George Orwell - Down and Out in Paris and London

shouting and hilarious mood finished.

By one o'clock we were not happy any longer. We

felt the joy of the evening wearing thin, and called

hastily for more bottles, but Madame F. was watering

the wine now, and it did not taste the same. Men grew

quarrelsome. The girls were violently kissed and hands

thrust into their bosoms and they made off lest worse

should happen. Big Louis, the bricklayer, was drunk,

and crawled about the floor barking and pretending to

be a dog. The others grew tired of him and kicked at

him as he went past. People seized each other by the

arm and began long rambling confessions, and were

angry when these were not listened to. The crowd

thinned. Manuel and another man, both gamblers, went

across to the Arab

bistro , where card-playing went on till

daylight. Charlie suddenly borrowed thirty francs from

Madame F. and disappeared, probably to a brothel. Men

began to empty their glasses, call briefly, «

'Sieurs, dames !"

and go off to bed.

By half-past one the last drop of pleasure had

evaporated, leaving nothing but headaches. We perceived

that we were not splendid inhabitants of a splendid

world, but a crew of underpaid workmen grown squalidly

and dismally drunk. We went on swallowing the wine,

but it was only from habit, and the stuff seemed suddenly

nauseating. One's head had swollen up like a balloon, the

floor rocked, one's tongue and lips were stained purple.

At last it was no use keeping it up any longer. Several

men went out into the yard behind the bistro and were

sick. We crawled up to bed, tumbled down half dressed,

and stayed there ten hours.

Most of my Saturday nights went in this way. On the

whole, the two hours when one was perfectly and wildly

happy seemed worth the subsequent headache. For

many men in the quarter, unmarried and with no future

to think of, the weekly drinking-bout was the one thing

that made life worth living.

XVIII

CHARLIE told us a good story one Saturday night in the

bistro

. Try and picture him-drunk, but sober enough to

talk consecutively. He bangs on the zinc bar and yells for

silence:

"Silence,

messieurs et dames -silence, I implore you!

Listen to this story, that I am about to tell you. A

memorable story, an instructive story, one of the

souvenirs of a refined and civilised life. Silence,

messieurs

et dames

!

"It happened at a time when I was hard up. You

know what that is like-how damnable, that a man of

refinement should ever be in such a condition. My

money had not come from home; I had pawned every-

thing, and there was nothing open to me except to

work, which is a thing I will not do. I was living with a

girl at the time-Yvonne her name was-a great half-witted

peasant girl like Azaya there, with yellow hair and fat

legs. The two of us had eaten nothing in three days.

Mon

Dieu

, what sufferings! The girl used to walk up and

down the room with her hands on her belly, howling

like a dog that she was dying of starvation. It was

terrible.

"But to a man of intelligence nothing is impossible. I

propounded to myself the question, 'What is the easiest

way to get money without working?' And immediately

the answer came: 'To get money easily one must be a

woman. Has not every woman something to sell?' And

then, as I lay reflecting upon the things I should do if I

were a woman, an idea came into my head. I

remembered the Government maternity hospitals-you

know the Government maternity hospitals? They are

places where women who are enceinte are given meals

free and no questions are asked. It is done to encourage

childbearing. Any woman can go there and demand a

meal, and she is given it immediately.

«

'Mon Dieu !' I thought, 'if only I were a woman! I

would eat at one of those places every day. Who can

tell whether a woman is enceinte or not, without an

examination?' 7

"I turned to Yvonne. 'Stop that insufferable

bawling.' I said, 'I have thought of a way to get food.'

" 'How?' said she.

" 'It is simple,' I said. "Go to the Government

maternity hospital. Tell them you are enceinte and ask for

food. They will give you a good meal and ask no

questions.'

« Yvonne was appalled.

'Mais, mon Dieu ,' she cried, 'I

am not

enceinte !'

" 'Who cares?' I said. 'That is easily remedied. What

do you need except a cushion-two cushions if

necessary? It is an inspiration from heaven, ma chére.

Don't waste it.'

"Well, in the end I persuaded her, and then we

borrowed a cushion and I got her ready and took her to

the maternity hospital. They received her with open

arms. They gave her cabbage soup, a ragoût of beef, a

purée of potatoes, bread and cheese and beer, and all

kinds of advice about her baby. Yvonne gorged till she

almost burst her skin. and mangaed to slip some of the

bread and cheese into her pocket for me. I took her there

every day until I had money again. My intelligence had

saved us.

"Everything went well until a year later. I was with

Yvonne again, and one day we were walking down the

Boulevard Port Royal, near the barracks. Suddenly

Yvonne's mouth fell open, and she began turning red

and white, and red again.

"

'Mon Dieu !' she cried, 'look at that who is coming! It

is the nurse who was in charge at the maternity hospital.

I am ruined!'

