George Orwell's 1984 -- Chapter 19
Chapter 19
He was lying on
something that felt like a camp bed, except that it was higher off the ground
and that he was fixed down in some way so that he could not move. Light that
seemed stronger than usual was falling on his face. O'Brien was standing at his
side, looking down at him intently. At the other side of him stood a man in a
white coat, holding a hypodermic syringe.
Even
after his eyes were open he took in his surroundings only gradually. He had the
impression of swimming up into this room from some quite different world, a
sort of underwater world far beneath it. How long he had been down there he did
not know. Since the moment when they arrested him he had not seen darkness or
daylight. Besides, his memories were not continuous. There had been times when
consciousness, even the sort of consciousness that one has in sleep, had
stopped dead and started again after a blank interval. But whether the
intervals were of days or weeks or only seconds, there was no way of knowing.
With
that first blow on the elbow the nightmare had started. Later he was to realize
that all that then happened was merely a preliminary, a routine interrogation
to which nearly all prisoners were subjected. There was a long range of crimes
— espionage, sabotage, and the like — to which everyone had to confess as a
matter of course. The confession was a formality, though the torture was real.
How many times he had been beaten, how long the beatings had continued, he
could not remember. Always there were five or six men in black uniforms at him
simultaneously. Sometimes it was fists, sometimes it was truncheons, sometimes
it was steel rods, sometimes it was boots. There were times when he rolled
about the floor, as shameless as an animal, writhing his body this way and that
in an endless, hopeless effort to dodge the kicks, and simply inviting more and
yet more kicks, in his ribs, in his belly, on his elbows, on his shins, in his
groin, in his testicles, on the bone at the base of his spine. There were times
when it went on and on until the cruel, wicked, unforgivable thing seemed to
him not that the guards continued to beat him but that he could not force hirnself
into losing consciousness. There were times when his nerve so forsook him that
he began shouting for mercy even before the beating began, when the mere sight
of a fist drawn back for a blow was enough to make him pour forth a confession
of real and imaginary crimes. There were other times when he started out with
the resolve of confessing nothing, when every word had to be forced out of him
between gasps of pain, and there were times when he feebly tried to compromise,
when he said to himself: 'I will confess, but not yet. I must hold out till the
pain becomes unbearable. Three more kicks, two more kicks, and then I will tell
them what they want.' Sometimes he was beaten till he could hardly stand, then
flung like a sack of potatoes on to the stone floor of a cell, left to
recuperate for a few hours, and then taken out and beaten again. There were
also longer periods of recovery. He remembered them dimly, because they were
spent chiefly in sleep or stupor. He remembered a cell with a plank bed, a sort
of shelf sticking out from the wall, and a tin washbasin, and meals of hot
soup and bread and sometimes coffee. He remembered a surly barber arriving to
scrape his chin and crop his hair, and businesslike, unsympathetic men in white
coats feeling his pulse, tapping his reflexes, turning up his eyelids, running
harsh fingers over him in search for broken bones, and shooting needles into
his arm to make him sleep.
