Upon that old Oblomov started to read the letter aloud. It seemed that Philip Matveitch desired him to forward the recipe for a certain beer which was brewed at Oblomovka.
“Then send it, send it,” exclaimed the chorus. “Yes, and also write him an answer.”
Two weeks elapsed.
“Really we must write that note,” old Oblomov kept repeating. “Where is the recipe?”
“Where is it?” retorted his wife. “Why, it still has to be looked for. Wait a little. Why need we hurry? Should God be good, we shall soon be having another festival, and eating flesh again. Let us write then. I tell you, the recipe won’t run away.”
“Yes, I daresay it would be better to write when we have reached the festival.”
Sure enough, the said festival arrived, and again there was talk of the letter. In fact, old Oblomov did in truth get himself ready to write it. He shut himself up in his study, he put on his spectacles, and he sat down to the table. Everything in the house was profoundly quiet, since orders had been issued that the establishment was not to stamp upon the floor, nor, indeed, to make a noise of any kind. “The barin is writing,” was said in much the same tone of respectful awe that might have been used had a dead person been lying in the house.
Hardly had old Oblomov inscribed the words “Dear Sir”—slowly and crookedly, and with a shaking hand, and as cautiously, as though he had been engaged in a dangerous task—when there entered to him his wife.
“I have searched and searched,” she said, “but can find no recipe. Nevertheless the bedroom wardrobe still remains to be ransacked, so how can you write the letter now?”
“It ought to go by the next post,” her husband remarked.