George Orwell - Down and Out in Paris and London Страница 17

   " '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

without even waiting to be sacked.

   As each day went by Jules grew more and more en-

raged at the trick the

patron had played on us. He had a

spluttering, oratorical way of talking. He used to walk

up and down shaking his fist, and trying to incite me

not to work:

   "Put that brush down, you fool! You and I belong to

proud races; we don't work for nothing, like these

damned Russian serfs. I tell you, to be cheated like

this is torture to me. There have been times in my life,

when someone has cheated me even of five sous, when

I have vomited-yes, vomited with rage.

   "Besides,

mon vieux, don't forget that I'm a Commu-

nist. A

bas la bourgeoisie! Did any man alive ever see me

working when I could avoid it? No. And not only I don't

wear myself out working, like you other fools, but I

steal, just to show my independence. Once I was in a

restaurant where the

patron thought he could treat me

like a dog. Well, in revenge I found out a way to steal

milk from the milk-cans and seal them up again so

that no one should know. I tell you I just swilled that

milk down night and morning. Every day I drank four

litres of milk, besides half a litre of cream. The patron

was at his wits' end to know where the milk was going.

It wasn't that I wanted milk, you understand, because I

hate the stuff, it was principle, just principle.

   "Well, after three days I began to get dreadful pains

in my belly, and I went to the doctor. 'What have you

been eating?' he said. I said: 'I drink four litres of milk

a day, and half a litre of cream.' 'Four litres!' he said.

'Then stop it at once. You'll burst if you go on.' 'What

do I care?' I said. 'With me principle is everything. I

shall go on drinking that milk, even if I do burst.'

   "Well, the next day the

patron caught me stealing

milk. 'You're sacked,' he said; 'you leave at the end of

the week.'

'Pardon, monsieur,' I said, 'I shall leave this

morning.' 'No, you won't,' he said, 'I can't spare you till

Saturday.' 'Very well,

mon patron,' I thought to myself,

'we'll see who gets tired of it first.' And then I set to

work to smash the crockery. I broke nine plates the

first day and thirteen the second; after that the

patron

was glad to see the last of me.

   « Ah, I'm not one of your Russian

moujiks . . ."

   Ten days passed. It was a bad time. I was absolutely at

the end of my money, and my rent was several days

overdue. We loafed about the dismal empty restaurant,