The
beatings grew less frequent, and became mainly a threat, a horror to which he
could be sent back at any moment when his answers were unsatisfactory. His
questioners now were not ruffians in black uniforms but Party intellectuals,
little rotund men with quick movements and flashing spectacles, who worked on
him in relays over periods which lasted — he thought, he could not be sure —
ten or twelve hours at a stretch. These other questioners saw to it that he was
in constant slight pain, but it was not chiefly pain that they relied on. They
slapped his face, wrung his ears. pulled his hair, made him stand on one leg,
refused him leave to urinate, shone glaring lights in his face until his eyes
ran with water; but the aim of this was simply to humiliate him and destroy his
power of arguing and reasoning. Their real weapon was the merciless questioning
that went on and on, hour after hour, tripping him up, laying traps for him,
twisting everything that he said, convicting him at every step of lies and
self-contradiction until he began weeping as much from shame as from nervous
fatigue Sometimes he would weep half a dozen times in a single session. Most of
the time they screamed abuse at him and threatened at every hesitation to
deliver him over to the guards again; but sometimes they would suddenly change
their tune, call him comrade, appeal to him in the name of Ingsoc and Big
Brother, and ask him sorrowfully whether even now he had not enough loyalty to
the Party left to make him wish to undo the evil he had done. When his nerves
were in rags after hours of questioning, even this appeal could reduce him to
snivelling tears. In the end the nagging voices broke him down more completely
than the boots and fists of the guards. He became simply a mouth that uttered,
a hand that signed, whatever was demanded of him. His sole concern was to find
out what they wanted him to confess, and then confess it quickly, before the
bullying started anew. He confessed to the assassination of eminent Party
members, the distribution of seditious pamphlets, embezzlement of public funds,
sale of military secrets, sabotage of every kind. He confessed that he had been
a spy in the pay of the Eastasian government as far back as 1968. He confessed
that he was a religious believer, an admirer of capitalism, and a sexual
pervert. He confessed that he had murdered his wife, although he knew, and his
questioners must have known, that his wife was still alive. He confessed that
for years he had been in personal touch with Goldstein and had been a member of
an underground organization which had included almost every human being he had
ever known. It was easier to confess everything and implicate everybody.
Besides, in a sense it was all true. It was true that he had been the enemy of
the Party, and in the eyes of the Party there was no distinction between the
thought and the deed.
There
were also memories of another kind. They stood out in his mind disconnectedly, like pictures with blackness all round them.
He
was in a cell which might have been either dark or light, because he could see
nothing except a pair of eyes. Near at hand some kind of instrument was ticking
slowly and regularly. The eyes grew larger and more luminous. Suddenly he
floated out of his seat, dived into the eyes, and was swallowed up.
He
was strapped into a chair surrounded by dials, under dazzling lights. A man in
a white coat was reading the dials. There was a tramp of heavy boots outside.
The door clanged open. The waxed-faced officer marched in, followed by two
guards.
'Room
101,' said the officer.
The
man in the white coat did not turn round. He did not look at Winston either; he
was looking only at the dials.
He
was rolling down a mighty corridor, a kilometre wide, full of glorious, golden
light, roaring with laughter and shouting out confessions at the top of his
voice. He was confessing everything, even the things he had succeeded in
holding back under the torture. He was relating the entire history of his life
to an audience who knew it already. With him were the guards, the other
questioners, the men in white coats, O'Brien, Julia, Mr Charrington, all
rolling down the corridor together and shouting with laughter. Some dreadful
thing which had lain embedded in the future had somehow been skipped over and
had not happened. Everything was all right, there was no more pain, the last
detail of his life was laid bare, understood, forgiven.
He
was starting up from the plank bed in the half-certainty that he had heard
O'Brien's voice. All through his interrogation, although he had never seen him,
he had had the feeling that O'Brien was at his elbow, just out of sight. It was
O'Brien who was directing everything. It was he who set the guards on to
Winston and who prevented them from killing him. It was he who decided when
Winston should scream with pain, when he should have a respite, when he should
be fed, when he should sleep, when the drugs should be pumped into his arm. It
was he who asked the questions and suggested the answers. He was the tormentor,
he was the protector, he was the inquisitor, he was the friend. And once —
Winston could not remember whether it was in drugged sleep, or in normal sleep,
or even in a moment of wakefulness — a voice murmured in his ear: 'Don't worry,
Winston; you are in my keeping. For seven years I have watched over you. Now
the turning-point has come. I shall save you, I shall make you perfect.' He was
not sure whether it was O'Brien's voice; but it was the same voice that had
said to him, 'We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness,' in that
other dream, seven years ago.
He
did not remember any ending to his interrogation. There was a period of
blackness and then the cell, or room, in which he now was had gradually
materialized round him. He was almost flat on his back, and unable to move. His
body was held down at every essential point. Even the back of his head was
gripped in some manner. O'Brien was looking down at him gravely and rather
sadly. His face, seen from below, looked coarse and worn, with pouches under
the eyes and tired lines from nose to chin. He was older than Winston had
thought him; he was perhaps forty-eight or fifty. Under his hand there was a
dial with a lever on top and figures running round the face.
