No More Learning

Once an agency to which I had applied months earlier sent me a PETIT BLEU, telling me
of an Italian gentleman who wanted English lessons. The PETIT BLEU said ‘Come at
once’ and promised twenty francs an hour. Boris and I were in despair. Here was a
splendid chance, and I could not take it, for it was impossible to go to the agency with my
coat out at the elbow. Then it occurred to us that I could wear Boris’s coat — it did not
match my trousers, but the trousers were grey and might pass for flannel at a short
distance. The coat was so much too big for me that I had to wear it unbuttoned and keep
one hand in my pocket. I hurried out, and wasted seventy-five centimes on a bus fare to
get to the agency. When I got there I found that the Italian had changed his mind and left
Paris.



Once Boris suggested that I should go to Les Halles and try for a job as a porter. I arrived
at half-past four in the morning, when the work was getting into its swing. Seeing a short,
fat man in a bowler hat directing some porters, I went up to him and asked for work.
Before answering he seized my right hand and felt the palm.

‘You are strong, eh? ’ he said.

‘Very strong,’ I said untruly.

‘BIEN. Let me see you lift that crate. ’

It was a huge wicker basket full of potatoes. I took hold of it, and found that, so far from
lifting it, I could not even move it. The man in the bowler hat watched me, then shrugged
his shoulders and turned away. I made off. When I had gone some distance I looked back
and saw FOUR men lifting the basket on to a cart. It weighed three hundredweight,
possibly. The man had seen that I was no use, and taken this way of getting rid of me.

Sometimes in his hopeful moments Boris spent fifty centimes on a stamp and wrote to
one of his ex-mistresses, asking for money. Only one of them ever replied. It was a
woman who, besides having been his mistress, owed him two hundred francs. When
Boris saw the letter waiting and recognized the handwriting, he was wild with hope. We
seized the letter and rushed up to Boris’s room to read it, like a child with stolen sweets.
Boris read the letter, then handed it silently to me. It ran:

My Little Cherished Wolf,

With what delight did I open thy channing letter, reminding me of the days of our perfect
love, and of the so dear kisses which I have received from thy lips. Such memories linger
for ever in the heart, like the perfume of a flower that is dead.

As to thy request for two hundred francs, alas! it is impossible. Thou dost not know, my
dear one, how I am desolated to hear of thy embarrassments. But what wouldst thou? In
this life which is so sad, trouble conies to everyone. I too have had my share. My little
sister has been ill (ah, the poor little one, how she suffered! ) and we are obliged to pay I
know not what to the doctor. All our money is gone and we are passing, I assure thee,
very difficult days.



Courage, my little wolf, always the courage! Remember that the bad days are not for
ever, and the trouble which seems so terrible will disappear at last.


Rest assured, my dear one, that I will remember thee always. And receive the most
sincere embraces of her who has never ceased to love thee, thy

Yvonne

This letter disappointed Boris so much that he went straight to bed and would not look for
work again that day. My sixty francs lasted about a fortnight. I had given up the pretence
of going out to restaurants, and we used to eat in my room, one of us sitting on the bed
and the other on the chair. Boris would contribute his two francs and I three or four
francs, and we would buy bread, potatoes, milk and cheese, and make soup over my spirit
lamp. We had a saucepan and a coffee-bowl and one spoon; every day there was a polite
squabble as to who should eat out of the saucepan and who out of the coffee-bowl (the
saucepan held more), and every day, to my secret anger, Boris gave in first and had the
saucepan. Sometimes we had more bread in the evening, sometimes not. Our linen was
getting filthy, and it was three weeks since I had had a bath; Boris, so he said, had not had
a bath for months. It was tobacco that made everything tolerable. We had plenty of
tobacco, for some time before Boris had met a soldier (the soldiers are given their
tobacco free) and bought twenty or thirty packets at fifty centimes each.

