For some reason he was interested in the singing and all the clatter and racket there, downstairs...Through the shrieks and guffaws, to the accompaniment of the guitar and the thin falsetto of a rollicking song, came the sound of someone desperately dancing, beating time with his heels. He listened intently, gloomily, pensively, bending down at the entrance and peering curiously from the sidewalk into the entryway.

“My soldier-boy so fine and free, What cause have you for beating me!” the singer's thin voice poured out. Raskolnikov wanted terribly to catch the words, as if that were all that mattered to him.

“Why don't I go in?” he thought. “They're laughing loudly! Drunk. Well, suppose I get drunk?”

“Won't you go in, dear master?” one of the women asked in a ringing, not yet quite husky voice. She was young and not even repulsive—she alone of the whole group.

“Well, well, here's a pretty one!” he replied, straightening up and looking at her.

She smiled; the compliment pleased her very much.

“You're a real pretty one yourself,” she said.

“But so skinny!” another observed in a bass voice. “Just checked out of the hospital, or what?”

“Look, they're all generals' daughters, and snub-nosed every nose of them!” a newly arrived peasant suddenly interrupted, tipsy, his coat unbuttoned, and with a slyly laughing mug. “Here's some fun, eh?”

“Go in if you're going!”

“That I will, my sweeties!”

And he tumbled down the steps.

Raskolnikov started to move on.

“Listen, dear master!” the girl called after him.

“What?”

She became embarrassed.

“I'd always be glad to spend some time with you, dear master, but right now I can't seem to settle my conscience on you. Give me six kopecks for a drink, my nice young gentleman!”

Raskolnikov took out what happened into his hand: three five-kopeck pieces.

“Ah, such a kind master!”

“What's your name?”

“Ask for Duklida.”

“Just look at that, will you,” one woman in the group suddenly remarked, shaking her head at Duklida. “I don't know how anyone could ask like that! I think I'd just drop down from conscience alone . . .”

Raskolnikov looked curiously at the one who had spoken. She was a pockmarked wench of about thirty, all covered with bruises, and with a swollen upper lip. She pronounced her judgment calmly and seriously.

“Where was it,” Raskolnikov thought as he walked on, “where was it that I read about a man condemned to death saying or thinking, an hour before his death, that if he had to live somewhere high up on a cliffside, on a ledge so narrow that there was room only for his two feet—and with the abyss, the ocean, eternal darkness, eternal solitude, eternal storm all around him—and had to stay like that, on a square foot of space, an entire lifetime, a thousand years, an eternity—it would be better to live so than to die right now! Only to live, to live, to live! To live, no matter how—only to live!^[60]. . . How true! Lord, how true! Man is a scoundrel! And he's a scoundrel who calls him a scoundrel for that,” he added in a moment.

He came out on another street. “Hah! The 'Crystal Palace'! Razumikhin was talking earlier about the 'Crystal Palace.' Only what was it I wanted to do? Ah, yes, to read! ... Zossimov said he read about it in the newspapers...”

“Do you have the newspapers?” he asked, going into a quite spacious and even orderly tavern with several rooms, all of them rather empty, however. Two or three customers were having tea, and in a farther room a group of some four men sat drinking champagne. Raskolnikov fancied that one of them was Zamyotov, but it was hard to tell from a distance.

“So what if it is!” he thought.

“Will you be having vodka, sir?” the waiter asked.

“Bring me tea. And some newspapers, old ones—say, from the last five days—and I'll leave you a good tip.”

“Right, sir. Here are today's, sir. And some vodka, sir?”

The old newspapers and the tea appeared. Raskolnikov sat down and began searching: “Izler...Izler...Aztecs...Aztecs...Izler...Bartola...Massimo...Aztecs...Izler...pah, the devil! Ah, the short notices: woman falls down stairs . .. tradesman burns up with drink...fire in Peski...fire on the Petersburg side...another fire on the Petersburg side...another fire on the Petersburg side...Izler...Izler...Izler...Izler...Massimo...Ah, here . . .”^[61]

He finally found what he wanted and started reading; the lines danced in front of his eyes, but he nevertheless finished the whole “news item” and greedily began looking in other issues for later additions. His hands trembled with convulsive impatience as he leafed through the pages. Suddenly someone sat down next to him at his table. He looked up—it was Zamyotov, the same Zamyotov, with the same look, with the signet rings, the watch-chains, the part in his black, curly, and pomaded hair, wearing a foppish waistcoat, a somewhat worn jacket, and not very fresh linen. He was cheerful; at least he was smiling cheerfully and good-naturedly. His dark-skinned face was a little flushed from the champagne he had been drinking.

“What! You here?” he began in perplexity, and in a tone suggesting they had known each other for ages. “Razumikhin told me just yesterday that you were still unconscious. How strange! And I was there at your place . . .”

Raskolnikov had known he would come over. He laid the newspapers aside and turned to Zamyotov. There was a smirk on his lips, and in that smirk the trace of some new, irritable impatience.

“I know you were,” he replied, “I heard about it, sir. You looked for my sock...And, you know, Razumikhin's lost his head over you; he says you went with him to Laviza Ivanovna, the one you took such trouble over that time, winking to Lieutenant Gunpowder, and he couldn't understand, remember? Yet one wonders how he could possibly not understand—it was clear enough...eh?”

“And what a rowdy he is!”

“Who, Gunpowder?”

“No, your friend Razumikhin . . .”

“Nice life you've got for yourself, Mr. Zamyotov; a toll-free entry into the most pleasant places! Who was that pouring champagne into you just now?”

“Yes, we were...having a drink...Pouring, really!”

“An honorarium! You profit in all ways!” Raskolnikov laughed. “Never mind, sweet boy, never mind!” he added, slapping Zamyotov on the shoulder. “I'm not saying it out of malice; it's all 'real friendly, for the fun of it,' as your workman said when he was punching Mitka, the one in the old woman's case.”

“How do you know about that?”

“Maybe I know more than you do.”

“You're a strange one, you are...You must still be very sick. You shouldn't have gone out . . .”

“So I seem strange to you?”

“Yes. What's this, you're reading newspapers?”

“Newspapers.”

“There's a lot about fires . . .”

“I'm not reading about fires.” Here he gave Zamyotov a mysterious look; a mocking smile again twisted his lips. “No, not about fires,” he went on, winking at Zamyotov. “And confess it, my dear young man, aren't you terribly anxious to know what I was reading about?”

“Not at all; I just asked. Can't I ask? Why do you keep . . .”

“Listen, you're an educated man, a literary man, eh?”

“I finished the sixth class in gymnasium,” Zamyotov answered with some dignity.

“The sixth class! All, my little sparrow! With a part in his hair and rings on his fingers—a rich man! Pah, what a dear little boy!” Here Raskolnikov dissolved into nervous laughter right in Zamyotov's face. The latter drew back, not really offended, but very much surprised.

“Pah, what a strange fellow!” Zamyotov repeated, very seriously. “I think you're still raving.”

“Raving? Nonsense, my little sparrow! ... So I'm strange, am I? Well, and are you curious about me? Are you curious?”