On a sweltering July evening in Petersburg, Raskolnikov leaves his cramped garret to walk toward K bridge, gripped by intense anxiety and hypochondriac isolation. Desperately in debt to his landlady and crushed by poverty, he avoids her and everyone else, consumed instead by a dark, reckless fantasy he has nursed for a month. Wandering through the dusty, foul-smelling streets in absolute rags, he momentarily panics when a drunken drayman ridicules his worn, conspicuous hat, fearing that such a trivial detail might ruin his entire hidden plan.
Counting exactly seven hundred and thirty steps from his lodging, he arrives at a large apartment house inhabited by working people and petty clerks. Using the dark, familiar back staircase to avoid detection, he reaches the fourth floor and goes to the flat of Alyona Ivanovna, a withered, malignant pawnbroker. The old woman eyes him with mistrust through a cracked-open door before letting him inside her meticulously clean, sunlit rooms. Raskolnikov presents an old silver watch that belonged to his father to pawn, observing every detail of the apartment and the placement of her keys with intense, nervous scrutiny.
After a brief, tense negotiation over the paltry sum of a rouble and fifteen copecks, the pawnbroker hands him the money. Raskolnikov lingers momentarily, asks if her sister is alone at home, and then flees in complete turmoil. Overwhelmed by a sudden, intense wave of loathing and disgust for his own thoughts, he stumbles out into the street like a drunken man, tormented by the realization of what his heart is capable of contemplating.
Seeking relief from his dizziness and physical weakness, he enters a tavern for the first time and eagerly drinks a glass of cold beer. The alcohol quickly clears his mind, making him feel as though a massive burden has been lifted and convincing himself that his agitation was merely physical derangement caused by hunger. Seated in the quiet, sticky corner of the tavern alongside a few other patrons, including a drunken, singing companion and a retired clerk, he watches them with newfound cheerfulness, though retaining a faint foreboding that his unstable frame of mind remains far from normal.