Oblomov - Ivan Goncharov [72]
He turned his eyes away and, they say, the steps still rock but have not fallen to pieces yet. Luka, it would seem, was indeed an excellent carpenter!
One must do the Oblomovs justice, though: sometimes when things went wrong, they would take a great deal of trouble and even flew into a temper and grew angry. How could one thing or another have been neglected for so long? Something must be done about it at once! And they went on talking interminably about repairing the little bridge across the ditch or fencing off part of the garden to prevent the cattle from spoiling the trees because the wattle fence had collapsed in one place.
One day, while taking a walk in the garden, Oblomov’s father had even gone so far as to lift, groaning and moaning, the fence off the ground with his own hands and told the gardener to prop it up at once with two poles; thanks to his promptness, the fence remained standing like that all through the summer, and it was only in winter that the snow brought it down again. At last even the bridge had three new planks laid across it after Antip had fallen through it with his horse and water-barrel. He had not had time to recover from his injuries before the bridge was as good as new. Nor did the cows and goats profit much from the fresh fall of the wattle fence in the garden: they had only had time to eat the currant bushes and to start stripping the bark off the tenth lime-tree, and never reached the appletrees, when an order was given to put the fence right and even to dig a ditch round it. The two cows and a goat which were caught in the act had received a good beating!
Oblomov also dreamt of the big, dark drawing-room in his parents’ house, with its ancient ashwood arm-chairs, which were always covered, a huge, clumsy and hard sofa, upholstered in faded and stained blue barracan and one large leather arm-chair. A long winter evening; his mother sat on the sofa with her feet tucked under her, lazily knitting a child’s stocking, yawning, and occasionally scratching her head with a knitting-needle. Nastasya Ivanovna and Pelageya Ignatyevna sat beside her and, bending low over their work, were diligently sewing something for Oblomov for the holidays or for his father or for themselves. His father paced the room with his hands behind his back, looking very pleased with himself, or sat down in the arm-chair, and after a time once more walked up and down the room, listening attentively to the sound of his own footsteps. Then he took a pinch of snuff, blew his nose and took another pinch. One tallow candle burned dimly in the room, and even this was permitted only on autumn and winter evenings. In the summer months everyone tried to get up and go to bed by daylight. This was done partly out of habit and partly out of economy. Oblomov’s parents were extremely sparing with any article which was not produced at home but had to be bought. They gladly killed an excellent turkey or a dozen chickens to entertain a guest, but they never put an extra raisin in a dish, and turned pale when their guest ventured to pour himself out another glass of wine. Such depravity, however, was a rare occurrence at Oblomovka: that sort of thing would be done only by some desperate character, a social outcast, who would never be invited to the house again. No, they had quite a different code of behaviour there: a visitor would never dream of touching anything before he had been asked at least three times. He knew very well that if he was asked only once to savour some dish or drink some wine, he was really expected to refuse it. It was not for every visitor, either, that two candles were lit: candles were bought in town for money and, like all purchased articles, were kept under lock and key by the mistress herself. Candle-ends were carefully counted and safely put away. Generally speaking, they did not like spending money at Oblomovka, and however