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 helping1 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 stuffiness2 of these labyrinthine3 cellars. Apart from this the hotel, which was large and well organized, was considered a comfortable one.
Our cafeterie was a murky4 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 110 degrees Fahrenheit5 — 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 hymn6 about Greenland’s icy mountains and India’s coral strand7. 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, uncouth8 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 incessantly9.
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 COUP10 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 shafts12. 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 forth13 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 voucher14, and the vouchers15 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 simultaneously16 bang! down comes another demanding scrambled17 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 bums18, and having to remember about the tea and coffee, besides half a dozen other orders that are still pending19; 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 delirium20. Sometimes we were going as though we had only five minutes to live; sometimes there were sudden lulls21 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 chunks22 of ice and suck them while we worked. The heat among the gas-fires was nauseating23; we swallowed quarts of drink during the day, and after a few hours even our aprons24 were drenched25 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 lame26 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 pandemonium27 stopped at half past ten. Then we scrubbed the cafeterie tables, swept the floor and polished the brasswork, and, on good mornings, went one at a time to the lavatory28 for a smoke. This was our slack time — only relatively29 slack, however, for we had only ten minutes for lunch, and we never got through it uninterrupted. The customers’ luncheon30 hour, between twelve and two, was another period of turmoil31 like the breakfast hour. Most of our work was fetching meals from the kitchen, which meant constant ENGUEULADES from the cooks. By this time the cooks had sweated in front of their furnaces for four or five hours, and their tempers were all warmed up.
At two we were suddenly free men. We threw off our aprons and put on our coats, hurried out of doors, and, when we had money, dived into the nearest BISTRO. It was strange, coming up into the street from those firelit cellars. The air seemed blindingly clear and cold, like arctic summer; and how sweet the petrol did smell, after the stenches of sweat and food! Sometimes we met some of our cooks and waiters in the BISTROS, and they were friendly and stood us drinks. Indoors we were their slaves, but it is an etiquette32 in hotel life that between hours everyone is equal, and the ENGUEULADES do not count.
At a quarter to five we went back to the hotel. Till half-past six there were no orders, and we used this time to polish silver, clean out the coffee-urns, and do other odd jobs. Then the grand turmoil of the day started — the dinner hour. I wish I could be Zola for a little while, just to describe that dinner hour. The essence of the situation was that a hundred or two hundred people were demanding individually different meals of five or six courses, and that fifty or sixty people had to cook and serve them and clean up the mess afterwards; anyone with experience of catering33 will know what that means. And at this time when the work was doubled, the whole staff was tired out, and a number of them were drunk. I could write pages about the scene without giving a true idea of it. The chargings to and fro in the narrow passages, the collisions, the yells, the struggling with crates34 and trays and blocks of ice, the heat, the darkness, the furious festering quarrels which there was no time to fight out — they pass description. Anyone coming into the basement for the first time would have thought himself in a den11 of maniacs35. It was only later, when I understood the working of a hotel, that I saw order in all this chaos36.
At half past eight the work stopped very suddenly. We were not free till nine, but we used to throw ourselves full length on the floor, and lie there resting our legs, too lazy even to go to the ice cupboard for a drink. Sometimes the CHEF DU PERSONNEL would come in with bottles of beer, for the hotel stood us an extra beer when we had had a hard day. The food we were given was no more than eatable, but the PATRON was not mean about drink; he allowed us two litres of wine a day each, knowing that if a PLONGEUR is not given two litres he will steal three. We had the heeltaps of bottles as well, so that we often drank too much — a good thing, for one seemed to work faster when partially37 drunk.
Four days of the week passed like this; of the other two working days, one was better and one worse. After a week of this life I felt in need of a holiday. It was Saturday night, so the people in our BISTRO were busy getting drunk, and with a free day ahead of me I was ready to join them. We all went to bed, drunk, at two in the morning, meaning to sleep till noon. At half past five I was suddenly awakened38. A night-watchman, sent from the hotel, was standing39 at my bedside. He stripped the clothes back and shook me roughly.
