To think that in only three weeks I shall have my
mistress!
Orwell - Down and Out in Paris and London
Boris slept the night at the house of a cobbler, another Russian refugee, in the Commerce
quarter. Meanwhile, I had eight francs left, and plenty of cigarettes, and was stuffed to
the eyes with food and drink. It was a marvellous change for the better after two bad
days.
CHAPTER VIII
We had now twenty-eight francs in hand, and could start looking for work once more.
Boris was still sleeping, on some mysterious tenns, at the house of the cobbler, and he
had managed to borrow another twenty francs from a Russian friend. He had friends,
mostly ex-officers like himself, here and there all over Paris. Some were waiters or
dishwashers, some drove taxis, a few lived on women, some had managed to bring
money away from Russia and owned garages or dancing-halls. In general, the Russian
refugees in Paris are hard-working people, and have put up with their bad luck far better
than one can imagine Englishmen of the same class doing. There are exceptions, of
course. Boris told me of an exiled Russian duke whom he had once met, who frequented
expensive restaurants. The duke would find out if there was a Russian officer among the
waiters, and, after he had dined, call him in a friendly way to his table.
‘Ah,’ the duke would say, ‘so you are an old soldier, like myself? These are bad days, eh?
Well, well, the Russian soldier fears nothing. And what was your regiment? ’
‘The so-and-so, sir,’ the waiter would answer.
‘A very gallant regiment! I inspected them in 1912. By the way, I have unfortunately left
my notecase at home. A Russian officer will, I know, oblige me with three hundred
francs. ’
If the waiter had three hundred francs he would hand it over, and, of course, never see it
again. The duke made quite a lot in this way. Probably the waiters did not mind being
swindled. A duke is a duke, even in exile.
It was through one of these Russian refugees that Boris heard of something which seemed
to promise money. Two days after we had pawned the overcoats, Boris said to me rather
mysteriously:
‘Tell me, MON AMI, have you any political opinions? ’
‘No, ‘I said.
‘Neither have I. Of course, one is always a patriot; but still — Did not Moses say
something about spoiling the Egyptians? As an Englishman you will have read the Bible.
What I mean is, would you object to earning money from Communists? ’
‘No, of course not. ’
‘Well, it appears that there is a Russian secret society in Paris who might do something
for us. They are Communists; in fact they are agents for the Bolsheviks. They act as a
friendly society, get in touch with exiled Russians, and try to get them to turn Bolshevik.
My friend has joined their society, and he thinks they would help us if we went to them. ’
‘But what can they do for us? In any case they won’t help me, as I’m not a Russian. ’
‘That is just the point. It seems that they are correspondents for a Moscow paper, and
they want some articles on English politics. If we got to them at once they may
commission you to write the articles. ’
‘Me? But I don’t know anything about politics. ’
‘MERDE! Neither do they. Who DOES know anything about politics? It’s easy. All you
have to do is to copy it out of the English papers. Isn’t there a Paris DAILY MAIL? Copy
it from that. ’
‘But the DAILY MAIL is a Conservative paper. They loathe the Communists. ’
‘Well, say the opposite of what the DAILY MAIL says, then you can’t be wrong. We
mustn’t throw this chance away, MON AMI. It might mean hundreds of francs. ’
I did not like the idea, for the Paris police are very hard on Communists, especially if
they are foreigners, and I was already under suspicion. Some months before, a detective
had seen me come out of the office of a Communist weekly paper, and I had had a great
deal of trouble with the police. If they caught me going to this secret society, it might
mean deportation. However, the chance seemed too good to be missed. That afternoon
Boris’s friend, another waiter, came to take us to the rendezvous. I cannot remember the
name of the street — it was a shabby street running south from the Seine bank, somewhere
near the Chamber of Deputies. Boris’s friend insisted on great caution. We loitered
casually down the street, marked the doorway we were to enter — it was a laundry — and
then strolled back again, keeping an eye on all the windows and cafes. If the place were
known as a haunt of Communists it was probably watched, and we intended to go home
if we saw anyone at all like a detective. I was frightened, but Boris enjoyed these
conspiratorial proceedings, and quite forgot that he was about to trade with the slayers of
his parents.
