Oblomov Read Free Page B

always in the same room, the room in which we have found him and which served him as a bedroom, study, and reception-room. He had three more rooms, but he seldom looked into them, except perhaps in the morning, and that, too, not every day, but only when his man-servant swept his study – which did not happen every day. In those rooms the furniture was covered with dust sheets and the curtains were drawn.
    The room in which Oblomov was lying seemed at first glance to be splendidly furnished. It had a mahogany bureau, two sofas, upholstered in a silk material, and a beautiful screen embroidered with birds and fruits never to be found in nature. It had silk curtains, rugs, a number of pictures, bronze, porcelain, and all sorts of pretty knick-knacks. But an experienced person of good taste casting a cursory glance round the room wouldat once detect a desire to keep up appearances somehow or other, since appearances had to be kept up. Oblomov, of course, had nothing else in mind when he furnished his study. A man of refined taste would never have been satisfied with those clumsy and heavy mahogany chairs and those rickety book-stands. The back of one of the sofas had dropped and the mahogany veneer had come unstuck in some places.
    The pictures, vases, and knick-knacks were equally shoddy.
    The owner himself, however, was so utterly indifferent to the furniture of his study that he seemed to be wondering who on earth could have dumped all that junk there. It was Oblomov’s indifference to his own property, and perhaps even still more the utter indifference shown by his servant Zakhar, that made the study look, on closer inspection, so neglected and untidy.
    Dust-covered cobwebs were festooned round the pictures on the walls; instead of reflecting the objects in the room, the mirrors were more like tablets which might be used for writing memoranda on in the dust. The rugs were covered in stains. A towel had been left on the sofa; almost every morning a dirty plate, with a salt-cellar and a bare bone from the previous night’s supper, could be seen on the table, which was strewn with crumbs. If it had not been for this plate and a freshly smoked pipe by the bed, or the owner of the flat himself lying in it, one might have thought that no one lived there – everything was so dusty and faded and void of all living traces of human habitation. It is true there were two or three open books and a newspaper on the book-stands, an inkwell with pens on the bureau; but the open pages had turned yellow and were covered with dust – it was clear that they had been left like that for a long, long time; the newspaper bore last year’s date, and if one were to dip a pen in the inkwell, a startled fly was as likely as not to come buzzing out of it.
    Oblomov, contrary to his custom, had woken up very early – about eight o’clock. He looked very worried about something. The expression of his face kept changing continually from that of alarm to one of anguish and vexation. It was clear that he was in the throes of some inner struggle, and his reason had not yet come to his aid.
    What had happened was that on the previous evening Oblomov had received a disagreeable letter from the bailiff of his estate. The sort of disagreeable news a bailiff usually sends can be easily imagined: bad harvest, arrears of taxes due from the peasants, falling income, and so on. Though the bailiff hadwritten identical letters to his master the year before and the year before that, this last letter had the same strong effect as any other unpleasant and unexpected piece of news.
    The whole thing was a great nuisance: he had to think of raising some money and of taking certain steps. Still, it is only fair to do justice to the care Oblomov bestowed on his affairs. Already, after receiving his bailiff’s first unpleasant letter several years before, he had begun devising a plan for all sorts of changes and improvements in the management of his estate. According to