George Orwell - Down and Out in Paris and London

arrangements were like.

The kitchen measured fifteen feet long by eight

broad, and half this space was taken up by the stoves

and tables. All the pots had to be kept on shelves out of

reach, and there was only room for one dustbin. This

dustbin used to be crammed full by midday, and the

floor was normally an inch deep in a compost of

trampled food.

For firing we had nothing but three gas-stoves,

without ovens, and all joints had to be sent out to the

bakery.

There was no larder. Our substitute for one was a

half-roofed shed in the yard, with a tree growing in the

middle of it. The meat, vegetables and so forth lay there

on the bare earth, raided by rats and cats.

There was no hot water laid on. Water for washing up

had to be heated in pans, and, as there was no room for

these on the stoves when meals were cooking, most of

the plates had to be washed in cold water. This, with

soft soap and the hard Paris water, meant scraping the

grease off with bits of newspaper.

We were so short of saucepans that I had to wash

each one as soon as it was done with, instead of leaving

them till the evening. This alone wasted probably an

hour a day.

Owing to some scamping of expense in the installa-

tion, the electric light usually fused at eight in the

evening. The patron would only allow us three candles

in the kitchen, and the cook said three were unlucky, so

we had only two.

Our coffee-grinder was borrowed from a

bistro near

by, and our dustbin and brooms from the concierge.

After the first week a quantity of linen did not come back

from the wash, as the bill was not paid. We were in

trouble with the inspector of labour, who had discovered

that the staff included no Frenchmen; he had several

private interviews with the

patron , who, I believe, was

obliged to bribe him. The electric company was still

dunning us, and when the duns found that we would

buy them off with

apéritifs , they came every morning. We

were in debt at the grocery, and credit would have been

stopped, only the grocer's wife (a moustachio'd woman of

sixty) had taken a fancy to Jules, who was sent every

morning to cajole her. Similarly I had to waste an hour

every day haggling over vegetables in the Rue du

Commerce, to save a few centimes.

These are the results of starting a restaurant on in-

sufficient capital. And in these conditions the cook and I

were expected to serve thirty or forty meals a day, and

would later on be serving a hundred. From the first day

it was too much for us. The cook's working hours were

from eight in the morning till midnight, and mine from

seven in the morning till half-past twelve the next

morning-seventeen and a half hours, almost without a

break. We never had time to sit down till five in the

afternoon, and even then there was no seat except the

top of the dustbin. Boris, who lived near by and had not

to catch the last Metro home, worked from eight in the

morning till two the next morning-eighteen hours a day,

seven days a week. Such hours, though not usual, are

nothing extraordinary in Paris.

Life settled at once into a routine that made the Hôtel

X. seem like a holiday. Every morning at six I drove

myself out of bed, did not shave, sometimes washed,

hurried up to the Place d'Italie and fought for

a place on the Metro. By seven I was in the desolation of

the cold, filthy kitchen, with the potato skins and bones

and fishtails littered on the floor, and a pile of plates,

stuck together in their grease, waiting from overnight. I

could not start on the plates yet, because the water was

cold, and I had to fetch milk and make coffee, for the

others arrived at eight and expected to find coffee ready.

Also, there were always several copper saucepans to

clean. Those copper saucepans are the bane of a

plongeur's

life. They have to be scoured with sand and

bunches of chain, ten minutes to each one, and then

polished on the outside with Brasso. Fortunately, the art

of making them has been lost and they are gradually

vanishing from French kitchens, though one can still

buy them second-hand.

When I had begun on the plates the cook would take

me away from the plates to begin skinning onions, and

when I had begun on the onions the

patron would arrive

and send me out to buy cabbages. When I came back

with the cabbages the

patron's wife would tell me to go to

some shop half a mile away and buy a pot of rouge; by

the time I came back there would be more vegetables

waiting, and the plates were still not done. In this way

our incompetence piled one job on another throughout

the day, everything in arrears.

Till ten, things went comparatively easily, though we

were working fast, and no one lost his temper. The cook

would find time to talk about her artistic nature, and say

did I not think Tolstoi was

épatant, and sing in a fine

soprano voice as she minced beef on the board. But at

ten the waiters began clamouring for their lunch, which

they had early, and at eleven the first customers would

be arriving. Suddenly everything became hurry and bad

temper. There was not the same furious rushing and

yelling as at the Hôtel X., but an atmosphere of

muddle, petty spite and exasperation. Discomfort was at

the bottom of it. It was unbearably cramped in the

kitchen, and dishes had to be put on the floor, and one

had to be thinking constantly about not stepping on

them. The cook's vast buttocks banged against me as she

moved to and fro. A ceaseless, nagging chorus of orders

streamed from her:

"Unspeakable idiot! How many times have I told you

not to bleed the beetroots? Quick, let me get to the sink!

Put those knives away; get on with the potatoes. What

have you done with my strainer? Oh, leave those

potatoes alone. Didn't I tell you to skim the

bouillon ? Take

that can of water off the stove. Never mind the washing

up, chop this celery. No, not like that, you fool, like this.

There! Look at you letting those peas boil over! Now get

to work and scale these herrings. Look, do you call this

plate clean? Wipe it on your apron. Put that salad on the

floor. That's right, put it where I'm bound to step in it!

Look out, that pot's boiling over! Get me down that

saucepan. No, the other one. Put this on the grill. Throw

those potatoes away. Don't waste time, throw them on

the floor. Tread them in.' Now throw down some sawdust;

this floor's like a skating-rink. Look, you fool, that

steak's burning!

Mon Dieu , why did they send me an idiot

for a

plongeur ? Who are you talking to? Do you realise that

my aunt was a Russian countess?" etc. etc. etc.

This went on till three o'clock without much variation,

except that about eleven the cook usually had a

crise de

nerfs

and a flood of tears. From three to five was a fairly

slack time for the waiters, but the cook was still busy,

and I was working my fastest, for there was a pile of dirty

plates waiting, and it was a race to get them done, or

partly done, before dinner began. The washing up was

doubled by the primitive conditions-

a cramped draining-board, tepid water, sodden cloths,

and a sink that got blocked once in an hour. By five the