No More Learning

‘But, after all, I wasn’t sorry. Maria and I had a good laugh, and then we talked it over,
and we made out that I didn’t owe Sainte Eloise anything. Clearly it wasn’t she who had
answered the prayer, and there was no need to buy her a candle. So I had my packet of
cigarettes after all. ’


CHAPTER XVI

Time went on and the Auberge de Jehan Cottard showed no signs of opening. Boris and I
went down there one day during our afternoon interval and found that none of the
alterations had been done, except the indecent pictures, and there were three duns instead
of two. The PATRON greeted us with his usual blandness, and the next instant turned to
me (his prospective dishwasher) and borrowed five francs. After that I felt certain that the
restaurant would never get beyond talk. The PATRON, however, again named the
opening for ‘exactly a fortnight from today’, and introduced us to the woman who was to
do the cooking, a Baltic Russian five feet tall and a yard across the hips. She told us that
she had been a singer before she came down to cooking, and that she was very artistic
and adored English literature, especially LA CASE DE L’ONCLE TOM.

In a fortnight I had got so used to the routine of a PLONGEUR’S life that I could hardly
imagine anything different. It was a life without much variation. At a quarter to six one
woke with a sudden start, tumbled into grease-stiffened clothes, and hurried out with
dirty face and protesting muscles. It was dawn, and the windows were dark except for the



workmen’s cafes. The sky was like a vast flat wall of cobalt, with roofs and spires of
black paper pasted upon it. Drowsy men were sweeping the pavements with ten-foot
besoms, and ragged families picking over the dustbins. Workmen, and girls with a piece
of chocolate in one hand and a CROISSANT in the other, were pouring into the Metro
stations. Trams, filled with more workmen, boomed gloomily past. One hastened down to
the station, fought for a place — one does literally have to fight on the Paris Metro at six in
the morning — and stood jammed in the swaying mass of passengers, nose to nose with
some hideous French face, breathing sour wine and garlic. And then one descended into
the labyrinth of the hotel basement, and forgot daylight till two o’clock, when the sun
was hot and the town black with people and cars.

After my first week at the hotel I always spent the afternoon interval in sleeping, or, when
I had money, in a BISTRO. Except for a few ambitious waiters who went to English
classes, the whole staff wasted their leisure in this way; one seemed too lazy after the
morning’s work to do anything better. Sometimes half a dozen PLONGEURS would
make up a party and go to an abominable brothel in the Rue de Sieyes, where the charge
was only five francs twenty-five centimes — tenpence half-penny. It was nicknamed ‘LE
PRIX FIXE’, and they used to describe their experiences there as a great joke. It was a
favourite rendezvous of hotel workers. The PLONGEURS’ wages did not allow them to
marry, and no doubt work in the basement does not encourage fastidious feelings.

For another four hours one was in the cellars, and then one emerged, sweating, into the
cool street. It was lamplight — that strange purplish gleam of the Paris lamps — and
beyond the river the Eiffel Tower flashed from top to bottom with zigzag skysigns, like
enormous snakes of fire. Streams of cars glided silently to and fro, and women, exquisite-
looking in the dim light, strolled up and down the arcade. Sometimes a woman would
glance at Boris or me, and then, noticing our greasy clothes, look hastily away again. One
fought another battle in the Metro and was home by ten. Generally from ten to midnight I
went to a little BISTRO in our street, an underground place frequented by Arab navvies.
It was a bad place for fights, and I sometimes saw bottles thrown, once with fearful
effect, but as a rule the Arabs fought among themselves and let Christians alone. Raki,
the Arab drink, was very cheap, and the BISTRO was open at all hours, for the Arabs —
lucky men — had the power of working all day and drinking all night.