All this was far worse for Boris than for me. The walking and sleeping on the floor kept
his leg and back in constant pain, and with his vast Russian appetite he suffered torments
of hunger, though he never seemed to grow thinner. On the whole he was surprisingly
gay, and he had vast capacities for hope. He used to say seriously that he had a PATRON
saint who watched over him, and when things were very bad he would search the gutter
for money, saying that the saint often dropped a two-franc piece there. One day we were
waiting in the rue Royale; there was a Russian restaurant near by, and we were going to
ask for a job there. Suddenly, Boris made up his mind to go into the Madeleine and bum a
fifty-centime candle to his PATRON saint. Then, coming out, he said that he would be on
the safe side, and solemnly put a match to a fifty-centime stamp, as a sacrifice to the
immortal gods. Perhaps the gods and the saints did not get on together; at any rate, we
missed the job.



On some mornings Boris collapsed in the most utter despair. He would lie in bed almost
weeping, cursing the Jew with whom he lived. Of late the Jew had become restive about
paying the daily two francs, and, what was worse, had begun putting on intolerable airs of
PATRONage. Boris said that I, as an Englishman, could not conceive what torture it was
to a Russian of family to be at the mercy of a Jew.

‘A Jew, MON AMI, a veritable Jew! And he hasn’t even the decency to be ashamed of it.
To think that I, a captain in the Russian Army — have I ever told you, MON AMI, that I
was a captain in the Second Siberian Rifles? Yes, a captain, and my father was a colonel.
And here I am, eating the bread of a Jew. A Jew. . .

‘I will tell you what Jews are like. Once, in the early months of the war, we were on the
march, and we had halted at a village for the night. A horrible old Jew, with a red beard
like Judas Iscariot, came sneaking up to my billet. I asked him what he wanted. “Your
honour,” he said, “I have brought a girl for you, a beautiful young girl only seventeen. It
will only be fifty francs. ” “Tha nk you,” I said, “you can take her away again. I don’t want
to catch any diseases. ” “Diseases! ” cried the Jew, “MAIS, MONSIEUR LE CAPITAINE,
there’s no fear of that. It’s my own daughter! ” That is the Jewish national character for
you.

‘Have I ever told you, MON AMI, that in the old Russian Anny it was considered bad
form to spit on a Jew? Yes, we thought a Russian officer’s spittle was too precious to be
wasted on Jews. . . ’ etc. etc.

On these days Boris usually declared himself too ill to go out and look for work. He
would he till evening in the greyish, verminous sheets, smoking and reading old
newspapers. Sometimes we played chess. We had no board, but we wrote down the
moves on a piece of paper, and afterwards we made a board from the side of a packing —
case, and a set of men from buttons, Belgian coins and the like. Boris, like many
Russians, had a passion for chess. It was a saying of his that the rules of chess are the
same as the rules of love and war, and that if you can win at one you can win at the
others. But he also said that if you have a chessboard you do not mind being hungry,
which was certainly not true in my case.



CHAPTER VII


My money oozed away — to eight francs, to four francs, to one franc, to twenty-five
centimes; and twenty-five centimes is useless, for it will buy nothing except a newspaper.
We went several days on dry bread, and then I was two and a half days with nothing to
eat whatever. This was an ugly experience. There are people who do fasting cures of
three weeks or more, and they say that fasting is quite pleasant after the fourth day; I do
not know, never having gone beyond the third day. Probably it seems different when one
is doing it voluntarily and is not underfed at the start.

The first day, too inert to look for work, I borrowed a rod and went fishing in the Seine,
baiting with bluebottles. I hoped to catch enough for a meal, but of course I did not. The
Seine is full of dace, but they grew cunning during the siege of Paris, and none of them
has been caught since, except in nets. On the second day I thought of pawning my
overcoat, but it seemed too far to walk to the pawnshop, and I spent the day in bed,
reading the MEMOIRS OF SHERLOCK HOLMES. It was all that I felt equal to, without
food. Hunger reduces one to an utterly spineless, brainless condition, more like the after-
effects of influenza than anything else. It is as though one had been turned into a jellyfish,
or as though all one’s blood had been pumped out and luke-wann water substituted.
Complete inertia is my chief memory of hunger; that, and being obliged to spit very
frequently, and the spittle being curiously white and flocculent, like cuckoo-spit. I do not
know the reason for this, but everyone who has gone hungry several days has noticed it.

