Page 108 - down-and-out-in-paris-and-london

he lies in bed till noon, puts on a clean shirt, throws dice for
drinks, and after lunch goes back to bed again. Nothing is
quite real to him but the BOULOT, drinks and sleep; and of
these sleep is the most important.
One night, in the small hours, there was a murder just
beneath my window. I was woken by a fearful uproar, and,
going to the window, saw a man lying flat on the stones be-
low; I could see the murderers, three of them, flitting away
at the end of the street. Some of us went down and found
that the man was quite dead, his skull cracked with a piece
of lead piping. I remember the colour of his blood, curious-
ly purple, like wine; it was still on the cobbles when I came
home that evening, and they said the school-children had
come from miles round to see it. But the thing that strikes
me in looking back is that I was in bed and asleep within
three minutes of the murder. So were most of the people in
the street; we just made sure that the man was done for, and
went straight back to bed. We were working people, and
where was the sense of wasting sleep over a murder?
Work in the hotel taught me the true value of sleep, just
as being hungry had taught me the true value of food. Sleep
had ceased to be a mere physical necessity; it was something
voluptuous, a debauch more than a relief. I had no more
trouble with the bugs. Mario had told me of a sure remedy
for them, namely pepper, strewed thick over the bedclothes.
It made me sneeze, but the bugs all hated it, and emigrated
to other rooms.

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