Words failing him, he turned to the door; and as he opened it he farted loudly, a favourite Italian insult.

Then he entered the dining-room and sailed across it dish in hand, graceful as a swan. Ten seconds later he was bowing reverently to a customer. And you could not help thinking, as you saw him bow and smile, with that benign smile of the trained waiter, that the customer was put to shame by having such an aristocrat to serve him.

This washing up was a thoroughly odious job–not hard, but boring and silly beyond words. It is dreadful to think that some people spend whole decades at such occupations. The woman whom I replaced was quite sixty years old, and she stood at the sink thirteen hours a day, six days a week, the year round; she was, in addition, horribly bullied by the waiters. She gave out that she had once been an actress–actually, I imagine, a prostitute; most prostitutes end as charwomen. It was strange to see that in spite of her age and her life she still wore a bright blonde wig, and darkened her eyes and painted her face like a girl of twenty. So apparently even a seventy-eight-hour week can leave one with some vitality.

Chapter XIII

XIII

ON MY THIRD DAY at the hotel the chef du personnel, who had generally spoken to me in quite a pleasant tone, called me up and said sharply:

‘Here, you, shave that moustache off at once! Nom de Dieu, who ever heard of a plongeur with a moustache?’

I began to protest, but he cut me short. ‘A plongeur with a moustache–nonsense! Take care I don’t see you with it tomorrow.’

On the way home I asked Boris what this meant. He shrugged his shoulders. ‘You must do what he says, mon ami. No one in a hotel wears a moustache, except the cooks. I should have thought you would have noticed it. Reason? There is no reason. It is the custom.’

I saw that it was an etiquette, like not wearing a white tie with a dinner-jacket, and shaved off my moustache. Afterwards I found out the explanation of the custom, which is this: waiters in good hotels do not wear moustaches, and to show their superiority they decree that plongeurs shall not wear them either; and the cooks wear their moustaches to show their contempt for the waiters.