9

OBLOMOV’S DREAM

WHERE ARE WE? In what blessed little corner of the earth has Oblomov’s dream transferred us? What a lovely spot!

It is true there is no sea there, no high mountains, cliffs or precipices, no virgin forests – nothing grand, gloomy, and wild. But what is the good of the grand and the wild? The sea, for instance? Let it stay where it is! It merely makes you melancholy: looking at it, you feel like crying. The heart quails at the sight of the boundless expanse of water, and the eyes grow tired of the endless monotony of the scene. The roaring and the wild pounding of the waves do not caress your feeble ears; they go on repeating their old, old song, gloomy and mysterious, the same since the world began; and the same old moaning is heard in it, the same complaints as though of a monster condemned to torture, and piercing, sinister voices. No birds twitter around; only silent sea-gulls like doomed creatures, mournfully fly to and fro near the coast and circle over the water.

The roar of a beast is powerless beside these lamentations of nature, the human voice, too, is insignificant, and man himself is so little and weak, so lost among the small details of the vast picture! Perhaps it is because of this that he feels so depressed when he looks at the sea. Yes, the sea can stay where it is! Its very calm and stillness bring no comfort to a man’s heart; in the barely perceptible swell of the mass of waters man still sees the same boundless, though slumbering, force which can so cruelly mock his proud will and bury so deeply his brave schemes, and all his labour and toil.

Mountains and precipices, too, have not been created for man’s enjoyment. They are as terrifying and menacing as the teeth and claws of a wild beast rushing upon him; they remind us too vividly of our frailty and keep us continually in fear of our lives. And the sky over the peaks and the precipices seems so far and unattainable, as though it had recoiled from men.

The peaceful spot where our hero suddenly found himself was not like that. The sky there seems to hug the earth, not in order to fling its thunderbolts at it, but to embrace it more tightly and lovingly; it hangs as low overhead as the trustworthy roof of the parental house, to preserve, it would seem, the chosen spot from all calamities. The sun there shines brightly and warmly for about six months of the year and withdraws gradually, as though reluctantly, as though turning back to take another look at the place it loves and to give it a warm, clear day in the autumn, amid the rain and slush.

The mountains there seem to be only small-scale models of the terrifying mountains far away that frighten the imagination. They form a chain of gently sloping hillocks, down which it is pleasant to slide on one’s back in play, or to sit on watching the sunset dreamily.

The river runs gaily, sporting and playing; sometimes it spreads into a wide pond, and sometimes it rushes along in a swift stream, or grows quiet, as though lost in meditation, and creeps slowly along the pebbles, breaking up into lively streams on all sides, whose rippling lulls you pleasantly to sleep.

The whole place, for ten or fifteen miles around, consists of a series of picturesque, smiling, gay landscapes. The sandy, sloping banks of the clear stream, the small bushes that steal down to the water from the hills, the twisting ravine with a brook running at the bottom, and the birch copse – all seem to have been carefully chosen and composed with the hand of a master.

A heart worn out by tribulations or wholly unacquainted with them cries out to hide itself in that secluded spot and live there happily and undisturbed. Everything there promises a calm, long life, till the hair turns white with age and death comes unawares, like sleep.

The year follows a regular and imperturbable course there. Spring arrives in March, according to the calendar, muddy streams run down the hills, the ground thaws, and a warm mist rises from it; the peasant throws off his sheepskin, comes out into the open only in his shirt and, shielding his eyes with a hand, stands there enjoying the sunshine and shakes his shoulders with pleasure; then he pulls the overturned cart first by one shaft, then by the other, or examines and kicks with his foot at the plough that lies idle in the shed, getting ready for his usual labours. No sudden blizzards return in the spring, covering the fields or breaking down the trees with snow. Like a cold and unapproachable beauty, winter remains true to its character till the lawfully appointed time for warmth; it does not tease with sudden thaws or bend one double with unheard of frosts; everything goes on in the usual way prescribed by nature. In November snow and frost begin, and by Twelfth- day it grows so cold that a peasant leaving his cottage for a minute returns with hoar-frost on his beard; and in February a sensitive nose already feels the soft breath of approaching spring in the air. But the summer – the summer is especially enchanting in that part of the country. The air there is fresh and dry; it is not filled with the fragrance of lemons and laurels, but only with the scent of wormwood, pine, and wild cherry; the days are bright with slightly burning but not scorching sunshine, and for almost three months there is not a cloud in the sky. As soon as clear days come, they go on for three or four weeks; the evenings are warm and the nights are close. The stars twinkle in such a kindly and friendly way from the sky. If rain comes, it is such a beneficent summer rain! It falls briskly, abundantly, splashing along merrily like the big, warm tears of a man overcome with sudden joy; and as soon as it stops the sun once more looks down with a bright smile of love on the hills and fields and dries them; and the whole countryside responds to the sun with a happy smile. The peasant welcomes the rain joyfully. «The rain will wet me and the sun will dry me», he says, holding up delightedly his face, shoulders, and back to the warm shower. Thunderstorms are not a menace but a blessing there; they always occur at the appointed tunes, hardly ever missing St Elijah’s day on the second of August, as though to confirm the well-known legend among the people. The strength and number of thunder-claps also seem to be the same each year, as though a definite amount of electricity had been allotted annually for the whole place. Terrible storms, bringing devastation in their wake, are unheard-of in those parts, and no report of them has ever appeared in the newspapers. And nothing would ever have been published about that thrice-blessed spot had not a twenty- eight-year-old peasant widow, Marina Kulkov, given birth to quadruplets, an event the Press could not possibly have ignored.

The Lord has never visited those parts either by Egyptian or ordinary plagues. No one of the inhabitants has ever seen or remembered any terrible heavenly signs, fiery balls, or sudden darkness; there are no poisonous snakes there; locusts do not come; there are no roaring lions, nor growling tigers, nor even bears nor wolves, because there are no forests. Only ruminating cows, bleating sheep, and cackling hens walk about the villages and fields in vast numbers.

It is hard to say whether a poet or a dreamer would have been pleased with nature in this peaceful spot. These gentlemen, as everyone knows, love to gaze at the moon and listen to the song of the nightingale. They love the coquette-moon when she dresses up in amber clouds and peeps mysteriously through the branches or flings sheaves of silvery beams into the eyes of her admirers. But in that country no one has even heard of the moon being anything but an ordinary moon. It stares very good- naturedly at the villages and the fields, looking very like a polished brass basin. The poet would have looked at her in vain with eyes of rapture; she gazes as good-naturedly at a poet as does a round-faced village beauty in response to the eloquent and passionate glances of a city philanderer.

There are no nightingales in those parts, either – perhaps because there are no shady nooks and roses there. But what an abundance of quail! At harvest time in the summer boys catch them with their hands. Do not imagine, however, that quail are regarded there as a gastronomic luxury – no, the morals of the inhabitants had not been corrupted to that extent: a quail is a bird which is not mentioned in the dietary rules. In that part of the country it delights the ear with its singing; that is why almost every house has a quail in a string cage under the roof.

The poet and dreamer would have remained dissatisfied by the general appearance of that modest and unpretentious district. They would never have succeeded in seeing an evening in the Swiss or Scottish style, when the whole of nature – the woods, the river, the cottage walls, and the sandy hills – is suffused by the red glow of the sunset, against which is set off a cavalcade of gentlemen, riding on a twisting, sandy road after having escorted a lady on a trip to some gloomy ruin and now returning at a smart pace to a strong castle, where an ancient native would tell them a story about the Wars of the Roses and where, after a supper of wild goat’s meat, a young girl would sing them a ballad to the accompaniment of a lute – scenes with which the pen of Walter Scott has so richly filled our imagination. No, there is nothing like that in our part of the country.

How quiet and sleepy everything is in the three or four villages which compose this little plot of land! They lie close to one another and look as though they had been flung down accidentally by a giant’s hand and scattered about in different directions, where they had remained to this day. One cottage, dropped on the edge of a ravine, has remained hanging there since time immemorial, half of it suspended in the air and propped up by three poles. People have lived quietly and happily there for three or four generations. One would think that a hen would be afraid to go into it, and yet Onisim Suslov, a steady man, who is too big to stand up in his own cottage, lives there with his wife. Not everyone would be able to enter Onisim’s cottage, unless, indeed, the visitor persuaded it to stand with its back to the forest and its front to him. For its front steps hang over the ravine, and in order to enter it one has to hold on to the grass with one hand and its roof with the other, and then lift one’s foot and place it firmly on the steps.

Another cottage clings precariously to the hillside like a swallow’s nest; three other cottages have been thrown together accidentally not far away, and two more stand at the very bottom of the ravine.

Everything in the village is quiet and sleepy: the doors of the silent cottages are wide open; not a soul is to be seen; only the flies swarm in clouds and buzz in the stuffy air. On entering a cottage, you will call in vain in a loud voice: dead silence will be your answer; very seldom will some old woman, who is spending her remaining years on the stove, reply with a painful sigh or a sepulchral cough; or a three-year-old child, long-haired, barefoot, and with only a torn shirt on, will appear from behind a partition, stare at you in silence, and hide himself again.

