“I'll give you interest for another month; be patient.”
“That's as I please, dearie, whether I'll be patient or sell your thing right now.”
“How much will you give for the watch, Alyona Ivanovna?”
“You bring me trifles, dearie, in my opinion it's not worth anything. Last time I gave you two roubles for your ring, and you could buy one new from a jeweler for a rouble and a half.”
“Give me four roubles anyway—I'll redeem it, it's my father's. I'll be getting money soon.”
“A rouble and a half, sir, and interest paid in advance, if you like, sir.”
“A rouble and a half!” the young man exclaimed.
“As you please.” And the old crone held the watch out to him. The young man took it and became so angry that he wanted simply to leave; but he at once thought better of it, remembering that there was nowhere else to go and that he had also come for another reason.
“I'll take it!” he said rudely.
The old crone felt in her pocket for her keys and went into the other room behind the curtain. The young man, left alone in the middle of the room, was listening with curiosity and figuring things out. She could be heard opening the chest of drawers. “Must be the top drawer,” he figured. “So she carries the keys in her right pocket...All in one bunch on a steel ring...And there's one key, the biggest of them, three times bigger, with a toothed bit, certainly not for a drawer...It means there's also some coffer, or a trunk...Now that's curious. Trunks always have keys like that...But how mean this all is . . .”
The old crone came back.
“Here you are, dearie: if it's ten kopecks to the rouble per month, you'll owe me fifteen kopecks on a rouble and a half for the month to come, sir. And you also owe me twenty kopecks by the same reckoning for the previous two roubles. That makes thirty-five altogether. I now owe you altogether one rouble and fifteen kopecks for your watch. Here, take it, sir.”
“What! So now it's one rouble and fifteen kopecks!”
“Right you are, sir.”
The young man did not argue and took the money. He looked at the old woman and made no move to leave, as if he still wanted to say or do something, but he himself did not seem to know precisely what . . .
“One of these days, Alyona Ivanovna, I may bring you yet another thing...silver...nice...a cigarette case...once I get it back from a friend of mine...” He became confused and fell silent.
“So, we'll talk then, dearie.”
“Good-bye, ma'am...And you stay at home alone like this, your sister's not here?” he asked as casually as he could, walking out to the entryway.
“What business do you have with her, dearie?”
“Nothing special. I just asked. And right away you...Good-bye, Alyona Ivanovna!”
Raskolnikov went out decidedly troubled. This trouble kept increasing more and more. On his way down the stairs he even stopped several times, as if suddenly struck by something. And finally, already in the street, he exclaimed:
“Oh, God, how loathsome this all is! And can it be, can it be that I...no, it's nonsense, it's absurd!” he added resolutely. “Could such horror really come into my head? But then, what filth my heart is capable of! ... Above all, filthy, nasty, vile, vile! . .. And for the whole month I . . .”
But neither words nor exclamations could express his agitation. The feeling of boundless loathing that had begun to oppress and sicken his heart while he was still only on his way to the old woman now reached such proportions and became so clearly manifest that he did not know where to flee from his anguish. He went down the sidewalk like a drunk man, not noticing the passers-by and running into them, and was in the next street before he came to his senses. Looking around, he noticed that he was standing by a tavern, the entrance to which was downstairs from the sidewalk, in the basement. At that same moment two drunks came walking out the door and, supporting and cursing each other, climbed up to the street. Without another thought, Raskolnikov immediately went down the stairs. He had never gone into taverns before, but his head was spinning now, and besides he was tormented by a burning thirst. He wanted to drink some cold beer, all the more so in that he attributed his sudden weakness to hunger. He sat down in a dark and dirty corner, at a sticky little table, asked for beer, and greedily drank the first glass. He immediately felt all relieved, and his thoughts became clear. “It's all nonsense,” he said hopefully, “and there was nothing to be troubled about! Just some physical disorder! One glass of beer, a piece of dry bread, and see—in an instant the mind gets stronger, the thoughts clearer, the intentions firmer! Pah, how paltry it all is! ... ” But in spite of this scornful spitting, he already looked cheerful, as if he had freed himself all at once of some terrible burden, and cast an amiable glance around at the people there. Yet even at that moment he had a distant foreboding that all this receptiveness to the good was also morbid.