When we were certain that the coast was clear we dived quickly into the doorway. In the
laundry was a Frenchwoman ironing clothes, who told us that ‘the Russian gentlemen’
lived up a staircase across the courtyard. We went up several flights of dark stairs and
emerged on to a landing. A strong, surly-looking young man, with hair growing low on
his head, was standing at the top of the stairs. As I came up he looked at me suspiciously,
barred the way with his arm and said something in Russian.
‘MOT D’ORDRE! ’ he said sharply when I did not answer.
I stopped, startled. I had not expected passwords.
‘MOT D’ORDRE! ’ repeated the Russian.
Boris’s friend, who was walking behind, now came forward and said something in
Russian, either the password or an explanation. At this, the surly young man seemed
satisfied, and led us into a small, shabby room with frosted windows. It was like a very
poverty-stricken office, with propaganda posters in Russian lettering and a huge, crude
picture of Lenin tacked on the walls. At the table sat an unshaven Russian in shirt sleeves,
addressing newspaper wrappers from a pile in front of him. As I came in he spoke to me
in French, with a bad accent.
‘This is very careless! ’ he exclaimed fussily. ‘Why have you come here without a parcel
of washing? ’
‘Washing? ’
‘Everybody who comes here brings washing. It looks as though they were going to the
laundry downstairs. Bring a good, large bundle next time. We don’t want the police on
our tracks. ’
This was even more conspiratorial than I had expected. Boris sat down in the only vacant
chair, and there was a great deal of talking in Russian. Only the unshaven man talked; the
surly one leaned against the wall with his eyes on me, as though he still suspected me. It
was queer, standing in the little secret room with its revolutionary posters, listening to a
conversation of which I did not understand a word. The Russians talked quickly and
eagerly, with smiles and shrugs of the shoulders. I wondered what it was all about. They
would be calling each other ‘little father’, I thought, and ‘little dove’, and ‘Ivan
Alexandrovitch’, like the characters in Russian novels. And the talk would be of
revolutions. The unshaven man would be saying firmly, ‘We never argue. Controversy is
a bourgeois pastime. Deeds are our arguments. ’ Then I gathered that it was not this
exactly. Twenty francs was being demanded, for an entrance fee apparently, and Boris
was promising to pay it (we had just seventeen francs in the world). Finally Boris
produced our precious store of money and paid five francs on account.
At this the surly man looked less suspicious, and sat down on the edge of the table. The
unshaven one began to question me in French, making notes on a slip of paper. Was I a
Communist? he asked. By sympathy, I answered; I had never joined any organization.
Did I understand the political situation in England? Oh, of course, of course. I mentioned
the names of various Ministers, and made some contemptuous remarks about the Labour
Party. And what about LE SPORT? Could I do articles on LE SPORT? (Football and
Socialism have some mysterious connexion on the Continent. ) Oh, of course, again. Both
men nodded gravely. The unshaven one said:
‘EVIDEMMENT, you have a thorough knowledge of conditions in England. Could you
undertake to write a series of articles for a Moscow weekly paper? We will give you the
particulars. ’
‘Certainly. ’
‘Then, comrade, you will hear from us by the first post tomorrow. Or possibly the second
post. Our rate of pay is a hundred and fifty francs an article. Remember to bring a parcel
of washing next time you come. AU REVOIR, comrade. ’
We went downstairs, looked carefully out of the laundry to see if there was anyone in the
street, and slipped out. Boris was wild with joy. In a sort of sacrificial ecstasy he rushed
into the nearest tobacconist’s and spent fifty centimes on a cigar. He came out thumping
his stick on the pavement and beaming.
‘At last! At last! Now, MON AMI, out fortune really is made. You took them in finely.
Did you hear him call you comrade? A hundred and fifty francs an article — NOM DE
DIEU, what luck! ’
Next morning when I heard the postman I rushed down to the BISTRO for my letter; to
my disappointment, it had not come. I stayed at home for the second post; still no letter.
When three days had gone by and I had not heard from the secret society, we gave up
hope, deciding that they must have found somebody else to do their articles.
Ten days later we made another visit to the office of the secret society, taking care to
bring a parcel that looked like washing. And the secret society had vanished! The woman
in the laundry knew nothing — she simply said that ‘CES MESSIEURS’ had left some
days ago, after trouble about the rent. What fools we looked, standing there with our
parcel! But it was a consolation that we had paid only five francs instead of twenty.
