse to the kitchen; the cook suddenly threw some water out through the window and splashed Arapka, which sat all morning with its eyes fixed on the window, wagging its tail and licking its chops.
Oblomov’s father was not idle, either. He sat at the window all morning, keeping a wary eye on all that was going on in the yard.
‘Hey, Ignashka, what are you carrying there, you fool?’ he would ask a servant walking across the yard.
‘I’m taking the knives to be sharpened, sir,’ the