Russian novels. And the talk would be of revolutions.
The unshaven man would be saying firmly, "We never
argue. Controversy is a bourgeois pastime. Deeds are our
arguments." Then I gathered that it was not this exactly.
Twenty francs was being demanded, for an entrance fee
apparently, and Boris was promising to pay it (we had
just seventeen francs in the world). Finally Boris
produced our precious store of money and paid five
francs on account.
At this the surly man looked less suspicious, and sat
down on the edge of the table. The unshaven one began
to question me in French, making notes on a slip of
paper. Was I a Communist? he asked. By sympathy, I
answered; I had never joined any organisation. Did I
understand the political situation in England? Oh, of
course, of course. I mentioned the names of various
Ministers, and made some contemptuous remarks about
the Labour Party. And what about Le Sport? Could I do
articles on Le Sport? (Football and Socialism have some
mysterious connection on the Continent.) Oh, of
course, again. Both men nodded gravely. The unshaven
one said:
"Evidemment, you have a thorough knowledge of
conditions in England. Could you undertake to write a
series of articles for a Moscow weekly paper? We will
give you the particulars."
"Certainly."
"Then, comrade, you will hear from us by the first
post to-morrow. Or possibly the second post. Our rate of
pay is a hundred and fifty francs an article. Remember to
bring a parcel of washing next time you come. Au
revoir, comrade."
We went downstairs, looked carefully out of the
laundry to see if there was anyone in the street, and
slipped out. Boris was wild with joy. In a sort of sacri-
ficial ecstasy he rushed into the nearest tobacconist's
and spent fifty centimes on a cigar. He came out thump-
ing his stick on the pavement and beaming.
"At last! At last! Now, mon ami, our fortune really
is made. You took them in finely. Did you hear him
call you comrade? A hundred and fifty francs an
article-nom de Dieu, what luck!"
Next morning when I heard the postman I rushed
down to the bistro for my letter; to my disappointment,
it had not come. I stayed at home for the second post;
still no letter. When three days had gone by and I had 4
not heard from the secret society, we gave up hope,
deciding that they must have found somebody else to do
their articles.
Ten days later we made another visit to the office of
the secret society, taking care to bring a parcel that
looked like washing. And the secret society had van-
ished! The woman in the laundry knew nothing-she
simply said that « ces messieurs" had left some days
ago, after trouble about the rent. What fools we looked,
standing there with our parcel! But it was a consolation
that we had paid only five francs instead of twenty.
And that was the last we ever heard of the secret
society. Who or what they really were, nobody knew.
Personally I do not think they had anything to do with
the Communist Party; I think they were simply
swindlers, who preyed upon Russian refugees by ex-
tracting entrance fees to an imaginary society. It was
quite safe, and no doubt they are still doing it in some
other city. They were clever fellows, and played their
part admirably. Their office looked exactly as a secret
Communist office should look, and as for that touch
about bringing a parcel of washing, it was genius.
IX
FOR three more days we continued traipsing about
looking for work, coming home for diminishing meals
of soup and bread in my bedroom. There were now two
gleams of hope. In the first place, Boris had heard of a
possible job at the Hôtel X., near the Place de la
Concorde, and in the second, the patron of the new
restaurant in the Rue du Commerce had at last come
back. We went down in the afternoon and saw him. On
the way Boris talked of the vast fortunes we should
make if we got this job, and on the importance of
making a good impression on the patron.
"Appearance-appearance is everything, mon ami. Give
me a new suit and I will borrow a thousand francs by
dinner-time. What a pity I did not buy a collar
when we had money. I turned my collar inside out this
morning; but what is the use, one side is as dirty as the
other. Do you think I look hungry, mon ami? »
"You look pale."
"Curse it, what can one do on bread and potatoes?
It is fatal to look hungry. It makes people want to kick
you. Wait."
He stopped at a jeweller's window and smacked his
cheeks sharply to bring the blood into them. Then, before
the flush had faded, we hurried into the restaurant and
introduced ourselves to the patron.
The patron was a short, fattish, very dignified man
with wavy grey hair, dressed in a smart, doublebreasted
flannel suit and smelling of scent. Boris told me that he
too was an ex-colonel of the Russian Army. His wife was
there too, a horrid, fat Frenchwoman with a dead-white
face and scarlet lips, reminding me of cold veal and
tomatoes. The patron greeted Boris genially, and they
talked together in Russian for a few minutes. I stood in the
background, preparing to tell some big lies about my
experience as a dishwasher.
Then the patron came over towards me. I shuffled
uneasily, trying to look servile. Boris had rubbed it into
me that a plongeur is a slave's slave, and I expected the
patron to treat me like dirt. To my astonishment, he seized
me warmly by the hand.