And that was the last we ever heard of the secret society. Who or what they really were,
nobody knew. Personally I do not think they had anything to do with the Communist
Party; I think they were simply swindlers, who preyed upon Russian refugees by
extracting entrance fees to an imaginary society. It was quite safe, and no doubt they are
still doing it in some other city. They were clever fellows, and played their part
admirably. Their office looked exactly as a secret Communist office should look, and as
for that touch about bringing a parcel of washing, it was genius.
CHAPTER IX
For three more days we continued traipsing about looking for work, coming home for
diminishing meals of soup and bread in my bedroom. There were now two gleams of
hope. In the first place, Boris had heard of a possible job at the Hotel X, near the Place de
la Concorde, and in the second, the PATRON of the new restaurant in the rue du
Commerce had at last come back. We went down in the afternoon and saw him. On the
way Boris talked of the vast fortunes we should make if we got this job, and on the
importance of making a good impression on the PATRON.
‘Appearance — appearance is everything, MON AMI. Give me a new suit and I will
borrow a thousand francs by dinner-time. What a pity I did not buy a collar when we had
money. I turned my collar inside out this morning; but what is the use, one side is as dirty
as the other. Do you think I look hungry, MON AMI? ’
‘You look pale. ’
‘Curse it, what can one do on bread and potatoes? It is fatal to look hungry. It makes
people want to kick you. Wait. ’
He stopped at a jeweller’s window and smacked his cheeks sharply to bring the blood
into them. Then, before the flush had faded, we hurried into the restaurant and introduced
ourselves to the PATRON.
The PATRON was a short, fattish, very dignified man with wavy grey hair, dressed in a
smart, double-breasted flannel suit and smelling of scent. Boris told me that he too was
an ex-colonel of the Russian Army. His wife was there too, a horrid, fat Frenchwoman
with a dead-white face and scarlet lips, reminding me of cold veal and tomatoes. The
PATRON greeted Boris genially, and they talked together in Russian for a few minutes. I
stood in the background, preparing to tell some big lies about my experience as a dish-
washer.
Then the PATRON came over towards me. I shuffled uneasily, trying to look servile.
Boris had rubbed it into me that a PLONGEUR is a slave’s slave, and I expected the
PATRON, to treat me like dirt. To my astonishment, he seized me warmly by the hand.
‘So you are an Englishman! ’ he exclaimed. ‘But how channing! I need not ask, then,
whether you are a golfer? ’
‘MAIS CERTAINEMENT,’ I said, seeing that this was expected of me.
‘All my life I have wanted to play golf. Will you, my dear MONSIEUR, be so kind as to
show me a few of the principal strokes? ’
Apparently this was the Russian way of doing business. The PATRON listened
attentively while I explained the difference between a driver and an iron, and then
suddenly informed me that it was all ENTENDU; Boris was to be MAITRE D’ HOTEL
when the restaurant opened, and I PLONGEUR, with a chance of rising to lavatory
attendant if trade was good. When would the restaurant open? I asked. ‘Exactly a
fortnight from today,’ the PATRON answered grandly (he had a manner of waving his
hand and flicking off his cigarette ash at the same time, which looked very grand),
‘exactly a fortnight from today, in time for lunch. ’ Then, with obvious pride, he showed
us over the restaurant.
It was a smallish place, consisting of a bar, a dining-room, and a kitchen no bigger than
the average bathroom. The PATRON was decorating it in a trumpery ‘picturesque’ style
(he called it ‘LE NORMAND’; it was a matter of sham beams stuck on the plaster, and
the like) and proposed to call it the Auberge de Jehan Cottard, to give a medieval effect.
He had a leaflet printed, full of lies about the historical associations of the quarter, and
this leaflet actually claimed, among other things, that there had once been an inn on the
site of the restaurant which was frequented by Charlemagne. The PATRON was very
pleased with this touch. He was also having the bar decorated with indecent pictures by
an artist from the Salon. Finally he gave us each an expensive cigarette, and after some
more talk he went home.
I felt strongly that we should never get any good from this restaurant. The PATRON had
looked to me like a cheat, and, what was worse, an incompetent cheat, and I had seen two
unmistakable duns hanging about the back door. But Boris, seeing himself a MAITRE
D ’HOTEL once more, would not be discouraged.
‘We’ve brought it off — only a fortnight to hold out. What is a fortnight? JE M’EN F .