On the third morning I felt very much better. I realized that I must do something at once,
and I decided to go and ask Boris to let me share his two francs, at any rate for a day or
two. When I arrived I found Boris in bed, and furiously angry. As soon as I came in he
burst out, almost choking:

‘He has taken it back, the dirty thief! He has taken it back! ’

‘Who’s taken what? ’ I said.

‘The Jew! Taken my two francs, the dog, the thief! He robbed me in my sleep! ’



It appeared that on the previous night the Jew had flatly refused to pay the daily two
francs. They had argued and argued, and at last the Jew had consented to hand over the
money; he had done it, Boris said, in the most offensive manner, making a little speech
about how kind he was, and extorting abject gratitude. And then in the morning he had
stolen the money back before Boris was awake.

This was a blow. I was horribly disappointed, for I had allowed my belly to expect food,
a great mistake when one is hungry. However, rather to my surprise, Boris was far from
despairing. He sat up in bed, lighted his pipe and reviewed the situation.

‘Now listen, MON AMI, this is a tight comer. We have only twenty-five centimes
between us, and I don’t suppose the Jew will ever pay my two francs again. In any case
his behaviour is becoming intolerable. Will you believe it, the other night he had the
indecency to bring a woman in here, while I was there on the floor. The low animal! And
I have a worse thing to tell you. The Jew intends clearing out of here. He owes a week’s
rent, and his idea is to avoid paying that and give me the slip at the same time. If the Jew
shoots the moon I shall be left without a roof, and the PATRON will take my suitcase in
lieu of rent, curse him! We have got to make a vigorous move. ’

‘All right. But what can we do? It seems to me that the only thing is to pawn our
overcoats and get some food. ’

‘We’ll do that, of course, but I must get my possessions out of this house first. To think
of my photographs being seized! Well, my plan is ready. I’m going to forestall the Jew

and shoot the moon myself. F LE CAMP — retreat, you understand. I think that is the

correct move, eh? ’

‘But, my dear Boris, how can you, in daytime? You’re bound to be caught. ’

‘Ah well, it will need strategy, of course. Our PATRON is on the watch for people
slipping out without paying their rent; he’s been had that way before. He and his wife
take it in turns all day to sit in the office — what misers, these Frenchmen! But I have
thought of a way to do it, if you will help. ’



I did not feel in a very helpful mood, but I asked Boris what his plan was. He explained it
carefully.

‘Now listen. We must start by pawning our overcoats. First go back to your room and
fetch your overcoat, then come back here and fetch mine, and smuggle it out under cover
of yours. Take them to the pawnshop in the rue des Francs Bourgeois. You ought to get
twenty francs for the two, with luck. Then go down to the Seine ha nk and fill your
pockets with stones, and bring them back and put them in my suitcase. You see the idea?
I shall wrap as many of my things as I can carry in a newspaper, and go down and ask the
PATRON the way to the nearest laundry. I shall be very brazen and casual, you
understand, and of course the PATRON will think the bundle is nothing but dirty linen.
Or, if he does suspect anything, he will do what he always does, the mean sneak; he will
go up to my room and feel the weight of my suitcase. And when he feels the weight of
stones he will think it is still full. Strategy, eh? Then afterwards I can come back and
carry my other things out in my pockets. ’

‘But what about the suitcase? ’

‘Oh, that? We shall have to abandon it. The miserable thing only cost about twenty
francs. Besides, one always abandons something in a retreat. Look at Napoleon at the
Beresina! He abandoned his whole army. ’

Boris was so pleased with this scheme (he called it UNE RUSE DE GUERRE) that he
almost forgot being hungry. Its main weakness — that he would have nowhere to sleep
after shooting the moon — he ignored.

