Down and Out in Paris and London (4 page)

most every day he would spread the photographs out on the

bed and talk about them:

‘VOILA, MON AMI. There you see me at the head of

my company. Fine big men, eh? Not like these little rats of

Frenchmen. A captain at twenty— not bad, eh? Yes, a cap-

tain in the Second Siberian Rifles; and my father was a

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colonel.

‘AH, MAIS, MON AMI, the ups and downs of life! A

captain in the Russian Army, and then, piff! the Revolu-

tion—every penny gone. In 1916 I stayed a week at the Hotel

Edouard Sept; in 1920 I was trying for a job as night watch-

man there. I have been night watchman, cellarman, floor

scrubber, dishwasher, porter, lavatory attendant. I have

tipped waiters, and I have been tipped by waiters.

‘Ah, but I have known what it is to live like a gentleman,

MON AMI. I do not say it to boast, but the other day I was

trying to compute how many mistresses I have had in my

life, and I made it out to be over two hundred. Yes, at least

two hundred … Ah, well, CA REVIENDRA. Victory is to

him who fights the longest. Courage!’ etc. etc.

Boris had a queer, changeable nature. He always wished

himself back in the army, but he had also been a waiter long

enough to acquire the waiter’s outlook. Though he had nev-

er saved more than a few thousand francs, he took it for

granted that in the end he would be able to set up his own

restaurant and grow rich. All waiters, I afterwards found,

talk and think of this; it is what reconciles them to being

waiters. Boris used to talk interestingly about Hotel life:

‘Waiting is a gamble,’ he used to say; ‘you may die poor,

you may make your fortune in a year. You are not paid

wages, you depend on tips—ten per cent of the bill, and

a commission from the wine companies on champagne

corks. Sometimes the tips are enormous. The barman at

Maxim’s, for instance, makes five hundred francs a day.

More than five hundred, in the season … I have made two

Down and Out in Paris and London

hundred francs a day myself. It was at a Hotel in Biarritz, in

the season. The whole staff, from the manager down to the

PLONGEURS, was working twenty-one hours a day. Twen-

ty-one hours’ work and two and a half hours in bed, for a

month on end. Still, it was worth it, at two hundred francs

a day.

‘You never know when a stroke of luck is coming. Once

when I was at the Hotel Royal an American customer sent

for me before dinner and ordered twenty-four brandy cock-

tails. I brought them all together on a tray, in twenty-four

glasses. ‘Now, GUARCON,’ said the customer (he was

drunk), ‘I’ll drink twelve and you’ll drink twelve, and if you

can walk to the door afterwards you get a hundred francs.’ I

walked to the door, and he gave me a hundred francs. And

every night for six days he did the same thing; twelve bran-

dy cocktails, then a hundred francs. A few months later I

heard he had been extradited by the American Govern-

ment—embezzlement. There is something fine, do you not

think, about these Americans?’

I liked Boris, and we had interesting times togeth-

er, playing chess and talking about war and Hotels. Boris

used often to suggest that I should become a waiter. ‘The

life would suit you,’ he used to say; ‘when you are in work,

with a hundred francs a day and a nice mistress, it’s not bad.

You say you go in for writing. Writing is bosh. There is only

one way to make money at writing, and that is to marry a

publisher’s daughter. But you would make a good waiter if

you shaved that moustache off. You are tall and you speak

English—those are the chief things a waiter needs. Wait till

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I can bend this accursed leg, MON AMI. And then, if you

are ever out of a job, come to me.’

Now that I was short of my rent, and getting hungry, I

remembered Boris’s promise, and decided to look him up at

once. I did not hope to become a waiter so easily as he had

promised, but of course I knew how to scrub dishes, and no

doubt he could get me a job in the kitchen. He had said that

dishwashing jobs were to be had for the asking during the

summer. It was a great relief to remember that I had after all

one influential friend to fall back on.

Down and Out in Paris and London

V

A short time before, Boris had given me an address in the

rue du Marche des Blancs Manteaux. All he had said in

his letter was that ‘things were not marching too badly’, and

I assumed that he was back at the Hotel Scribe, touching his

hundred francs a day. I was full of hope, and wondered why

I had been fool enough not to go to Boris before. I saw my-

self in a cosy restaurant, with jolly cooks singing love-songs

as they broke eggs into the pan, and five solid meals a day.

I even squandered two francs fifty on a packet of Gaulois

Bleu, in anticipation of my wages.

In the morning I walked down to the rue du Marche des

Blancs Manteaux; with a shock, I found it a shimmy back

street-as bad as my own. Boris’s hotel was the dirtiest hotel

in the street. From its dark doorway there came out a vile,

sour odour, a mixture of slops and synthetic soup—it was

Bouillon Zip, twenty-five centimes a packet. A misgiving

came over me. People who drink Bouillon Zip are starving,

or near it. Could Boris possibly be earning a hundred francs

a day? A surly PATRON, sitting in the office, said to me. Yes,

the Russian was at home—in the attic. I went up six nights

of narrow, winding stairs, the Bouillon Zip growing stron-

ger as one got higher. Boris did not answer when I knocked

at his door, so I opened it and went in.

The room was an attic, ten feet square, lighted only by a

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skylight, its sole furniture a narrow iron bedstead, a chair,

and a washhand-stand with one game leg. A long S-shaped

chain of bugs marched slowly across the wall above the

bed. Boris was lying asleep, naked, his large belly making a

mound under the grimy sheet. His chest was spotted with

insect bites. As I came in he woke up, rubbed his eyes, and

groaned deeply.

‘Name of Jesus Christ!’ he exclaimed, ‘oh, name of Jesus

Christ, my back! Curse it, I believe my back is broken!’

