PART IV
I
F or many a day after his illness Oblomov’s mood was one of dull and painful despondency; but gradually this became replaced with a phase of mute indifference, in which he would spend hours in watching the snow fall and listening to the grinding of the landlady’s coffee-mill, to the barking of the housedogs as they rattled at their chains, to the creaking of Zakhar’s boots, and to the measured tick of the clock’s pendulum. As of old, Agafia Matvievna, his landlady, would come and propose one or another dish for his delectation; also her children would come running to and fro through his rooms. To the landlady he returned kindly, indifferent answers, and to the youngsters he gave lessons in reading and waiting, while smiling wearily, involuntarily at their playfulness. Little by little he regained his firmer mode of life.
One day Schtoltz walked into his room.
“Well, Ilya?” he said, with a questioning sternness which caused Oblomov to lower his eyes and remain silent.
“Then it is to be ‘never’?” went on his friend.
“‘Never’?” queried Oblomov.
“Yes. Do you not remember my saying to you, ‘Now or never’?”
“I do,” the other returned. “But I am not the man I then was. I have now set my affairs in order, and my plans for improving my estate are nearly finished, and I write regularly for two journals, and I have read all the books which you left behind you.”
“But why have you never come to join me abroad?” asked Schtoltz.
“Something prevented me.”
“Olga?”
Oblomov gathered animation at the question.
“Where is she?” he exclaimed. “I heard that she had gone abroad with her aunt—that she went there soon after, after——”
“Soon after she had recognized her mistake,” concluded Schtoltz.
“You know the story, then?” said Oblomov, scarcely able to conceal his confusion.
“Yes, the whole of it—even to the point of the sprig of lilac. Do you not feel ashamed of yourself, Ilya? Does it not hurt you? Are you not consumed with regret and remorse?”
“Yes; please do not remind me of it,” interrupted Oblomov hurriedly. “So great was my agony when I perceived the gulf set between us that I fell ill of a fever. Ah, Schtoltz, if you love me, do not torture me, do not mention her name. Long ago I pointed out to her her mistake, but she would not listen to me. Indeed I am not so much to blame.”
“I am not blaming you,” said Schtoltz gently; “for I have read your letter. It is I that am most to blame—then she—then you least of all.”
“How is she now?”
“How is she? She is in great distress. She weeps, and will not be comforted.”
Mingled anguish, sympathy, and alarm showed themselves on Oblomov’s features.
“What?” he cried, rising to his feet. “Come, Schtoltz! We must go to her at once, in order that I may beg her pardon on my knees.”
Schtoltz thought it well to change his tactics.
“Do you sit still,” he said with a laugh. “I have not been telling you the exact truth. As a matter of fact, she is well and happy, and bids me give you her greeting. Also, she wanted to write to you, but I dissuaded her on the ground that it would only cause you pain.”
“Thank God for that!” cried Oblomov, almost with tears of joy. “Oh, I am so glad, Schtollz! Pray let me embrace you, and then let us drink to her happiness!”
“But why are you hidden away in this corner?” asked Sehtoltz after a pause.
“Because it is quiet here—there is no one to disturb me.”
“I suppose so,” retorted Sehtoltz. “In fact, you have here—well, Oblomovka over again, only worse.” He glanced about him. “And how are you now?”
“I am not very well. My breathing is bad, and spots persist in floating before my eyes. Sometimes, too, when I am asleep, some one seems to come and strike me a blow upon the back and head, so that I leap up with a start.”
“Listen, Ilya,” said Schtoltz gravely. “I tell you, in all seriousness, that if you do not change your mode of life you will soon be seized with dropsy or a stroke. As for your future, I have no hopes of it at all. If Olga, that angel, could not bear you from your swamp on her wings, neither shall I succeed in doing so. However, to the end I shall stand by you: and when I say that, I am voicing not only my own wish, but also that of Olga. For she desires you not to perish utterly, not to be buried alive; she desires that at least I shall make an attempt to dig you from the tomb.”
“Then she has not forgotten me?” cried Oblomov with emotion—adding: “As though I were worthy of her remembrance!”
“No, she has not forgotten you, and, I think, never will. Indeed, she is not the sort of person to forget you. Some day you must go and pay her a visit in the country.”
“Yes, yes—but not now,” urged Oblomov.
“Even at this moment I—I——” He pointed to his heart.
“What does it contain?” asked Sehtoltz. “Love?”
“No, shame and sorrow. Ah, life, life!”
“What of it?”
“It disturbs me—it allows me no rest.”
“Were it to do so, the flame of your candle would soon go out, and you would find yourself in darkness. Ah, Ilya, Ilya! Life passes too swiftly for it to be spent in slumber. Would, rather, it were a perpetual fire!—that one could live for hundreds and hundreds of years! Then what an immensity of work would one not do!”
“You and I are of different types,” said Oblomov. “You have wings; you do not merely exist—you also fly. You have gifts and ambition; you do not grow fat; specks do not dance before your eyes; and the back of your neck does not need to be periodically scratched. In short, my organism and yours are wholly dissimilar.”
“Fie, fie! Man was created to order his own being, and even to change his own nature; yet, instead, he goes and develops a paunch, and then supposes that nature has laid upon him that burden. Once upon a time you too had wings. Now you have laid them aside.”
“Where are they?” asked Oblomov. “I am powerless, completely powerless.”
“Rather, you are determined to be powerless. Even during your boyhood at Oblomovka, and amid the circle of your aunts and nurses and valets, you had begun to waste your intellect, and to be unable to put on your own socks, and so forth. Hence your present inability to live.”
“All that may be so,” said Oblomov with a sigh; “but now it is too late to turn back.”
“And what am I to say to Olga on my return?”
Oblomov hung his head in sad and silent meditation.
“Say nothing,” at length he said. “Or say that you have not seen me....”
A year and a half later Oblomov was sitting in his dull, murky rooms. He had now grown corpulent, and from his eyes ennui peered forth like a disease. At intervals,