In the fields, too, peace and a profound silence reign; only here and there a ploughman can be seen stirring like an ant on the black earth – and, scorched by the heat and bathed in perspiration, pitching his plough forward. The same imperturbable peace and quiet prevail among the people of that locality. No robberies, murders, or fatal accidents ever happened there; no strong passions or daring enterprises ever agitated them. And, indeed, what passions or daring enterprises could have agitated them? Everyone there knew what he was capable of. The inhabitants of those villages lived far from other people. The nearest villages and the district town were twenty and twenty-five miles away. At a certain time the peasants carted their com to the nearest landing-stage of the Volga, which was their Colchis or Pillars of Hercules, and some of them went to the market once a year, and that was all the intercourse they had with the outside world. Their interests were centred upon themselves and they never came into contact with or ran foul of any one else’s. They knew that the administrative city of the province was sixty miles away, but very few of them ever went there; they also knew that farther away in the same direction was Saratov or Nizhny-Novgorod; they had heard of Petersburg and Moscow, and that French and Germans lived beyond Petersburg, and the world farther away was for them as mysterious as it was for the ancients – unknown countries, inhabited by monsters, people with two heads, giants; farther away still there was darkness, and at the end of it all was the fish which held the world on its back. And as their part of the country was hardly ever visited by travellers, they had no opportunity of learning the latest news of what was going on in the world: the peasants who supplied them with their wooden vessels lived within fifteen miles of their villages and were as ignorant as they. There was nothing even with which they could compare their way of living and find out in this way whether they lived well or no, whether they were rich or poor, or whether there was anything others had that they, too, would like.

These lucky people imagined that everything was as it should be and were convinced that everyone else lived like them and to live otherwise was a sin. They would not believe it if someone told them that there were people who had other ways of ploughing, sowing, harvesting, and selling. What passions and excitements could they possibly have? Like everyone else, they had their worries and weaknesses, rent and taxes, idleness and sleep; but all this did not amount to a great deal and did not stir their blood. For the last five years not one of the several hundred peasants of that locality had died a natural, let alone a violent, death. And when someone had gone to his eternal sleep either from old age or from some chronic illness, the people there had gone on marvelling at such an extraordinary event for months. And yet it did not surprise them at all that, for instance, Taras the blacksmith had nearly steamed himself to death in his mud hut so that he had to be revived with cold water. The only crime that was greatly prevalent was the theft of peas, carrots, and turnips from the kitchen gardens, and on one occasion two sucking pigs and a chicken had suddenly disappeared – an event which outraged the whole neighbourhood and was unanimously attributed to the fact that carts with wooden wares had passed through the village on their way to the fair. But, generally speaking, accidents of any kind were extremely rare.

Once, however, a man had been found lying in a ditch by the bridge outside a village, evidently a member of a co-operative group of workmen who had passed by on their way to the town. The boys were the first to discover him, and they ran back terrified to the village with the news that some terrible serpent or werewolf was lying in a ditch, adding that he had chased them and nearly eaten Kuzka. The braver souls among the peasants armed themselves with pitchforks and axes and went in a crowd to the ditch.

«Where are you off to?» The old men tried to stop them. «Think yourselves stout fellows, do you? What do you want there? Leave it alone, no one’s driving you».

But the peasants went, and about a hundred yards from the spot began calling to the monster in different voices, and as there was no reply, they stopped, then moved on again. A peasant lay in the ditch, leaning his head against its side; a bundle and a stick with two pairs of bast-shoes tied on it, lay beside him. They did not venture near him or touch him.

«Hey you, there!» they shouted in turn, scratching their heads or their backs. «What’s your name? Hey, you! What do you want here?»

The stranger tried to raise his head but could not; evidently he was either ill or very tired. One peasant nearly brought himself to touch him with his pitchfork.

«Don’t touch him! Don’t touch him!» many of the others cried. «How do we know what sort of a man he is? He hasn’t said a word. He may be one of them – don’t touch him, lads!»

«Let’s go», some said. «Come on now: he isn’t one of ours, is he? He’ll only bring us trouble!»

And they all went back to the village, telling the old men that a stranger was lying there who would not speak and goodness only knows what he was up to.

«Don’t have anything to do with him if he is a stranger», the old men said, sitting on the mound of earth beside their cottages, with their elbows on their knees. «Let him do as he likes! You shouldn’t have gone at all!»

Such was the spot where Oblomov suddenly found himself in his dream. Of the three or four villages scattered there, one was Sosnovka and another Vavilovka, about a mile from each other. Sosnovka and Vavilovka were the hereditary property of the Oblomov family and were therefore known under the general name of Oblomovka. The Oblomov country seat was in Sosnovka. About three and a half miles from Sosnovka lay the little village of Verkhlyovo, which had once belonged to the Oblomov family but which had long since passed into other hands, and a few more scattered cottages which went with it. This village belonged to a rich landowner who was never to be seen on his estate, which was managed by a German steward.

Such was the whole geography of the place.

Oblomov woke up in the morning in his small bed. He was only seven. He felt light-hearted and gay. What a pretty, red-cheeked, and plump boy he was! He had such sweet, round cheeks that were the envy of many a little rogue who would blow up his own on purpose, but could never get cheeks like that. His nurse was waiting for him to wake up. She began putting on his stockings, but he did not let her; he played about, dangling his legs. His nurse caught him, and they both laughed. At last she succeeded in making him get up. She washed his face, combed his hair, and took him to his mother. Seeing his mother, who had been dead for years, Oblomov even in his sleep thrilled with joy and his ardent love for her; two warm tears slowly appeared from under his eyelashes and remained motionless. His mother covered him with passionate kisses, then looked at him anxiously to see if his eyes were clear, if anything hurt him, asked the nurse if he had slept well, if he had waked in the night, if he had tossed in his sleep, if he had a temperature. Then she took him by the hand and led him to the ikon. Kneeling down and putting her arm round him, she made him repeat the words of a prayer. The boy repeated them after her absent-mindedly, gazing at the window, through which the cool of the morning and the scent of lilac poured into the room.

«Are we going for a walk to-day, Mummy?» he suddenly asked in the middle of the prayer.

«Yes, darling», she replied hurriedly, without taking her eyes off the ikon and hastening to finish the holy words.

The boy repeated them listlessly, but his mother put her whole soul into them. Then they went to see his father, and then they had breakfast.

At the breakfast table Oblomov saw their aunt, an old lady of eighty; she was constantly grumbling at her maid, who stood behind her chair waiting on her and whose head shook with age. Three elderly spinsters, his father’s distant relations, were also there, as well as his father’s slightly mad brother, and a poor landowner by the name of Chekmenev, the owner of seven serfs, who was staying with them, and several old ladies and old gentlemen. All these members of the Oblomov retinue and establishment picked up the little boy and began showering caresses and praises on him; he had hardly time to wipe away the traces of the unbidden kisses. After that they began stuffing him with rolls, biscuits, and cream. Then his mother hugged and kissed him again and sent him for a walk in the garden, the yard, and the meadow, with strict instructions to his nurse not to leave the child alone, not to let him go near the horses, the dogs, and the goat or wander too far from the house, and, above all, not to let him go to the ravine, which had a bad name as the most terrible place in the neighbourhood. Once they found a dog there which was reputed to be mad only because it ran away and disappeared behind the hills when attacked with pitchforks and axes; carcasses were thrown into the ravine, and wolves and robbers and other creatures which did not exist in those parts or anywhere else in the world were supposed to live there.

The child did not wait for his mother to finish her warnings; he was already out in the yard. He examined his father’s house and ran round it with joyful surprise, as though he had never seen it before: the gates which leaned to one side; the wooden roof which had settled in the middle and was overgrown with tender green moss; the rickety front steps; the various outbuildings and additions built on to it, and the neglected garden. He was dying to climb on to the projecting gallery which went all round the house and to have a look at the stream from there; but the gallery was very old and unsafe, and only the servants were allowed to go there – nobody else used it. He didn’t heed his mother’s prohibition and was already running to the inviting steps when his nurse appeared and succeeded in catching him. He rushed away from her to the hay-loft, intending to climb up the steep ladder leading to it, and she had no sooner reached the hay-loft than she had to stop him climbing up the dovecote, getting into the cattle yard and – Lord forbid – the ravine.

«Dear me, what an awful child – what a fidget, to be sure!» his nurse said. «Can’t you sit still for a minute, sir? Fie, for shame!»

The nurse’s days – and nights – were one continuous scurrying and dashing about: one moment in agony, another full of joy, afraid that he might fall and hurt himself, deeply moved by his unfeigned childish affection, or vaguely apprehensive about his distant future – this was all she lived for, these agitations warmed the old woman’s blood and sustained her sluggish existence which might otherwise have come to an end long before.

The child, however, was not always so playful; sometimes he suddenly grew quiet and gazed intently at everything as he sat beside his nurse. His childish mind was observing closely all that was going on around him; these impressions sank deeply into his soul, and grew and matured with him.

It was a glorious morning; the air was cool; the sun was still low. Long shadows fell from the house, the trees, the dovecote, and the gallery. The garden and the yard were full of cool places, inviting sleep and day-dreaming. Only the rye-fields in the distance blazed and shimmered, and the stream sparkled and glittered in the sun so that it hurt one’s eyes to look at it.

