As the clock struck half-past nine, Ílya Ílyitch started up.
"What kind of a man am I?" he said aloud in a tone of vexation. "Conscience only knows. It is time to do something: where there's a will—Zakhár!" he cried.
In a room which was separated merely by a narrow corridor from Ílya Ílyitch's library, nothing was heard at first except the growling of the watch-dog; then the thump of feet springing down from somewhere. It was Zakhár leaping down from his couch on the stove, where he generally spent his time immersed in drowsiness.
An elderly man appeared in the room: he was dressed in a gray coat, through a hole under the armpit of which emerged a part of his shirt; he also wore a gray waistcoat with brass buttons. His head was as bald as his knee, and he had enormous reddish side-whiskers already turning gray—so thick and bushy that they would have sufficed for three ordinary individuals.
Zakhár would never have taken pains to change in any respect either the form which God had bestowed on him, or the costume which he wore in the country. His raiment was made for him in the style which he had brought with him from his village. His gray coat and waistcoat pleased him, for the very reason that in his semi-fashionable attire he perceived a feeble approach to the livery which he had worn in former times when waiting on his former masters (now at rest), either to church or to parties; but liveries in his recollections were merely representative of the dignity of the Oblómof family. There was nothing else to recall to the old man the comfortable and liberal style of life on the estate in the depths of the country. The older generation of masters had died, the family portraits were at home, and in all probability were going to rack and ruin in the garret; the traditions of the former life and importance of the house of Oblómof were all extinct, or lived only in the memories of a few old people still lingering in the country.
Consequently, precious in the eyes of Zakhár was the gray coat: in this he saw a faint emblem of vanished greatness, and he found similar indications in some of the characteristics of his master's features and notions, reminding of his parentage, and in his caprices, which although he grumbled at them under his breath and aloud, yet he prized secretly as manifestations of the truly imperious will and autocratic spirit of a born noble. Had it not been for these whims, he would not have felt that his master was in any sense above him; had it not been for them, there would have been nothing to bring back to his mind his younger days, the village which they had abandoned so long ago, and the traditions about that ancient home,—the sole chronicles preserved by aged servants, nurses, and nursemaids, and handed down from mouth to mouth.
The house of the Oblómofs was rich in those days, and had great influence in that region; but afterwards somehow or other everything had gone to destruction, and at last by degrees had sunk out of sight, overshadowed by parvenus of aristocratic pretensions. Only the few gray-haired retainers of the house preserved and interchanged their reminiscences of the past, treasuring them like holy relics.
This was the reason why Zakhár so loved his gray coat. Possibly he valued his side-whiskers because of the fact that he saw in his childhood many of the older servants with this ancient and aristocratic adornment.
Ílya Ílyitch, immersed in contemplation, took no notice of Zakhár, though the servant had been silently waiting for some time. At last he coughed.
"What is it you want?" asked Ílya Ílyitch.