George Orwell's 1984 -- Chapter 10
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 10
Winston picked
his way up the lane through dappled light and shade, stepping out into pools of
gold wherever the boughs parted. Under the trees to the left of him the ground
was misty with bluebells. The air seemed to kiss one's skin. It was the second
of May. From somewhere deeper in the heart of the wood came the droning of ring
doves.
He
was a bit early. There had been no difficulties about the journey, and the girl
was so evidently experienced that he was less frightened than he would normally
have been. Presumably she could be trusted to find a safe place. In general you
could not assume that you were much safer in the country than in London. There
were no telescreens, of course, but there was always the danger of concealed
microphones by which your voice might be picked up and recognized; besides, it
was not easy to make a journey by yourself without attracting attention. For
distances of less than 100 kilometres it was not necessary to get your passport
endorsed, but sometimes there were patrols hanging about the railway stations,
who examined the papers of any Party member they found there and asked awkward
questions. However, no patrols had appeared, and on the walk from the station
he had made sure by cautious backward glances that he was not being followed.
The train was full of proles, in holiday mood because of the summery weather.
The wooden-seated carriage in which he travelled was filled to overflowing by a
single enormous family. ranging from a toothless great-grandmother to a
month-old baby, going out to spend an afternoon with 'in-laws' in the country,
and, as they freely explained to Winston, to get hold of a little blackmarket
butter.
The
lane widened, and in a minute he came to the footpath she had told him of, a
mere cattle-track which plunged between the bushes. He had no watch, but it
could not be fifteen yet. The bluebells were so thick underfoot that it was
impossible not to tread on them. He knelt down and began picking some partly to
pass the time away, but also from a vague idea that he would like to have a
bunch of flowers to offer to the girl when they met. He had got together a big
bunch and was smelling their faint sickly scent when a sound at his back froze
him, the unmistakable crackle of a foot on twigs. He went on picking bluebells.
It was the best thing to do. It might be the girl, or he might have been
followed after all. To look round was to show guilt. He picked another and
another. A hand fell lightly on his shoulder.
He
looked up. It was the girl. She shook her head, evidently as a warning that he
must keep silent, then parted the bushes and quickly led the way along the
narrow track into the wood. Obviously she had been that way before, for she
dodged the boggy bits as though by habit. Winston followed, still clasping his
bunch of flowers. His first feeling was relief, but as he watched the strong
slender body moving in front of him, with the scarlet sash that was just tight
enough to bring out the curve of her hips, the sense of his own inferiority was
heavy upon him. Even now it seemed quite likely that when she turned round and
looked at him she would draw back after all. The sweetness of the air and the
greenness of the leaves daunted him. Already on the walk from the station the
May sunshine had made him feel dirty and etiolated, a creature of indoors, with
the sooty dust of London in the pores of his skin. It occurred to him that till
now she had probably never seen him in broad daylight in the open. They came to
the fallen tree that she had spoken of. The girl hopped over and forced apart
the bushes, in which there did not seem to be an opening. When Winston followed
her, he found that they were in a natural clearing, a tiny grassy knoll
surrounded by tall saplings that shut it in completely. The girl stopped and
turned.
'Here
we are,' she said.
He
was facing her at several paces' distance. As yet he did not dare move nearer
to her.
'I
didn't want to say anything in the lane,' she went on, 'in case there's a mike
hidden there. I don't suppose there is, but there could be. There's always the
chance of one of those swine recognizing your voice. We're all right here.'
He
still had not the courage to approach her. 'We're all right here?' he repeated
stupidly.
'Yes.
Look at the trees.' They were small ashes, which at some time had been cut down
and had sprouted up again into a forest of poles, none of them thicker than
one's wrist. 'There's nothing big enough to hide a mike in. Besides, I've been
here before.'
They
were only making conversation. He had managed to move closer to her now. She
stood before him very upright, with a smile on her face that looked faintly
ironical, as though she were wondering why he was so slow to act. The bluebells
had cascaded on to the ground. They seemed to have fallen of their own accord.
He took her hand.
'Would
you believe,' he said, 'that till this moment I didn't know what colour your
eyes were?' They were brown, he noted, a rather light shade of brown, with dark
lashes. 'Now that you've seen what I'm really like, can you still bear to look
at me?'
'Yes,
easily.'
'I'm
thirty-nine years old. I've got a wife that I can't get rid of. I've got
varicose veins. I've got five false teeth.'
'I
couldn't care less,' said the girl.
The
next moment, it was hard to say by whose act, she was in his his arms. At the
beginning he had no feeling except sheer incredulity. The youthful body was
strained against his own, the mass of dark hair was against his face, and yes!
actually she had turned her face up and he was kissing the wide red mouth. She
had clasped her arms about his neck, she was calling him darling, precious one,
loved one. He had pulled her down on to the ground, she was utterly
unresisting, he could do what he liked with her. But the truth was that he had
no physical sensation, except that of mere contact. All he felt was incredulity
and pride. He was glad that this was happening, but he had no physical desire.
