Page 30 - down-and-out-in-paris-and-london

V

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