At first the RUSE DE GUERRE worked well. I went home and fetched my overcoat (that
made already nine kilometres, on an empty belly) and smuggled Boris’s coat out
successfully. Then a hitch occurred. The receiver at the pawnshop, a nasty, sour-faced,
interfering, little man — a typical French official — refused the coats on the ground that
they were not wrapped up in anything. He said that they must be put either in a valise or a
cardboard box. This spoiled everything, for we had no box of any kind, and with only
twenty-five centimes between us we could not buy one.



I went back and told Boris the bad news. ‘MERDE! ’ he said, ‘that makes it awkward.
Well, no matter, there is always a way. We’ll put the overcoats in my suitcase. ’

‘But how are we to get the suitcase past the PATRON? He’s sitting almost in the door of
the office. It’s impossible! ’

‘How easily you despair, MON AMI! Where is that English obstinacy that I have read
of? Courage! We’ll manage it. ’

Boris thought for a little while, and then produced another cunning plan. The essential
difficulty was to hold the PATRON’S attention for perhaps five seconds, while we could
slip past with the suitcase. But, as it happened, the PATRON had just one weak spot —
that he was interested in LE SPORT, and was ready to talk if you approached him on this
subject. Boris read an article about bicycle races in an old copy of the PETIT PARISIEN,
and then, when he had reconnoitred the stairs, went down and managed to set the
PATRON talking.
Meanwhile, I waited at the foot of the stairs, with the overcoats under
one arm and the suitcase under the other. Boris was to give a cough when he thought the
moment favourable. I waited trembling, for at any moment the PATRON’S wife might
come out of the door opposite the office, and then the game was up. However, presently
Boris coughed. I sneaked rapidly past the office and out into the street, rejoicing that my
shoes did not 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 comer, and we bolted.

And then, after all our trouble, the receiver at the pawnshop 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’lDENTITE was not enough, and I must
show a passport or addressed envelopes. Boris had addressed envelopes by the score, but
his CARTE D’lDENTITE was out of order (he never renewed 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 extraordinarily unamusing jokes.

Then the luck changed as though by a miracle. I was walking home through the Rue
Broca when suddenly, glittering 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
them, skins and all. After that we felt like new men, and sat playing chess till the
pawnshop opened.

At four o’clock I went back to the pawnshop. I was not hopeful, for if I had only got
seventy francs before, what could I expect for two shabby overcoats in a cardboard
suitcase? Boris had said twenty francs, but I thought it would be ten francs, or even five.
Worse yet, I might be refused altogether, like poor NUMERO 83 on the previous
occasion. I sat on the front bench, so as not to see people laughing when the clerk said
five francs.

At last the clerk called my number: ‘NUMERO 117! ’

‘Yes,’ I said, standing up.

‘Fifty francs? ’

It was almost as great a shock as the seventy francs had been the time before. I believe
now that the clerk had mixed my number up with someone else’s, for one could not have
sold the coats outright for fifty francs. I hurried home and walked into my room with my
hands behind my back, saying nothing. Boris was playing with the chessboard. He looked
up eagerly.

‘What did you get? ’ he exclaimed. ‘What, not twenty francs? Surely you got ten francs,
anyway? NOM DE DIEU, five francs — that is a bit too thick. MON AMI, DON’T say it
was five francs. If you say it was five francs I shall really begin to think of suicide. ’



I threw the fifty-franc, note on to the table. Boris turned white as chalk, and then,
springing up, seized my hand and gave it a grip that almost broke the bones. We ran out,
bought bread and wine, a piece of meat and alcohol for the stove, and gorged.

