Pagina 380 di 1294

They were bare-headed and wore cotton dresses and goatskin shoes.

There were women of forty and some not more than seventeen;

almost all had blackened eyes.

He felt strangely attracted by the singing and all the noise and

uproar in the saloon below.... someone could be heard within

dancing frantically, marking time with his heels to the sounds of

the guitar and of a thin falsetto voice singing a jaunty air. He

listened intently, gloomily and dreamily, bending down at the

entrance and peeping inquisitively in from the pavement.

"Oh, my handsome soldier Don't beat me for nothing,"

trilled the thin voice of the singer. Raskolnikov felt a great

desire to make out what he was singing, as though everything

depended on that.

"Shall I go in?" he thought. "They are laughing. From drink.

Shall I get drunk?"

"Won't you come in?" one of the women asked him. Her voice was

still musical and less thick than the others, she was young and

not repulsive--the only one of the group.