'I
told you,' said O'Brien, 'that if we met again it would be here.'
'Yes,'
said Winston.
Without
any warning except a slight movement of O'Brien's hand, a wave of pain flooded
his body. It was a frightening pain, because he could not see what was
happening, and he had the feeling that some mortal injury was being done to
him. He did not know whether the thing was really happening, or whether the
effect was electrically produced; but his body was being wrenched out of shape,
the joints were being slowly torn apart. Although the pain had brought the
sweat out on his forehead, the worst of all was the fear that his backbone was
about to snap. He set his teeth and breathed hard through his nose, trying to
keep silent as long as possible.
'You
are afraid,' said O'Brien, watching his face, 'that in another moment something
is going to break. Your especial fear is that it will be your backbone. You
have a vivid mental picture of the vertebrae snapping apart and the spinal
fluid dripping out of them. That is what you are thinking, is it not, Winston?'
Winston
did not answer. O'Brien drew back the lever on the dial. The wave of pain
receded almost as quickly as it had come.
'That
was forty,' said O'Brien. 'You can see that the numbers on this dial run up to
a hundred. Will you please remember, throughout our conversation, that I have
it in my power to inflict pain on you at any moment and to whatever degree I
choose? If you tell me any lies, or attempt to prevaricate in any way, or even
fall below your usual level of intelligence, you will cry out with pain,
instantly. Do you understand that?'
'Yes,'
said Winston.
O'Brien's
manner became less severe. He resettled his spectacles thoughtfully, and took
a pace or two up and down. When he spoke his voice was gentle and patient. He
had the air of a doctor, a teacher, even a priest, anxious to explain and
persuade rather than to punish.
'I
am taking trouble with you, Winston,' he said, 'because you are worth trouble.
You know perfectly well what is the matter with you. You have known it for
years, though you have fought against the knowledge. You are mentally deranged.
You suffer from a defective memory. You are unable to remember real events and
you persuade yourself that you remember other events which never happened.
Fortunately it is curable. You have never cured yourself of it, because you did
not choose to. There was a small effort of the will that you were not ready to
make. Even now, I am well aware, you are clinging to your disease under the
impression that it is a virtue. Now we will take an example. At this moment,
which power is Oceania at war with?'
'When
I was arrested, Oceania was at war with Eastasia.
'With
Eastasia. Good. And Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia, has it not?'
Winston
drew in his breath. He opened his mouth to speak and then did not speak. He
could not take his eyes away from the dial.
'The
truth, please, Winston. Your truth. Tell me what you think you remember.'
'I
remember that until only a week before I was arrested, we were not at war with
Eastasia at all. We were in alliance with them. The war was against Eurasia.
That had lasted for four years. Before that — '
O'Brien
stopped him with a movement of the hand.
'Another
example,' he said. 'Some years ago you had a very serious delusion indeed. You
believed that three men, three one-time Party members named Jones, Aaronson,
and Rutherford men who were executed for treachery and sabotage after making
the fullest possible confession — were not guilty of the crimes they were
charged with. You believed that you had seen unmistakable documentary evidence
proving that their confessions were false. There was a certain photograph about
which you had a hallucination. You believed that you had actually held it in
your hands. It was a photograph something like this.'
An
oblong slip of newspaper had appeared between O'Brien's fingers. For perhaps
five seconds it was within the angle of Winston's vision. It was a photograph,
and there was no question of its identity. It was the photograph. It was
another copy of the photograph of Jones, Aaronson, and Rutherford at the party
function in New York, which he had chanced upon eleven years ago and promptly
destroyed. For only an instant it was before his eyes, then it was out of sight
again. But he had seen it, unquestionably he had seen it! He made a desperate,
agonizing effort to wrench the top half of his body free. It was impossible to
move so much as a centimetre in any direction. For the moment he had even
forgotten the dial. All he wanted was to hold the photograph in his fingers
again, or at least to see it.
'It
exists!' he cried.
'No,'
said O'Brien.