"So you are an Englishman!" he exclaimed. "But how
charming! I need not ask, then, whether you are a golfer?"
« Mais certainement, » I said, seeing that this was ex-
pected of me.
"All my life I have wanted to play golf. Will you, my
dear monsieur, be so kind as to show me a few of the
principal strokes?"
Apparently this was the Russian way of doing busi-
ness. The patron listened attentively while I explained the
difference between a driver and an iron, and then
suddenly informed me that it was all entendu; Boris was
to be maitre d'hôtel when the restaurant opened, and I
plongeur, with a chance of rising to lavatory attendant if
trade was good. When would the restaurant open? I
asked. "Exactly a fortnight from to-day," the patron
answered grandly (he had a manner of waving his hand
and flicking off his cigarette ash at the same time, which
looked very grand), "exactly a fortnight from to-day, in
time for lunch." Then, with obvious pride, he showed us
over the restaurant.
It was a smallish place, consisting of a bar, a dining-
room, and a kitchen no bigger than the average bath-
room. The patron was decorating it in a
trumpery
"picturesque" style (he called it « le Normand »; it was a
matter of sham beams stuck on the plaster, and the like)
and proposed to call it the Auberge de Jehan Cottard, to
give a medieval effect. He had a leaflet printed, full of lies
about the historical associations of the quarter, and this
leaflet actually claimed, among other things, that there
had once been an inn on the site of the restaurant which
was frequented by Charlemagne. The patron was very
pleased with this touch. He was also having the bar
decorated with indecent pictures by an artist from the
Salon. Finally he gave us each an expensive cigarette,
and after some more talk he went home.
I felt strongly that we should never get any good
from this restaurant. The patron had looked to me like a
cheat, and, what was worse, an incompetent cheat, and I
had seen two unmistakable duns hanging about the back
door. But Boris, seeing himself a maitre d'hôtel once more,
would not be discouraged.
"We've brought it off-only a fortnight to hold out. What
is a fortnight? Food? Je m'en f--- . To think that
in only three weeks I shall have my mistress! Will she be
dark or fair, I wonder? I don't mind, so long as she is not
too thin."
Two bad days followed. We had only sixty centimes left,
and we spent it on half a pound of bread, with a piece of
garlic to rub it with. The point of rubbing garlic on bread is
that the taste lingers and gives one the illusion of having
fed recently. We sat most of that day in the Jardin des
Plantes. Boris had shots with stones at the tame pigeons,
but always missed them, and after that we wrote dinner
menus on the backs of envelopes. We were too hungry even
to try and think of anything except food. I remember the
dinner Boris finally selected for himself. It was: a dozen
oysters, bortch soup (the red, sweet, beetroot soup with
cream on top), crayfishes, a young chicken en casserole, beef
with stewed plums, new potatoes, a salad, suet pudding
and Roquefort cheese, with a litre of Burgundy and some
old brandy. Boris had international tastes in food. Later
on, when we were prosperous, I occasionally saw him eat
meals almost as large without difficulty.
When our money came to an end I stopped looking for
work, and was another day without food. I did not believe
that the Auberge de Jehan Cottard was really going to
open, and I could see no other prospect, but I was too lazy
to do anything but lie in bed. Then the luck changed
abruptly. At night, at about ten o'clock,
I heard an eager shout from the street. I got up and
went to the window. Boris was there, waving his stick
and beaming. Before speaking he dragged a bent loaf
from his pocket and threw it up to me.
« Mon ami, mon cher ami, we're saved! What do you
think?"
"Surely you haven't got a job!"
"At the Hôtel X., near the Place de la Concorde--five
hundred francs a month, and food. I have been working
there to-day. Name of Jesus Christ, how I have eaten!"
After ten or twelve hours' work, and with his game
leg, his first thought had been to walk three kilometres
to my hotel and tell me the good news! What was more,
he told me to meet him in the Tuileries the next day
during his afternoon interval, in case he should be able
to steal some food for me. At the appointed time I met
Boris on a public bench. He undid his waistcoat and
produced a large, crushed, newspaper packet; in it were
some minced veal, a wedge of Camembert cheese,
bread and an éclair, all jumbled together.
"Voila!" said Boris, "that's all I could smuggle out
for you. The doorkeeper is a cunning swine."
