George Orwell

DOWN AND OUT IN PARIS AND LONDON
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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 charming! 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 (...)

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