Closing time in a cafe. Paris, about 1935.

Source:
Paris en Images, copyright Gaston Paris / Roger-Viollet:
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Gaito Gazdanov's Paris / 13

Platon

[The taxi driver spends a lot of his night shifts in cafes, killing time between fares. In one of these places he strikes up a strange friendship with Platon (Plato), a middle-aged drunk who has abandoned his family and a comfortable middle class life for a career as a philosophical barfly.]

He lived on a tiny sum – hardly enough for a daily sandwich and glass of white wine – which his mother secretly provided him.

“And the rent?” I asked him one day.

He shrugged his shoulders and said that he never paid it; and when the landlord threatened to retaliate, he retorted that if anyone took the slightest action against him he would light the fuse on a bundle of dynamite and blow up the house.

This would run counter to the interests of the landlord – he lived in the same building – who would never again have to worry about collecting rent from any of his tenants.

Platon told this story in a soft and perfectly serene voice, but with such an air of sincerety and unshakeable resolve that I didn’t doubt that he was capable of carrying out his project. [34]