George Orwell's 1984 -- Chapter 9
Nineteen
Eighty-Four is a rare work that grows more haunting as its
futuristic purgatory becomes more real. Published in 1949, the book
offers political satirist George Orwell's nightmare vision of a
totalitarian, bureaucratic world and one poor stiff's attempt to find
individuality. The brilliance of the novel is Orwell's prescience of
modern life--the ubiquity of television, the distortion of the
language--and his ability to construct such a thorough version of
hell. Required reading for students since it was published, it ranks
among the most terrifying novels ever written.
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 9
It was the middle
of the morning, and Winston had left the cubicle to go to the lavatory.
A
solitary figure was coming towards him from the other end of the long,
brightly-lit corridor. It was the girl with dark hair. Four days had gone past
since the evening when he had run into her outside the junk-shop. As she came
nearer he saw that her right arm was in a sling, not noticeable at a distance
because it was of the same colour as her overalls. Probably she had crushed her
hand while swinging round one of the big kaleidoscopes on which the plots of
novels were 'roughed in'. It was a common accident in the Fiction Department.
They
were perhaps four metres apart when the girl stumbled and fell almost flat on
her face. A sharp cry of pain was wrung out of her. She must have fallen right
on the injured arm. Winston stopped short. The girl had risen to her knees. Her
face had turned a milky yellow colour against which her mouth stood out redder
than ever. Her eyes were fixed on his, with an appealing expression that looked
more like fear than pain.
A
curious emotion stirred in Winston's heart. In front of him was an enemy who
was trying to kill him: in front of him, also, was a human creature, in pain
and perhaps with a broken bone. Already he had instinctively started forward to
help her. In the moment when he had seen her fall on the bandaged arm, it had
been as though he felt the pain in his own body.
'You're
hurt?' he said.
'It's
nothing. My arm. It'll be all right in a second.'
She
spoke as though her heart were fluttering. She had certainly turned very pale.
'You
haven't broken anything?'
'No,
I'm all right. It hurt for a moment, that's all.'
She
held out her free hand to him, and he helped her up. She had regained some of
her colour, and appeared very much better.
'It's
nothing,' she repeated shortly. 'I only gave my wrist a bit of a bang. Thanks,
comrade!'
And
with that she walked on in the direction in which she had been going, as
briskly as though it had really been nothing. The whole incident could not have
taken as much as half a minute. Not to let one's feelings appear in one's face
was a habit that had acquired the status of an instinct, and in any case they
had been standing straight in front of a telescreen when the thing happened.
Nevertheless it had been very difficult not to betray a momentary surprise, for
in the two or three seconds while he was helping her up the girl had slipped
something into his hand. There was no question that she had done it intentionally.
It was something small and flat. As he passed through the lavatory door he
transferred it to his pocket and felt it with the tips of his fingers. It was a
scrap of paper folded into a square.
While
he stood at the urinal he managed, with a little more fingering, to get it
unfolded. Obviously there must be a message of some kind written on it. For a
moment he was tempted to take it into one of the water-closets and read it at
once. But that would be shocking folly, as he well knew. There was no place where
you could be more certain that the telescreens were watched continuously.
He
went back to his cubicle, sat down, threw the fragment of paper casually among
the other papers on the desk, put on his spectacles and hitched the speakwrite
towards him. 'five minutes,' he told himself, 'five minutes at the very least!'
His heart bumped in his breast with frightening loudness. Fortunately the piece
of work he was engaged on was mere routine, the rectification of a long list of
figures, not needing close attention.
Whatever
was written on the paper, it must have some kind of political meaning. So far
as he could see there were two possibilities. One, much the more likely, was
that the girl was an agent of the Thought Police, just as he had feared. He did
not know why the Thought Police should choose to deliver their messages in such
a fashion, but perhaps they had their reasons. The thing that was written on
the paper might be a threat, a summons, an order to commit suicide, a trap of
some description. But there was another, wilder possibility that kept raising
its head, though he tried vainly to suppress it. This was, that the message did
not come from the Thought Police at all, but from some kind of underground
organization. Perhaps the Brotherhood existed after all! Perhaps the girl was
part of it! No doubt the idea was absurd, but it had sprung into his mind in
the very instant of feeling the scrap of paper in his hand. It was not till a
couple of minutes later that the other, more probable explanation had occurred
to him. And even now, though his intellect told him that the message probably
meant death — still, that was not what he believed, and the unreasonable hope
persisted, and his heart banged, and it was with difficulty that he kept his
voice from trembling as he murmured his figures into the speakwrite.
He
rolled up the completed bundle of work and slid it into the pneumatic tube.
Eight minutes had gone by. He re-adjusted his spectacles on his nose, sighed,
and drew the next batch of work towards him, with the scrap of paper on top of
it. He flattened it out. On it was written, in a large unformed handwriting:
I
love you.