It was too soon, her youth and prettiness had frightened him, he was too much
used to living without women — he did not know the reason. The girl picked
herself up and pulled a bluebell out of her hair. She sat against him, putting
her arm round his waist.
'Never
mind, dear. There's no hurry. We've got the whole afternoon. Isn't this a
splendid hide-out? I found it when I got lost once on a community hike. If
anyone was coming you could hear them a hundred metres away.'
'What
is your name?' said Winston.
'Julia.
I know yours. It's Winston — Winston Smith.'
'How
did you find that out?'
'I
expect I'm better at finding things out than you are, dear. Tell me, what did
you think of me before that day I gave you the note?'
He
did not feel any temptation to tell lies to her. It was even a sort of
love-offering to start off by telling the worst.
'I
hated the sight of you,' he said. 'I wanted to rape you and then murder you
afterwards. Two weeks ago I thought seriously of smashing your head in with a
cobblestone. If you really want to know, I imagined that you had something to
do with the Thought Police.'
The
girl laughed delightedly, evidently taking this as a tribute to the excellence
of her disguise.
'Not
the Thought Police! You didn't honestly think that?'
'Well,
perhaps not exactly that. But from your general appearance — merely because
you're young and fresh and healthy, you understand — I thought that probably-'
'You
thought I was a good Party member. Pure in word and deed. Banners, processions,
slogans, games, community hikes all that stuff. And you thought that if I had a
quarter of a chance I'd denounce you as a thought-criminal and get you killed
off?'
'Yes,
something of that kind. A great many young girls are like that, you know.'
'It's
this bloody thing that does it,' she said, ripping off the scarlet sash of the
Junior Anti-Sex League and flinging it on to a bough. Then, as though touching
her waist had reminded her of something, she felt in the pocket of her overalls
and produced a small slab of chocolate. She broke it in half and gave one of
the pieces to Winston. Even before he had taken it he knew by the smell that it
was very unusual chocolate. It was dark and shiny, and was wrapped in silver
paper. Chocolate normally was dull-brown crumbly stuff that tasted, as nearly
as one could describe it, like the smoke of a rubbish fire. But at some time or
another he had tasted chocolate like the piece she had given him. The first
whiff of its scent had stirred up some memory which he could not pin down, but
which was powerful and troubling.
'Where
did you get this stuff?' he said.
'Black
market,' she said indifferently. 'Actually I am that sort of girl, to look at.
I'm good at games. I was a troop-leader in the Spies. I do voluntary work three
evenings a week for the Junior Anti-Sex League. Hours and hours I've spent
pasting their bloody rot all over London. I always carry one end of a banner in
the processions. I always Iook cheerful and I never shirk anything. Always yell
with the crowd, that's what I say. It's the only way to be safe.'
The
first fragment of chocolate had melted on Winston's tongue. The taste was
delightful. But there was still that memory moving round the edges of his
consciousness, something strongly felt but not reducible to definite shape,
like an object seen out of the corner of one's eye. He pushed it away from him,
aware only that it was the memory of some action which he would have liked to
undo but could not.
'You
are very young,' he said. 'You are ten or fifteen years younger than I am. What
could you see to attract you in a man like me?'
'It
was something in your face. I thought I'd take a chance. I'm good at spotting
people who don't belong. As soon as I saw you I knew you were against them.'
Them,
it appeared, meant the Party, and above all the Inner Party, about whom she
talked with an open jeering hatred which made Winston feel uneasy, although he
knew that they were safe here if they could be safe anywhere. A thing that
astonished him about her was the coarseness of her language. Party members were
supposed not to swear, and Winston himself very seldom did swear, aloud, at any
rate. Julia, however, seemed unable to mention the Party, and especially the
Inner Party, without using the kind of words that you saw chalked up in
dripping alley-ways. He did not dislike it. It was merely one symptom of her
revolt against the Party and all its ways, and somehow it seemed natural and
healthy, like the sneeze of a horse that smells bad hay. They had left the
clearing and were wandering again through the chequered shade, with their arms
round each other's waists whenever it was wide enough to walk two abreast. He
noticed how much softer her waist seemed to feel now that the sash was gone.
They did not speak above a whisper. Outside the clearing, Julia said, it was
better to go quietly. Presently they had reached the edge of the little wood.
She stopped him.
'Don't
go out into the open. There might be someone watching. We're all right if we
keep behind the boughs.'
They
were standing in the shade of hazel bushes. The sunlight, filtering through
innumerable leaves, was still hot on their faces. Winston looked out into the
field beyond, and underwent a curious, slow shock of recognition. He knew it by
sight. An old, closebitten pasture, with a footpath wandering across it and a
molehill here and there. In the ragged hedge on the opposite side the boughs of
the elm trees swayed just perceptibly in the breeze, and their leaves stirred
faintly in dense masses like women's hair. Surely somewhere nearby, but out of
sight, there must be a stream with green pools where dace were swimming?
'Isn't
there a stream somewhere near here?' he whispered.
'That's
right, there is a stream. It's at the edge of the next field, actually. There
are fish in it, great big ones. You can watch them lying in the pools under the
willow trees, waving their tails.'
'It's
the Golden Country — almost,' he murmured.