‘What’s the matter?’ I exclaimed.

‘My back is broken, that is all. I have spent the night on

the floor. Oh, name of Jesus Christ! If you knew what my

back feels like!’

‘My dear Boris, are you ill?’

‘Not ill, only starving—yes, starving to death if this goes

on much longer. Besides sleeping on the floor, I have lived

on two francs a day for weeks past. It is fearful. You have

come at a bad moment, MON AMI.’

It did not seem much use to ask whether Boris still had

his job at the Hotel Scribe. I hurried downstairs and bought

a loaf of bread. Boris threw himself on the bread and ate

half of it, after which he felt better, sat up in bed, and told

me what was the matter with him. He had failed to get a job

after leaving the hospital, because he was still very lame,

and he had spent all his money and pawned everything, and

finally starved for several days. He had slept a week on the

quay under the Font d’Austerlitz, among some empty wine

barrels. For the past fortnight he had been living in this

room, together with a Jew, a mechanic. It appeared (there

0

Down and Out in Paris and London

was some complicated explanation.) that the Jew owed Bo-

ris three hundred francs, and was repaying this by letting

him sleep on the floor and allowing him two francs a day

for food. Two francs would buy a bowl of coffee and three

rolls. The Jew went to work at seven in the mornings, and af-

ter that Boris would leave his sleeping-place (it was beneath

the skylight, which let in the rain) and get into the bed. He

could not sleep much even there owing to the bugs, but it

rested his back after the floor.

It was a great disappointment, when I had come to Boris

for help, to find him even worse off than myself. I explained

that I had only about sixty francs left and must get a job im-

mediately. By this time, however, Boris had eaten the rest

of the bread and was feeling cheerful and talkative. He said

carelessly:

‘Good heavens, what are you worrying about? Sixty

francs—why, it’s a fortune! Please hand me that shoe, MON

AMI. I’m going to smash some of those bugs if they come

within reach.’

‘But do you think there’s any chance of getting a job?’

‘Chance? It’s a certainty. In fact, I have got something al-

ready. There is a new Russian restaurant which is to open in

a few days in the rue du Commerce. It is UNE CHOSE EN-

TENDUE that I am to be MAITRE D’HOTEL. I can easily

get you a job in the kitchen. Five hundred francs a month

and your food—tips, too, if you are lucky.’

‘But in the meantime? I’ve got to pay my rent before

long.’

‘Oh, we shall find something. I have got a few cards-up

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1

my sleeve. There are people who owe me money, for in-

stance—Paris is full of them. One of them is bound to pay

up before long. Then think of all the women who have been

my mistress! A woman never forgets, you know—I have

only to ask and they will help me. Besides, the Jew tells me

he is going to steal some magnetos from the garage where

he works, and he will pay us five francs a day to clean them

before he sells them. That alone would keep us. Never wor-

ry, MON AMI. Nothing is easier to get than money.’

‘Well, let’s go out now and look for a job.’

‘Presently, MON AMI. We shan’t starve, don’t you fear.

This is only the fortune of war—I’ve been in a worse hole

scores of times. It’s only a question of persisting. Remember

Foch’s maxim: ‘ATTAQUEZ! ATTAQUEZ! ATTAQUEZ!‘

It was midday before Boris decided to get up. All the

clothes he now had left were one suit, with one shirt, col-

lar and tie, a pair of shoes almost worn out, and a pair of

socks all holes. He had also an overcoat which was to be

pawned in the last extremity. He had a suitcase, a wretched

twenty-franc cardboard thing, but very important, be-

cause the PATRON of the hotel believed that it was full of

clothes—without that, he would probably have turned Bo-

ris out of doors. What it actually contained were the medals

and photographs, various odds and ends, and huge bundles

of love-letters. In spite of all this Boris managed to keep a

fairly smart appearance. He shaved without soap and with a

razor-blade two months old, tied his tie so that the holes did

not show, and carefully stuffed the soles of his shoes with

newspaper. Finally, when he was dressed, he produced an

Down and Out in Paris and London

ink-bottle and inked the skin of his ankles where it showed

through his socks. You would never have thought, when it

was finished, that he had recently been sleeping under the

Seine bridges.

We went to a small cafe off the rue de Rivoli, a well-

known rendezvous of hotel managers and employees. At

the back was a dark, cave-like room where all kinds of ho-

tel workers were sitting—smart young waiters, others not

so smart and clearly hungry, fat pink cooks, greasy dish-

washers, battered old scrubbing-women. Everyone had an

untouched glass of black coffee in front of him. The place

was, in effect, an employment bureau, and the money spent

on drinks was the PATRON’S commission. Sometimes a

stout, important-looking man, obviously a restaurateur,

would come in and speak to the barman, and the barman-

would call to one of the people at the back of the cafe. But he

never called to Boris or me, and we left after two hours, as

the etiquette was that you could only stay two hours for one

drink. We learned afterwards, when it was too late, that the

dodge was to bribe the barman; if you could afford twenty

francs he would generally get you a job.

We went to the Hotel Scribe and waited an hour on the

pavement, hoping that the manager would come out, but

he never did. Then we dragged ourselves down to the rue

du Commerce, only to find that the new restaurant, which

was being redecorated, was shut up and the PATRON away.

It was now night. We had walked fourteen kilometres over

pavement, and we were so tired that we had to waste one

franc fifty on going home by Metro. Walking was agony to

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Boris with his game leg, and his optimism wore thinner and

thinner as the day went on. When he got out of the Metro

at the Place d’Italie he was in despair. He began to say that

it was no use looking for work—there was nothing for it but