He
stepped across the room. There was a memory hole in the opposite wall. O'Brien
lifted the grating. Unseen, the frail slip of paper was whirling away on the
current of warm air; it was vanishing in a flash of flame. O'Brien turned away
from the wall.
'Ashes,'
he said. 'Not even identifiable ashes. Dust. It does not exist. It never
existed.'
'But
it did exist! It does exist! It exists in memory. I remember it. You remember
it.'
'I
do not remember it,' said O'Brien.
Winston's
heart sank. That was doublethink. He had a feeling of deadly helplessness. If
he could have been certain that O'Brien was lying, it would not have seemed to
matter. But it was perfectly possible that O'Brien had really forgotten the
photograph. And if so, then already he would have forgotten his denial of
remembering it, and forgotten the act of forgetting. How could one be sure that
it was simple trickery? Perhaps that lunatic dislocation in the mind could
really happen: that was the thought that defeated him.
O'Brien
was looking down at him speculatively. More than ever he had the air of a teacher
taking pains with a wayward but promising child.
'There
is a Party slogan dealing with the control of the past,' he said. 'Repeat it,
if you please.'
"Who
controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the
past," repeated Winston obediently.
"Who
controls the present controls the past," said O'Brien, nodding his head
with slow approval. 'Is it your opinion, Winston, that the past has real
existence?'
Again
the feeling of helplessness descended upon Winston. His eyes flitted towards
the dial. He not only did not know whether 'yes' or 'no' was the answer that
would save him from pain; he did not even know which answer he believed to be
the true one.
O'Brien
smiled faintly. 'You are no metaphysician, Winston,' he said. 'Until this
moment you had never considered what is meant by existence. I will put it more
precisely. Does the past exist concretely, in space? Is there somewhere or
other a place, a world of solid objects, where the past is still happening?'
'No.'
'Then
where does the past exist, if at all?'
'In
records. It is written down.'
'In
records. And- ?'
'In
the mind. In human memories.
'In
memory. Very well, then. We, the Party, control all records, and we control all
memories. Then we control the past, do we not?'
'But
how can you stop people remembering things?' cried Winston again momentarily
forgetting the dial. 'It is involuntary. It is outside oneself. How can you
control memory? You have not controlled mine!'
O'Brien's
manner grew stern again. He laid his hand on the dial.
'On
the contrary,' he said, 'you have not controlled it. That is what has brought
you here. You are here because you have failed in humility, in self-
discipline. You would not make the act of submission which is the price of
sanity. You preferred to be a lunatic, a minority of one. Only the disciplined
mind can see reality, Winston. You believe that reality is something objective,
external, existing in its own right. You also believe that the nature of
reality is self-evident. When you delude yourself into thinking that you see
something, you assume that everyone else sees the same thing as you. But I tell
you, Winston, that reality is not external. Reality exists in the human mind,
and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in
any case soon perishes: only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and
immortal. Whatever the Party holds to be the truth, is truth. It is impossible
to see reality except by looking through the eyes of the Party. That is the
fact that you have got to relearn, Winston. It needs an act of
self-destruction, an effort of the will. You must humble yourself before you
can become sane.'
He
paused for a few moments, as though to allow what he had been saying to sink
in.
'Do
you remember,' he went on, ' writing in your diary, "Freedom is the
freedom to say that two plus two make four"?'
'Yes,'
said Winston.
O'Brien
held up his left hand, its back towards Winston, with the thumb hidden and the
four fingers extended.
'How
many fingers am I holding up, Winston?
'Four.'
'And
if the party says that it is not four but five — then how many?'
'Four.'
The
word ended in a gasp of pain. The needle of the dial had shot up to fifty-five.
The sweat had sprung out all over Winston's body. The air tore into his lungs
and issued again in deep groans which even by clenching his teeth he could not
stop. O'Brien watched him, the four fingers still extended. He drew back the
lever. This time the pain was only slightly eased.
'How
many fingers, Winston?'
'Four.'
The
needle went up to sixty.
'How
many fingers, Winston?'
'Four!
Four! What else can I say? Four!'
