“A better flat you could not find in all the city.”
“Nevertheless I do not want it. It lies too far from—from——”
“From where? From the centre of the city?”
Oblomov forbore to specify what he meant, but merely remarked that he should not be dining at home that evening.
“Then hand me over the rent, and the devil take you!” exclaimed Tarantiev.
“I possess no money at all. As it is, I shall have to borrow some.”
“Well, repay me at least my cab fare,” insisted the visitor. “It was only three roubles.”
“Where is the cabman? Why has he charged you so much?”
“I dismissed him long ago. I may add that the fare home is another three roubles.”
“By the coach you could travel for half a rouble.” However, Oblomov tendered Tarantiev four roubles, which the man at once pocketed.
“Also, I have expended some seven roubles on your account,” went on Tarantiev. “Besides, you might as well advance me something towards the price of a dinner. Roadside inns are dear. As a rule they fleece one of five roubles.”
Silently Oblomov handed him another rouble, in the hope that the man would now depart; but Tarantiev was not to be so easily shaken off.
“And also you might order Zakhar to bring me a snack now,” he said.
“But I thought you intended to dine at an inn?”
“Yes, to dine, but at the moment the time is two o’clock, and no more.”
Oblomov issued the necessary orders. On receiving them, Zakhar looked darkly at Tarantiev.
“We have no food ready,” he said’. “Also, where are my master’s shirt and jacket?”
“Shirt and jacket? Why, I gave them back to you long ago. I stuffed them into your own hands, and you bundled them away into a corner. Yet you come asking me where they are!”
“Also, what about a floorbrush and two cups which you carried off?” persisted Zakhar.
“Floorbrush? What floorbrush?” retorted Tarantiev. “Go and get me something to eat, you old fool!”
“We have not a single morsel in the house,” said Zakhar; “and also there is nobody to cook it.” With which he withdrew.
‘Tarantiev locked about him, and, perceiving Oblomov to be possessed both of a hat and a cap, attempted unsuccessfully to borrow the former for the remainder of the summer, and then took his leave.
When he had gone Oblomov sat plunged in thought. He recognized that his bright, cloudless holiday of love was over, and that workaday love had now become the order of the day, and that already it was so completely entering into his life’s ordinary tendencies that things were beginning to lose their rainbow colours.
“Indeed,” he reflected, “this morning may have seen the extinction of the last roseate ray of love’s festival—so that henceforth my life is to be warmed rather than lighted. Yes, life will swallow up love, although secretly it will remain moved by its powerful springs, and its manifestations be of an invariably simple, everyday nature. Yes, the poem is fading, and stem prose is to follow—to follow with a drab series of incidents which shall comprise a marriage ceremony, a journey to Oblomovka, the building of a house, an application to the local council, the laying out of roads, an endless transaction of business with peasants, a number of improvements, harvests, and so forth, the frequent spectacle of the bailiff’s anxious face, elections to the council of nobles, and sundry sittings on the local bench,” Somewhere he could see Olga beaming upon him, and singing Casta Diva, and then giving him a hasty kiss before he went forth to work, or to the town, or to interview the bailiff. Guests would call (a no very comforting prospect!), and they would talk about the wine which each happened to be brewing in his vats, and about the number of arshins 19 of cloth which each happened to have rendered to the Treasury. What would this amount to? What was it he was promising for himself? Was it life? Whether life or not, it would have to be lived as though it, and it alone, constituted existence. At least it would be an existence that would find favour with Schtoltz!
But the actual wedding ceremony—that, at all events, would represent the poetry of life, its nascent, its just opening flower? He pictured himself leading Olga to the altar. On her head there would’ be a wreath of orange-blossoms, and to her gown a long train, and the crowd would whisper in amazement. Shyly, and with gently heaving bosom and brow bent forward in gracious pride, she would give him her hand in complete unconsciousness that the eyes of all were fixed upon her. Then, a bright smile would show itself on her face, the tears would begin to well, and for a moment or two the furrow on her forehead would twitch with thought. Then, when they had arrived home and the guests had all departed, she, yes, she—clad still in her gorgeous raiment—would throw herself upon his breast as she had done that morning!
Unable any longer to keep his fancies to himself, he went with them to Olga. She listened to him with a smile; but when he jumped up with the intention of informing also her aunt she frowned with such decision that he halted in awe.
“Not a word to any one!” she said. “The right moment is not yet come.”
“What ought we to do first, then?”
“To go to the registrar, and to sign the record.”
“And then?”
“After marriage to go and live at Oblomovka, and to see what can be done there.”
“We shall not be able to do that, for the house is in ruins, and a new one must first be built.”
“Then where are we to live?”
“We must take a flat in town.”
“Then you had better go at once and see about it.”
“Alas!” was Oblomov’s reflection. “Olga wishes for ever to be on the move. Apparently she cares nothing about dreaming over the poetical phases of life, or losing herself in reveries. She is like Schtoltz. It would seem as though the two had conspired to live life at top speed.”
II
Late that August rain set in, and, one day, Oblomov saw a vanload of the Ilyinskis’ furniture come past his windows. To remain in his country villa, now that the park was desolate and the shutters hung closed over the Ilyinskis’ windows, seemed to him impossible. At length he removed to the rooms which had been recommended him by Tarantiev, until such time as he should be able to find for himself a new flat. He took hasty meals at restaurants, and spent most of his evenings with Olga.
But the long autumn evenings in town were not like the long, bright days amid fields and woods.
Here he could not visit Olga three times a day, nor send her notes by Zakhar, seeing that she was five versts away. Thus the polled poem of the late summer seemed somehow to have halted, or to be moving more slowly, as though it contained less substance than of yore.
Sometimes they would keep silence for quite half an hour at a time, while she busied herself with her needlework, and he busied himself in a chaos of thoughts which ranged beyond the immediate present. Only at intervals would he gaze at her and tremble with passion; only at intervals would she throw him a fleeting glance, and smile as she caught the rays of tender humility, of silent happiness, which his eyes conveyed.
Yet on the sixth day, when Olga invited him to meet her at a certain shop, and to escort