After eating, Boris became more optimistic than I had ever known him. ‘What did I tell
you? ’ he said. ‘The fortune of war! This morning with five sous, and now look at us. I
have always said it, there is nothing easier to get than money. And that reminds me, I
have a friend in the rue Fondary whom we might go and see. He has cheated me of four
thousand francs, the thief. He is the greatest thief alive when he is sober, but it is a
curious thing, he is quite honest when he is drunk. I should think he would be drunk by
six in the evening. Let’s go and find him. Very likely he will pay up a hundred on
account. MERDE! He might pay two hundred. ALLONS-Y! ’

We went to the rue Fondary and found the man, and he was drunk, but we did not get our
hundred francs. As soon as he and Boris met there was a terrible altercation on the
pavement. The other man declared that he did not owe Boris a penny, but that on the
contrary Boris owed HIM four thousand francs, and both of them kept appealing to me
for my opinion. I never understood the rights of the matter. The two argued and argued,
first in the street, then in a BISTRO, then in a PRIX FIXE restaurant where we went for
dinner, then in another BISTRO. Finally, having called one another thieves for two hours,
they went off together on a drinking bout that finished up the last sou of Boris’s money.

Boris slept the night at the house of a cobbler, another Russian refugee, in the Commerce
quarter. Meanwhile, I had eight francs left, and plenty of cigarettes, and was stuffed to
the eyes with food and drink. It was a marvellous change for the better after two bad
days.


CHAPTER VIII

We had now twenty-eight francs in hand, and could start looking for work once more.
Boris was still sleeping, on some mysterious tenns, at the house of the cobbler, and he
had managed to borrow another twenty francs from a Russian friend. He had friends,
mostly ex-officers like himself, here and there all over Paris. Some were waiters or
dishwashers, some drove taxis, a few lived on women, some had managed to bring



money away from Russia and owned garages or dancing-halls. In general, the Russian
refugees in Paris are hard-working people, and have put up with their bad luck far better
than one can imagine Englishmen of the same class doing. There are exceptions, of
course. Boris told me of an exiled Russian duke whom he had once met, who frequented
expensive restaurants. The duke would find out if there was a Russian officer among the
waiters, and, after he had dined, call him in a friendly way to his table.

‘Ah,’ the duke would say, ‘so you are an old soldier, like myself? These are bad days, eh?
Well, well, the Russian soldier fears nothing. And what was your regiment? ’

‘The so-and-so, sir,’ the waiter would answer.

‘A very gallant regiment! I inspected them in 1912. By the way, I have unfortunately left
my notecase at home. A Russian officer will, I know, oblige me with three hundred
francs. ’

If the waiter had three hundred francs he would hand it over, and, of course, never see it
again. The duke made quite a lot in this way. Probably the waiters did not mind being
swindled. A duke is a duke, even in exile.

It was through one of these Russian refugees that Boris heard of something which seemed
to promise money. Two days after we had pawned the overcoats, Boris said to me rather
mysteriously:

‘Tell me, MON AMI, have you any political opinions? ’

‘No, ‘I said.

‘Neither have I. Of course, one is always a patriot; but still — Did not Moses say
something about spoiling the Egyptians? As an Englishman you will have read the Bible.
What I mean is, would you object to earning money from Communists? ’

‘No, of course not. ’


‘Well, it appears that there is a Russian secret society in Paris who might do something
for us. They are Communists; in fact they are agents for the Bolsheviks. They act as a



friendly society, get in touch with exiled Russians, and try to get them to turn Bolshevik.
My friend has joined their society, and he thinks they would help us if we went to them. ’

‘But what can they do for us? In any case they won’t help me, as I’m not a Russian. ’

‘That is just the point. It seems that they are correspondents for a Moscow paper, and
they want some articles on English politics. If we got to them at once they may
commission you to write the articles. ’

‘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. Boris’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 intended to go home
if we saw anyone at all like a detective. I was frightened, but Boris enjoyed these
conspiratorial proceedings, and quite forgot that he was about to trade with the slayers of
his parents.



