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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,