“Shut up!” shouted Bonnat. “I’m the only one of the bunch who patronizes the bath here at any rate.”
“Ugh!” shuddered Fisher. “That bath is filthy, and there’s never a drop of hot water, so one would be dirtier after taking a bath there.”
“Nonsense!” answered Bonnat. “All you have to do is to take down a pitcher or a bucket. Then rub soap all over your body, and stand up in the tub and pour the pitchers of cold water over and over yourself. It’s fine!”
“Whoor-roo!” shivered Enfield. “No cold water for me!”
Enfield was a thin-faced, sensitive-looking fellow, with eyes that lighted up unexpectedly, and who seemed to shrink up in his clothes, as if he were always cold. Menna had told me he was very talented, and could make big money at illustrations, but he drank all the time, not in a noisy way, but in a sad, quiet, secret way. He lived in a room somewhere on the East side in the tenement-house district. It was almost empty, except for an old stove, and Enfield would collect all the newspapers he could lay his hands on, and he slept on a pile of these, with another pile on top of him, and in bitter cold weather when he could not afford other fuel he burned his papers. He would roll them into tight logs and they would smoulder just like wood for hours, and give out a good heat even. His room was simply piled with old newspapers, said Menna. This man had come from extremely refined and wealthy people, but he chose to live in this dreadful way, so as to indulge his vice for liquor, and, it was suspected, drugs. At times he would brace up and do a decent piece of work, and then he would turn up, dressed immaculately, and the boys would be treated to the best of everything; but inside of a week he would spend every cent and pawn his clothes. I liked Enfield, though sometimes his cadaverous face frightened me. His hands always looked so thin and cold that I had a kind of maternal desire to take them in mine and warm them. There was something pathetically helpless about all these artists. They seemed all boys to me—even the older ones. I suppose it was that childish helplessness about them that appealed most to me.
They all chatted away, and gibed each other and joked as they worked, and they would tell stories, and then all stop work to laugh uproariously. Fisher told one about Enfield. He said that one evening the boys had a little spread in their rooms, beer and sausage and cheese, and for a joke they had put the remains of the sausage and cheese in the pocket of Enfield’s coat. Enfield caught up the story here and finished it thus:
They all chatted away and jibed each other and joked as they worked, and would tell stories.
“Some time later, I was starving.” He said that as if it were quite the usual thing to starve a bit. “I hadn’t eaten for two days, and all of a sudden I put my hand in that pocket, and found a sausage and some cheese. It surely saved my life.”