" 'Quick!' I said, 'run!' But it was too late. The nurse

had recognised Yvonne, and she came straight up to us,

smiling. She was a big fat woman with a

gold pince-nez and red cheeks like the cheeks of an

apple. A motherly, interfering kind of woman.

" 'I hope you are well,

ma petite ?' she said kindly.

'And your baby, is he well too? Was it a boy, as you

were hoping?'

« Yvonne had begun trembling so hard that I had to

grip her arm. 'No,' she said at last.

" 'Ah, then,

evidemment , it was a girl?'

"Thereupon Yvonne, the idiot, lost her head com-

pletely. 'No,' she actually said again!

"The nurse was taken aback.

'Comment !' she ex-

claimed, 'neither a boy nor a girl! But how can that be?'

"Figure to yourselves,

messieurs et dames , it was a

dangerous moment. Yvonne had turned the colour of a

beetroot and she looked ready to burst into tears; another

second and she would have confessed everything.

Heaven knows what might have happened. But as for

me, I had kept my head; I stepped in and saved the

situation.

" 'It was twins,' I said calmly.

" 'Twins!' exclaimed the nurse. And she was so

pleased that she took Yvonne by the shoulders and

embraced her on both cheeks, publicly.

"Yes, twins. . . ."

XIX

ONE day, when we had been at the Hôtel X. five or six

weeks, Boris disappeared without notice. In the evening

I found him waiting for me in the Rue de Rivoli. He

slapped me gaily on the shoulder.

"Free at last,

mon ami ! You can give notice in the

morning. The Auberge opens to-morrow."

"Tomorrow?"

"Well, possibly we shall need a day or two to arrange

things. But, at any rate, no more

cafeterie !

Nous

sommes lancés

, mon ami! My tail coat is out of pawn

already."

His manner was so hearty that I felt sure there was

something wrong, and I did not at all want to leave my

safe and comfortable job at the hotel. However, I had

promised Boris, so I gave notice, and the next morning at

seven went down to the Auberge de Jehan Cottard. It

was locked, and I went in search of Boris, who had once

more bolted from his lodgings and taken a room in the

Rue de la Croix Nivert. I found him asleep, together with

a girl whom he had picked up the night before, and who

he told me was "of a very sympathetic temperament." As

to the restaurant, he said that it was all arranged; there

were only a few little things to be seen to before we

opened.

At ten I managed to get Boris out of bed, and we un-

locked the restaurant. At a glance I saw what the "few

little things" amounted to. It was briefly this: that the

alterations had not been touched since our last visit. The

stoves for the kitchen had not arrived, the water and

electricity had not been laid on, and there was all

manner of painting, polishing and carpentering to be

done. Nothing short of a miracle could open the restau-

rant within ten days, and by the look of things it might

collapse without even opening. It was obvious what had

happened. The

patron was short of money, and he had

engaged the staff (there were four of us) in order to use

us instead of workmen. He would be getting our services

almost free, for waiters are paid no wages, and though he

would have to pay me, he would not be feeding me till

the restaurant opened. In effect, he had swindled us of

several hundred francs by sending for us before the

restaurant was open. We had thrown up a good job for

nothing.

Boris, however, was full of hope. He had only one

idea in his head, namely, that here at last was a chance

of being a waiter and wearing a tail coat once more. For

this he was quite willing to do ten days' work unpaid,

with the chance of being left jobless in the end.

"Patience!" he kept saying. "That will arrange itself. Wait

till the restaurant opens, and we'll get it all back.

Patience,

mon ami ! »

We needed patience, for days passed and the restau-

rant did not even progress towards opening. We cleaned

out the cellars, fixed the shelves, distempered the walls,

polished the woodwork, whitewashed the ceiling, stained

the floor; but the main work, the plumbing and

gasfitting and electricity, was still not done, because the

patron

could not pay the bills. Evidently he was almost

penniless, for he refused the smallest charges, and he

had a trick of swiftly disappearing when asked for

money. His blend of shiftiness and aristocratic manners

made him very hard to deal with. Melancholy duns came

looking for him at all hours, and by instruction we

always told them that he was at Fontainebleau, or Saint

Cloud, or some other place that was safely distant.

Meanwhile, I was getting hungrier and hungrier. I had

left the hotel with thirty francs, and I had to go back

immediately to a diet of dry bread. Boris had managed

in the beginning to extract an advance of sixty francs

from the

patron , but he had spent half of it, in

redeeming his waiter's clothes, and half on the girl of

sympathetic temperament. He borrowed three francs a

day from Jules, the second waiter, and spent it on

bread. Some days we had not even money for tobacco.

Sometimes the cook came to see how things were

getting on, and when she saw that the kitchen was still

bare of pots and pans she usually wept. Jules, the

second waiter, refused steadily to help with the work. He