'The
Golden Country?'
'It's
nothing, really. A landscape I've seen sometimes in a dream.'
'Look!'
whispered Julia.
A
thrush had alighted on a bough not five metres away, almost at the level of
their faces. Perhaps it had not seen them. It was in the sun, they in the
shade. It spread out its wings, fitted them carefully into place again, ducked
its head for a moment, as though making a sort of obeisance to the sun, and
then began to pour forth a torrent of song. In the afternoon hush the volume of
sound was startling. Winston and Julia clung together, fascinated. The music went
on and on, minute after minute, with astonishing variations, never once
repeating itself, almost as though the bird were deliberately showing off its
virtuosity. Sometimes it stopped for a few seconds, spread out and resettled
its wings, then swelled its speckled breast and again burst into song. Winston
watched it with a sort of vague reverence. For whom, for what, was that bird
singing? No mate, no rival was watching it. What made it sit at the edge of the
lonely wood and pour its music into nothingness? He wondered whether after all
there was a microphone hidden somewhere near. He and Julia had spoken only in
low whispers, and it would not pick up what they had said, but it would pick up
the thrush. Perhaps at the other end of the instrument some small, beetle-like
man was listening intently — listening to that. But by degrees the flood of
music drove all speculations out of his mind. It was as though it were a kind
of liquid stuff that poured all over him and got mixed up with the sunlight
that filtered through the leaves. He stopped thinking and merely felt. The
girl's waist in the bend of his arm was soft and warm. He pulled her round so
that they were breast to breast; her body seemed to melt into his. Wherever his
hands moved it was all as yielding as water. Their mouths clung together; it
was quite different from the hard kisses they had exchanged earlier. When they
moved their faces apart again both of them sighed deeply. The bird took fright
and fled with a clatter of wings.
Winston
put his lips against her ear. 'Now,' he whispered.
'Not
here,' she whispered back. 'Come back to the hide- out. It's safer.'
Quickly,
with an occasional crackle of twigs, they threaded their way back to the
clearing. When they were once inside the ring of saplings she turned and faced
him. They were both breathing fast. but the smile had reappeared round the
corners of her mouth. She stood looking at him for an instant, then felt at the
zipper of her overalls. And, yes! it was almost as in his dream. Almost as
swiftly as he had imagined it, she had torn her clothes off, and when she flung
them aside it was with that same magnificent gesture by which a whole
civilization seemed to be annihilated. Her body gleamed white in the sun. But
for a moment he did not look at her body; his eyes were anchored by the
freckled face with its faint, bold smile. He knelt down before her and took her
hands in his
'Have
you done this before?'
'Of
course. Hundreds of times — well scores of times anyway 'With Party members.'
'Yes,
always with Party members.'
'With
members of the Inner Party?'
'Not
with those swine, no. But there's plenty that would if they got half a chance.
They're not so holy as they make out.'
His
heart leapt. Scores of times she had done it: he wished it had been hundreds —
thousands. Anything that hinted at corruption always filled him with a wild
hope. Who knew, perhaps the Party was rotten under the surface, its cult of
strenuousness and self-denial simply a sham concealing iniquity. If he could
have infected the whole lot of them with leprosy or syphilis, how gladly he
would have done so! Anything to rot, to weaken, to undermine! He pulled her
down so that they were kneeling face to face.
'Listen.
The more men you've had, the more I love you. Do you understand that?'
'Yes,
perfectly.'
'I
hate purity, I hate goodness! I don't want any virtue to exist anywhere. I want
everyone to be corrupt to the bones.
'Well
then, I ought to suit you, dear. I'm corrupt to the bones.'
'You
like doing this? I don't mean simply me: I mean the thing in itself?'
'I
adore it.'
That
was above all what he wanted to hear. Not merely the love of one person but the
animal instinct, the simple undifferentiated desire: that was the force that
would tear the Party to pieces. He pressed her down upon the grass, among the
fallen bluebells. This time there was no difficulty. Presently the rising and
falling of their breasts slowed to normal speed, and in a sort of pleasant
helplessness they fell apart. The sun seemed to have grown hotter. They were
both sleepy. He reached out for the discarded overalls and pulled them partly
over her. Almost immediately they fell asleep and slept for about half an hour.
Winston
woke first. He sat up and watched the freckled face, still peacefully asleep,
pillowed on the palm of her hand. Except for her mouth, you could not call her
beautiful. There was a line or two round the eyes, if you looked closely. The
short dark hair was extraordinarily thick and soft. It occurred to him that he
still did not know her surname or where she lived.
The
young, strong body, now helpless in sleep, awoke in him a pitying, protecting
feeling. But the mindless tenderness that he had felt under the hazel tree,
while the thrush was singing, had not quite come back. He pulled the overalls
aside and studied her smooth white flank. In the old days, he thought, a man
looked at a girl's body and saw that it was desirable, and that was the end of
the story. But you could not have pure love or pure lust nowadays. No emotion
was pure, because everything was mixed up with fear and hatred. Their embrace
had been a battle, the climax a victory. It was a blow struck against the
Party. It was a political act.
No comments:
Post a Comment