The
needle must have risen again, but he did not look at it. The heavy, stern face
and the four fingers filled his vision. The fingers stood up before his eyes
like pillars, enormous, blurry, and seeming to vibrate, but unmistakably four.
'How
many fingers, Winston?'
'Four!
Stop it, stop it! How can you go on? Four! Four!'
'How
many fingers, Winston?'
'Five!
Five! Five!'
'No,
Winston, that is no use. You are lying. You still think there are four. How
many fingers, please?'
'Four!
five! Four! Anything you like. Only stop it, stop the pain!
Abruptly
he was sitting up with O'Brien's arm round his shoulders. He had perhaps lost
consciousness for a few seconds. The bonds that had held his body down were
loosened. He felt very cold, he was shaking uncontrollably, his teeth were
chattering, the tears were rolling down his cheeks. For a moment he clung to
O'Brien like a baby, curiously comforted by the heavy arm round his shoulders.
He had the feeling that O'Brien was his protector, that the pain was something
that came from outside, from some other source, and that it was O'Brien who
would save him from it.
'You
are a slow learner, Winston,' said O'Brien gently.
'How
can I help it?' he blubbered. 'How can I help seeing what is in front of my
eyes? Two and two are four.
Sometimes,
Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are
all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.'
He
laid Winston down on the bed. The grip of his limbs tightened again, but the
pain had ebbed away and the trembling had stopped, leaving him merely weak and
cold. O'Brien motioned with his head to the man in the white coat, who had
stood immobile throughout the proceedings. The man in the white coat bent down
and looked closely into Winston's eyes, felt his pulse, laid an ear against his
chest, tapped here and there, then he nodded to O'Brien.
'Again,'
said O'Brien.
The
pain flowed into Winston's body. The needle must be at seventy, seventy-five.
He had shut his eyes this time. He knew that the fingers were still there, and
still four. All that mattered was somehow to stay alive until the spasm was
over. He had ceased to notice whether he was crying out or not. The pain
lessened again. He opened his eyes. O'Brien had drawn back the lever.
'How
many fingers, Winston?'
'Four.
I suppose there are four. I would see five if I could. I am trying to see
five.'
'Which
do you wish: to persuade me that you see five, or really to see them?'
'Really
to see them.'
'Again,'
said O'Brien.
Perhaps
the needle was eighty — ninety. Winston could not intermittently remember why
the pain was happening. Behind his screwed-up eyelids a forest of fingers
seemed to be moving in a sort of dance, weaving in and out, disappearing behind
one another and reappearing again. He was trying to count them, he could not
remember why. He knew only that it was impossible to count them, and that this
was somehow due to the mysterious identity between five and four. The pain died
down again. When he opened his eyes it was to find that he was still seeing the
same thing. Innumerable fingers, like moving trees, were still streaming past
in either direction, crossing and recrossing. He shut his eyes again.
'How
many fingers am I holding up, Winston?'
'I
don't know. I don't know. You will kill me if you do that again. Four, five,
six — in all honesty I don't know.'
'Better,'
said O'Brien.
A
needle slid into Winston's arm. Almost in the same instant a blissful, healing
warmth spread all through his body. The pain was already half-forgotten. He
opened his eyes and looked up gratefully at O'Brien. At sight of the heavy,
lined face, so ugly and so intelligent, his heart seemed to turn over. If he
could have moved he would have stretched out a hand and laid it on O'Brien arm.
He had never loved him so deeply as at this moment, and not merely because he
had stopped the pain. The old feeling, that it bottom it did not matter whether
O'Brien was a friend or an enemy, had come back. O'Brien was a person who could
be talked to. Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.
O'Brien had tortured him to the edge of lunacy, and in a little while, it was
certain, he would send him to his death. It made no difference. In some sense
that went deeper than friendship, they were intimates: somewhere or other,
although the actual words might never be spoken, there was a place where they
could meet and talk. O'Brien was looking down at him with an expression which
suggested that the same thought might be in his own mind. When he spoke it was
in an easy, conversational tone.
'Do
you know where you are, Winston?' he said.
'I
don't know. I can guess. In the Ministry of Love.'
'Do
you know how long you have been here?'