«Why, Nanny, is it so dark here and so light there, and why will it be light here soon as well?»

«Because the sun is going to meet the moon, my dear, and frowns when it can’t find it, but as soon as it sees it in the distance it grows brighter».

The little boy grew thoughtful and went on looking all about him: he saw Antip going to get water and another Antip, ten tunes bigger than the real one, walking beside him along the ground, and the water-barrel looked as big as a house, and the horse’s shadow covered the whole of the meadow, and after taking only two steps across the meadow, it suddenly moved across the hill, and Antip had had no time to leave the yard. The child, too, took two steps – another step and he would be on the other side of the hill. He would like to have gone there to see where the horse had disappeared to. He ran to the gate, but his mother’s voice could be heard from the window:

«Nurse, don’t you see that the child has run out in the sun! Take him where it’s cool. If his head gets hot, he’ll be sick and lose his appetite. If you’re not careful, he’ll run to the ravine».

«Oh, you naughty boy!» the nurse grumbled softly as she took him back to the house.

The boy watched with his keen and sensitive eyes what the grown-ups were doing and how they were spending the morning. Not a single detail, however trifling, escaped the child’s inquisitive attention; the picture of his home-life was indelibly engraved on his memory; his malleable mind absorbed the living examples before him and unconsciously drew up the programme of his life in accordance with the life around him.

The morning could not be said to be wasted in the Oblomov house. The clatter of knives chopping meat and vegetables in the kitchen could be heard as far as the village. From the servants’ hall came the hum of the spindle and the soft, thin voice of a woman: it was difficult to say whether she was crying or improvising a melancholy song without words. As soon as Antip returned to the yard with the barrel of water, the women and the coachmen came trudging towards it from every direction with pails, troughs, and jugs. Then an old woman carried a basinful of flour and a large number of eggs from the storehouse to the kitchen; the cook suddenly threw some water out through the window and splashed Arapka, which sat all morning with its eyes fixed on the window, wagging its tail and licking its chops.

Oblomov’s father was not idle, either. He sat at the window all morning, keeping a wary eye on all that was going on in the yard.

«Hey, Ignashka, what are you carrying there, you fool?» he would ask a servant walking across the yard.

«I’m taking the knives to be sharpened, sir», the man would answer, without looking at his master.

«Very well, and mind you sharpen them properly».

Then he would stop a peasant woman.

«Hey, my good woman, where have you been?»

«To the cellar, sir», she would stop and reply, shielding her eyes and gazing at the window. «Been to fetch some milk for dinner».

«All right, go, go», her master would reply. «And mind you don’t spill the milk. And you, Zakharka, where are you off to again, you rogue?» he shouted later. «I’ll show you how to run! It’s the third time I’ve seen you. Back to the hall with you!»

And Zakharka went back to the hall to doze.

If the cows came back from the fields, Oblomov’s father would be the first to see that they were watered; if he saw from the window that the dog was chasing a hen, he would at once take stern measures to restore order.

His wife, too, was very busy: she spent three hours explaining to Averka, the tailor, how to make a tunic for Oblomov out of her husband’s jacket, drawing the pattern in chalk and watching that Averka did not steal any cloth; then she went to the maids’ room to tell each girl what her daily task of lace-making was; then she called Nastasya Ivanovna, or Stepanida Agapovna, or someone else from her retinue for a walk in the garden with the practical purpose of seeing how ripe the apples were, if the one that was ripe the day before had fallen off the tree, to do some grafting or pruning, and so on. Her chief concern, however, was the kitchen and the dinner. The whole household was consulted about the dinner: the aged aunt, too, was invited to the council. Everyone suggested a dish: giblet soup, noodles, brawn, tripe, red or white sauce. Every advice was taken into consideration, thoroughly discussed, and then accepted or rejected in accordance with the final decision of the mistress of the house. Nastasya Petrovna or Stepanida Ivanovna was constantly being sent to the kitchen to remind the cook of something or other, to add one dish or cancel another, to take sugar, honey, wine for the cooking, and see whether the cook had used all that he had been given.

Food was the first and foremost concern at Oblomovka. What calves were fattened there every year for the festival days! What birds were reared there! What deep understanding, what hard work, what care were needed in looking after them! Turkeys and chickens for name-days and other solemn occasions were fattened on nuts. Geese were deprived of exercise and hung up motionless in a sack a few days before a festival so that they should get covered with fat. What stores of jams, pickles, and biscuits! What meads, what kvases, were brewed, what pies baked at Oblomovka!

And so up to midday everyone was busy, everyone was living a full, conspicuous, ant-like life. These industrious ants were not idle on Sundays and holidays, either: on those days the clatter of knives in the kitchen was louder than ever; the kitchen-maid journeyed a few times from the barn to the kitchen with a double quantity of flour and eggs; in the poultry yard there was a greater uproar and more bloodshed than ever. An enormous pie was baked, which was served cold for dinner on the following day; on the third and fourth day its remnants were sent to the maids’ room, where it lasted till Friday, when one stale end of it without stuffing descended by special favour to Antip, who, crossing himself, proudly and fearlessly demolished this interesting fossil, enjoying the consciousness that it was his master’s pie more than the pie itself, like an archaeologist who will enjoy drinking some wretched wine out of what remains of some vessel a thousand years old.

The child kept observing and watching it all with his childish mind, which did not miss anything. He saw how often a usefully and busily spent morning was followed by midday and dinner.

At midday it was hot; not a cloud in the sky. The sun stood motionless overhead scorching the grass. There was not the faintest breeze in the motionless air. Neither tree nor water stirred; an imperturbable stillness fell over the village and the fields, as though everything were dead. The human voice sounded loud and clear in the empty air. The flight and the buzzing of a beetle could be heard a hundred yards away, and from the thick grass there came the sound of snoring, as if someone were fast asleep there. In the house, too, dead silence reigned. It was the hour of after-dinner sleep. The child saw that everyone – father, mother, the old aunt, and their retinue – had retired to their rooms; and those who had no rooms of their own went to the hay-loft, the garden, or sought coolness in the hall, while some, covering their faces from the flies with a handkerchief, dropped off to sleep where the heat and the heavy dinner had overcome them. The gardener stretched himself out under a bush in the garden beside his mattock, and the coachman was asleep in the stables. Oblomov looked into the servants’ quarters: there everyone was lying stretched out side by side on the floor, on the benches, and in the passage, and the children, left to their own devices, were crawling about and playing in the sand. The dogs, too, stole into their kennels, there being no one to bark at. One could walk through the house from one end to the other without meeting a soul; it would have been easy to steal everything and take it away in carts, if there were any thieves in those parts, for no one would have interfered with them. It was a sort of all-absorbing and invincible sleep, a true semblance of death. Everything was dead, except for the snoring that came in all sorts of tones and variations from every comer of the house. Occasionally someone would raise his head, look round senselessly, in surprise, and turn over, or spit without opening his eyes, and munching his lips or muttering something under his breath, fall asleep again. Another would suddenly, without any preliminary preparations, jump up from his couch, as though afraid of losing a precious moment, seize a mug of kvas, and blowing away the flies that floated in it, which made the hitherto motionless flies begin to move about in the hope of improving their position, have a drink, and then fall back on the bed as though shot dead.

The child went on watching and watching. He ran out into the open with his nurse again after dinner. But in spite of the strict injunctions of her mistress and her own determination, the nurse could not resist the fascination of sleep. She, too, was infected by the epidemic that raged in Oblomovka. At first she looked sedulously after the child, did not let him go far from her, scolded him for being naughty; then, feeling the symptoms of the infection, she begged him not to go out of the gate, not to tease the goat, and not to climb on the dovecote or the gallery. She herself sat down in some shady nook – on the front steps, at the entrance to the cellar, or simply on the grass, with the apparent intention of knitting a sock and looking after the child. But soon her admonitions grew more sluggish and she began nodding. «Oh dear», she thought, falling asleep, «that fidget is sure to climb on the gallery or – run off to – the ravine…» At this point the old woman’s head dropped forward and the sock fell out of her hands; she lost sight of the child and, opening her mouth slightly, began to snore softly.

The child had been waiting impatiently for that moment, with which his independent life began. He seemed to be alone in the whole world; he tiptoed past his nurse and ran off to see where everybody was asleep; he stopped and watched intently if someone woke for a minute, spat and mumbled in his sleep, then, with a sinking heart, ran up on the gallery, raced round it on the creaking boards, climbed the dovecote, penetrated into the remotest corners of the garden, where he listened to the buzzing of a beetle and watched its flight in the air for a long time; he listened to the chirring in the grass and tried to catch the disturbers of peace; caught a dragon-fly, tore off its wings to see what it would do, or stuck a straw through it and watched it fly with that appendage; observed with delight, holding his breath, a spider sucking a fly and the poor victim struggling and buzzing in its clutches. In the end the child killed both the victim and its torturer. Then he went to a ditch, dug up some roots, peeled them, and enjoyed eating them more than the jams and apples his mother gave him. He ran out of the gate, too: he would like to go to the birch-wood, which seemed to him so near that he was sure he would get there in five minutes, not by the road, but straight across the ditch, the wattle fences, and the pits; but he was afraid, for he had been told that there were wood demons and robbers and terrible beasts there. He wanted to go to the ravine, too, for it was only about a hundred yards from the garden; he ran to the very edge of it, to peer into it as into the crater of a volcano, when suddenly all the stories and legends about the ravine rose before his mind’s eye; he was thrown into a panic, and rushed more dead than alive back to his nurse trembling with fear, and woke the old woman. She awoke with a start, straightened the kerchief on her head, pushed back the wisps of grey hair under it with a finger, and, pretending not to have been asleep at all, glanced suspiciously at Oblomov and at the windows of her master’s house and, with trembling fingers, began clicking with the knitting-needles of the sock that lay on her lap.

