Down and Out in Paris and London - George Orwell

of the Hôtel 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 songthe " Marseillaise, » or the

" Internationale, » or " Madelon," or " Les Fraises et les

Framboises. » 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 corner 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 corner 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 his 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, "Vine 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'Humanité

.

   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

arm 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.

                        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 civilised 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 every-

thing, 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?' 7

   "I turned to Yvonne. 'Stop that insufferable

bawling.' I said, 'I have thought of a way to get food.'

   " 'How?' said she.

   " 'It is simple,' I said. "Go to the Government