Page 135 - down-and-out-in-paris-and-london

hours’ one would keep up a drizzle of useless nagging, ris-
ing into storms of abuse every few minutes. ‘Get me down
that saucepan, idiot!’ the cook would cry (she was not tall
enough to reach the shelves where the saucepans were kept).
‘Get it down yourself, you old whore,’ I would answer. Such
remarks seemed to be generated spontaneously from the air
of the kitchen.
We quarrelled over things of inconceivable pettiness.
The dustbin, for instance, was an unending source of quar-
rels—whether it should be put where I wanted it, which was
in the cook’s way, or where she wanted it, which was be-
tween me and the sink. Once she nagged and nagged until
at last, in pure spite, I lifted the dustbin up and put it out in
the middle of the floor, where she was bound to trip over it.
‘Now, you cow,’ I said, ‘move it yourself.’
Poor old woman, it was too heavy for her to lift, and she
sat down, put her head on the table and burst out crying.
And I jeered at her. This is the kind of effect that fatigue has
upon one’s manners.
After a few days the cook had ceased talking about Tolstoy
and her artistic nature, and she and I were not on speaking
terms, except for the purposes of work, and Boris and Jules
were not on speaking terms, and neither of them was on
speaking terms with the cook. Even Boris and I were bare-
ly on speaking terms. We had agreed beforehand that the
ENGUEULADES of working hours did not count between
times; but we had called each other things too bad to be
forgotten—and besides, there were no between times. Jules
grew lazier and lazier, and he stole food constantly—from

1 Down and Out in Paris and London