To think that in only three weeks I shall have my mistress! Will she be dark or fair, I
wonder? I don’t mind, so long as she is not too thin. ’
Two bad days followed. We had only sixty centimes left, and we spent it on half a pound
of bread, with a piece of garlic to rub it with. The point of rubbing garlic on bread is that
the taste lingers and gives one the illusion of having fed recently. We sat most of that day
in the Jardin des Plantes. Boris had shots with stones at the tame pigeons, but always
missed them, and after that we wrote dinner menus on the backs of envelopes. We were
too hungry even to try and think of anything except food. I remember the dinner Boris
finally selected for himself. It was: a dozen oysters, bortch soup (the red, sweet, beetroot
soup with cream on top), crayfishes, a young chicken en CASSEROLE, beef with stewed
plums, new potatoes, a salad, suet pudding and Roquefort cheese, with a litre of
Burgundy and some old brandy. Boris had international tastes in food. Later on, when we
were prosperous, I occasionally saw him eat meals almost as large without difficulty.
When our money came to an end I stopped looking for work, and was another day
without food. I did not believe that the Auberge de Jehan Cottard was really going to
open, and I could see no other prospect, but I was too lazy to do anything but lie in bed.
Then the luck changed abruptly. At night, at about ten o’clock, I heard an eager shout
from the street. I got up and went to the window. Boris was there, waving his stick and
beaming. Before speaking he dragged a bent loaf from his pocket and threw it up to me.
‘MON AMI, MON CHER AMI, we’re saved! What do you think? ’
‘Surely you haven’t got a job! ’
‘At the Hotel X, near the Place de la Concorde — five hundred francs a month, and food. I
have been working there today. Name of Jesus Christ, how I have eaten! ’
After ten or twelve hours’ work, and with his game leg, his first thought had been to walk
three kilometres to my hotel and tell me the good news! What was more, he told me to
meet him in the Tuileries the next day during his afternoon interval, in case he should be
able to steal some food for me. At the appointed time I met Boris on a public bench. He
undid his waistcoat and produced a large, crushed, newspaper packet; in it were some
minced veal, a wedge of Gamembert cheese, bread and an eclair, all jumbled together.
‘VOILA! ’ said Boris, ‘that’s all I could smuggle out for you. The doorkeeper is a cunning
swine. ’
It is disagreeable to eat out of a newspaper on a public seat, especially in the Tuileries,
which are generally full of pretty girls, but I was too hungry to care. While I ate, Boris
explained that he was working in the cafeterie of the hotel — that is, in English, the
stillroom. It appeared that the cafeterie was the very lowest post in the hotel, and a
dreadful come-down for a waiter, but it would do until the Auberge de Jehan Gottard
opened. Meanwhile I was to meet Boris every day in the Tuileries, and he would smuggle
out as much food as he dared. For three days we continued with this arrangement, and I
lived entirely on the stolen food. Then all our troubles came to an end, for one of the
PLONGEURS left the Hotel X, and on Boris’s recommendation I was given a job there
myself.
CHAPTER X
The Hotel X was a vast, grandiose place with a classical facade, and at one side a little,
dark doorway like a rat-hole, which was the service entrance. I arrived at a quarter to
seven in the morning. A stream of men with greasy trousers were hurrying in and being
checked by a doorkeeper who sat in a tiny office. I waited, and presently the CHEF DU
PERSONNEL, a sort of assistant manager, arrived and began to question me. He was an
Italian, with a round, pale face, haggard from overwork. He asked whether I was an
experienced dishwasher, and I said that I was; he glanced at my hands and saw that I was
lying, but on hearing that I was an Englishman he changed his tone and engaged me.
