Oblomov - Ivan Goncharov [68]
Listening to his nurse’s stories of our Golden Fleece – the Fire Bird – of the obstacles and secret passages in the enchanted castle, the little boy plucked up courage, imagining himself the hero of some great exploit – and a shiver ran down his back, or he grieved over the misfortunes of the brave hero of the tale. One story followed another. The nurse told her stories picturesquely, with fervour and enthusiasm, sometimes with inspiration, because she half-believed them herself. Her eyes sparkled, her head shook with excitement, her voice rose to unaccustomed notes. Overcome by a mysterious terror, the boy clung to her with tears in his eyes. Whether she spoke of dead men rising from their graves at midnight, or of the victims of some monster, pining away in captivity, or of the bear with the wooden leg walking through large and small villages in search of the leg that had been cut off – the boy’s hair stood on end with horror; his childish imagination was paralysed and then worked feverishly; he was going through an agonizing, sweet, and painful experience; his nerves were taut like chords. When his nurse repeated the bear’s words grimly: ‘Creak, creak, limewood leg; I’ve walked through large villages, I’ve walked though a small village, all the women are fast asleep, but one woman does not sleep, she is sitting on my skin, she is cooking my flesh, she is spinning my own fur,’ and so on, when the bear entered the cottage and was about to seize the woman who had robbed him of his leg, the little boy could stand it no longer: he flung himself shrieking into his nurse’s arms, trembling all over; he cried with fright and laughed with joy because he was not in the wild beast’s claws, but on the stove beside his nurse. The little boy’s imagination was peopled with strange phantoms; fear and anguish struck root in his soul for years, perhaps for ever. He looked sadly about him, and seeing only evil and misfortune everywhere in life, dreamt constantly of that magic country where there were no evils, troubles, or sorrows, where Militrissa Kirbityevna lived, where such excellent food and such fine clothes could be had for nothing.…
Fairy-tales held sway not only over the children in Oblomovka, but also over the grown-ups to the end of their lives. Everyone in the house and the village, from the master and mistress down to the burly blacksmith Taras, was afraid of something on a dark night: every tree was transformed into a giant and every bush into a den of brigands. The rattling of a shutter and the howling of the wind in the chimney made men, women and children turn pale. At Epiphany no one went out of the gate by himself at ten o’clock at night; on Easter night no one ventured into the stables, afraid of meeting the house-demon there. They believed in everything at Oblomovka: in ghosts and werewolves. If they were told that a stack of hay walked about the field, they believed it implicitly; if someone spread a rumour that a certain ram was not really a ram but something else, or that a certain Marfa or Stepanida was a witch, they were afraid of both the ram and Marfa; it never occurred to them to ask why the ram was not a ram or why Marfa had become a witch, and, indeed, they would attack anyone who dared to doubt it – so strong was their belief in the miraculous at Oblomovka!
Oblomov realized afterwards that the world was a very simple affair, that dead men did not rise from their graves, that as soon as there were any giants about, they were put in a sideshow, and robbers were clapped into jail; but if his belief in phantoms disappeared, there remained a sort of sediment of fear and a vague feeling of anguish. Oblomov discovered that no misfortunes were caused by monsters, and he scarcely knew what misfortunes there were, and yet he expected something dreadful to happen any moment and he could not help being afraid. Even now, if he were left in a dark room or if he saw a corpse, he would still be frightened because of the sinister feeling of anguish sown in his mind as a child; laughing at