Meanwhile the heat had begun to abate a little; everything in nature was getting more animated; the sun had moved towards lie the woods. In the house, too, the silence was little by little broken; a door creaked somewhere; someone could be heard walking in the yard; someone else sneezed in the hay-loft. Soon a servant hurriedly brought an enormous samovar from the kitchen, bending under its weight. The company began to assemble for tea; one had a crumpled face and swollen eyelids; another had a red spot on the cheek and on the temple; a third was still too sleepy to speak in his natural voice. They wheezed, groaned, yawned, scratched their heads, stretched themselves, still barely awake. The dinner and the sleep had made them terribly thirsty. Their throats were parched; they drank about twelve cups of tea each, but this did not help; they moaned and groaned; they tried cranberry water, pear water, kvas, and some medicinal drinks to quench their thirst. All sought deliverance from it as though it were some punishment inflicted on them by God; all rushed about, panting for a drink, like a caravan of travellers in the Arabian desert looking in vain for a spring of water.

The little boy was there beside his mother, watching the strange faces around him and listening to their languid and sleepy conversation. He enjoyed looking at them, and thought every stupid remark they made interesting. After tea they all found something to do: one went down to the river and walked slowly along the bank, kicking the pebbles into the water; another sat by the window watching everything that went on outside; if a cat ran across the yard or a magpie flew by, he followed it with his eyes and the tip of his nose, turning his head to right and left. So dogs sometimes like to sit for a whole day on the window-sill, basking in the sun and carefully examining every passer-by. Oblomov’s mother would put his head on her lap and slowly comb his hair, admiring its softness and making Nastasya Ivanovna and Stepanida Tikhonovna admire it too. She talked to them of his future, conjuring up a vision of him as the hero of some brilliant exploit, while they predicted great riches for him.

But presently it was getting dark, again a fire crackled in the kitchen and again there was a loud clatter of knives; supper was being prepared. The servants had gathered at the gates; sounds of the balalaika and of laughter were heard there. They were playing catch.

The sun was setting behind the woods; its last few warm rays cut straight across the woods like shafts of fire, brightly gilding the tops of the pines. Then the rays were extinguished one by one, the last one lingering for a long time and piercing the thicket of branches like a thin quill; but it, too, was extinguished. Objects lost their shapes: at first everything was merged into a grey, and then into a black, mass. The birds gradually stopped singing; soon they fell silent altogether, except one, which, as though in defiance of the rest, went on chirping monotonously amid the general silence and at intervals which were getting longer and longer till, finally, it gave one last low whistle, slightly rustled the leaves round it, and fell asleep. All was silent. Only the grasshoppers chirped louder than ever. White mists rose from the ground and spread over the meadows and the river. The river, too, grew quieter; a few more moments and something splashed in it for the last time, and it grew motionless. There was a smell of damp in the air. It grew darker and darker. The trees began to look like groups of monsters; the woods were full of nameless terrors; someone suddenly moved about there with a creaking noise, as though one of the monsters shifted from one place to another, a dead twig cracking under its foot. The first star, like a living eye, gleamed brightly in the sky, and lights appeared in the windows of the house.

It was the time of solemn and universal stillness in nature, a time when the creative mind is most active, when poetic thoughts are fanned into flames, when passion burns more brightly or anguish is felt more acutely in the heart, when the seed of a criminal design ripens more imperturbably and more strongly in the cruel heart, and when everybody in Oblomovka is once more peacefully and soundly asleep.

«Let’s go for a walk, Mummy», said Oblomov.

«Good heavens, child», she replied, «go for a walk at this hour! It’s damp, you’ll get your feet wet, and it’s so frightening: the wood-demon is walking about in the woods now, carrying off little children».

«Where to? What is he like? Where does he live?» the little boy asked.

And his mother gave full rein to her unbridled fancy. The boy listened to her, opening and closing his eyes, till at last he was overcome by sleep. The nurse came and, taking him from his mother’s lap, carried him off to bed asleep, his head hanging over her shoulder.

«Well, thank goodness, another day gone», the Oblomovka inhabitants said, getting into bed, groaning, and crossing themselves. «We’ve lived through it safely, God grant it may be the same to-morrow! Praise be unto thee, о Lord!»

Then Oblomov dreamt of another occasion: one endless winter evening he was timidly pressing closely to his nurse, who was whispering a fairy-story to him about some wonderful country where there was no night and no cold, where all sorts of miracles happened, where the rivers flowed with milk and honey, where no one did a stroke of work all the year round, and fine fellows, like Oblomov, and maidens more beautiful than words can tell did nothing but enjoy themselves all day long. A fairy godmother lived there, who sometimes took the shape of a pike and who chose for her favourite some quiet and harmless man – in other words, some loafer, ill-treated by everyone, and for no reason in the world, bestowed all sorts of treasures on him, while he did nothing but eat and drink and dressed in costly clothes, and then married some indescribable beauty, Militrissa Kirbityevna. The little boy listened breathlessly to the story, pricking up his ears, and his eyes glued to his nurse’s face. The nurse or the traditional tale so artfully avoided every reference to reality that the child’s imagination and intellect, having absorbed the fiction, remained enslaved by it all his life. The nurse told him good-humouredly the story of Yemelya-the-Fool, that wickedly insidious satire on our forefathers and, perhaps, on ourselves too. Though when he grew up Oblomov discovered that there were no rivers flowing with milk and honey, nor fairy godmothers, and though he smiled at his nurse’s tales, his smile was not sincere, and it was accompanied by a secret sigh: the fairy-tale had become mixed up with real life in his mind, and sometimes he was sorry that fairy-tale was not life and life was not fairy-tale. He could not help dreaming of Militrissa Kirbityevna; he was always drawn to the land where people do nothing but have a good time and where there are no worries or sorrows; he preserved for the rest of his life a predisposition for doing no work, walking about in clothes that had been provided for him, and eating at the fairy godmother’s expense.

Oblomov’s father and grandfather, too, had heard as children the same fairy stories, handed down for centuries and generations in their stereotyped form by their nurses.

In the meantime the nurse was drawing another picture for the little boy’s imagination. She was telling him about the heroic exploits of our Achilles and Ulysses, about the great bravery of Ilya Muromets, Dobryna Nikitich, Alyosha Popovich, Polkan the Giant, Kolechishche the Traveller, about how they had journeyed all over Russia, defeating numberless hosts of infidels, how they vied with each other in drinking big goblets of wine at one gulp without uttering a sound; she then told him of wicked robbers, sleeping princesses, towns and people turned to stone; finally, she passed on to our demonology, dead men, monsters, and werewolves.

With Homer’s simplicity and good humour and his eye for vivid detail and concrete imagery, she filled the boy’s memory and imagination with the Iliad of Russian life, created by our Homers in the far-off days when man was not yet able to stand up to the dangers and mysteries of life and nature, when he trembled at the thought of werewolves and wood-demons and sought Alyosha Popovich’s help against the adversities threatening him on all sides, and when the air, water, forests, and plains were full of marvels. Man’s life in those days was insecure and terrible; it was dangerous for him to go beyond his own threshold; a wild beast might fall upon him any moment, or a robber might kill him, or a wicked Tartar rob him of all his possessions, or he might disappear without a trace. Or else signs from heaven might appear, pillars or balls of fire; or a light might glimmer above a new grave; or some creature might walk about in the forest as though swinging a lantern, laughing terribly and flashing its eyes in the dark. And so many mysterious things happened to people, too: a man might live for years happily without mishap, and all of a sudden he would begin to talk strangely or scream in a wild voice, or walk in his sleep; another would for no reason at all begin to writhe on the ground in convulsions. And before it happened, a hen had crowed like a cock or a raven had croaked over the roof. Man, weak creature that he is, felt bewildered, and tried to find in his imagination the key to his own being and to the mysteries that encompassed him. And perhaps it was the everlasting quiet of a sleepy and stagnant life and the absence of movement and of any real terrors, adventures, and dangers that made man create amidst the real life another fantastic one where he might find amusement and true scope for his idle imagination or an explanation of ordinary events and the causes of the events outside the events themselves. Our poor ancestors groped their way through life, they neither controlled their will nor let it be inspired, and then marvelled naively or were horrified at the discomforts and evils of life, and sought for an explanation of them in the mute and obscure hieroglyphics of nature. A death, they thought, was caused by the fact that, shortly before, a corpse had been carried out of the house head and not feet foremost, and a fire because a dog had howled for three nights under the window; and they took great care that a corpse should be carried out feet foremost, but went on eating the same food and sleeping on the bare grass as before; a barking dog was beaten or driven away, but still they shook the sparks from a burning splinter down the cracks of the rotten floor. And to this day the Russian people, amid the stark and commonplace realities of life, prefer to believe in seductive legends of the old days, and it may be a long, long time before they give up this belief.