‘We have been looking for someone to practise our English on,’ he said. ‘Our clients are
all Americans, and the only English we know is ’ He repeated something that little
boys write on the walls in London. ‘You may be useful. Come downstairs. ’
He led me down a winding staircase into a narrow passage, deep underground, and so
low that I had to stoop in places. It was stiflingly hot and very dark, with only dim,
yellow bulbs several yards apart. There seemed to be miles of dark labyrinthine
passages — actually, I suppose, a few hundred yards in all — that reminded one queerly of
the lower decks of a liner; there were the same heat and cramped space and warm reek of
food, and a humming, whirring noise (it came from the kitchen furnaces) just like the
whir of engines. We passed doorways which let out sometimes a shouting of oaths,
sometimes the red glare of a fire, once a shuddering draught from an ice chamber. As we
went along, something struck me violently in the back. It was a hundred-pound block of
ice, carried by a blue-aproned porter. After him came a boy with a great slab of veal on
his shoulder, his cheek pressed into the damp, spongy flesh. They shoved me aside with a
cry of ‘SAUVE-TOI, IDIOT! ’ and rushed on. On the wall, under one of the lights,
someone had written in a very neat hand: ‘Sooner will you find a cloudless sky in winter,
than a woman at the Hotel X who has her maidenhead. ’ It seemed a queer sort of place.
One of the passages branched off into a laundry, where an old, skull-faced woman gave
me a blue apron and a pile of dishcloths. Then the CHEF DU PERSONNEL took me to a
tiny underground den — a cellar below a cellar, as it were — where there were a sink and
some gas-ovens. It was too low for me to stand quite upright, and the temperature was
perhaps 110 degrees Fahrenheit. The CHEF DU PERSONNEL explained that my job
was to fetch meals for the higher hotel employees, who fed in a small dining-room above,
clean their room and wash their crockery. When he had gone, a waiter, another Italian,
thrust a fierce, fuzzy head into the doorway and looked down at me.
‘English, eh? ’ he said. ‘Well, I’m in charge here. If you work well’ — he made the motion
of up-ending a bottle and sucked noisily. ‘If you don’t’ — he gave the doorpost several
vigorous kicks. ‘To me, twisting your neck would be no more than spitting on the floor.
And if there’s any trouble, they’ll believe me, not you. So be careful. ’
After this I set to work rather hurriedly. Except for about an hour, I was at work from
seven in the morning till a quarter past nine at night; first at washing crockery, then at
scrubbing the tables and floors of the employees’ dining-room, then at polishing glasses
and knives, then at fetching meals, then at washing crockery again, then at fetching more
meals and washing more crockery. It was easy work, and I got on well with it except
when I went to the kitchen to fetch meals. The kitchen was like nothing I had ever seen or
imagined — a stifling, low-ceilinged inferno of a cellar, red-lit from the fires, and
deafening with oaths and the clanging of pots and pans. It was so hot that all the metal-
work except the stoves had to be covered with cloth. In the middle were furnaces, where
twelve cooks skipped to and fro, their faces dripping sweat in spite of their white caps.
Round that were counters where a mob of waiters and PLONGEURS clamoured with
trays. Scullions, naked to the waist, were stoking the fires and scouring huge copper
saucepans with sand. Everyone seemed to be in a hurry and a rage. The head cook, a fine,
scarlet man with big moustachios, stood in the middle booming continuously, ‘CA
MARCHE DEUX AUFS BROUILLES! CA MARCHE UN CHATEAUBRIAND AUX
POMMES SAUTEES! ’ except when he broke off to curse at a PLONGEUR. There were
three counters, and the first time I went to the kitchen I took my tray unknowingly to the
wrong one. The head cook walked up to me, twisted his moustaches, and looked me up
and down. Then he beckoned to the breakfast cook and pointed at me.
‘Do you see THAT? That is the type of PLONGEUR they send us nowadays. Where do
you come from, idiot? From Charenton, I suppose? ’ (There is a large lunatic asylum at
Charenton. )
‘From England,’ I said.
‘I might have known it. Well, MAN CHER MONSIEUR L’ANGLAIS, may I inform you
that you are the son of a whore? And now — the camp to the other counter, where you
belong. ’
I got this kind of reception every time I went to the kitchen, for I always made some
mistake; I was expected to know the work, and was cursed accordingly. From curiosity I
counted the number of times I was called MAQUEREAU during the day, and it was
thirty-nine.
At half past four the Italian told me that I could stop working, but that it was not worth
going out, as we began at five. I went to the lavatory for a smoke; smoking was strictly
forbidden, and Boris had warned me that the lavatory was the only safe place. After that I
worked again till a quarter past nine, when the waiter put his head into the doorway and
told me to leave the rest of the crockery. To my astonishment, after calling me pig,
mackerel, etc. , all day, he had suddenly grown quite friendly. I realized that the curses I
had met with were only a kind of probation.