'I
don't know. Days, weeks, months — I think it is months.'
'And
why do you imagine that we bring people to this place?'
'To
make them confess.'
'No,
that is not the reason. Try again.'
'To
punish them.'
'No!'
exclaimed O'Brien. His voice had changed extraordinarily, and his face had
suddenly become both stern and animated. 'No! Not merely to extract your
confession, not to punish you. Shall I tell you why we have brought you here?
To cure you! To make you sane! Will you understand, Winston, that no one whom
we bring to this place ever leaves our hands uncured? We are not interested in
those stupid crimes that you have committed. The Party is not interested in the
overt act: the thought is all we care about. We do not merely destroy our
enemies, we change them. Do you understand what I mean by that?'
He
was bending over Winston. His face looked enormous because of its nearness, and
hideously ugly because it was seen from below. Moreover it was filled with a
sort of exaltation, a lunatic intensity. Again Winston's heart shrank. If it
had been possible he would have cowered deeper into the bed. He felt certain
that O'Brien was about to twist the dial out of sheer wantonness. At this
moment, however, O'Brien turned away. He took a pace or two up and down. Then
he continued less vehemently:
'The
first thing for you to understand is that in this place there are no
martyrdoms. You have read of the religious persecutions of the past. In the
Middle Ages there was the Inquisitlon. It was a failure. It set out to
eradicate heresy, and ended by perpetuating it. For every heretic it burned at
the stake, thousands of others rose up. Why was that? Because the Inquisition
killed its enemies in the open, and killed them while they were still
unrepentant: in fact, it killed them because they were unrepentant. Men were
dying because they would not abandon their true beliefs. Naturally all the
glory belonged to the victim and all the shame to the Inquisitor who burned
him. Later, in the twentieth century, there were the totalitarians, as they
were called. There were the German Nazis and the Russian Communists. The
Russians persecuted heresy more cruelly than the Inquisition had done. And they
imagined that they had learned from the mistakes of the past; they knew, at any
rate, that one must not make martyrs. Before they exposed their victims to
public trial, they deliberately set themselves to destroy their dignity. They
wore them down by torture and solitude until they were despicable, cringing
wretches, confessing whatever was put into their mouths, covering themselves
with abuse, accusing and sheltering behind one another, whimpering for mercy.
And yet after only a few years the same thing had happened over again. The dead
men had become martyrs and their degradation was forgotten. Once again, why was
it? In the first place, because the confessions that they had made were
obviously extorted and untrue. We do not make mistakes of that kind. All the
confessions that are uttered here are true. We make them true. And above all we
do not allow the dead to rise up against us. You must stop imagining that
posterity will vindicate you, Winston. Posterity will never hear of you. You
will be lifted clean out from the stream of history. We shall turn you into gas
and pour you into the stratosphere. Nothing will remain of you, not a name in a
register, not a memory in a living brain. You will be annihilated in the past
as well as in the future. You will never have existed.'
Then
why bother to torture me? thought Winston, with a momentary bitterness.
O'Brien checked his step as though Winston had uttered the thought aloud. His
large ugly face came nearer, with the eyes a little narrowed.
'You
are thinking,' he said, 'that since we intend to destroy you utterly, so that
nothing that you say or do can make the smallest difference — in that case, why
do we go to the trouble of interrogating you first? That is what you were
thinking, was it not?'
'Yes,'
said Winston.
O'Brien
smiled slightly. 'You are a flaw in the pattern, Winston. You are a stain that
must be wiped out. Did I not tell you just now that we are different from the
persecutors of the past? We are not content with negative obedience, nor even
with the most abject submission. When finally you surrender to us, it must be
of your own free will. We do not destroy the heretic because he resists us: so
long as he resists us we never destroy him. We convert him, we capture his
inner mind, we reshape him. We burn all evil and all illusion out of him; we
bring him over to our side, not in appearance, but genuinely, heart and soul.
