in the public ward of a hospital, where he was being
treated for arthritis in the left leg. He had told me to come
to him if I were ever in difficulties.
I must say something about Boris, for he was a
curious character and my close friend for a long time. He
was a big, soldierly man of about thirty-five, and had
been good-looking, but since his illness he had grown im-
mensely fat from lying in bed. Like most Russian
refugees, he had had an adventurous life. His parents,
killed in the Revolution, had been rich people, and he had
served through the war in the Second Siberian Rifles,
which, according to him, was the best regiment in the
Russian Army. After the war he had first worked in a
brush factory, then as a porter at Les Halles, then had
become a dishwasher, and had finally worked his way up
to be a waiter. When he fell ill he was at the Hôtel Scribe,
and taking a hundred francs a day in tips. His ambition
was to become a maitre d'hdtel, save fifty thousand
francs, and set up a small, select restaurant on the Right
Bank.
Boris always talked of the war as the happiest time
0f his life. War and soldiering were his passion; he
had read innumerable books 0f strategy and military
history, and could tell you all about the theories 0f
Napoleon, Kutuzof, Clausewitz, Moltke and Foch.
Anything to do with soldiers pleased him. His favourite
café was the Closerie des Lilas in Montparnasse,
simply because the statue 0f Marshal Ney stands
outside it. Later 0n, Boris and I sometimes went to the
Rue du Commerce together. If we went by Metro, Boris
always got out at Cambronne station instead 0f
Commerce, though Commerce was nearer; he liked the
association with General Cambronne, who was called
on to surrender at Waterloo, and answered simply,
«
Merde! »
The only things left to Boris by the Revolution were
his medals and some photographs of his old regiment;
he had kept these when everything else went to the
pawnshop. Almost every day he would spread the
photographs out on the bed and talk about them:
"
Voila, mon ami! There you see me at the head 0f my
company. Fine big men, eh? Not like these little rats 0f
Frenchmen. A captain at twenty-not bad, eh? Yes, a
captain in the Second Siberian Rifles; and my father
was a colonel.
«
Ah, mais, mon ami, the ups and downs of life! A
captain in the Russian Army, and then, piff! the Revo-
lution-every penny gone. In 1916 I stayed a week at the
Hotel Édouard Sept; in 1920 I was trying for a job as
night watchman there. I have been night watchman,
cellarman, floor scrubber, dishwasher, porter, lavatory
attendant. I have tipped waiters, and I have been
tipped by waiters.
« Ah, but I have known what it is to live like a
gentleman,
mon ami. I do not say it to boast, but the
other day I was trying to compute how many
mistresses I have had in my life, and I made it out to
be over two hundred. Yes, at least two hundred . . . Ah, well,
ca reviendra
. Victory is to him who fights the longest.
Courage!" etc. etc.
Boris had a queer, changeable nature. He always
wished himself back in the army, but he had also been
a waiter long enough t0 acquire the waiter's outlook.
Though he had never saved more than a few thousand
francs, he took it for granted that in the end he would
be able to set up his own restaurant and grow rich. All
waiters, I afterwards found, talk and think of this; it is
what reconciles them to being waiters. Boris used to
talk interestingly about hotel life:
"Waiting is a gamble," he used to say; "you may die
poor, you may make your fortune in a year. You are
not paid wages, you depend on tips-ten per cent. of the
bill, and a commission from the wine companies on
champagne corks. Sometimes the tips are enormous.
The barman at Maxim's, for instance, makes five
hundred francs a day. More than five hundred, in the
season. . . . I have made two hundred francs a day
myself. It was at a hotel in Biarritz, in the season. The
whole staff, from the manager down to the
plongeurs,
was working twenty-one hours a day. Twenty-one
hours' work and two and a half hours in bed, for a
month on end. Still, it was worth it, at two hundred
francs a day.
"You never know when a stroke of luck is coming.
Once when I was at the Hôtel Royal an American
customer sent for me before dinner and ordered
twentyfour brandy cocktails. I brought them all
together on a tray, in twenty-four glasses. 'Now,
garcon
,' said the customer (he was drunk), 'I'll drink
twelve and you'll drink twelve, and if you can walk to
the door afterwards you get a hundred francs.' I
walked to the door, and he gave me a hundred francs.
And every night for six days he did the same thing; twelve
brandy
cocktails, then a hundred francs. A few months later
I heard he had been extradited by the American
Governmentembezzlement. There is something fine, do
you not think, about these Americans?"
I liked Boris, and we had interesting times together,
playing chess and talking about war and hotels. Boris
used often to suggest that I should become a waiter.
"The life would suit you," he used to say; "when you are
in work, with a hundred francs a day and a nice mistress,
it's not bad. You say you go in for writing. Writing is
bosh. There is only one way to make money at writing,
and that is to marry a publisher's daughter. But you
would make a good waiter if you shaved that moustache
off. You are tall and you speak English those are the
chief things a waiter needs. Wait till I can bend this