‘That’ll do, MAN P’TIT,’ said the waiter. ‘TU N’ES PAS DEBROUILL ARD , but you
work all right. Come up and have your dinner. The hotel allows us two litres of wine
each, and I’ve stolen another bottle. We’ll have a fine booze. ’
We had an excellent dinner from the leavings of the higher employees. The waiter, grown
mellow, told me stories about his love-affairs, and about two men whom he had stabbed
in Italy, and about how he had dodged Us military service. He was a good fellow when
one got to know him; he reminded me of Benvenuto Cellini, somehow. I was tired and
drenched with sweat, but I felt a new man after a day’s solid food. The work did not seem
difficult, and I felt that this job would suit me. It was not certain, however, that it would
continue, for I had been engaged as an ‘extra’ for the day only, at twenty-five francs. The
sour-faced doorkeeper counted out the money, less fifty centimes which he said was for
insurance (a lie, I discovered afterwards). Then he stepped out into the passage, made me
take off my coat, and carefully prodded me all over, searching for stolen food. After this
the CHEF DU PERSONNEL appeared and spoke to me. Like the waiter, he had grown
more genial on seeing that I was willing to work.
‘We will give you a permanent job if you like,’ he said. ‘The head waiter says he would
enjoy calling an Englishman names. Will you sign on for a month? ’
Here was a job at last, and I was ready to jump at it. Then I remembered the Russian
restaurant, due to open in a fortnight. It seemed hardly fair to promise working a month,
and then leave in the middle. I said that I had other work in prospect — could I be engaged
for a fortnight? But at that the CHEF DU PERSONNEL shrugged his shoulders and said
that the hotel only engaged men by the month. Evidently I had lost my chance of a job.
Boris, by arrangement, was waiting for me in the Arcade of the Rue de Rivoli. When I
told him what had happened, he was furious. For the first time since I had known him he
forgot his manners and called me a fool.
‘Idiot! Species of idiot! What’s the good of my finding you a job when you go and chuck
it up the next moment? How could you be such a fool as to mention the other restaurant?
You’d only to promise you would work for a month. ’
‘It seemed more honest to say I might have to leave,’ I objected.
‘Honest! Honest! Who ever heard of a PLONGEUR being honest? MON AMI’ —
suddenly he seized my lapel and spoke very earnestly — ‘MON AMI, you have worked
here all day. You see what hotel work is like. Do you think a PLONGEUR can afford a
sense of honour? ’
‘No, perhaps not. ’
‘Well, then, go back quickly and tell the CHEF DU PERSONNEL you are quite ready to
work for a month. Say you will throw the other job over. Then, when our restaurant
opens, we have only to walk out. ’
‘But what about my wages if I break my contract?
‘Boris banged his stick on the pavement and cried out at such stupidity. ‘Ask to be paid
by the day, then you won’t lose a sou. Do you suppose they would prosecute a
PLONGEUR for breaking Us contract? A PLONGEUR is too low to be prosecuted. ’
I hurried back, found the CHEF DU PERSONNEL, and told him that I would work for a
month, whereat he signed me on. Ibis was my first lesson in PLONGEUR morality. Later
I realized how foolish it had been to have any scruples, for the big hotels are quite
merciless towards their employees. They engage or discharge men as the work demands,
and they all sack ten per cent or more of their staff when the season is over. Nor have
they any difficulty in replacing a man who leaves at short notice, for Paris is thronged by
hotel employees out of work.
CHAPTER XI
As it turned out, I did not break my contract, for it was six weeks before the Auberge de
Jehan Cottard even showed signs of opening. In the meantime I worked at the Hotel X,
four days a week in the cafeterie, one day helping the waiter on the fourth floor, and one
day replacing the woman who washed up for the dining-room. My day off, luckily, was
Sunday, but sometimes another man was ill and I had to work that day as well. The hours
were from seven in the morning till two in the afternoon, and from five in the evening till
nine — eleven hours; but it was a fourteen-hour day when I washed up for the dining-
room. By the ordinary standards of a Paris PLONGEUR, these are exceptionally short
hours. The only hardship of life was the fearful heat and stuffiness of these labyrinthine
cellars. Apart from this the hotel, which was large and well organized, was considered a
comfortable one.