‘Get up!’ he said. ‘TU T’ES BIEN SAOULE LA GNEULE, EH? Well, never mind that, the hotel’s a man short. You’ve got to work today.’
‘Why should I work?’ I protested. ‘This is my day off.’
‘Day off, nothing! The work’s got to be done. Get up!’
I got up and went out, feeling as though my back were broken and my skull40 filled with hot cinders41. I did not think that I could possibly do a day’s work. And yet, after only an hour in the basement, I found that I was perfectly42 well. It seemed that in the heat of those cellars, as in a turkish bath, one could sweat out almost any quantity of drink. PLONGEURS know this, and count on it. The power of swallowing quarts of wine, and then sweating it out before it can do much damage, is one of the compensations of their life.
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1
helping
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| n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的 | |
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stuffiness
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| n.不通风，闷热；不通气 | |
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labyrinthine
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| adj.如迷宫的；复杂的 | |
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murky
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| adj.黑暗的，朦胧的；adv.阴暗地，混浊地；n.阴暗；昏暗 | |
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Fahrenheit
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| n./adj.华氏温度；华氏温度计(的) | |
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hymn
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| n.赞美诗，圣歌，颂歌 | |
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strand
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| vt.使（船）搁浅，使（某人）困于（某地） | |
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uncouth
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| adj.无教养的，粗鲁的 | |
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incessantly
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| ad.不停地 | |
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coup
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| n.政变；突然而成功的行动 | |
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den
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| n.兽穴；秘密地方；安静的小房间，私室 | |
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shafts
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| n.轴( shaft的名词复数 )；（箭、高尔夫球棒等的）杆；通风井；一阵（疼痛、害怕等） | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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voucher
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| n.收据；传票；凭单，凭证 | |
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vouchers
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| n.凭证( voucher的名词复数 )；证人；证件；收据 | |
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simultaneously
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| adv.同时发生地，同时进行地 | |
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scrambled
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| v.快速爬行( scramble的过去式和过去分词 )；攀登；争夺；（军事飞机）紧急起飞 | |
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bums
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| n. 游荡者，流浪汉，懒鬼，闹饮，屁股 adj. 没有价值的，不灵光的，不合理的 vt. 令人失望，乞讨 vi. 混日子，以乞讨为生 | |
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pending
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| prep.直到，等待…期间；adj.待定的；迫近的 | |
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delirium
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| n. 神智昏迷,说胡话;极度兴奋 | |
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lulls
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| n.间歇期（lull的复数形式）vt.使镇静，使安静（lull的第三人称单数形式） | |
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chunks
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| 厚厚的一块( chunk的名词复数 )； （某物）相当大的数量或部分 | |
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nauseating
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| adj.令人恶心的，使人厌恶的v.使恶心，作呕( nauseate的现在分词 ) | |
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aprons
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| 围裙( apron的名词复数 )； 停机坪，台口（舞台幕前的部份） | |
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drenched
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| adj.湿透的；充满的v.使湿透( drench的过去式和过去分词 )；在某人（某物）上大量使用（某液体） | |
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lame
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| adj.跛的，(辩解、论据等)无说服力的 | |
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pandemonium
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| n.喧嚣，大混乱 | |
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lavatory
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| n.盥洗室，厕所 | |
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relatively
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| adv.比较...地，相对地 | |
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luncheon
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| n.午宴，午餐，便宴 | |
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turmoil
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| n.骚乱，混乱，动乱 | |
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etiquette
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| n.礼仪，礼节；规矩 | |
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catering
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| n. 给养 | |
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crates
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| n. 板条箱, 篓子, 旧汽车 vt. 装进纸条箱 | |
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maniacs
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| n.疯子（maniac的复数形式） | |
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chaos
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| n.混乱，无秩序 | |
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partially
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| adv.部分地，从某些方面讲 | |
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awakened
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| v.（使）醒( awaken的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）觉醒；弄醒；（使）意识到 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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skull
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| n.头骨；颅骨 | |
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cinders
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| n.煤渣( cinder的名词复数 )；炭渣；煤渣路；煤渣跑道 | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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