When we were certain that the coast was clear we dived quickly into the doorway. In the
laundry was a Frenchwoman ironing clothes, who told us that ‘the Russian gentlemen’
lived up a staircase across the courtyard. We went up several flights of dark stairs and
emerged on to a landing. A strong, surly-looking young man, with hair growing low on
his head, was standing at the top of the stairs. As I came up he looked at me suspiciously,
barred the way with his arm and said something in Russian.

‘MOT D’ORDRE! ’ he said sharply when I did not answer.

I stopped, startled. I had not expected passwords.

‘MOT D’ORDRE! ’ repeated the Russian.

Boris’s friend, who was walking behind, now came forward and said something in
Russian, either the password or an explanation. At this, the surly young man seemed
satisfied, and led us into a small, shabby room with frosted windows. It was like a very
poverty-stricken office, with propaganda posters in Russian lettering and a huge, crude
picture of Lenin tacked on the walls. At the table sat an unshaven Russian in shirt sleeves,
addressing newspaper wrappers from a pile in front of him. As I came in he spoke to me
in French, with a bad accent.

‘This is very careless! ’ he exclaimed fussily. ‘Why have you come here without a parcel
of washing? ’

‘Washing? ’

‘Everybody who comes here brings washing. It looks as though they were going to the
laundry downstairs. Bring a good, large bundle next time. We don’t want the police on
our tracks. ’

This was even more conspiratorial than I had expected. Boris sat down in the only vacant
chair, and there was a great deal of talking in Russian. Only the unshaven man talked; the
surly one leaned against the wall with his eyes on me, as though he still suspected me. It
was queer, standing in the little secret room with its revolutionary posters, listening to a
conversation of which I did not understand a word. The Russians talked quickly and
eagerly, with smiles and shrugs of the shoulders. I wondered what it was all about. They



would be calling each other ‘little father’, I thought, and ‘little dove’, and ‘Ivan
Alexandrovitch’, like the characters in Russian novels. And the talk would be of
revolutions. The unshaven man would be saying firmly, ‘We never argue. Controversy is
a bourgeois pastime. Deeds are our arguments. ’ Then I gathered that it was not this
exactly. Twenty francs was being demanded, for an entrance fee apparently, and Boris
was promising to pay it (we had just seventeen francs in the world). Finally Boris
produced our precious store of money and paid five francs on account.

At this the surly man looked less suspicious, and sat down on the edge of the table. The
unshaven one began to question me in French, making notes on a slip of paper. Was I a
Communist? he asked. By sympathy, I answered; I had never joined any organization.
Did I understand the political situation in England? Oh, of course, of course. I mentioned
the names of various Ministers, and made some contemptuous remarks about the Labour
Party. And what about LE SPORT? Could I do articles on LE SPORT? (Football and
Socialism have some mysterious connexion on the Continent. ) Oh, of course, again. Both
men nodded gravely. The unshaven one said:

‘EVIDEMMENT, you have a thorough knowledge of conditions in England. Could you
undertake to write a series of articles for a Moscow weekly paper? We will give you the
particulars. ’

‘Certainly. ’

‘Then, comrade, you will hear from us by the first post tomorrow. Or possibly the second
post. Our rate of pay is a hundred and fifty francs an article. Remember to bring a parcel
of washing next time you come. AU REVOIR, comrade. ’

We went downstairs, looked carefully out of the laundry to see if there was anyone in the
street, and slipped out. Boris was wild with joy. In a sort of sacrificial ecstasy he rushed
into the nearest tobacconist’s and spent fifty centimes on a cigar. He came out thumping
his stick on the pavement and beaming.

‘At last! At last! Now, MON AMI, out fortune really is made. You took them in finely.
Did you hear him call you comrade? A hundred and fifty francs an article — NOM DE
DIEU, what luck! ’



Next morning when I heard the postman I rushed down to the BISTRO for my letter; to
my disappointment, it had not come.