Lesson Ten What is it like to be poor

Lesson Ten What is it like to be poor?It is altogether curious,your first contact with poverty.You have thought so much about poverty -- it is the thing you have feared all your life,the thing you knew would happen to you sooner or later;and it is all so utterly and prosaically different.You thought it would be quite simple;it is extraordinarily complicated.You thought it would be terrible;it is merely squalid and boring.It is the peculiar lowness of poverty that you discover first:the shifts that it puts you to,the complicated meanness,the crust-wiping.总的来说，初尝贫穷的滋味很怪异。

关于贫穷你已经想过很多，终其一生你都在害怕它，知道它迟早会发生在你身上；它和你想的真是完全不一样。

你以为它很简单，其实它极端复杂。

你以为它很糟糕，其实它只是可怜又无聊。

你首先发现的，就是贫穷所致的特别低人一等的感觉，它带给你的变化，以及一言难尽的吝啬和锱铢必较。

You discover,for instance,the secrecy attaching to poverty.At a sudden stroke you have been reduced to an income of six francs a day.But of course you dare not admit it -- you have got to pretend that you are living quite as usual.Form the start it tangles you in a net of lies,and even with the lies you can hardly manage it.You stop sending clothes to the laundry,and the laundress catches you in the street and asks you why;you mumble something,and she,thinking you are sending the clothes elsewhere,is your enemy for life.The tobacconist keeps asking why you have cut down on your smoking.There are letters you want to answer,and cannot,because stamps are too expensive.And then there are your meals -- meals are the worst difficulty of all.Every day at meal-times you go out,ostensibly to a restaurant,and loaf an hour in the Luxembourg Gardens,watching the pigeons.Afterwards you smuggle your food home in your pockets.Your food is bread and margarine,or bread and wine,and even the nature of the food is governed by lies.You have to buy rye bread instead of household bread,because the rye loaves,though dearer,are round and can be smuggled in your pockets.This wastes you a franc a day.Sometimes,to keep up appearances,you have to spend sixty centimes on a drink,and go correspondingly short of food.Your linen gets filthy,and you run out of soap and razorblades.Your hair wants cutting,and you try to cut it yourself,with such fearful results that you have to go to the barber after all,and spend the equivalent of a day’s food.All day you are telling lies,and expensive lies.比如，你发现了贫穷所属的秘密。

在突如其来的打击之下，你沦落到每天只有六法郎收入的地步。

当然你不敢承认，而且必须装得和以前活得一样好。

从一开始你就陷入了谎言的网中，甚至难以圆谎。

你不再把衣服送到洗衣店去，洗衣妇在街上截住你逼问原因；你含糊应付，她就认为你把衣服送到别处去洗，永远跟你结了仇。

卖烟草的一直问你为什么减少了吸烟量。

有些信需要回复，但是你由于邮票太贵而没法回。

还有吃饭，这是最大的困难。

每天到了饭点你就出去，表面上是去餐馆，其实是在卢森堡公园逛上一个小时看鸽子。

之后你偷偷把食物装在口袋里带回去。

你吃面包和人造黄油，或是面包和酒，甚至食物是什么也要说谎。

你必须买黑面包而不是家庭面包，因为它虽然贵点，但却是圆形的，可以藏在衣袋里。

这每天浪费掉你一法郎。

有时候为了装装门面，你还得花六十生丁喝酒，因而导致没饭可吃。

你的衣服床单脏了，肥皂和剃须刀也用光了。

你需要理发，试着自己动手结果不堪入目，最后不得不求助于理发师，然后花掉一天的饭钱。

从早到晚你都在说谎，代价昂贵的谎言。

You discover the extreme precariousness of your six francs a day. Mean disasters happen and rob you of food. You have spent your last eighty centimes on half a litre of milk, and are boiling it over the spirit lamp. While it boils a bug runs down your forearm; you give the bug a flick with your nail, and it falls, plop! straight into the milk. There is nothing for it but to throw the milk away and go foodless.你发现每天的六法郎根本没有保障。

一些意想不到的灾难就会掠夺你的一日三餐。

你花最后的八十生丁买了半升牛奶，然后在酒精灯上把它煮沸。

煮牛奶时，一只臭虫跳到你的前臂上；你用指甲弹开臭虫，扑通一声，它掉进了牛奶。

你无可奈何，只好把牛奶倒了，这样又得继续饿着肚子。

You go to the baker’s to buy a pound of bread, and you wait while the girl cuts a poundfor another customer. She is clumsy, and cuts more than a pound. “Pardon, monsieur,”she says. “I suppose you don’t mind paying two sous extra?” Bread is a franc a pound, and you have exactly a franc. When you think that you too might be asked to pay two sous extra, and would have to confess that you could not, you bolt in panic. It is hours before you dare venture into a baker’s shop again.你去面包房买了一磅面包，面包房里的姑娘为另外一个顾客切面包时，你在一旁等着。

她笨手笨脚，切了一磅多。

“对不起，先生，”她说，“我相信你不会介意多付两苏吧。

”一法郎一磅面包，你恰好只有一法郎。

你觉得她有可能会让你额外付两苏，你不得不承认你付不起，所以只能落荒而逃。

你作了很长时间的思想斗争才敢再次冒险走进面包房。

You go to the greengrocer’s to spend a franc on a kilogram of potatoes. But one of the pieces that make up the franc is a Belgium piece, and the shopman refuses it. You slink out of the shop, and can never go there again.你来到蔬菜店，想花一法郎买一公斤土豆。

但凑够一法郎的硬币中有一枚是比利时硬币，店主拒收。

你灰溜溜地离开蔬菜店，再也不敢光顾那里。

You have strayed into a respectable quarter, and you see a prosperous friend coming. To avoid him you dodge into the nearest café. Once in the caféyou must buy something, so you spend your last fifty centimes on a glass of black coffee with a dead fly in it. One could multiply these disasters by the hundred. They are part of the process of being hard up.你游荡到一个体面的街区，看到一个有钱的朋友走过来，为避免与他碰面，你躲进了最近的一家咖啡厅。