Along with brothers Anatole, and Leon, Eugene Pachutinsky is Henry Miller's friend during his ten-year sojourn in Paris. After the war, Miller places an ad in a Paris newspaper to learn his friends' fate. Eugene responds: he has survived and is waiting for a government pension. On a fluke he arranges the purchase of a large school house in Rocquecor, which he remodels and sets aside two rooms for Miller and his wife.