George Orwell: Down and Out in Paris and London

gentleman,

mon ami . I do not say it to boast, but the

other day I was trying to compute how many

mistresses I have had in my life, and I made it out to

be over two hundred. Yes, at least two hundred . . . Ah, well,

ca reviendra

. Victory is to him who fights the longest.

Courage!" etc. etc.

Boris had a queer, changeable nature. He always

wished himself back in the army, but he had also been

a waiter long enough t0 acquire the waiter's outlook.

Though he had never saved more than a few thousand

francs, he took it for granted that in the end he would

be able to set up his own restaurant and grow rich. All

waiters, I afterwards found, talk and think of this; it is

what reconciles them to being waiters. Boris used to

talk interestingly about hotel life:

"Waiting is a gamble," he used to say; "you may die

poor, you may make your fortune in a year. You are

not paid wages, you depend on tips-ten per cent. of the

bill, and a commission from the wine companies on

champagne corks. Sometimes the tips are enormous.

The barman at Maxim's, for instance, makes five

hundred francs a day. More than five hundred, in the

season. . . . I have made two hundred francs a day

myself. It was at a hotel in Biarritz, in the season. The

whole staff, from the manager down to the

plongeurs ,

was working twenty-one hours a day. Twenty-one

hours' work and two and a half hours in bed, for a

month on end. Still, it was worth it, at two hundred

francs a day.

"You never know when a stroke of luck is coming.

Once when I was at the Hôtel Royal an American

customer sent for me before dinner and ordered

twentyfour brandy cocktails. I brought them all

together on a tray, in twenty-four glasses. 'Now,

garcon

,' said the customer (he was drunk), 'I'll drink

twelve and you'll drink twelve, and if you can walk to

the door afterwards you get a hundred francs.' I

walked to the door, and he gave me a hundred francs.

And every night for six days he did the same thing; twelve

brandy

cocktails, then a hundred francs. A few months later

I heard he had been extradited by the American

Governmentembezzlement. There is something fine, do

you not think, about these Americans?"

I liked Boris, and we had interesting times together,

playing chess and talking about war and hotels. Boris

used often to suggest that I should become a waiter.

"The life would suit you," he used to say; "when you are

in work, with a hundred francs a day and a nice mistress,

it's not bad. You say you go in for writing. Writing is

bosh. There is only one way to make money at writing,

and that is to marry a publisher's daughter. But you

would make a good waiter if you shaved that moustache

off. You are tall and you speak English those are the

chief things a waiter needs. Wait till I can bend this

accursed leg,

mon ami . And then, if you are ever out of

a job, come to me."

Now that I was short of my rent, and getting hungry,

I remembered Boris's promise, and decided to look him

up at once. I did not hope to become a waiter so easily

as he had promised, but of course I knew how to scrub

dishes, and no doubt he could get me a job in the

kitchen. He had said that dishwashing jobs were to be

had for the asking during the summer. It was a great

relief to remember that I had after all one influential

friend to fall back on.

V

A SHORT time before, Boris had given me an address

in the Rue du Marché des Blancs Manteaux. All he had

said in his letter was that "things were not marching too

badly," and I assumed that he was back

at the Hôtel Scribe, touching his hundred francs a

day. I was full of hope, and wondered why I had been

fool enough not to go to Boris before. I saw myself in a

cosy restaurant, with jolly cooks singing love-songs as

they broke eggs into the pan, and five solid meals a day.

I even squandered two francs-fifty on a packet of

Gaulois Bleu, in anticipation of my wages.

In the morning I walked down to the Rue du Marché

des Blancs Manteaux; with a shock, I found it a slummy

back street as bad as my own. Boris's hotel was the

dirtiest hotel in the street. From its dark doorway there

came out a vile, sour odour, a mixture of slops and

synthetic soup-it was Bouillon Zip, twenty-five

centimes a packet. A misgiving came over me. People

who drink Bouillon Zip are starving, or near it. Could

Boris possibly be earning a hundred francs a day? A

surly patron, sitting in the office, said to me, Yes, the

Russian was at home-in the attic. I went up six flights of

narrow, winding stairs, the Bouillon Zip growing

stronger as one got higher. Boris did not answer when I

knocked at his door, so I opened it and went in.

The room was an attic, ten feet square, lighted only

by a skylight, its sole furniture a narrow iron bedstead, a

chair, and a washhand-stand with one game leg. A long

S-shaped chain of bugs marched slowly across the wall

above the bed. Boris was lying asleep, naked, his large

belly making a mound under the grimy sheet. His chest

was spotted with insect bites. As I came in he woke up,

rubbed his eyes, and groaned deeply.

"Name of Jesus Christ!" he exclaimed, "oh, name of

Jesus Christ, my back! Curse it, I believe my back is

broken!"

"What's the matter?" I exclaimed.

"My back is broken, that is all. I have spent the night

on the floor. Oh, name of Jesus Christ! If you knew

what my back feels like!"

"My dear Boris, are you ill?"

"Not ill, only starving-yes, starving to death if this

goes on much longer. Besides sleeping on the floor, I

have lived on two francs a day for weeks past. It is

fearful. You have come at a bad moment, mon ami. »

It did not seem much use to ask whether Boris still

had his job at the Hôtel Scribe. I hurried downstairs

and bought a loaf of bread. Boris threw himself on the

bread and ate half of it, after which he felt better, sat

up in bed, and told me what was the matter with him.

He had failed to get a job after leaving the hospital,

because he was still very lame, and he had spent all

his money and pawned everything, and finally starved

for several days. He had slept a week on the quay

under the Pont d'Austerlitz, among some empty wine

barrels. For the past fortnight he had been living in

this room, together with a Jew, a mechanic. It -

appeared (there was some complicated explanation)

that the Jew owed Boris three hundred francs, and

was repaying this by letting him sleep on the floor and

allowing him two francs a day for food. Two francs

would buy a bowl of coffee and three rolls. The Jew

went to work at seven in the mornings, and after that

Boris would leave his sleepingplace (it was beneath the

skylight, which let in the rain) and get into the bed. He

could not sleep much even there owing to the bugs,

but it rested his back after the floor.

It was a great disappointment, when I had come to

Boris for help, to find him even worse off than myself. I

explained that I had only about sixty francs left and

must get a job immediately. By this time, however,

Boris had eaten the rest of the bread and was feeling

cheerful and talkative. He said carelessly:

"Good heavens, what are you worrying about? Sixty

francs-why, it's a fortune! Please hand me that shoe,