Listening to his nurse’s stories of our Golden Fleece – the Fire Bird – of the obstacles and secret passages in the enchanted castle, the little boy plucked up courage, imagining himself the hero of some great exploit – and a shiver ran down his back, or he grieved over the misfortunes of the brave hero of the tale. One story followed another. The nurse told her stories picturesquely, with fervour and enthusiasm, sometimes with inspiration, because she half-believed them herself. Her eyes sparkled, her head shook with excitement, her voice rose to unaccustomed notes. Overcome by a mysterious terror, the boy clung to her with tears in his eyes. Whether she spoke of dead men rising from their graves at midnight, or of the victims of some monster, pining away in captivity, or of the bear with the wooden leg walking through large and small villages in search of the leg that had been cut off – the boy’s hair stood on end with horror; his childish imagination was paralysed and then worked feverishly; he was going through an agonizing, sweet, and painful experience; his nerves were taut like chords. When his nurse repeated the bear’s words grimly: «Creak, creak, limewood leg; I’ve walked through large villages, I’ve walked though a small village, all the women are fast asleep, but one woman does not sleep, she is sitting on my skin, she is cooking my flesh, she is spinning my own fur», and so on, when the bear entered the cottage and was about to seize the woman who had robbed him of his leg, the little boy could stand it no longer: he flung himself shrieking into his nurse’s arms, trembling all over; he cried with fright and laughed with joy because he was not in the wild beast’s claws, but on the stove beside his nurse. The little boy’s imagination was peopled with strange phantoms; fear and anguish struck root in his soul for years, perhaps for ever. He looked sadly about him, and seeing only evil and misfortune everywhere in life, dreamt constantly of that magic country where there were no evils, troubles, or sorrows, where Militrissa Kirbityevna lived, where such excellent food and such fine clothes could be had for nothing…

Fairy-tales held sway not only over the children in Oblomovka, but also over the grown-ups to the end of their lives. Everyone in the house and the village, from the master and mistress down to the burly blacksmith Taras, was afraid of something on a dark night: every tree was transformed into a giant and every bush into a den of brigands. The rattling of a shutter and the howling of the wind in the chimney made men, women and children turn pale. At Epiphany no one went out of the gate by himself at ten o’clock at night; on Easter night no one ventured into the stables, afraid of meeting the house-demon there. They believed in everything at Oblomovka: in ghosts and werewolves. If they were told that a stack of hay walked about the field, they believed it implicitly; if someone spread a rumour that a certain ram was not really a ram but something else, or that a certain Marfa or Stepanida was a witch, they were afraid of both the ram and Marfa; it never occurred to them to ask why the ram was not a ram or why Marfa had become a witch, and, indeed, they would attack anyone who dared to doubt it – 80 strong was their belief in the miraculous at Oblomovka!

Oblomov realized afterwards that the world was a very simple affair, that dead men did not rise from their graves, that as soon as there were any giants about, they were put in a sideshow, and robbers were clapped into jail; but if his belief in phantoms disappeared, there remained a sort of sediment of fear and a vague feeling of anguish. Oblomov discovered that no misfortunes were caused by monsters, and he scarcely knew what misfortunes there were, and yet he expected something dreadful to happen any moment and he could not help being afraid. Even now, if he were left in a dark room or if he saw a corpse, he would still be frightened because of the sinister feeling of anguish sown in his mind as a child; laughing at his fears in the morning, he could not help turning pale again in the evening.

Then Oblomov saw himself as a boy of thirteen or fourteen. He was going to school at Verkhlyovo, about three miles from Oblomovka. The steward of the estate, a German by the name of Stolz, had started a small boarding-school for the children of the local gentry. He had a son, Andrey, who was almost of the same age as Oblomov, and there was another boy, who hardly ever worked at all. He was scrofulous and spent all his childhood with his eyes or ears in bandages, and was always weeping surreptitiously because he lived with wicked strangers and not with his grandmother and had no one to fondle him and make him his favourite pasty. So far there were no other children at the school.

There was nothing for it: Oblomov’s father and mother decided to send their darling child to school. The boy protested violently at first, shrieking, crying, and being as unreasonable about it as he possibly could, but in the end he was sent off to Verkhlyovo. The German was a strict and business-like man like most Germans. Oblomov might have learnt something from him had Oblomovka been 300 miles from Verkhlyovo. But in the circumstances, how could he have learnt anything? The fascination of the Oblomovka atmosphere, way of life, and habits extended to Verkhlyovo, which had also once belonged to the Oblomovs; except for Stolz’s house, everything there was imbued with the same primitive laziness, simplicity of customs, peace, and inertia. The child’s heart and mind had been filled with the scenes, pictures, and habits of that life long before he set eyes on his first book. And who can tell when the development of a child’s intellect begins? How can one trace the birth of the first ideas and impressions in a child’s mind? Perhaps when a child begins to talk, or even before it can talk or walk, but only gazes at everything with that dumb, intent look that seems blank to grown-ups, it already catches and perceives the meaning and the connexions of the events of his life, but is not able to tell it to himself or to others. Perhaps Oblomov had observed and understood long ago what was being said and done in his presence: that his father, dressed in velveteen trousers and a brown quilted cotton coat, did nothing but walk up and down the room all day with his hands behind his back, take snuff, and blow his nose, while his mother passed on from coffee to tea, from tea to dinner; that it never entered his father’s head to check how many stacks of hay or corn had been mown or reaped, and call to account those who were guilty of neglecting their duties, but if his handkerchief was not handed to him soon enough, he would make a scene and turn the whole house upside down. Perhaps his childish mind had decided long ago that the only way to live was how the grown-ups round him lived. What other decision could he possibly have reached? And how did the grownups live at Oblomovka? Did they ever ask themselves why life had been given them? Goodness only knows. And how did they answer it? Most probably they did not answer it at all: everything seemed so clear and simple to them. They had never heard of the so-called hard life, of people who were constantly worried, who rushed about from place to place, or who devoted their lives to everlasting, never-ending work. They did not really believe in mental worries, either; they did not think that life existed so that man should constantly strive for some barely apprehended aims; they were terribly afraid of strong passions, and just as with other people bodies might be consumed by the volcanic action of inner, spiritual fire, so their souls wallowed peacefully and undisturbed in their soft bodies. Life did not mark them, as it did other people, with premature wrinkles, devastating moral blows and diseases. The good people conceived life merely as an ideal of peace and inactivity, disturbed from time to time by all sorts of unpleasant accidents, such as illness, loss of money, quarrels, and, incidentally, work. They suffered work as a punishment imposed upon our forefathers, but they could not love it and avoided it wherever and whenever they could, believing it both right and necessary to do so. They never troubled themselves about any vague moral and intellectual problems, and that was why they were always so well and happy and lived so long. Men of forty looked like boys; old men did not struggle with a hard, painful death, but, having lived to an unbelievably old age, died as if by stealth, quietly growing cold and imperceptibly breathing their last. This is why it is said that in the old days people were stronger. Yes, indeed they were: in those days they were in no hurry to explain to a boy the meaning of life and prepare him for it as though it were some complicated and serious business; they did not worry him with books which arouse all sorts of questions, which corrode your heart and mind and shorten life. Their way of life was ready-made and was taught to them by their parents, who in turn received it ready-made from their grandparents, and their grandparents from their great-grandparents, being enjoined to keep it whole and undefiled like Vesta’s fire. Whatever was done in the time of Oblomov’s father, had been done in the times of his grandfather and great-grandfather and, perhaps, is still being done at Oblomovka.

