‘A Man With Brains Can’t Starve’
Well, now that you know I’ve been working, there’s no point in keeping my vacation a secret. Tales of joblessness in LA to resume in 2010. In the mean time, here is an excerpt from Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell. This passage, from Chapters five and six, is Orwell’s account of looking for work with a slovenly Russian friend in 1930s Paris, harder up than I have ever been. Enjoy! It will make for far better reading than anything I’ve written anyhow.
***
It was midday before Boris decided to get up. All the clothes he now
had left were one suit, with one shirt, collar and tie, a pair of shoes
almost worn out, and a pair of socks all holes. He had also an overcoat
which was to be pawned in the last extremity. He had a suitcase, a wretched
twenty-franc cardboard thing, but very important, because the patron of the
hotel believed that it was full of clothes—without that, he would
probably have turned Boris out of doors. What it actually contained were
the medals and photographs, various odds and ends, and huge bundles of
love-letters. In spite of all this Boris managed to keep a fairly smart
appearance. He shaved without soap and with a razor-blade two months old,
tied his tie so that the holes did not show, and carefully stuffed the
soles of his shoes with newspaper. Finally, when he was dressed, he
produced an ink-bottle and inked the skin of his ankles where it showed
through his socks. You would never have thought, when it was finished, that
he had recently been sleeping under the Seine bridges.
We went to a small cafe off the rue de Rivoli, a well-known rendezvous
of hotel managers and employees. At the back was a dark, cave-like room
where all kinds of hotel workers were sitting—smart young waiters,
others not so smart and clearly hungry, fat pink cooks, greasy
dish-washers, battered old scrubbing-women. Everyone had an untouched glass
of black coffee in front of him. The place was, in effect, an employment
bureau, and the money spent on drinks was the patron’s commission.
Sometimes a stout, important-looking man, obviously a restaurateur, would
come in and speak to the barman, and the barmanwould call to one of the
people at the back of the cafe. But he never called to Boris or me, and we
left after two hours, as the etiquette was that you could only stay two
hours for one drink. We learned afterwards, when it was too late, that the
dodge was to bribe the barman; if you could afford twenty francs he would
generally get you a job.
We went to the Hotel Scribe and waited an hour on the pavement, hoping
that the manager would come out, but he never did. Then we dragged
ourselves down to the rue du Commerce, only to find that the new
restaurant, which was being redecorated, was shut up and the patron away.
It was now night. We had walked fourteen kilometres over pavement, and we
were so tired that we had to waste one franc fifty on going home by Metro.
Walking was agony to Boris with his game leg, and his optimism wore thinner
and thinner as the day went on. When he got out of the Metro at the Place
d’Italie he was in despair. He began to say that it was no use looking for
work—there was nothing for it but to try crime.
‘Sooner rob than starve, mon ami. I have often planned it. A fat, rich
American—some dark corner down Montparnasse way—a cobblestone in a
stocking—bang! And then go through his pockets and bolt. It is feasible,
do you not think? I would not flinch—I have been a soldier, remember.’
He decided against the plan in the end, because we were both
foreigners and easily recognized.
When we had got back to my room we spent another one franc fifty on
bread and chocolate. Boris devoured his share, and at once cheered up like
magic; food seemed to act on his system as rapidly as a cocktail. He took
out a pencil and began making a list of the people who would probably give
us jobs. There were dozens of them, he said.
‘Tomorrow we shall find something, mon ami, I know it in my bones. The
luck always changes. Besides, we both have brains—a man with brains
can’t starve.
‘What things a man can do with brains! Brains will make money out of
anything. I had a friend once, a Pole, a real man of genius; and what do
you think he used to do? He would buy a gold ring and pawn it for fifteen
francs. Then—you know how carelessly the clerks fill up the tickets—
where the clerk had written “en or he would add “et diamants” and he would
change “fifteen francs” to “fifteen thousand”. Neat, eh? Then, you see, he
could borrow a thousand francs on the security of the ticket. That is what
I mean by brains…’
For the rest of the evening Boris was in a hopeful mood, talking of
the times we should have together when we were waiters together at Nice or
Biarritz, with smart rooms and enough money to set up mistresses. He was
too tired to walk the three kilometres back to his hotel, and slept the
night on the floor of my room, with his coat rolled round his shoes for a
pillow.
