Page 48 - down-and-out-in-paris-and-london

creak. The plan might have failed if Boris had been thinner,
for his big shoulders blocked the doorway of the office. His
nerve was splendid, too; he went on laughing and talking in
the most casual way, and so loud that he quite covered any
noise I made. When I was well away he came and joined me
round the corner, and we bolted.
And then, after all our trouble, the receiver at the pawn-
shop again refused the overcoats. He told me (one could see
his French soul revelling in the pedantry of it) that I had not
sufficient papers of identification; my CARTE D’IDENTITE
was not enough, and I must show a passport or addressed
envelopes. Boris had addressed envelopes by the score, but
his CARTE D’IDENTITE was out of order (he never re-
newed it, so as to avoid the tax), so we could not pawn the
overcoats in his name. All we could do was to trudge up to
my room, get the necessary papers, and take the coats to the
pawnshop in the Boulevard Port Royal.
I left Boris at my room and went down to the pawnshop.
When I got there I found that it was shut and would not
open till four in the afternoon. It was now about half-past
one, and I had walked twelve kilometres and had no food
for sixty hours. Fate seemed to be playing a series of ex-
traordinarily unamusing jokes.
Then the luck changed as though by a miracle. I was
walking home through the Rue Broca when suddenly, glit-
tering on the cobbles, I saw a five-sou piece. I pounced on
it, hurried home, got our other five-sou piece and bought
a pound of potatoes. There was only enough alcohol in the
stove to parboil them, and we had no salt, but we wolfed