What, then, had they to worry or get excited about, or to learn? What aims had they to pursue? They wanted nothing: life, like a quiet river, flowed past them, and all that remained for them was to sit on the bank of that river and watch the inevitable events which presented themselves uncalled for to every one of them in turn. And so, too, like living pictures, there unrolled themselves in turn before the imagination of Oblomov in his sleep the three main events of life, as they happened in his family and among his relations and friends: births, marriages, and funerals. Then there followed a motley procession of their gay and mournful sub-divisions: christenings, name-days, family celebrations, fast and feast days, noisy dinner-parties, assemblies of relatives, greetings, congratulations, conventional tears and smiles. Everything was done with the utmost precision, gravity, and solemnity. He even saw the familiar faces and their expression on these different occasions, their preoccupied looks and the fuss they made. Present them with any ticklish problem of match-making, any solemn wedding or name-day you like, and they would arrange it according to all the accepted rules and without the least omission. No one in Oblomovka made the slightest mistake about the right place for a guest at the table, what dishes were to be served, who were to drive together on a ceremonial occasion, what observances were to be kept. Did they not know how to rear a child? Why, you had only to look at the rosy and well-fed darlings that their mothers carried or led by the hand! It was their ambition that their children should be plump, white-skinned, and healthy. They would do without spring altogether rather than fail to bake a cake in the shape of a lark at its beginning. They did not belong to those who did not know how important that was and did not do it. All their life and learning, all their joys and sorrows were in these things, and that was the main reason why they banished all other griefs and worries and knew no other joys. Their life was full of these fundamental and inevitable events which provided endless food for their hearts and minds. They waited with beating hearts for some ceremony, rite, or feast, and then, having christened, married, or buried a man, they forgot him completely and sank into their usual apathy, from which some similar event – a name-day, a wedding, etc. – roused them once again. As soon as a baby was born, the first concern of his parents was to carry out as precisely as possible and without any omissions all the customary rites that decorum demanded, that is to say, to have a feast after the christening; then the careful rearing of the baby began. Its mother set herself and the nurse the task of rearing a healthy child, guarding it from colds, the evil eye, and other hostile influences. They took great care that the child should always be happy and eat a lot. As soon as the boy was firmly on his feet – that is to say, when he no longer needed a nurse – the mother was already secretly cherishing the desire to find him a mate – also as rosy and as healthy as possible. Again the time came for rites, feasts, and, at last, weddings: that was all they lived for. Then came the repetitions: the birth of children, rites, and feasts, until a funeral brought about a change of scenery, but not for long: one set of people made way for another, the children grew up into young men and in due course married and had children of their own – and so life, according to this programme, went on in an uninterrupted and monotonous sequence of events, breaking off imperceptibly at the very edge of the grave.

Sometimes, it is true, other cares were thrust upon them, but the inhabitants of Oblomovka met them for the most part with stoic impassivity, and after circling over their heads, the troubles flew past them like birds which, coming to a smooth wall and finding no shelter there, flutter their wings in vain near the hard stones and fly away. Thus, for instance, a part of the gallery round the house suddenly collapsed one day, burying under its ruins a hen with its chicks; Aksinya, Antip’s wife, who had sat down under the gallery with her spinning, would have been badly injured had she not gone to fetch some more flax. There was a great commotion in the house: everyone, big and small, rushed to the spot and expressed dismay at the thought that instead of the hen and chicks the mistress herself might have been walking under the gallery with Oblomov. They all gasped with horror and began reproaching one another that it had never occurred to them before to remind each other to order someone to repair the gallery. They were all astonished that it should have collapsed, although only the day before they were surprised at its having stood so long! They began discussing how to repair the damage; they expressed regret about the hen and her chicks and then slowly dispersed to where they had come from, having first been strictly forbidden to take Oblomov anywhere near the gallery. Three weeks later, orders were given to Andrushka, Petrushka, and Vaska to take the fallen planks and banisters out of the way and put them near the barn, where they remained till the spring. Every time Oblomov’s father caught sight of them out of the window, he would think of having the gallery repaired: he would call for the carpenter and consult him as to whether it would be better to build a new gallery or break down what remained of the old, then he would let him go home, saying, «You can go now and I’ll think it over». That went on till Vaska or Motka told his master that, having climbed on to what remained of the gallery that morning, he noticed that the corners had broken away from the walls and might collapse any moment. Then the carpenter was called for a final consultation, as a result of which it was decided to prop up the part of the gallery that was still standing with the fragments of the old, which was actually done at the end of the month.

«Why», said Oblomov’s father to his wife, «the gallery is as good as new. Look how beautifully Fyodor has fixed the planks, just like the pillars of the Marshal’s house! It’s perfectly all right now: it will last for years!»

Someone reminded him that it would be a good opportunity for repairing the gate and the front steps, for the holes between them were so big that pigs, let alone cats, got through them into the cellar.

«Yes, yes, to be sure», Oblomov’s father replied, looking worried, and went at once to inspect the front steps.

«Yes, indeed, look how rickety they are», he said, rocking the steps with his foot like a cradle.

«But it rocked like that when it was made», someone observed.

«Well, what about it?» Oblomov’s father replied. «They haven’t fallen down, though they have stood there for sixteen years without any repairs. Luka made a good job of it. He was a real carpenter, Luka was! He’s dead, may his soul rest in peace. They’ve got spoilt now – no carpenter could do such a job now!»

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 apple-trees, 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 armchair. 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 necessary a purchase might be, money for it was issued with the greatest regret and that, too, only if the sum was insignificant. Any considerable expense was accompanied by moans, shrieks, and abuse. At Oblomovka they preferred to put up with all sorts of inconveniences, and even stopped regarding them as such, rather than spend money. That was why the sofa in the drawing-room had for years been covered in stains; that was why the leather arm-chair of Oblomov’s father was leather only in name, being all rope, a piece of leather remaining only on the back, the rest having all peeled off five years before; and that was perhaps why the gate was lopsided and the front steps rickety. To pay 200, 300, or 500 roubles all at once for something, however necessary it might be, seemed almost suicidal to them. Hearing that a young local landowner had been to Moscow and bought a dozen shirts for 300 roubles, a pair of boots for twenty-five roubles, and a waistcoat for his wedding for forty roubles, Oblomov’s father crossed himself and said, with a look of horror on his face, that «such a scamp must be locked up’. They were, generally speaking, impervious to economic truths about the desirability of a quick turnover of capital, increased production, and exchange of goods. In the simplicity of their souls they understood and put into practice only one way of using capital – keeping it under lock and key – in a chest.

The other inhabitants of the house and the usual visitors sat in the arm-chairs in the drawing-room in different positions, breathing hard. As a rule, deep silence reigned among them: they saw each other every day, and had long ago explored and exhausted all their intellectual treasures, and there was little news from the outside world. All was quiet; only the sound of the heavy, home-made boots of Oblomov’s father, the muffled ticking of a clock in its case on the wall, and the snapping of a thread by the teeth or the hands of Pelageya Ignatyevna or Nastasya Ivanovna broke the dead silence from time to time. Half an hour sometimes passed like that, unless of course someone yawned aloud and muttered, as he made the sign of the cross over his mouth, „Lord, have mercy upon us!“ His neighbour yawned after him, then the next person, as though at a word of command, opened his mouth slowly, and so the infectious play of the air and lungs spread among them all, moving some of them to tears.

Oblomov’s father would go up to the window, look out, and say with mild surprise:

„Good Lord, it’s only five o’clock, and how dark it is outside!“

„Yes“, someone would reply, „it is always dark at this time of the year: the evenings are drawing in“.

And in the spring they would be surprised and happy that the days were drawing out. But if asked what they wanted the long days for, they did not know what to say.

And again they were silent. Then someone snuffed the candle and suddenly extinguished it, and they all gave a start.

„An unexpected guest!“ someone was sure to say. Sometimes this would serve as topic for conversation.

„Who would that be?“ the mistress would ask. „Not Nastasya Faddeyevna? I wish it was! But no, she won’t come before the holiday. That would have been nice! How we should embrace each other and have a good cry! And we should have gone to morning and afternoon Mass together… But I’m afraid I couldn’t keep up with her! I may be the younger one, but I can’t stand as long as she can!“

„When was it she left here?“ Oblomov’s father asked. „After St Elijah’s Day, I believe“.

„You always get the dates mixed up“, his wife corrected him. „She left before Whitsun“.

„I think she was here on the eve of St Peter’s Fast“, retorted Oblomov’s father.

„You’re always like that“, his wife said reprovingly. „You will argue and make yourself ridiculous“.

Of course she was here. Don’t you remember we had mushroom pies because she liked them?»

«That’s Maria Onisimovna: she likes mushroom pies – I do remember that! And Maria Onisimovna did not stop till St Elijah’s Day, but only till St Prokhov’s and Nikanor’s».

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 in unison, ineffably, like the Olympian gods. When the laughter began to die down, someone would start it anew and – off they went again.

At last they managed somehow to compose themselves.

«Will you go tobogganing this Christmas?» Luka Savich asked Oblomov’s father after a pause.

Another general outburst of laughter which lasted for about ten minutes.

«Shall I ask Antip to get the hill ready before the holidays?» Oblomov’s father said suddenly. «Luka Savich is dying to have another go – he can’t bear to wait…»

The laughter of the whole company interrupted him.

«But is that toboggan still in working order?» one of them asked, choking with laughter.

There was more laughter.

They all went on laughing for a long time, then gradually began quieting down: one was wiping his tears, another blowing his nose, a third coughing violently and clearing his throat, saying with difficulty: «Oh dear, oh dear, this will be the death of me! Dear me, the way he rolled over on his back with the skirts of his coat flying…»

This was followed by another outburst of laughter, the last and the longest of all, and then all was quiet. One man sighed, another yawned aloud, muttering something under his breath, and everyone fell silent.

As before, the only sounds that could be heard were the ticking of the clock, Oblomov’s father’s footfalls, and the sharp snapping of a thread broken off by one of the ladies. Suddenly Oblomov’s father stopped in the middle of the room, looking dismayed and touching the tip of his nose.

«Good heavens», he said, «what can this mean? Someone’s going to die: the tip of my nose keeps itching».