It was the typical life of a PLONGEUR, and it did not seem a bad life at the time. I had
no sensation of poverty, for even after paying my rent and setting aside enough for
tobacco and journeys and my food on Sundays, I still had four francs a day for drinks,
and four francs was wealth. There was — it is hard to express it — a sort of heavy
contentment, the contentment a well-fed beast might feel, in a life which had become so
simple. For nothing could be simpler than the life of a PLONGEUR. He lives in a rhythm
between work and sleep, without time to think, hardly conscious of the exterior world; his
Paris has shrunk to the hotel, the Metro, a few BISTROS and his bed. If he goes afield, it
is only a few streets away, on a trip with some servant-girl who sits on his knee
swallowing oysters and beer. On his free day he lies in bed till noon, puts on a clean shirt,
throws dice for drinks, and after lunch goes back to bed again. Nothing is quite real to
him but the BOULOT, drinks and sleep; and of these sleep is the most important.

One night, in the small hours, there was a murder just beneath my window. I was woken
by a fearful uproar, and, going to the window, saw a man lying flat on the stones below; I
could see the murderers, three of them, flitting away at the end of the street. Some of us
went down and found that the man was quite dead, his skull cracked with a piece of lead
piping. I remember the colour of his blood, curiously purple, like wine; it was still on the
cobbles when I came home that evening, and they said the school-children had come
from miles round to see it. But the thing that strikes me in looking back is that I was in
bed and asleep within three minutes of the murder. So were most of the people in the
street; we just made sure that the man was done for, and went straight back to bed. We
were working people, and where was the sense of wasting sleep over a murder?

Work in the hotel taught me the true value of sleep, just as being hungry had taught me
the true value of food. Sleep had ceased to be a mere physical necessity; it was something
voluptuous, a debauch more than a relief. I had no more trouble with the bugs. Mario had
told me of a sure remedy for them, namely pepper, strewed thick over the bedclothes. It
made me sneeze, but the bugs all hated it, and emigrated to other rooms.


CHAPTER XVII



With thirty francs a week to spend on drinks I could take part in the social life of the
quarter. We had some jolly evenings, on Saturdays, in the little BISTRO at the foot of the
Hotel des Trois Moineaux.

The brick-floored room, fifteen feet square, was packed with twenty people, and the air
dim with smoke. The noise was deafening, for everyone was either talking at the top of
his voice or singing. Sometimes it was just a confused din of voices; sometimes everyone
would burst out together in the same song — the ‘Marseillaise’, or the ‘Internationale’, or
‘Madelon’, or ‘Les Fraises et les Fram-boises’. Azaya, a great clumping peasant girl who
worked fourteen hours a day in a glass factory, sang a song about, ‘IL A PERDU SES
PANTALONS, TOUT EN DANSANT LE CHARLESTON. ’ Her friend Marinette, a
thin, dark Corsican girl of obstinate virtue, tied her knees together and danced the
DANSE DU VENTRE. The old Rougiers wandered in and out, cadging drinks and trying
to tell a long, involved story about someone who had once cheated them over a bedstead.
R. , cadaverous and silent, sat in his comer quietly boozing. Charlie, drunk, half danced,
half staggered to and fro with a glass of sham absinthe balanced in one fat hand, pinching
the women’s breasts and declaiming poetry. People played darts and diced for drinks.
Manuel, a Spaniard, dragged the girls to the bar and shook the dice-box against their
bellies, for luck. Madame F. stood at the bar rapidly pouring CHOPINES of wine through
the pewter funnel, with a wet dishcloth always handy, because every man in the room
tried to make love to her. Two children, bastards of big Louis the bricklayer, sat in a
comer sharing a glass of SIROP. Everyone was very happy, overwhelmingly 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 Us 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,
‘VIVE 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’HUMANITE.



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 ann 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.


CHAPTER 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 civilized 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 everything, 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? ”

‘I turned to Yvonne. “Stop that insufferable bawling. ” I said, “I have thought of a way to
get food. ”


‘“How? ” she said.

‘“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 CHERE. 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 ragout of beef, a puree of potatoes, bread and cheese and beer, and all
kinds of advice about her baby. Yvonne gorged till she almost burst her skin, and
managed 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 recognized 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 completely. “No,” she actually said again!