For
several seconds he was too stunned even to throw the incriminating thing into
the memory hole. When he did so, although he knew very well the danger of
showing too much interest, he could not resist reading it once again, just to
make sure that the words were really there.
For
the rest of the morning it was very difficult to work. What was even worse than
having to focus his mind on a series of niggling jobs was the need to conceal
his agitation from the telescreen. He felt as though a fire were burning in his
belly. Lunch in the hot, crowded, noise-filled canteen was torment. He had
hoped to be alone for a little while during the lunch hour, but as bad luck
would have it the imbecile Parsons flopped down beside him, the tang of his
sweat almost defeating the tinny smell of stew, and kept up a stream of talk
about the preparations for Hate Week. He was particularly enthusiastic about a
papier-mache; model of Big Brother's head, two metres wide, which was being
made for the occasion by his daughter's troop of Spies. The irritating thing
was that in the racket of voices Winston could hardly hear what Parsons was
saying, and was constantly having to ask for some fatuous remark to be
repeated. Just once he caught a glimpse of the girl, at a table with two other
girls at the far end of the room. She appeared not to have seen him, and he did
not look in that direction again.
The
afternoon was more bearable. Immediately after lunch there arrived a delicate,
difficult piece of work which would take several hours and necessitated putting
everything else aside. It consisted in falsifying a series of production
reports of two years ago, in such a way as to cast discredit on a prominent
member of the Inner Party, who was now under a cloud. This was the kind of
thing that Winston was good at, and for more than two hours he succeeded in
shutting the girl out of his mind altogether. Then the memory of her face came
back, and with it a raging, intolerable desire to be alone. Until he could be
alone it was impossible to think this new development out. Tonight was one of
his nights at the Community Centre. He wolfed another tasteless meal in the
canteen, hurried off to the Centre, took part in the solemn foolery of a
'discussion group', played two games of table tennis, swallowed several glasses
of gin, and sat for half an hour through a lecture entitled 'Ingsoc in relation
to chess'. His soul writhed with boredom, but for once he had had no impulse to
shirk his evening at the Centre. At the sight of the words I love you the
desire to stay alive had welled up in him, and the taking of minor risks
suddenly seemed stupid. It was not till twenty-three hours, when he was home
and in bed — in the darkness, where you were safe even from the telescreen so
long as you kept silent — that he was able to think continuously.
It
was a physical problem that had to be solved: how to get in touch with the girl
and arrange a meeting. He did not consider any longer the possibility that she
might be laying some kind of trap for him. He knew that it was not so, because
of her unmistakable agitation when she handed him the note. Obviously she had
been frightened out of her wits, as well she might be. Nor did the idea of
refusing her advances even cross his mind. Only five nights ago he had
contemplated smashing her skull in with a cobblestone, but that was of no
importance. He thought of her naked, youthful body, as he had seen it in his
dream. He had imagined her a fool like all the rest of them, her head stuffed
with lies and hatred, her belly full of ice. A kind of fever seized him at the
thought that he might lose her, the white youthful body might slip away from
him! What he feared more than anything else was that she would simply change
her mind if he did not get in touch with her quickly. But the physical
difficulty of meeting was enormous. It was like trying to make a move at chess
when you were already mated. Whichever way you turned, the telescreen faced
you. Actually, all the possible ways of communicating with her had occurred to
him within five minutes of reading the note; but now, with time to think, he
went over them one by one, as though laying out a row of instruments on a
table.
Obviously
the kind of encounter that had happened this morning could not be repeated. If
she had worked in the Records Department it might have been comparatively
simple, but he had only a very dim idea whereabouts in the building the Fiction
Department lay, and he had no pretext for going there. If he had known where
she lived, and at what time she left work, he could have contrived to meet her
somewhere on her way home; but to try to follow her home was not safe, because
it would mean loitering about outside the Ministry, which was bound to be
noticed. As for sending a letter through the mails, it was out of the question.
By a routine that was not even secret, all letters were opened in transit.
Actually, few people ever wrote letters. For the messages that it was
occasionally necessary to send, there were printed postcards with long lists of
phrases, and you struck out the ones that were inapplicable. In any case he did
not know the girl's name, let alone her address. Finally he decided that the
safest place was the canteen. If he could get her at a table by herself,
somewhere in the middle of the room, not too near the telescreens, and with a
sufficient buzz of conversation all round — if these conditions endured for,
say, thirty seconds, it might be possible to exchange a few words.
