Zakliar retired, and Oblomov spent another quarter of an hour in thinking over the accursed letter.
“I have lain here long enough,” at last he said to himself. “Really, I must rise.... But suppose I were to read the letter through carefully and then to rise? Zakhar!”
Zakhar re-entered, and Oblomov straightway sank into a reverie. For a minute or two the valet stood eyeing his master with covert resentment. Then he moved towards the door.
“Why are you going away?” Oblomov asked suddenly.
“Because, barin, you have nothing to say to me. Why should I stand here for nothing?”
“What? Have your legs become so shrunken that you cannot stand for a moment or two? I am worried about something, so you must wait. You have just been lying down in your room, haven’t you? Please search for the letter which arrived from the starosta last night. What have you done with it?”
“What letter? I have seen no letter,” asserted Zakhar.
“But you took it from the postman yourself?”
“Maybe I did, but how am I to know where you have since placed it?” The valet fussed about among the papers and other things on the table.
“You never know anything,” remarked his master. “Look in that basket there. Or possibly the letter has fallen behind the sofa? By the way, the back of that sofa has not yet been mended. Tell the joiner to come at once. It was you that broke the thing, yet you never give it a thought!”