George Orwell - Down and Out in Paris and London
" '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
was a Magyar, a little dark, sharp-featured fellow in spec-
tacles, and very talkative; he had been a medical
student, but had abandoned his training for lack of
money. He had a taste for talking while other people
were working, and he told me all about himself and his
ideas. It appeared that he was a Communist, and had
various strange theories (he could prove to you by
figures that it was wrong to work), and he was also,
like most Magyars, passionately proud. Proud and lazy
men do not make good waiters. It was Jules's dearest
boast that once when a customer in a restaurant had
insulted him, he had poured a plate of hot soup down
the customer's neck, and then walked straight out
without even waiting to be sacked.
As each day went by Jules grew more and more en-
raged at the trick the
patron had played on us. He had a
spluttering, oratorical way of talking. He used to walk
up and down shaking his fist, and trying to incite me
not to work:
"Put that brush down, you fool! You and I belong to
proud races; we don't work for nothing, like these
damned Russian serfs. I tell you, to be cheated like
this is torture to me. There have been times in my life,
when someone has cheated me even of five sous, when
I have vomited-yes, vomited with rage.
"Besides,
mon vieux, don't forget that I'm a Commu-
nist. A
bas la bourgeoisie! Did any man alive ever see me
working when I could avoid it? No. And not only I don't
wear myself out working, like you other fools, but I
steal, just to show my independence. Once I was in a
restaurant where the
patron thought he could treat me
like a dog. Well, in revenge I found out a way to steal
milk from the milk-cans and seal them up again so
that no one should know. I tell you I just swilled that
milk down night and morning. Every day I drank four
litres of milk, besides half a litre of cream. The patron
was at his wits' end to know where the milk was going.
It wasn't that I wanted milk, you understand, because I
hate the stuff, it was principle, just principle.
"Well, after three days I began to get dreadful pains
in my belly, and I went to the doctor. 'What have you
been eating?' he said. I said: 'I drink four litres of milk
a day, and half a litre of cream.' 'Four litres!' he said.
'Then stop it at once. You'll burst if you go on.' 'What
do I care?' I said. 'With me principle is everything. I
shall go on drinking that milk, even if I do burst.'
"Well, the next day the
patron caught me stealing
milk. 'You're sacked,' he said; 'you leave at the end of
the week.'
'Pardon, monsieur,' I said, 'I shall leave this
morning.' 'No, you won't,' he said, 'I can't spare you till
Saturday.' 'Very well,
mon patron,' I thought to myself,
'we'll see who gets tired of it first.' And then I set to
work to smash the crockery. I broke nine plates the
first day and thirteen the second; after that the
patron
was glad to see the last of me.
« Ah, I'm not one of your Russian
moujiks . . ."
Ten days passed. It was a bad time. I was absolutely at
the end of my money, and my rent was several days
overdue. We loafed about the dismal empty restaurant,