For
a week after this, life was like a restless dream. On the next day she did not
appear in the canteen until he was leaving it, the whistle having already
blown. Presumably she had been changed on to a later shift. They passed each
other without a glance. On the day after that she was in the canteen at the
usual time, but with three other girls and immediately under a telescreen. Then
for three dreadful days she did not appear at all. His whole mind and body
seemed to be afflicted with an unbearable sensitivity, a sort of transparency,
which made every movement, every sound, every contact, every word that he had
to speak or listen to, an agony. Even in sleep he could not altogether escape
from her image. He did not touch the diary during those days. If there was any
relief, it was in his work, in which he could sometimes forget himself for ten
minutes at a stretch. He had absolutely no clue as to what had happened to her.
There was no enquiry he could make. She might have been vaporized, she might
have committed suicide, she might have been transferred to the other end of
Oceania: worst and likeliest of all, she might simply have changed her mind and
decided to avoid him.
The
next day she reappeared. Her arm was out of the sling and she had a band of
sticking-plaster round her wrist. The relief of seeing her was so great that he
could not resist staring directly at her for several seconds. On the following
day he very nearly succeeded in speaking to her. When he came into the canteen
she was sitting at a table well out from the wall, and was quite alone. It was
early, and the place was not very full. The queue edged forward till Winston
was almost at the counter, then was held up for two minutes because someone in
front was complaining that he had not received his tablet of saccharine. But
the girl was still alone when Winston secured his tray and began to make for
her table. He walked casually towards her, his eyes searching for a place at
some table beyond her. She was perhaps three metres away from him. Another two
seconds would do it. Then a voice behind him called, 'Smith!' He pretended not
to hear. 'Smith!' repeated the voice, more loudly. It was no use. He turned
round. A blond-headed, silly-faced young man named Wilsher, whom he barely
knew, was inviting him with a smile to a vacant place at his table. It was not
safe to refuse. After having been recognized, he could not go and sit at a
table with an unattended girl. It was too noticeable. He sat down with a
friendly smile. The silly blond face beamed into his. Winston had a
hallucination of himself smashing a pick-axe right into the middle of it. The
girl's table filled up a few minutes later.
But
she must have seen him coming towards her, and perhaps she would take the hint.
Next day he took care to arrive early. Surely enough, she was at a table in
about the same place, and again alone. The person immediately ahead of him in
the queue was a small, swiftly-moving, beetle-like man with a flat face and
tiny, suspicious eyes. As Winston turned away from the counter with his tray,
he saw that the little man was making straight for the girl's table. His hopes sank
again. There was a vacant place at a table further away, but something in the
little man's appearance suggested that he would be sufficiently attentive to
his own comfort to choose the emptiest table. With ice at his heart Winston
followed. It was no use unless he could get the girl alone. At this moment
there was a tremendous crash. The little man was sprawling on all fours, his
tray had gone flying, two streams of soup and coffee were flowing across the
floor. He started to his feet with a malignant glance at Winston, whom he
evidently suspected of having tripped him up. But it was all right. Five
seconds later, with a thundering heart, Winston was sitting at the girl's
table.
He
did not look at her. He unpacked his tray and promptly began eating. It was
all-important to speak at once, before anyone else came, but now a terrible
fear had taken possession of him. A week had gone by since she had first
approached him. She would have changed her mind, she must have changed her
mind! It was impossible that this affair should end successfully; such things
did not happen in real life. He might have flinched altogether from speaking if
at this moment he had not seen Ampleforth, the hairy-eared poet, wandering
limply round the room with a tray, looking for a place to sit down. In his
vague way Ampleforth was attached to Winston, and would certainly sit down at
his table if he caught sight of him. There was perhaps a minute in which to
act. Both Winston and the girl were eating steadily. The stuff they were eating
was a thin stew, actually a soup, of haricot beans. In a low murmur Winston
began speaking. Neither of them looked up; steadily they spooned the watery
stuff into their mouths, and between spoonfuls exchanged the few necessary
words in low expressionless voices.
'What
time do you leave work?'
'Eighteen-thirty.'
'Where
can we meet?'
'Victory
Square, near the monument.
'It's
full of telescreens.'
'It
doesn't matter if there's a crowd.'
'Any
signal?'
'No.
Don't come up to me until you see me among a lot of people. And don't look at
me. Just keep somewhere near me.'
'What
time?'
'Nineteen
hours.'
'All
right.'
Ampleforth
failed to see Winston and sat down at another table. They did not speak again,
and, so far as it was possible for two people sitting on opposite sides of the
same table, they did not look at one another. The girl finished her lunch
quickly and made off, while Winston stayed to smoke a cigarette.
Winston
was in Victory Square before the appointed time. He wandered round the base of
the enormous fluted column, at the top of which Big Brother's statue gazed
southward towards the skies where he had vanquished the Eurasian aeroplanes
(the Eastasian aeroplanes, it had been, a few years ago) in the Battle of
Airstrip One. In the street in front of it there was a statue of a man on
horseback which was supposed to represent Oliver Cromwell. At five minutes past
the hour the girl had still not appeared. Again the terrible fear seized upon
Winston. She was not coming, she had changed her mind! He walked slowly up to
the north side of the square and got a sort of pale-coloured pleasure from
identifying St Martin's Church, whose bells, when it had bells, had chimed 'You
owe me three farthings.' Then he saw the girl standing at the base of the
monument, reading or pretending to read a poster which ran spirally up the
column. It was not safe to go near her until some more people had accumulated.
There were telescreens all round the pediment. But at this moment there was a
din of shouting and a zoom of heavy vehicles from somewhere to the left.
Suddenly everyone seemed to be running across the square. The girl nipped
nimbly round the lions at the base of the monument and joined in the rush.
Winston followed. As he ran, he gathered from some shouted remarks that a convoy
of Eurasian prisoners was passing.
Already
a dense mass of people was blocking the south side of the square. Winston, at
normal times the kind of person who gravitates to the outer edge of any kind of
scrimmage, shoved, butted, squirmed his way forward into the heart of the
crowd. Soon he was within arm's length of the girl, but the way was blocked by
an enormous prole and an almost equally enormous woman, presumably his wife,
who seemed to form an impenetrable wall of flesh. Winston wriggled himself
sideways, and with a violent lunge managed to drive his shoulder between them.
For a moment it felt as though his entrails were being ground to pulp between
the two muscular hips, then he had broken through, sweating a little. He was
next to the girl. They were shoulder to shoulder, both staring fixedly in front
of them.
A
long line of trucks, with wooden-faced guards armed with sub-machine guns
standing upright in each corner, was passing slowly down the street. In the
trucks little yellow men in shabby greenish uniforms were squatting, jammed
close together. Their sad, Mongolian faces gazed out over the sides of the
trucks utterly incurious. Occasionally when a truck jolted there was a
clank-clank of metal: all the prisoners were wearing leg-irons. Truck-load
after truck-load of the sad faces passed. Winston knew they were there but he
saw them only intermittently. The girl's shoulder, and her arm right down to
the elbow, were pressed against his. Her cheek was almost near enough for him
to feel its warmth. She had immediately taken charge of the situation, just as
she had done in the canteen. She began speaking in the same expressionless
voice as before, with lips barely moving, a mere murmur easily drowned by the
din of voices and the rumbling of the trucks.
'Can
you hear me?'
'Yes.'
'Can
you get Sunday afternoon off?'
'Yes.'
'Then
listen carefully. You'll have to remember this. Go to Paddington Station-'
With
a sort of military precision that astonished him, she outlined the route that
he was to follow. A half-hour railway journey; turn left outside the station;
two kilometres along the road: a gate with the top bar missing; a path across a
field; a grass-grown lane; a track between bushes; a dead tree with moss on it.
It was as though she had a map inside her head. 'Can you remember all that?' she murmured finally.
'Yes.'
'You
turn left, then right, then left again. And the gate's got no top bar.'
'Yes.
What time?'
'About
fifteen. You may have to wait. I'll get there by another way. Are you sure you
remember everything?'
'Yes.'
'Then
get away from me as quick as you can.'
She
need not have told him that. But for the moment they could not extricate
themselves from the crowd. The trucks were still filing post, the people still
insatiably gaping. At the start there had been a few boos and hisses, but it
came only from the Party members among the crowd, and had soon stopped. The
prevailing emotion was simply curiosity. Foreigners, whether from Eurasia or
from Eastasia, were a kind of strange animal. One literally never saw them
except in the guise of prisoners, and even as prisoners one never got more than
a momentary glimpse of them. Nor did one know what became of them, apart from
the few who were hanged as war-criminals: te others simply vanished,
presumably into forced-labour camps. The round Mogol faces had given way to
faces of a more European type, dirty, bearded and exhausted. From over scrubby
cheekbones eyes looked into Winston's, sometimes with strange intensity, and
flashed away again. The convoy was drawing to an end. In the last truck he
could see an aged man, his face a mass of grizzled hair, standing upright with
wrists crossed in front of him, as though he were used to having them bound
together. It was almost time for Winston and the girl to part. But at the last
moment, while the crowd still hemmed them in, her hand felt for his and gave it
a fleeting squeeze.
It
could not have been ten seconds, and yet it seemed a long time that their hands
were clasped together. He had time to learn every detail of her hand. He
explored the long fingers, the shapely nails, the work-hardened palm with its
row of callouses, the smooth flesh under the wrist. Merely from feeling it he
would have known it by sight. In the same instant it occurred to him that he
did not know what colour the girl's eyes were. They were probably brown, but
people with dark hair sometimes had blue eyes. To turn his head and look at her
would have been inconceivable folly. With hands locked together, invisible
among the press of bodies, they stared steadily in front of them, and instead
of the eyes of the girl, the eyes of the aged prisoner gazed mournfully at
Winston out of nests of hair.
No comments:
Post a Comment