Our cafeterie was a murky cellar measuring twenty feet by seven by eight high, and so
crowded with coffee-urns, breadcutters and the like that one could hardly move without
banging against something. It was lighted by one dim electric bulb, and four or five gas-
fires that sent out a fierce red breath. There was a thermometer there, and the temperature
never fell below 1 10 degrees Fahrenheit — it neared 130 at some times of the day. At one
end were five service lifts, and at the other an ice cupboard where we stored milk and
butter. When you went into the ice cupboard you dropped a hundred degrees of
temperature at a single step; it used to remind me of the hymn about Greenland’s icy
mountains and India’s coral strand. Two men worked in the cafeterie besides Boris and
myself. One was Mario, a huge, excitable Italian — he was like a city policeman with
operatic gestures — and the other, a hairy, uncouth animal whom we called the Magyar; I
think he was a Transylvanian, or something even more remote. Except the Magyar we
were all big men, and at the rush hours we collided incessantly.
The work in the cafeterie was spasmodic. We were never idle, but the real work only
came in bursts of two hours at a time — we called each burst ‘UN COUP DE FEU’. The
first COUP DE FEU came at eight, when the guests upstairs began to wake up and
demand breakfast. At eight a sudden banging and yelling would break out all through the
basement; bells rang on all sides, blue-aproned men rushed through the passages, our
service lifts came down with a simultaneous crash, and the waiters on all five floors
began shouting Italian oaths down the shafts. I don’t remember all our duties, but they
included making tea, coffee and chocolate, fetching meals from the kitchen, wines from
the cellar and fruit and so forth from the dining-room, slicing bread, making toast, rolling
pats of butter, measuring jam, opening milk-cans, counting lumps of sugar, boiling eggs,
cooking porridge, pounding ice, grinding coffee — all this for from a hundred to two
hundred customers. The kitchen was thirty yards away, and the dining-room sixty or
seventy yards. Everything we sent up in the service lifts had to be covered by a voucher,
and the vouchers had to be carefully filed, and there was trouble if even a lump of sugar
was lost. Besides this, we had to supply the staff with bread and coffee, and fetch the
meals for the waiters upstairs. All in all, it was a complicated job.
I calculated that one had to walk and run about fifteen miles during the day, and yet the
strain of the work was more mental than physical. Nothing could be easier, on the face of
it, than this stupid scullion work, but it is astonishingly hard when one is in a hurry. One
has to leap to and fro between a multitude of jobs — it is like sorting a pack of cards
against the clock. You are, for example, making toast, when bang! down comes a service
lift with an order for tea, rolls and three different kinds of jam, and simultaneously bang!
down comes another demanding scrambled eggs, coffee and grapefruit; you run to the
kitchen for the eggs and to the dining-room for the fruit, going like lightning so as to be
back before your toast bums, and having to remember about the tea and coffee, besides
half a dozen other orders that are still pending; and at the same time some waiter is
following you and making trouble about a lost bottle of soda-water, and you are arguing
with him. It needs more brains than one might think. Mario said, no doubt truly, that it
took a year to make a reliable cafetier.
The time between eight and half past ten was a sort of delirium. Sometimes we were
going as though we had only five minutes to live; sometimes there were sudden lulls
when the orders stopped and everything seemed quiet for a moment. Then we swept up
the litter from the floor, threw down fresh sawdust, and swallowed gallipots of wine or
coffee or water — anything, so long as it was wet. Very often we used to break off chunks
of ice and suck them while we worked. The heat among the gas-fires was nauseating; we
swallowed quarts of drink during the day, and after a few hours even our aprons were
drenched with sweat. At times we were hopelessly behind with the work, and some of the
customers would have gone without their breakfast, but Mario always pulled us through.
He had worked fourteen years in the cafeterie, and he had the skill that never wastes a
second between jobs. The Magyar was very stupid and I was inexperienced, and Boris
was inclined to shirk, partly because of his lame leg, partly because he was ashamed of
working in the cafeterie after being a waiter; but Mario was wonderful. The way he
would stretch his great arms right across the cafeterie to fill a coffee-pot with one hand
and boil an egg with the other, at the same time watching toast and shouting directions to
the Magyar, and between whiles singing snatches from RIGOLETTO, was beyond all
praise. The PATRON knew his value, and he was paid a thousand francs a month, instead
of five hundred like the rest of us.
The breakfast pandemonium stopped at half past ten.