We again failed to find work the next day, and it was three weeks
before the luck changed. My two hundred francs saved me from trouble about
the rent, but everything else went as badly as possible. Day after day
Boris and I went up and down Paris, drifting at two miles an hour through
the crowds, bored and hungry, and finding nothing. One day, I remember, we
crossed the Seine eleven times. We loitered for hours outside service
doorways, and when the manager came out we would go up to him
ingratiatingly, cap in hand. We always got the same answer: they did not
want a lame man, nor a man without experience. Once we were very nearly
engaged. While we spoke to the manager Boris stood straight upright, not
supporting himself with his stick, and the .manager did not see that he was
lame. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘we want two men in the cellars. Perhaps you would
do. Come inside.’ Then Boris moved, the game was up. ‘Ah,’ said the
manager, ‘you limp. malheureusement—’
We enrolled our names at agencies and answered advertisements, but
walking everywhere made us slow, and we seemed to miss every job by half an
hour. Once we very nearly got a job swabbing out railway trucks, but at the
last moment they rejected us in favour of Frenchmen. Once we answered an
advertisement calling for hands at a circus. You had to shift benches and
clean up litter, and, during the performance, stand on two tubs and let a
lion jump through your legs. When we got to the place, an hour before the
time named, we found a queue of fifty men already waiting. There is some
attraction in lions, evidently.
Once an agency to which I had applied months earlier sent me a petit bleu, telling me of an Italian gentleman who wanted English lessons. The
petit bleu said ‘Come at once’ and promised twenty francs an hour. Boris
and I were in despair. Here was a splendid chance, and I could not take it,
for it was impossible to go to the agency with my coat out at the elbow.
Then it occurred to us that I could wear Boris’s coat—it did not match
my trousers, but the trousers were grey and might pass for flannel at a
short distance. The coat was so much too big for me that I had to wear it
unbuttoned and keep one hand in my pocket. I hurried out, and wasted
seventy-five centimes on a bus fare to get to the agency. When I got there
I found that the Italian had changed his mind and left Paris.
Once Boris suggested that I should go to Les Halles and try for a job
as a porter. I arrived at half-past four in the morning, when the work was
getting into its swing. Seeing a short, fat man in a bowler hat directing
some porters, I went up to him and asked for work. Before answering he
seized my right hand and felt the palm.
‘You are strong, eh?’ he said.
‘Very strong,’ I said untruly.
‘Bien. Let me see you lift that crate.’
It was a huge wicker basket full of potatoes. I took hold of it, and
found that, so far from lifting it, I could not even move it. The man in
the bowler hat watched me, then shrugged his shoulders and turned away. I
made off. When I had gone some distance I looked back and saw FOUR men
lifting the basket on to a cart. It weighed three hundredweight, possibly.
The man had seen that I was no use, and taken this way of getting rid of me.
…
All this was far worse for Boris than for me. The walking and sleeping
on the floor kept his leg and back in constant pain, and with his vast
Russian appetite he suffered torments of hunger, though he never seemed to
grow thinner. On the whole he was surprisingly gay, and he had vast
capacities for hope. He used to say seriously that he had a patron saint
who watched over him, and when things were very bad he would search the
gutter for money, saying that the saint often dropped a two-franc piece
there. One day we were waiting in the rue Royale; there was a Russian
restaurant near by, and we were going to ask for a job there. Suddenly,
Boris made up his mind to go into the Madeleine and bum a fifty-centime
candle to his patron saint. Then, coming out, he said that he would be on
the safe side, and solemnly put a match to a fifty-centime stamp, as a
sacrifice to the immortal gods. Perhaps the gods and the saints did not get
on together; at any rate, we missed the job.