«Goodness», his wife cried, throwing up her hands, «no one’s going to die if it’s the tip of the nose that’s itching. Someone’s going to die when the bridge of the nose is itching. Really, my dear, you never can remember anything! You’ll say something like this when strangers or visitors are in the house, and you will disgrace yourself!»

«But what does it mean when the tip of your nose is itching?» Oblomov’s father asked, looking embarrassed.

«Looking into a wine-glass! How could you say a thing like that! Someone’s going to die, indeed!»

«I’m always mixing things up!» said Oblomov’s father. «How is one to remember – the nose itching at the side, or at the tip, or the eyebrows…»

«At the side means news», Pelageya Ivanovna chimed in. «If the eyebrows are itching, it means tears; the forehead, bowing, if it’s on the right – to a man, and if it’s on the left side – to a woman; if the ears are itching, it means that it’s going to rain; lips – kissing; moustache – eating sweets; elbow – sleeping in a new place; soles of the feet – a journey…»

«Well done, Pelageya Ivanovna!» said Oblomov’s father. «And I suppose when butter is going to be cheap, your neck will be itching…»

The ladies began to laugh and whisper to one another; some of the men smiled; it seemed as though they would burst out laughing again, but at that moment there came a sound like a dog growling and a cat hissing when they are about to throw themselves upon each other. That was the clock striking.

«Good Lord, it’s nine o’clock already!» Oblomov’s father cried with joyful surprise. «Dear me, I never noticed how the time was passing. Hey, there! Vaska! Vanka! Motka!»

Three sleepy faces appeared at the door.

«Why don’t you lay the table?» Oblomov’s father asked with surprise and vexation. «You never think of your masters! Well, what are you standing there for? Come on, vodka!»

«That’s why the tip of your nose was itching», Pelageya Ivanovna said quickly. «When you drink vodka, you’ll be looking into your glass».

After supper, having kissed and made the sign of the cross over each other, they all went to bed, and sleep descended over their untroubled heads. In his dream Oblomov saw not one or two such evenings, but weeks, months, and years of days and evenings spent in this way. Nothing interfered with the monotony of their life, and the inhabitants of Oblomovka were not tired of it because they could not imagine any other kind of existence; and if they could, they would have recoiled from it in horror. They did not want any other life, and they would have hated it. They would have been sorry if circumstances had brought any change in their mode of living, whatever its nature. They would have been miserable if to-morrow were not like yesterday and if the day after to-morrow were not like tomorrow. What did they want with variety, change, or unforeseen contingencies, which other people were so keen on? Let others make the best of them if they could; at Oblomovka they did not want to have anything to do with it. Let others live as they liked. For unforeseen contingencies, though they might turn out well in the end, were disturbing: they involved constant worry and trouble, running about, restlessness, buying and selling or writing – in a word, doing something in a hurry, and that was no joking matter: they went on for years snuffling and yawning, or laughing good-humouredly at country jokes or, gathering in a circle, telling each other their dreams. If a dream happened to be frightening, they all looked depressed and were afraid in good earnest; if it were prophetic, they were all un- feignedly glad or sad, according to whether the dream was comforting or ominous. If the dream required the observance of some rite, they took the necessary steps at once. Or they played cards – ordinary games on weekdays, and Boston with their visitors on holy-days – or they played patience, told fortunes for a king of hearts or a queen of clubs, foretelling a marriage. Sometimes Natalya Faddeyevna came to stay for a week or a fortnight. To begin with, the two elderly ladies would tell each other all the latest news in the neighbourhood, what everyone did or how everyone lived; they discussed not only all the details of their family life and what was going on behind the scenes, but also everyone’s most secret thoughts and intentions, prying into their very souls, criticizing and condemning the unworthy, especially the unfaithful husbands, and then they would go over all the important events: name-days, christenings, births, who invited or did not invite whom and how those who had been invited were entertained. Tired of this, they began showing each other their new clothes, dresses, coats, even skirts and stockings. The lady of the house boasted of her linen, yarn and lace of home manufacture. But that topic, too, would be exhausted. Then they would content themselves with coffee, tea, jam. Only after that would they fall silent. They sat for some time looking at each other and from time to time sighing deeply. Occasionally one of them would burst out crying.

«What’s the matter, my dear?» the other one asked anxiously.

«Oh, I feel so sad, my dear», the visitor replied with a heavy sigh. «We’ve angered the good Lord, sinners that we are. No good will come of it».

«Oh, don’t frighten me, dear, don’t scare me», the lady of the house interrupted.

«Oh, yes, yes», Natalya Faddeyevna went on, «the day of judgement is coming: nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom – the end of the world is near!» she exclaimed at last, and the two ladies burst out crying bitterly.

Natalya Faddeyevna had no grounds at all for her final conclusion, no one having risen against anyone and there not having been even a comet that year, but old ladies sometimes have dark forebodings.

Only very seldom was this way of passing the time interrupted by some unexpected event, such as, for instance, the whole household being overcome by the fumes from the stoves. Other sicknesses were practically unknown in the house and the village, except when a man would accidentally stumble in the dark against the sharp end of a stake, or fall off the hay-loft, or be hit on the head by a plank dropping from the roof. But this happened only seldom, and against such accidents there was a score of well-tried domestic remedies: the bruise would be rubbed with a fresh-water sponge or with daphne, the injured man was given holy water to drink or had some spell whispered over him – and he would be well again. But poisoning by charcoal fumes was a fairly frequent occurrence. If that happened, they all took to their beds, moaning and groaning were heard all over the house, some tied pickled cucumbers round their heads, some stuffed cranberries into their ears and sniffed horse-radish, some went out into the frost with nothing but their shirts on, and some simply lay unconscious on the floor. This happened periodically once or twice a month, because they did not like to waste the heat in the chimney and shut the flues while flames like those in Robert the Devil still flickered in the stoves. It was impossible to touch a single stove without blistering one’s hand.

Only once was the monotony of their existence broken by a really unexpected event. Having rested after a heavy dinner, they had all gathered round the tea-table, when an Oblomov peasant, who had just returned from town, came suddenly into the room and after a great deal of trouble pulled out from the inside of his coat a crumpled letter addressed to Oblomov’s father. They all looked dumbfounded; Mrs Oblomov even turned slightly pale; they all craned their necks towards the letter and fixed their eyes upon it.

«How extraordinary! Who could it be from?» Mrs Oblomov said at last, having recovered from her surprise.

Mr Oblomov took the letter and turned it about in bewilderment, not knowing what to do with it.

«Where did you get it?» he asked the peasant. «Who gave it you?»

«Why, sir, at the inn where I stopped in town», replied the peasant. «A soldier came twice from the post office, sir, to ask if there was any peasant there from Oblomovka. He’d got a letter for the master, it seems».

«Well?»

«Well, sir, at first I hid myself, so the soldier, sir, he went away with this here letter. But the sexton from Verkhlyovo had seen me and he told them. So he comes a second time, the soldier, sir. And as he comes the second time, he starts swearing at me and gives me the letter. Charged me five copecks for it, he did. I asks him what I was to do with the letter, and he told me to give it to you, sir».

«You shouldn’t have taken it», Mrs Oblomov observed vexedly.

«I didn’t take it, ma’am. I said to him, I said, „What do we want your letter for – we don’t want no letters,“ I said. „I wasn’t told to take letters and I durstn’t,“ I said. „Take your letter and go away,“ I said. But he started cursing me something awful, he did, threatening to go to the police, so I took it».

«Fool!» said Mrs Oblomov.

«Who could it be from?» Mr Oblomov said wonderingly, examining the address. «The writing seems familiar!»

He passed the letter round and they all began discussing who it could be from and what it was about. They were all completely at a loss. Mr Oblomov asked for his glasses and they spent an hour and a half looking for them. He put them on and was already about to open the letter when his wife stopped him.

«Don’t open it», she said apprehensively. «Who knows, it might be something dreadful – some awful trouble. You know what people are nowadays. There’s plenty of time: you can open it to-morrow or the day after: it won’t run away».

The letter was locked up in a drawer with the glasses. They all sat down to tea, and the letter might have lain in the drawer for years had they not all been so greatly excited by the extraordinary event. At tea and all next day they talked of nothing but the letter. At last they could not stand it any longer, and on the fourth day, having all gathered in a crowd, they opened it nervously. Mr Oblomov glanced at the signature.

«Radishchev», he read. «Why, that’s Filip Matveich».

«Oh, so that’s who it is from!» they cried from all sides. «Is he still alive? Good Lord, fancy he’s not dead! Well, thank God! What does he say?»

Mr Oblomov began reading the letter aloud. It seemed that Radishchev was asking for a recipe of beer that was brewed particularly well at Oblomovka.

«Send it him! Send it him!» they all shouted. «You must write him a letter!»

A fortnight passed.

«Yes, I must write to him», Mr Oblomov kept saying to his wife. «Where’s the recipe?»

«Where is it?» his wife replied. «I must try and find it. But why all this hurry? Wait till the holy-days; the fast will be over, and then you can write to him. There’s plenty of time…»

«Yes, indeed, I’d better write during the holy-days», said Mr Oblomov.

