Looking round, he noticed that he was standing close to a tavern which was entered by steps leading from the pavement to the basement. At that instant two drunken men came out of the door and, abusing and supporting one another, they mounted the steps. Without stopping to think, Raskolnikov went down the steps at once. Until that moment he had never been into a tavern, but now he felt dizzy and was tormented by a burning thirst. He longed for a drink of cold beer, and attributed his sudden weakness to hunger. He sat down at a sticky little table in a dark and dirty corner; ordered some beer, and eagerly drank off the first glassful. At once he felt relief; and his thoughts became clear.

“All that’s nonsense,” he said hopefully, “and there is nothing in it all to worry about! It’s simply physical weakness. Just a glass of beer, a piece of dry bread—and in one moment the brain is stronger, the mind is clearer and the will is firm! Pah, how utterly petty it all is!”

But, though he spat this out so scornfully, he was by now looking cheerful as though he were suddenly set free from a terrible burden: and he gazed round in a friendly way at the people in the room. But even at that moment he had a dim foreboding that this happier frame of mind was also not normal.

There were few people at the time in the tavern. Besides the two drunken men he had met on the steps, a group consisting of about five men, with a girl and a concertina, had gone out at the same time. Their departure left the room quiet and rather empty. The persons remaining were a man who appeared to be an artisan, drunk, but not extremely so, sitting with a beer, and his companion, a huge, stout man with a gray beard, in a short full-skirted coat. He was very drunk and had dozed off on the bench; every now and then, as if in his sleep, he began cracking his fingers, with his arms wide apart and the upper part of his body bouncing about on the bench, while he hummed some meaningless refrain, trying to recall some such lines as these:—

“His wife a year he stroked and loved
His wife a—a year he—stroked and loved.”—

Or suddenly waking up again:—

“Walking along the crowded row
He met the one he used to know.”—

But no-one shared his enjoyment: his silent companion looked at all these outbursts with hostility and mistrust. There was another man in the room who looked somewhat like a retired government clerk. He was sitting apart, sipping now and then from his mug and looking round at the company. He, too, appeared to be somewhat excited.

CHAPTER TWO

RASKOLNIKOV WAS NOT USED to crowds, and, as was said previously, he avoided society of every sort, especially recently. But now all at once he felt a desire to be with other people. Something new seemed to be taking place within him, and with it he felt a sort of thirst for company. He was so weary after a whole month of concentrated wretchedness and gloomy excitement that he longed to rest, if only for a moment, in some other world, whatever it might be; and, in spite of the filthiness of the surroundings, he was glad now to stay in the tavern.

The owner of the establishment was in another room, but he frequently came down some steps into the main room, his jaunty, polished boots with red turn-over tops coming into view each time before the rest of him. He wore a full coat and a horribly greasy black satin waistcoat, with no cravat, and his whole face seemed smeared with oil like an iron lock. At the counter stood a boy of about fourteen, and there was another somewhat younger boy who served the customers. On the counter lay some sliced cucumber, some pieces of dried black bread, and some fish chopped up into little pieces, all smelling very bad. It was unbearably humid, and so heavy with the fumes of alcohol that five minutes in such an atmosphere could well cause drunkenness.

We all have chance meetings with people, even with complete strangers, who interest us at first glance, suddenly, before a word is spoken. Such was the impression made on Raskolnikov by the person sitting a little distance from him, who looked like a retired clerk. The young man often recalled this impression afterwards, and even ascribed it to presentiment. He looked repeatedly at the clerk, partly no doubt because the latter was staring persistently at him, obviously anxious to enter into conversation. The clerk looked at the other persons in the room, including the tavern-keeper, as though he were used to their company, and weary of it, showing at the same time a shade of patronizing contempt for them as members of a culture inferior to his own, with whom it would be useless for him to converse. He was over fifty, bald and grizzled, of medium height, and stoutly built. His face, bloated from continual drinking, was of a yellow, even greenish, tinge, with swollen eyelids out of which keen reddish eyes gleamed like little slits. But there was something very strange in him; there was a light in his eyes as though of intense feeling—perhaps there was even a streak of thought and intelligence, but at the same time they gleamed with something like madness.