George Orwell - Down and Out in Paris and London

"Have I ever told you,

mon ami , that in the old Russian

Army,it was considered bad form to spit on a Jew? Yes,

we thought a Russian officer's spittle was too precious to

be wasted on Jews . . ." etc. etc.

On these days Boris usually declared himself too ill to

go out and look for work. He would lie till evening in the

greyish, verminous sheets, smoking and reading old

newspapers. Sometimes we played chess. We had no

board, but we wrote down the moves on a piece of paper,

and afterwards we made a board from the side of a

packing-case, and a set of men from buttons, Belgian

coins and the like. Boris, like many Russians, had a

passion for chess. It was a saying of his that the rules of

chess are the same as the rules of love and war, and that

if you can win at one you can win at the others. But he

also said that if you have a chessboard you do not mind

being hungry, which was certainly not true in my case.

VII

MY MONEY oozed away-to eight francs, to four

francs, to one franc, to twenty-five centimes; and twenty-

five centimes is useless, for it will buy nothing except a

newspaper. We went several days on dry bread, and then

I was two and a half days with nothing to eat whatever.

This was an ugly experience. There are people who do

fasting cures of three weeks or more, and they say that

fasting is quite pleasant after the fourth day; I do not

know, never having gone beyond the third day. Probably

it seems different when one is doing it voluntarily and is

not underfed at the start.

The first day, too inert to look for work, I borrowed a

rod and went fishing in the Seine, baiting with blue-

bottles. I hoped to catch enough for a meal, but of course

I did not. The Seine is full of dace, but they grew cunning

during the seige of Paris, and none of

them has been

caught since, except in nets. On the second day I thought

of pawning my overcoat, but it seemed too far to walk to

the pawnshop, and I spent the day in bed, reading the

Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

. It was all that I felt equal to,

without food. Hunger reduces one to an utterly spineless,

brainless condition, more like the after-effects of

influenza than anything else. It is as though one had been

turned into a jellyfish, or as though all one's blood had

been pumped out and luke-warm water substituted.

Complete inertia is my chief memory of hunger; that, and

being obliged to spit very frequently, and the spittle

being curiously white and flocculent, like cuckoo-spit. I

do not know the reason for this, but everyone who has

gone hungry several days has noticed it.

On the third morning I felt very much better. I

realised that I must do something at once, and I decided

to go and ask Boris to let me share his two francs, at

any rate for a day or two. When I arrived I found Boris

in bed, and furiously angry. As soon as I came in he

burst out, almost choking:

"He has taken it back, the dirty thief! He has taken it

back!"

"Who's taken what?" I said.

"The Jew! Taken my two francs, the dog, the thief! He

robbed me in my sleep!"

It appeared that on the previous night the Jew had

flatly refused to pay the daily two francs. They had

argued and argued, and at last the Jew had consented to

hand over the money; he had done it, Boris said, in

the most offensive manner, making a little speech

about how kind he was, and extorting abject gratitude.

And then in the morning he had stolen the money back

before Boris was awake.

This was a blow. I was horribly disappointed, for I

had allowed my belly to expect food, a great mistake

when one is hungry. However, rather to my surprise,

Boris was far from despairing. He sat up in bed,

lighted his pipe and reviewed the situation.

"Now listen,

mon-ami , this is a tight corner. We have

only twenty-five centimes between us, and I don't

suppose the Jew will ever pay my two francs again. In

any case his behaviour is becoming intolerable. Will

you believe it, the other night he had the indecency to

bring a woman in here, while I was there on the floor.

The low animal! And I have a worse thing to tell you.

The Jew intends clearing out of here. He owes a week's

rent, and his idea is to avoid paying that and give me the

slip at the same time. If the Jew shoots the moon I shall

be left without a roof, and the

patron will will take my

suitcase in lieu of rent, curse him! We have got to make

a vigorous move."

"All right. But what can we do? It seems to me that

the only thing is to pawn our overcoats and get some

food."

"We'll do that, of course, but I must get my posses-

sions out of this house first. To think of my photographs

being seized! Well, my plan is ready. I'm going to

forestall the Jew and shoot the moon myself. F-----

le

camp

-retreat, you understand. I think that is the correct

move, eh?"

"But, my dear Boris, how can you, in daytime? You're

bound to be caught."

« Ah well, it will need strategy, of course. Our

patron

is on the watch for people slipping out without paying

their rent; he's been had that way before. He and his

wife take it in turns all day to sit in the office-what

misers, these Frenchmen! But I have thought of a way

to do it, if you will help."

I did not feel in a very helpful mood, but I asked

Boris what his plan was. He explained it carefully.

"Now listen. We must start by pawning our overcoats.

First go back to your room and fetch your overcoat, then

come back here and fetch mine, and smuggle it out under

cover of yours. Take them to the pawnshop in the Rue

des Francs Bourgeois. You ought to get twenty francs

for the two, with luck. Then go down to the Seine bank

and fill your pockets with stones, and bring them back

and put them in my suitcase. You see the idea? I shall

wrap as many of my things as I can carry in a

newspaper, and go down and ask the patron the way to

the nearest laundry. I shall be very brazen and casual,

you understand, and of course the patron will think the

bundle is nothing but dirty linen. Or, if he does suspect

anything, he will do what he always does, the mean

sneak; he will go up to my room and feel the weight of

my suitcase. And when he feels the weight of stones he

will think it is still full. Strategy, eh? Then afterwards I

can come back and carry my other things out in my

pockets."

"But what about the suitcase?"

"Oh, that? We shall have to abandon it. The miser-

able thing only cost about twenty francs. Besides, one

always abandons something in a retreat. Look at

Napoleon at the Beresina! He abandoned his whole

army."

Boris was so pleased with this scheme (he called it

une

ruse de guerre

) that he almost forgot being hungry. Its

main weakness-that he would have nowhere to sleep

after shooting the moon-he ignored.

At first the

ruse de guerre worked well. I went home

and fetched my overcoat (that made already nine kilo-

metres, on an empty belly) and smuggled Boris's coat

out successfully. Then a hitch occured. The receiver at

the pawnshop, a nasty, sour-faced interfering, little

man-a typical French official-refused the coats on the

ground that they were not wrapped up in anything. He