There were few people left in the tavern by then. Just after the two drunks he had run into on the stairs, a whole party left together, five men or so, with one wench and an accordion. After them the place became quiet and roomy. There remained one man who looked like a tradesman, drunk, but not very, sitting over a beer; his friend, fat, enormous, in a tight-waisted coat, and with a gray beard, who was quite drunk, had dozed off on a bench, and every once in a while, as if half awake, would suddenly start snapping his fingers, spreading his arms wide and jerking the upper part of his body without getting up from the bench, while he sang some gibberish, trying hard to recall the verses, something like:
“The whole year long he loved his wife, The who-o-ole year lo-o-o-ng he lo-o-oved his wife . . .”
Or again, suddenly waking up:
“Down Podyacheskaya he did go, He met a girl he used to know...”
But no one shared his happiness; his silent friend even looked upon all these outbursts with hostility and mistrust. There was yet another man there who in appearance resembled a retired official. He was sitting apart over his little crock, taking a sip every once in a while and looking around. He also seemed somewhat agitated.
II
Raskolnikov was not used to crowds and, as has already been mentioned, fled all company, especially of late. But now something suddenly drew him to people. Something new was happening in him, as it were, and with that a certain thirst for people made itself felt. After a whole month of this concentrated anguish, this gloomy excitement of his, he was so tired out that he wished, if only for a moment, to draw a breath in another world, whatever it might be, and, despite all the filthiness of the situation, it was with pleasure that he now went on sitting in the tavern.
The proprietor of the establishment was in another room, but frequently came into the main room, descending a flight of stairs from somewhere, his foppish black boots with their wide red tops appearing first. He was wearing a long-skirted coat and a terribly greasy black satin waistcoat, with no necktie, and his whole face was as if oiled like an iron padlock. Behind the counter was a lad of about fourteen, and there was another younger lad who served when anything was asked for. There were chopped pickles, dry black bread, and fish cut into pieces, all quite evil-smelling. It was so stuffy that it was almost impossible to sit there, and everything was so saturated with wine-smell that it seemed one could get drunk in five minutes from the air alone.
We sometimes encounter people, even perfect strangers, who begin to interest us at first sight, somehow suddenly, all at once, before a word has been spoken. Such was precisely the impression made on Raskolnikov by the guest who sat apart and looked like a retired official. Later the young man recalled this first impression more than once and even ascribed it to a presentiment. He kept glancing at the official, also no doubt because the latter was looking persistently at him, and one could see that he very much wanted to start a conversation. But at the others in the tavern, not excluding the proprietor, the official looked somehow habitually and even with boredom, and at the same time also with a certain shade of haughty disdain, as at people of lower position and development with whom he saw no point in talking. He was a man already past fifty, of average height and solid build, with some gray in his hair and a large bald spot, with a yellow, even greenish, face, swollen from constant drinking, and with puffy eyelids behind which his reddish eyes shone, tiny as slits, but lively. Yet there was something very strange in him; his eyes seemed even to be lit with rapture—perhaps there were sense and reason as well, but at the same time there seemed also to be a flicker of madness in them. He was dressed in an old, completely ragged black frock coat, which had shed all its buttons. Only one still somehow hung on, and this one he kept buttoned, obviously not wishing to shirk convention. From under his nankeen waistcoat a shirtfront stuck out, all crumpled, soiled, and stained. His face had been shaved in official style, but a good while ago, so that thick, blue-gray bristles were beginning to show on it. And there was indeed something solidly official in his ways. Yet he was agitated, kept ruffling his hair, and every once in a while leaned his head on his hands in anguish, resting his torn elbows on the spilt-upon and sticky table. Finally he looked straight at Raskolnikov and said loudly and firmly: