On this particular morning Oblomov had (contrary to his usual custom) awakened at the early hour of eight. Somehow he looked perturbed; anxiety, regret, and vexation kept chasing one another across his features. Evidently he had fallen a prey to some inward struggle, and had not yet been able to summon his wits to the rescue. The fact of the matter was that, overnight, he had received from the starosta * of his country estate an exceedingly unpleasant letter. We all know what disagreeable things a starosta can say in his letters—how he can tell of bad harvests, of arrears of debt, of diminished incomes, and so forth; and though this particular official had been inditing precisely similar epistles during the past three years, his latest communication had affected its recipient as powerfully as though Oblomov had received an unlooked-for blow. Yet, to do Oblomov justice, he had always bestowed a certain care upon his affairs. Indeed, no sooner had he received the starosta’s first disturbing letter (he had done so three years ago) than he had set about devising a plan for changing and improving the administration of his property. Yet to this day the plan in question remained not fully thought out, although long ago he had recognized the necessity of doing something actually decisive.
* Overseer or steward.
Consequently, on awakening, he resolved to rise, to perform his ablutions, and his tea consumed, to consider matters, to jot down a few notes, and, in general, to tackle the affair properly. Yet for another halfhour he lay prone under the torture of this resolve; until eventually he decided that such tackling could best be done after tea, and that, as usual, he would drink that tea in bed—the more so since a recumbent position could not prove a hindrance to thought.
Therefore he did as he had decided; and when the tea had been consumed he raised himself upon his elbow and arrived within an ace of getting out of bed. In fact, glancing at his slippers, he even began to extend a foot in their direction, but presently withdrew it.
Half-past ten struck, and Oblomov gave himself a shake. “What is the matter?” he said vexedly. “In all conscience ’tis time that I were doing something! Would I could make up my mind to—to———” He broke off with a shout of “Zakhar!” whereupon there entered an elderly man in a grey suit and brass buttons—a man who sported beneath a perfectly bald pate a pair of long, bushy, grizzled whiskers that would have sufficed to fit out three ordinary men with beards. His clothes, it is true, were cut according to a country pattern, but he cherished them as a faint reminder of his former livery, as the one surviving token of the dignity of the house of Oblomov. The house of Oblomov was one which had once been wealthy and distinguished, but which, of late years, had undergone impoverishment and diminution, until finally it had become lost among a crowd of noble houses of more recent creation.
For a few moments Oblomov remained too plunged in thought to notice Zakhar’s presence; but at length the valet coughed.
“What do you want?” Oblomov inquired.
“You called me just now, barin?” *
* “Master” or “sir”
“I called you, you say? Well, I cannot remember why I did so. Return to your room until I have remembered.”