Oblomov - Ivan Goncharov [74]
They reckoned the time by holy-days, by the seasons of the years, by different family and domestic occurrences, and never referred to dates or months. That was perhaps partly because, except for Oblomov’s father, they all got mixed up with the dates and the months. Defeated, Oblomov’s father made no answer, and again the whole company sank into drowsiness. Oblomov, snuggled up behind his mother’s back, was also drowsing and occasionally dropped off to sleep.
‘Aye,’ some visitor would then say with a deep sigh, ‘Maria Onisimovna’s husband, the late Vassily Fomich, seemed a healthy chap, if ever there was one, and yet he died! Before he was fifty, too! He should have lived to be a hundred!’
‘We shall all die at the appointed time – it’s God’s will,’ Pelageya Ignatyevna replied with a sigh. ‘Some people die, but the Khlopovs have one christening after another – I am told Anna Andreyevna has just had another baby – her sixth!’
‘It isn’t only Anna Andreyevna,’ said the lady of the house. ‘Wait till her brother gets married – there’ll be one child after another – there’s going to be plenty of trouble in that family! The young boys are growing up and will soon be old enough to marry; then the daughters will have to get married, and where is one to find husbands for them? To-day everyone is asking for a dowry, and in cash, too.’
‘What are you saying?’ asked Oblomov’s father, going up to them.
‘Well, we’re saying that – –’
And they told him what they were talking about.
‘Yes,’ Oblomov’s father said sententiously, ‘that’s life for you! One dies, another one is born, a third one marries, and we just go on getting older. There are no two days that are alike, let alone two years. Why should it be so? Wouldn’t it have been nice if one day were just like the day before, and yesterday were just like to-morrow? It’s sad, when you come to think of it.’
‘The old are ageing and the young are growing up,’ someone muttered sleepily in a corner of the room.
‘One has to pray more and try not to think of anything,’ the lady of the house said sternly.
‘True, true,’ Oblomov’s father, who had meant to indulge in a bit of philosophy, remarked apprehensively and began pacing the room again.
There was another long silence; only the faint sound made by the wool as it was pulled through the material by the needles could be heard. Sometimes the lady of the house broke the silence.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘it is dark outside. At Christmas time, when our people come to stay, it will be merrier and we shan’t notice the evenings pass. If Malanya Petrovna comes, there will be no end of fun! The things she does! Telling fortunes by melting down tin or wax, or running out of the gate; my maids don’t know where they are when she’s here. She’d organize all sorts of games – she is a rare one!’
‘Yes,’ someone observed, ‘a society lady! Two years ago she took it into her head to go tobogganing – that was when Luka Savich injured his forehead.’
They all suddenly came to life and burst out laughing as they looked at Luka Savich.
‘How did you manage to do that, Luka Savich?’ said Oblomov’s father, dying with laughter. ‘Come on, tell us!’
And they all went on laughing, and Oblomov woke up, and he, too, laughed.
‘Well, what is there to tell?’ Luka Savich said, looking put out. ‘Alexey Naumich has invented it all: there was nothing of the kind at all.’
‘Oh!’ they shouted in chorus. ‘What do you mean – nothing happened at all? We’re not dead, are we? And what about that scar on your forehead? You can still see it.’
And they shook with laughter.
‘What are you laughing at?’ Luka Savich tried to put in a word between the outbursts of laughter. ‘I – I’d have been all right if that rascal Vaska had not given me that old toboggan – it came to pieces under me – I – –’
His voice was drowned in the general laughter. In vain did he try to finish the story of his fall: the laughter spread to the hall and the maids’ room, till the whole house was full of it; they all recalled the amusing incident, they all laughed and laughed