Page 62 - down-and-out-in-paris-and-london

Two bad days followed. We had only sixty centimes left,
and we spent it on half a pound of bread, with a piece of
garlic to rub it with. The point of rubbing garlic on bread
is that the taste lingers and gives one the illusion of hav-
ing fed recently. We sat most of that day in the Jardin des
Plantes. Boris had shots with stones at the tame pigeons,
but always missed them, and after that we wrote dinner
menus on the backs of envelopes. We were too hungry even
to try and think of anything except food. I remember the
dinner Boris finally selected for himself. It was: a dozen oys-
ters, bortch soup (the red, sweet, beetroot soup with cream
on top), crayfishes, a young chicken en CASSEROLE, beef
with stewed plums, new potatoes, a salad, suet pudding and
Roquefort cheese, with a litre of Burgundy and some old
brandy. Boris had international tastes in food. Later on,
when we were prosperous, I occasionally saw him eat meals
almost as large without difficulty.
When our money came to an end I stopped looking for
work, and was another day without food. I did not believe
that the Auberge de Jehan Cottard was really going to open,
and I could see no other prospect, but I was too lazy to do
anything but lie in bed. Then the luck changed abruptly. At
night, at about ten o’clock, I heard an eager shout from the
street. I got up and went to the window. Boris was there,
waving his stick and beaming. Before speaking he dragged
a bent loaf from his pocket and threw it up to me.
‘MON AMI, MON CHER AMI, we’re saved! What do
you think?’
‘Surely you haven’t got a job!’

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