The question of the letter was raised again during the holy-days. Mr Oblomov made up his mind to write the letter. He withdrew to his study, put on his glasses, and sat down at the table. Dead silence reigned in the house; the servants were told not to stamp their feet or make a noise. «The master’s writing», everyone said, speaking in a timid and respectful voice as though someone was lying dead in the house. He had just time to write, «Dear Sir», in a trembling hand, slowly, crookedly, and as carefully as though performing some dangerous operation, when his wife came into the room.

«I’m very sorry», she said, «but I can’t find the recipe. I must have a look in the bedroom cupboard. It may be there. But how are you going to send the letter?»

«By post, I suppose», replied Mr Oblomov.

«And what will the postage be?»

Mr Oblomov produced an old calendar.

«Forty copecks», he said.

«Waste forty copecks on such nonsense!» she observed. «Let’s rather wait till we can send it by someone. Tell the peasants to find out».

«Yes», said Mr Oblomov, «it would certainly be better to send it by hand». And tapping the pen on the table a few times, he put it back in the inkstand and took off his glasses.

«Yes, indeed», he concluded. «It won’t run away; there’s plenty of time».

It is doubtful whether Filip Matveich ever received the recipe.

Sometimes Oblomov’s father picked up a book. It made no difference to him what book it was. He did not feel any need for reading, but regarded it as a luxury, as something that one could easily do without, just as one could do without a picture on the wall or without taking a walk. That was why he did not mind what book he picked up: he looked upon it as something that was meant as an entertainment, something that would help to distract him when he was bored or had nothing better to do.

«I haven’t read a book for ages», he would say, or sometimes he would change the phrase to, «Now, then, let’s read a book». Or he would simply happen to see the small pile of books that was left him by his brother and pick one up at random. Whether it happened to be Golikov, or the latest Dream Book, or Kheraskov’s Rossiade, or Sumarokov’s tragedies, or the Moscow News of two years ago, he read it all with equal pleasure, remarking at times: «Whatever will he think of next! What a rascal! Damn the fellow!» These exclamations referred to the authors, for whose calling he had no respect whatever; he had even adopted the attitude of semi-indulgent contempt for a writer which is so characteristic of old-fashioned people. He, like many other people of his day, thought that an author must be a jovial fellow, a rake, a drunkard, and a mountebank, something like a clown. Sometimes he read the two-year-old papers aloud for the edification of everybody or just told them a piece of news from them. «They write from The Hague», he would say, «that his Majesty the King has safely returned to his palace after a short journey», and as he spoke he glanced at his listeners over his glasses. Or: «The ambassador of such and such a country has presented his credentials in Vienna. And here they write», he went on, «that the works of Madame Genlis have been translated into Russian».

«I suppose», remarked one of his listeners, a small landowner, «they do all these translations to extract some money from US gentry».

Meanwhile poor Oblomov had still to go for his lessons to Stolz. As soon as he woke up on Monday morning, he felt terribly depressed. He heard Vaska’s raucous voice shouting from the front steps:

«Antip, harness the piebald one to take the young master to the German!»

His heart sank. Sadly he went to his mother. She knew what was the matter with him and began gilding the pill, secretly sighing herself at the thought of parting with him for a whole week.

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 tune 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 and ignorance is darkness» was already penetrating into the big and small villages together with the books sold by book pedlars. Oblomov’s parents understood the advantages of education, but only its material advantages. They saw that it was only education that made it possible for people to make a career, that is, to acquire rank, decorations, and money; that old-fashioned lawyers, case-hardened and corrupt officials, who had grown old in their pettifogging ways and chicaneries, were having a bad time. Ominous rumours were abroad that not only reading and writing but all sorts of hitherto unheard-of subjects were required. A gulf opened up between the higher and the lower grades of civil servants which could be bridged only by something called a diploma. Officials of the old school, children of habit and nurslings of bribes, began to disappear. Many of those who had survived were dismissed as unreliable, and others were put on trial; the luckiest were those who, giving up the new order of things as a bad job, retired to their well-feathered nests while the going was good. Oblomov’s parents grasped all this and understood the advantages of education, but only these obvious advantages. They had only the vaguest and remotest idea of the intrinsic need of education, and that was why they wanted to obtain for their son some of its brilliant advantages. They dreamed of a gold-embroidered uniform for him; they imagined him as a Councillor at Court, and his mother even imagined him as a Governor of a province. But they wanted to obtain all this as cheaply as possible, by all sorts of tricks, by secretly dodging the rocks and obstacles scattered on the path of learning and honours, without bothering to jump over them – that is, for instance, by working a little, not by physical exhaustion or the loss of the blessed plumpness acquired in childhood. All they wanted was that their son should merely comply with the prescribed rules and regulations and obtain in some way or other a certificate which said that their darling Ilya had mastered all the arts and sciences. The whole of this Oblomov system of education met with strong opposition in Stolz’s system. Each fought stubbornly for his own ideas. Stolz struck at his opponents directly, openly, and persistently, and they parried his blows by all sorts of cunning devices, including those already described. Neither side won; German pertinacity might have overcome the stubbornness and obduracy of the Oblomovs, had not the German met opposition in his own camp. The fact was that Stolz’s own son spoiled Oblomov, prompting him at lessons and doing his translations for him.

Oblomov clearly saw his life at home and at Stolz’s. As soon as he woke up at home, he saw Zakhar, later his famous valet, Zakhar Trofimych, standing by his bed. Zakhar, like his old nurse, pulled on his stockings and put on his shoes, while Oblomov, a boy of fourteen, merely stretched out to him first one leg, then the other, as he lay on the bed; and if something seemed to him amiss, he hit Zakhar on the nose with a foot. If Zakhar resented it and had the impudence to complain, he would get a hiding from the grown-ups as well. Then Zakhar combed his hair, helped him on with his coat, forcing his arms carefully through the sleeves so as not to disturb him unduly, and reminded him of the things he had to do, washing as soon as he got up, and so on. If Oblomov wanted something, he had only to wink and three or four servants rushed to carry out his wish; if he dropped something, or if he had to get something, someone else would pick it up or get it for him; if he wanted to fetch something or run out of the house for something and, being a lively boy, would like to run out and do it all himself, his father, mother, and three aunts shouted all at once: «What for? Where are you off to? And what are Vaska, Vanka, and Zakharka for? Hey, Vaska! Vanka! Zakharka! What are you gaping at, you idiots! I’ll show you!»

And try as he might, Oblomov could never do anything for himself. Later he found that it was much less trouble and learned to shout himself:

«Hey, Vaska! Vanka! Bring me this! Bring me that! I don’t want this, I want that! Run and fetch it!»

At times he got tired of the tender solicitude of his parents. If he ran down the stairs or across the yard, a dozen desperate voices shouted after him: «Oh, hold him by the hand! Stop him! He’ll fall down and hurt himself! Stop!» If he tried to run out into the hall in winter, or to open a window, there were again shouts: «Where are you off to? You can’t do that! Don’t run, don’t go, don’t open it: you’ll hurt yourself, you’ll catch a cold…!» And sadly Oblomov remained indoors, cherished like an exotic flower in a hot-house, and like it he grew slowly and languidly. His energies, finding no outlet, turned inwards and withered, drooping. Sometimes he woke up feeling so bright and cheerful, so fresh and gay; he felt as though something inside him were full of life and movement, just as if some imp had taken up its quarters there, daring him to climb on the roof, or mount the grey mare and gallop to the meadows where they were haymaking, or sit astride on the fence, or tease the village dogs; or he suddenly wanted to run like mad through the village, then across the field and the gullies into the birch wood, and down to the bottom of the ravine in three jumps, or getting the village boys to play a game of snowball with him and trying out his strength. The little imp egged him on; he resisted as long as he could, and at last jumped down the front steps into the yard in winter, without his cap, ran through the gate, seized a ball of snow in each hand and flew towards a group of boys. The fresh wind cut into his face, the frost pinched his ears, the cold air entered his mouth and throat, his chest expanded with joy – he ran along faster and faster, laughing and screaming. There were the boys; he flung a snowball at them but missed; he was not used to it. He was about to pick up another when his face was smothered by a huge lump of snow: he fell; his face hurt from the new sensation; he was enjoying it all, he was laughing, and there were tears in his eyes.

Meanwhile there was an uproar at home: darling Ilya had vanished! A noise, shouts. Zakhar rushed into the yard, followed by Vaska, Mitka, Vanka – all running about in confusion. Two dogs ran madly after them, catching them by the heels, for, as everyone knows, dogs cannot bear to see a running man. Shouting and yelling, the servants raced through the village, followed by the barking dogs. At last they came across the boys and began meting out justice: pulled them by the hair and ears, hit them across the back, and told off their fathers. Then they got hold of the young master, wrapped him in the sheepskin they had brought, then in his father’s fur coat and two blankets, and carried him home in triumph. At home they had despaired of seeing him again, giving him up for lost; but the joy of his parents at seeing him alive and unhurt was indescribable. They offered up thanks to the Lord, then gave him mint and elderberry tea to drink, followed by raspberry tea in the evening, and kept him three days in bed – yet only one thing could have done him good – playing snowball again…