We make him one of ourselves before we kill him. It is intolerable to us that
an erroneous thought should exist anywhere in the world, however secret and
powerless it may be. Even in the instant of death we cannot permit any
deviation. In the old days the heretic walked to the stake still a heretic,
proclaiming his heresy, exulting in it. Even the victim of the Russian purges
could carry rebellion locked up in his skull as he walked down the passage
waiting for the bullet. But we make the brain perfect before we blow it out.
The command of the old despotisms was "Thou shalt not". The command
of the totalitarians was "Thou shalt". Our command is "Thou
art". No one whom we bring to this place ever stands out against us.
Everyone is washed clean. Even those three miserable traitors in whose
innocence you once believed — Jones, Aaronson, and Rutherford — in the end we
broke them down. I took part in their interrogation myself. I saw them
gradually worn down, whimpering, grovelling, weeping — and in the end it was
not with pain or fear, only with penitence. By the time we had finished with
them they were only the shells of men. There was nothing left in them except
sorrow for what they had done, and love of Big Brother. It was touching to see
how they loved him. They begged to be shot quickly, so that they could die
while their minds were still clean.'
His
voice had grown almost dreamy. The exaltation, the lunatic enthusiasm, was
still in his face. He is not pretending, thought Winston, he is not a
hypocrite, he believes every word he says. What most oppressed him was the
consciousness of his own intellectual inferiority. He watched the heavy yet graceful
form strolling to and fro, in and out of the range of his vision. O'Brien was a
being in all ways larger than himself. There was no idea that he had ever had,
or could have, that O'Brien had not long ago known, examined, and rejected. His
mind contained Winston's mind. But in that case how could it be true that
O'Brien was mad? It must be he, Winston, who was mad. O'Brien halted and looked
down at him. His voice had grown stern again.
'Do
not imagine that you will save yourself, Winston, however completely you
surrender to us. No one who has once gone astray is ever spared. And even if we
chose to let you live out the natural term of your life, still you would never
escape from us. What happens to you here is for ever. Understand that in
advance. We shall crush you down to the point from which there is no coming
back. Things will happen to you from which you could not recover, if you lived
a thousand years. Never again will you be capable of ordinary human feeling.
Everything will be dead inside you. Never again will you be capable of love, or
friendship, or joy of living, or laughter, or curiosity, or courage, or
integrity. You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty, and then we shall
fill you with ourselves.'
He
paused and signed to the man in the white coat. Winston was aware of some heavy
piece of apparatus being pushed into place behind his head. O'Brien had sat
down beside the bed, so that his face was almost on a level with Winston's.
'Three
thousand,' he said, speaking over Winston's head to the man in the white coat.
Two
soft pads, which felt slightly moist, clamped themselves against Winston's
temples. He quailed. There was pain coming, a new kind of pain. O'Brien laid a
hand reassuringly, almost kindly, on his.
'This
time it will not hurt,' he said. 'Keep your eyes fixed on mine.'
At
this moment there was a devastating explosion, or what seemed like an
explosion, though it was not certain whether there was any noise. There was
undoubtedly a blinding flash of light. Winston was not hurt, only prostrated.
Although he had already been lying on his back when the thing happened, he had
a curious feeling that he had been knocked into that position. A terrific
painless blow had flattened him out. Also something had happened inside his
head. As his eyes regained their focus he remembered who he was, and where he
was, and recognized the face that was gazing into his own; but somewhere or
other there was a large patch of emptiness, as though a piece had been taken
out of his brain.
'It
will not last,' said O'Brien. 'Look me in the eyes. What country is Oceania at
war with?'
Winston
thought. He knew what was meant by Oceania and that he himself was a citizen of
Oceania. He also remembered Eurasia and Eastasia; but who was at war with whom he did not know. In fact he had
not been aware that there was any war.
'I
don't remember.'
'Oceania
is at war with Eastasia. Do you remember that now?'
'Yes.'
'Oceania
has always been at war with Eastasia. Since the beginning of your life, since
the beginning of the Party, since the beginning of history, the war has
continued without a break, always the same war. Do you remember that?'
'Yes.'
'
Eleven years ago you created a legend about three men who had been condemned to
death for treachery. You pretended that you had seen a piece of paper which
proved them innocent. No such piece of paper ever existed. You invented it, and
later you grew to believe in it. You remember now the very moment at which you
first invented it. Do you remember that?'