‘The nurse was taken aback. “COMMENT! ” she exclaimed, “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. . . ’


CHAPTER XIX

One day, when we had been at the Hotel 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
tomorrow. ’


‘Tomorrow? ’



‘Well, possibly we shall need a day or two to arrange things. But, at any rate, no more
CAFETERIA! NOUS SOMMES LANCES, 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 Groix 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 unlocked 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 restaurant 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 restaurant 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 gas-fitting 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
spectacles, 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 enraged 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 Communist. 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, too hungry even
to get on with the work that remained. Only Boris now believed that the restaurant would
open. He had set his heart on being MAITRE D’ HOTEL, and he invented a theory that
the PATRON’S money was tied up in shares and he was waiting a favourable moment
for selling. On the tenth day I had nothing to eat or smoke, and I told the PATRON that I
could not continue working without an advance on my wages. As blandly as usual, the
PATRON promised the advance, and then, according to his custom, vanished. I walked



part of the way home, but I did not feel equal to a scene with Madame F. over the rent, so
I passed the night on a bench on the boulevard. It was very uncomfortable — the arm of
the seat cuts into your back — and much colder than I had expected. There was plenty of
time, in the long boring hours between dawn and work, to think what a fool I had been to
deliver myself into the hands of these Russians.

Then, in the morning, the luck changed. Evidently the PATRON had come to an
understanding with his creditors, for he arrived with money in his pockets, set the
alterations going, and gave me my advance. Boris and I bought macaroni and a piece of
horse’s liver, and had our first hot meal in ten days.

The workmen were brought in and the alterations made, hastily and with incredible
shoddiness. The tables, for instance, were to be covered with baize, but when the
PATRON found that baize was expensive he bought instead disused army blankets,
smelling incorrigibly of sweat. The table cloths (they were check, to go with the
‘Norman’ decorations) would cover them, of course. On the last night we were at work
till two in the morning, getting things ready. The crockery did not arrive till eight, and,
being new, had all to be washed. The cutlery did not arrive till the next morning, nor the
linen either, so that we had to dry the crockery with a shirt of the PATRON’S and an old
pillowslip belonging to the concierge. Boris and I did all the work. Jules was skulking,
and the PATRON and his wife sat in the bar with a dun and some Russian friends,
drinking success to the restaurant. The cook was in the kitchen with her head on the table,
crying, because she was expected to cook for fifty people, and there were not pots and
pans enough for ten. About midnight there was a fearful interview with some duns, who
came intending to seize eight copper saucepans which the PATRON had obtained on
credit. They were bought off with half a bottle of brandy.

Jules and I missed the last Metro home and had to sleep on the floor of the restaurant.
The first thing we saw in the morning were two large rats sitting on the kitchen table,
eating from a ham that stood there. It seemed a bad omen, and I was surer than ever that
the Auberge de Jehan Cottard would turn out a failure.


CHAPTER XX



The PATRON had engaged me as kitchen PLONGEUR; that is, my job was to wash up,
keep the kitchen clean, prepare vegetables, make tea, coffee and sandwiches, do the
simpler cooking, and run errands. The terms were, as usual, five hundred francs a month
and food, but I had no free day and no fixed working hours. At the Hotel X I had seen
catering at its best, with unlimited money and good organization. Now, at the Auberge, I
learned how things are done in a thoroughly bad restaurant. It is worth describing, for
there are hundreds of similar restaurants in Paris, and every visitor feeds in one of them
occasionally.

I should add, by the way, that the Auberge was not the ordinary cheap eating-house
frequented by students and workmen. We did not provide an adequate meal at less than
twenty-five francs, and we were picturesque and artistic, which sent up our social
standing. There were the indecent pictures in the bar, and the Norman decorations — sham
beams on the walls, electric lights done up as candlesticks, ‘peasant’ pottery, even a
mounting-block at the door — and the PATRON and the head waiter were Russian
officers, and many of the customers tided Russian refugees. In short, we were decidedly
chic.

Nevertheless, the conditions behind the kitchen door were suitable for a pigsty. For this is
what our service 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 installation, 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 APERITIFS, 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 insufficient 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 Hotel 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’ltalie 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.