Page 54 - down-and-out-in-paris-and-london

‘Me? But I don’t know anything about politics.’
‘MERDE! Neither do they. Who DOES know anything
about politics? It’s easy. All you have to do is to copy it out of
the English papers. Isn’t there a Paris DAILY MAIL? Copy
it from that.’
‘But the DAILY MAIL is a Conservative paper. They
loathe the Communists.’
‘Well, say the opposite of what the DAILY MAIL says,
then you can’t be wrong. We mustn’t throw this chance
away, MON AMI. It might mean hundreds of francs.’
I did not like the idea, for the Paris police are very hard
on Communists, especially if they are foreigners, and I was
already under suspicion. Some months before, a detective
had seen me come out of the office of a Communist weekly
paper, and I had had a great deal of trouble with the police.
If they caught me going to this secret society, it might mean
deportation. However, the chance seemed too good to be
missed. That afternoon Boris’s friend, another waiter, came
to take us to the rendezvous. I cannot remember the name
of the street—it was a shabby street running south from the
Seine bank, somewhere near the Chamber of Deputies. Bo-
ris’s friend insisted on great caution. We loitered casually
down the street, marked the doorway we were to enter—it
was a laundry— and then strolled back again, keeping an
eye on all the windows and cafes. If the place were known as
a haunt of Communists it was probably watched, and we in-
tended to go home if we saw anyone at all like a detective. I
was frightened, but Boris enjoyed these conspiratorial pro-
ceedings, and quite forgot that he was about to trade with