It is disagreeable to eat out of a newspaper on a
public seat, especially in the Tuileries, which are
generally full of pretty girls, but I was too hungry to
care. While I ate, Boris explained that he was working in
the cafeterie of the hotel-that is, in English, the
stillroom. It appeared that the cafeterie was the very
lowest post in the hotel, and a dreadful come-down for
a waiter, but it would do until the Auberge de Jehan
Cottard opened. Meanwhile I was to meet Boris every
day in the Tuileries, and he would smuggle out as much
food as he dared. For three days we continued with
this arrangement, and I lived entirely on the stolen
food. Then all our troubles came to an end, for one of
the plongeurs left the Hôtel X., and on Boris's recom-
mendation I was given a job there myself.
X
THE Hôtel X. was a vast, grandiose place with a classical
façade, and at one side a little, dark doorway like a rat-
hole, which was the service entrance. I arrived at a
quarter to seven in the morning. A stream of men with
greasy trousers were hurrying in and being checked by a
doorkeeper who sat in a tiny office. I waited, and
presently the chef du personnel, a sort of assistant manager,
arrived and began to question me. He was an Italian,
with a round, pale face, haggard from overwork. He
asked whether I was an experienced dishwasher, and I
said that I was; he glanced at my hands and saw that I
was lying, but on hearing that I was an Englishman he
changed his tone and engaged me.
"We have been looking for someone to practise our
English on," he said. "Our clients are all Americans, and
the only English we know is ---" He repeated something
that little boys write on the walls in London. "You may
be useful. Come downstairs."
He led me down a winding staircase into a narrow
passage, deep underground, and so low that I had to
stoop in places. It was stiflingly hot and very dark, with
only dim, yellow bulbs several yards apart. There seemed
to be miles of dark labyrinthine passages actually, I
suppose, a few hundred yards in all-that reminded one
queerly of the lower decks of a liner; there were the same
heat and cramped space and warm reek of food, and a humming,
whirring noise (it came from the kitchen furnaces) just like
the whir of engines.
We passed doorways which let out sometimes a shouting
of oaths, sometimes the red glare of a fire, once a
shuddering draught from an ice chamber. As we went
along, something struck me violently in the back. It was
a hundred-pound block of ice, carried by a blueaproned
porter. After him came a boy with a great slab of veal on
his shoulder, his cheek pressed into the damp, spongy
flesh. They shoved me aside with a cry of « Sauve-toi,
idiot!" and rushed on. On the wall, under one of the
lights, someone had written in a very neat hand: "Sooner
will you find a cloudless sky in winter, than a woman at
the Hôtel X. who has her maidenhead." It seemed a
queer sort of place:
One of the passages branched off into a laundry,
where an old, skull-fa
ced woman gave me a blue apron
and a pile of dishcloths. Then the chef du personnel took
me to a tiny underground den-a cellar below a cellar, as
it were-where there were a sink and some gas-ovens. It
was too low for me to stand quite upright, and the
temperature was perhaps 11o degrees Fahrenheit. The
chef du personnel explained that my job was to fetch meals
for the higher hotel employees, who fed in a small
dining-room above, clean their room and wash their
crockery. When he had gone, a waiter, another Italian,
thrust a fierce, fuzzy head into the doorway and looked
down at me.
"English, eh?" he said. "Well, I'm in charge here. If
you work well"-he made the motion of up-ending a
bottle and sucked noisily. "If you don't"-he gave the
doorpost several vigorous kicks. "To me, twisting your
neck would be no more than spitting on the floor. And if
there's any trouble, they'll believe me, not you. So be
careful."
After this I set to work rather hurriedly. Except for
about an hour, I was at work from seven in the morning
till a quarter past nine at night; first at washing
crockery, then at scrubbing the tables and floors of the
employees' dining-room, then at polishing glasses and
knives, then at fetching meals, then at washing crockery
again, then at fetching more meals and washing more
crockery. It was easy work, and I got on well with it
except when I went to the kitchen to fetch meals. The
kitchen was like nothing I had ever seen or imagined-a
stifling, low-ceilinged inferno of a cellar, redlit from the
fires, and deafening with oaths and the clanging of pots
and pans. It was so hot that all the metal-work except
the stoves had to be covered with cloth. In the middle
were furnaces, where twelve cooks skipped to and fro,
their faces dripping sweat in spite of their white caps.
Round that were counters where a mob of waiters and
plongeurs clamoured with trays. Scullions, naked to the
waist, were stoking the fires and scouring huge copper
saucepans with sand. Everyone seemed to be in a hurry
and a rage. The head cook, a fine, scarlet man with big
moustachios, stood in the middle booming
continuously, « Ça marche deux ouefs brouillés! Ca marche
un Chateau-briand aux pommes sautées! » except when he
broke off to curse at a plongeur. There were three
Down and Out in London and Paris Page 6
