Oblomov - Ivan Goncharov [79]
Nothing was good enough for him to eat that morning. They baked rolls of different shapes for him, loaded him with pickles, biscuits, jams, all sorts of sweetmeats, cooked and uncooked dainties, and even provisions. He was given it all on the supposition that he did not get enough to eat at the German’s house.
‘You won’t get anything decent to eat there,’ they said at Oblomovka. ‘For dinner they’ll give you nothing but soup, roast meat, and potatoes, and bread and butter for tea. As for supper – not a crumb, old man!’
Oblomov, however, dreamt mostly of Mondays on which he did not hear Vaska’s voice shouting for the piebald to be harnessed, but his mother greeting him at breakfast with a smile and pleasant news.
‘You’re not going to-day, dear; Thursday is a great holy-day, and it isn’t worth travelling there and back for three days.’
Or sometimes she would announce to him suddenly:
‘To-day is commemoration week – it’s no time for lessons: we shall be baking pancakes.’
Or his mother would look at him intently on a Monday morning and say:
‘Your eyes look tired this morning, darling. Are you well?’ and shake her head.
The sly little boy was perfectly well, but he said nothing.
‘You’d better stay at home this week,’ she said, ‘and we shall see how you feel.’
And they were all convinced in the house that lessons and Commemoration Saturday must never be allowed to interfere with each other and that a holy-day on a Thursday was an insurmountable obstacle to lessons during the whole of the week. Only from time to time would a servant or a maid, who had been punished because of the young master, grumble:
‘Oh, you spoilt little brat! When will you clear out to your German?’
At other times Antip would suddenly turn up at the German’s on the familiar piebald in the middle or at the beginning of the week to fetch Oblomov.
‘Maria Savishna or Natalya Faddeyevna or the Kuzovkovs with all their children have come on a visit and you’re wanted back home!’
And Oblomov stayed at home for three weeks, and then Holy Week was not far off, followed by Easter; or someone in the house decided that for some reason or other one did not study in the week after Easter; there would be only a fortnight left till summer, and it was not worth going back to school, for the German himself had a rest in summer, so that it was best to put the lessons off till the autumn. Oblomov spent a most enjoyable six months. How tall he grew during that time! And how fat he grew! How soundly he slept! They could not admire him enough at home, nor could they help observing that when the dear child returned home from the German on Saturdays, he looked pale and thin.
‘He can easily come to harm,’ his mother would remark. ‘He’ll have plenty of time to study, but you cannot buy health for money: health is the most precious thing in life. The poor boy comes back from school as from a hospital: all his fat is gone, he looks so thin – and such a naughty boy, too: always running about!’
‘Yes,’ his father observed, ‘learning is no joke: it will take it out of anyone!’
And the fond parents went on finding excuses for keeping their son at home. There was no difficulty in finding excuses besides holy-days. In winter they thought it was too cold, in summer it was too hot to drive to the next village, and sometimes it rained; in the autumn the roads were too muddy. Sometimes Antip aroused their doubts: he did not seem to be drunk, but he had a sort of wild look in his eyes – there might be trouble, he might get stuck in the mud or fall into a ditch. The Oblomovs, however, tried to make their excuses as legitimate as possible in their own eyes, and particularly in the eyes of Stolz, who did not spare Donnerwetters to their faces and behind their backs for pampering the child.
The days of the heroes of Fonvisin’s comedy The Minor – the Prostakovs and Skotinins – had gone long before. The proverb ‘Knowledge is light