Oblomov shook his head despondently. "Poorly, doctor," he said. " I have just been thinking of consulting you. My stomach will scarcely digest anything, there is a pain in the pit of it, and my breath comes with difficulty."
"Give me your wrist," said the doctor. He closed his eyes and felt the patient's pulse. "And have you a cough?" he inquired.
"Yes--at night-time, but more especially while I am at supper."
"Hm! And does your heart throb at all, or your head ache?" He then added other questions, bowed his bald pate, and subsided into profound meditation. At length he straightened himself with a jerk, and said with an air of decision--"Two or three years more of this room, of lying about, of eating rich, heavy foods, and you will have a stroke."
Oblomov started.
"Then what ought I to do, doctor? Tell me, for Heaven's sake!"
"Merely what other people do--namely, go abroad."
"Pardon me, doctor, but how am I to do that?"
"Why should you not? Does money prevent you, or what?"
"Yes, yes; money is the reason," replied Oblomov, gladly catching at the excuse, which was the most natural one that could possibly have been devised. "See here--just read what my starosta writes."
"Quite so, but that is no business of mine," said the doctor. "My business is to inform you that you must change your mode of life, and also your place of residence. You must have fresh air--you must have something to do. Go to Kissingen or to Ems, and remain there during June and July, whilst you drink the waters. Then go on to Switzerland, or to the Tyrol, and partake of the local grape cure. That you can do during September and October."
"Oh, the devil take the Tyrol!" murmured Oblomov under his breath.
"Next, transfer yourself to some dry place like Egypt, and put away from you all cares and worries."
"Excellent!" said Oblomov. "I only wish that starostas' letters like this one reached you!"
"Also you must do no thinking whatsoever."
"No thinking, you say?"
"Yes--you must impose upon the brain no exertion."
"But what about my plans for my estate? I am not a log, if you will pardon my saying so."
"Oh, very well. I have merely been warning you. Likewise, you must avoid emotion of every kind, for that sort of thing is sure to militate against a successful cure. Try, rather, to divert yourself with riding, with dancing, with moderate exercise in the open air, and with pleasant conversation--more especially conversation with the opposite sex. These things are designed to make your heart beat more lightly, and to experience none but agreeable emotions. Again, you must lay aside all reading and writing. Rent a villa which faces south and lies embowered in flowers, and surround yourself also with an atmosphere of music and women."
"And may I eat at all?"
"Yes, certainly; but avoid all animal and farinaceous food, as well as anything which may be served cold. Eat only light soups and vegetables. Even in this great care will need to be exercised, for cholera, I may tell you, is about. Walk eight hours out of every twenty-four; go in for shooting."
"Good Lord!" groaned Oblomov.
"Finally," concluded the doctor, "go to Paris for the winter, where, surrounded by a whirlpool of gaiety, you will best be able to distract your mind from your habitual brooding. Cultivate theatres, balls, masquerades, the streets, society, friends, noise, and laughter."
"Anything else?" inquired Oblomov, with ill-concealed impatience. The doctor reflected a moment.
"Yes; also get the benefit of sea air," he said. "Cross over to England, or else go for a voyage to America."
With that he rose to take his leave. "Should you carry out these instructions to the letter--" he began.
"Yes, yes. Of course I shall carry them out!" said Oblomov bitterly as he accompanied the physician to the door.
The doctor having departed, Oblomov threw himself back into an arm-chair, clasped his hands behind his head, and remained sitting in an almost unthinking heap. Roused by Zakhar to consider once more the question of changing his quarters, he engaged in a long and heated conversation with the valet. Eventually he dismissed the man to his den, but could not dismiss from his own mind certain comparisons which Zakhar had drawn between his master's life and the life of ordinary people. How strange that suddenly there should have dawned in him thoughts concerning human fate and destiny! All at once he found his mind drawing a parallel between that destiny and his own existence; all at once questions of life arose before his vision, like owls in an ancient ruin flushed from sleep by a stray ray of sunlight. Somehow he felt pained and grieved at his arrested development, at the check which had taken place in his moral growth, at the weight which appeared to be pressing upon his every faculty. Also gnawing at his heart there was a sense of envy that others should be living a life so full and free, while all the time the narrow, pitiful little pathway of his own existence was being blocked by a great boulder. And in his hesitating soul there arose a torturing consciousness that many sides of his nature had never yet been stirred, that others had never even been touched, and that not one of them had attained complete formation. Yet with this there went an aching suspicion that, buried in his being, as in a tomb, there still remained a moribund element of sweetness and light, and that it was an element which, though hidden in his personality, as a nugget lies lurking in the bowels of the earth, might once have become minted into sterling coin. But the treasure was now overlaid with rubbish--was now thickly littered over with dust. 'Twas as though some one had stolen from him, and besmirched, the store of gifts with which life and the world had dowered him; so that always he would be prevented from entering life's field and sailing across it with the aid of intellect and of will. Yes, at the very start a secret enemy had laid a heavy hand upon him and diverted him from the road of human destiny. And now he seemed to be powerless to leave the swamps and wilds in favour of that road. All around him was a forest, and ever the recesses of his soul were growing dimmer and darker, and the path more and more tangled, while the consciousness of his condition kept awaking within him less and less frequently--to arouse only for a fleeting moment his slumbering faculties. Brain and volition alike had become paralysed, and, to all appearances, irrevocably--the events of his life had become whittled down to microscopical proportions. Yet even with them he was powerless to cope--he was powerless to pass from one of them to another. Consequently they bandied him to and fro like the waves of the ocean. Never was he able to oppose to any event elasticity of will; never was he able to conceive, as the result of any event, a reasoned-out impulse. Yet to confess this, even to himself, always cost him a bitter pang: his fruitless regrets for lost opportunities, coupled with burning reproaches of conscience, always pricked him like needles, and led him to strive to put away such reproaches and to discover a scapegoat. . . .
Once again Oblomov sank asleep; and as he slept he dreamed of a different period, of different people, of a different place from the present. Let us follow him thither.
[balalaiki:] Three-stringed, lute-like instruments.
[gorielki:] A sort of catch-as-catch-can.
[samovar:] Tea-urn.
Part 1
Chapter 5
WE find ourselves transported to a land where neither sea nor mountains nor crags nor precipices nor lonely forests exist--where, in short, there exists nothing grand or wild or immense.