'Yes.'
'Just
now I held up the fingers of my hand to you. You saw five fingers. Do you
remember that?'
'Yes.'
O'Brien
held up the fingers of his left hand, with the thumb concealed.
'There
are five fingers there. Do you see five fingers?'
'Yes.'
And
he did see them, for a fleeting instant, before the scenery of his mind
changed. He saw five fingers, and there was no deformity. Then everything was
normal again, and the old fear, the hatred, and the bewilderment came crowding
back again. But there had been a moment — he did not know how long, thirty
seconds, perhaps — of luminous certainty, when each new suggestion of O'Brien's
had filled up a patch of emptiness and become absolute truth, and when two and
two could have been three as easily as five, if that were what was needed. It had
faded but before O'Brien had dropped his hand; but though he could not
recapture it, he could remember it, as one remembers a vivid experience at some
period of one's life when one was in effect a different person.
'You
see now,' said O'Brien, 'that it is at any rate possible.'
'Yes,'
said Winston.
O'Brien
stood up with a satisfied air. Over to his left Winston saw the man in the
white coat break an ampoule and draw back the plunger of a syringe. O'Brien
turned to Winston with a smile. In almost the old manner he resettled his
spectacles on his nose.
'Do
you remember writing in your diary,' he said, 'that it did not matter whether I
was a friend or an enemy, since I was at least a person who understood you and
could be talked to? You were right. I enjoy talking to you. Your mind appeals
to me. It resembles my own mind except that you happen to be insane. Before we
bring the session to an end you can ask me a few questions, if you choose.'
'Any
question I like?'
'Anything.'
He saw that Winston's eyes were upon the dial. 'It is switched off. What is
your first question?'
'What
have you done with Julia?' said Winston.
O'Brien
smiled again. 'She betrayed you, Winston. Immediately-unreservedly. I have
seldom seen anyone come over to us so promptly. You would hardly recognize her
if you saw her. All her rebelliousness, her deceit, her folly, her dirty-mindedness
— everything has been burned out of her. It was a perfect conversion, a
textbook case.'
'You
tortured her?'
O'Brien
left this unanswered. 'Next question,' he said.
'Does
Big Brother exist?'
'Of
course he exists. The Party exists. Big Brother is the embodiment of the
Party.'
'Does
he exist in the same way as I exist?
'You
do not exist,' said O'Brien.
Once
again the sense of helplessness assailed him. He knew, or he could imagine, the
arguments which proved his own nonexistence; but they were nonsense, they were
only a play on words. Did not the statement, 'You do not exist', contain a
logical absurdity? But what use was it to say so? His mind shrivelled as he thought
of the unanswerable, mad arguments with which O'Brien would demolish him.
'I
think I exist,' he said wearily. 'I am conscious of my own identity. I was born
and I shall die. I have arms and legs. I occupy a particular point in space. No
other solid object can occupy the same point simultaneously. In that sense,
does Big Brother exist?'
'It
is of no importance. He exists.'
'Will
Big Brother ever die?'
'Of
course not. How could he die? Next question.'
'Does
the Brotherhood exist?'
'That,
Winston, you will never know. If we choose to set you free when we have
finished with you, and if you live to be ninety years old, still you will never
learn whether the answer to that question is Yes or No. As long as you live it
will be an unsolved riddle in your mind.'
Winston
lay silent. His breast rose and fell a little faster. He still had not asked
the question that had come into his mind the first. He had got to ask it, and
yet it was as though his tongue would not utter it. There was a trace of
amusement in O'Brien's face. Even his spectacles seemed to wear an ironical
gleam. He knows, thought Winston suddenly, he knows what I am going to ask! At
the thought the words burst out of him:
'What
is in Room 101?'
The
expression on O'Brien's face did not change. He answered drily:
'You
know what is in Room 101, Winston. Everyone knows what is in Room 101.'
He
raised a finger to the man in the white coat. Evidently the session was at an
end. A needle jerked into Winston's arm. He sank almost instantly into deep
sleep.
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