certain that the world was a good place and we a notable
set of people.
For an hour the noise scarcely slackened. Then about
midnight there was a piercing shout of « Citoyens! » and
the sound of a chair falling over. A blond, red-faced
workman had risen to his feet and was banging a bottle
on the table. Everyone stopped singing; the word went
round, "Sh! Furex is starting!" Furex was a strange
creature, a Limousin stonemason who worked steadily
all the week and drank himself into a kind of paroxysm
on Saturdays. He had lost his memory and could not
remember anything before the war, and he would have
gone to pieces through drink if Madame F. had not taken
care of him. On Saturday evenings at about five o'clock
she would say to someone, "Catch Furex before he
spends his wages," and when he had been caught she
would take away his money, leaving him enough for one
good drink. One week he escaped, and, rolling blind
drunk in the Place Monge, was run over by a car and
badly hurt.
The queer thing about Furex was that, though he was
a Communist when sober, he turned violently patriotic
when drunk. He started the evening with good
Communist principles, but after four or five litres he
was a rampant Chauvinist, denouncing spies,
challenging all foreigners to fight, and, if he was not
prevented, throwing bottles. It was at this stage that he
made his speech-for he made a patriotic speech every
Saturday night. The speech was always the same, word
for word. It ran:
"Citizens of the Republic, are there any Frenchmen
here? If there are any Frenchmen here, I rise to remind
them-to remind them in effect, of the glorious days of
the war. When one looks back upon that time of
comradeship and heroism-one looks back, in effect,
upon that time of comradeship and heroism. When one
remembers the heroes who are dead-one remembers, in
effect, the heroes who are dead. Citizens of the
Republic, I was wounded at Verdun "
Here he partially undressed and showed the wound
he had received at Verdun. There were shouts of
applause. We thought nothing in the world could be
funnier than this speech of Furex's. He was a well-
known spectacle in the quarter; people used to come in
from other bistros to watch him when his fit started.
The word was passed round to bait Furex. With a
wink to the others someone called for silence, and asked
him to sing the « Marseillaise. » He sang it well, in a fine
bass voice, with patriotic gurgling noises deep down in
his chest when he came to « Aux arrmes, citoyens!
Forrmez vos bataillons! » Veritable tears rolled down his
cheeks; he was too drunk to see that everyone was
laughing at him. Then, before he had finished, two
strong workmen seized him by either arm and held him
down, while Azaya shouted, "Vine l'Allemagne! » just out
of his reach. Furex's face went purple at such infamy.
Everyone in the bistro began shouting together, "Vive
l'Allemagne! A bas la France!" while Furex struggled to
get at them. But suddenly he spoiled the fun. His face
turned pale and doleful, his limbs went limp, and before
anyone could stop him he was sick on the table. Then Madame
F. hoisted him like a sack and carried him up to bed. In the
morning he reappeared quiet and civil, and bought a copy of
L'Humanité.
The table was wiped with a cloth, Madame F.
brought more litre bottles and loaves of bread, and we
settled down to serious drinking. There were more
songs. An itinerant singer came in with his banjo and
performed for five-sou pieces. An Arab and a girl from
the bistro down the street did a dance, the man wielding
a painted wooden phallus the size of a rolling-pin.
There were gaps in the noise now. People had begun to
talk about their love-affairs, and the war, and the barbel
fishing in the Seine, and the best way to faire la
revolution, and to tell stories. Charlie, grown sober again,
captured the conversation and talked about his soul for
five minutes. The doors and windows were opened to
cool the room. The street was emptying, and in the
distance one could hear the lonely milk train thundering
down the Boulevard St. Michel. The air blew cold on
our foreheads, and the coarse African wine still tasted
good: we were still happy, but meditatively, with the
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
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
Down and Out in London and Paris Page 11
