‘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 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. Twenty-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 Hôtel Royal an American customer sent for me before dinner and ordered twenty-four brandy cocktails. I brought them all together on a tray, in twenty-four glasses. “Now, garçon,” 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 brandy cocktails, then a hundred francs. A few months later I heard he had been extradited by the American Government–embezzlement. There is something fine, do you not think, about these Americans?’
I liked Boris, and we had interesting times together, 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 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.
V
A SHORT TIME BEFORE, Boris had given me an address in the Rue du Marché 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 Hôtel 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 myself 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 Gauloises Bleu, in anticipation of my wages.
In the morning I walked down to the Rue du Marché des Blancs Manteaux; with a shock, I found it a slummy 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 flights of narrow, winding stairs, the Bouillon Zip growing stronger 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 skylight, its sole furniture a narrow iron bedstead, a chair, and a washhandstand 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 Hôtel 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 Pont 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 was some complicated explanation) that the Jew owed Boris 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 after 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 immediately. 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 already. There is a new Russian restaurant which is to open in a few days in the Rue du Commerce. It is une chose entendue that I am to be maître d’hôtel. 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 my sleeve. There are people who owe me money, for instance–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 worry, 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, collar 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, because the patron of the
