Chapter
22
At each stage of his
imprisonment he had known, or seemed to know, whereabouts he was in the
windowless building. Possibly there were slight differences in the air
pressure. The cells where the guards had beaten him were below ground level.
The room where he had been interrogated by O'Brien was high up near the roof.
This place was
many metres underground, as deep down as it was possible to go.
It
was bigger than most of the cells he had been in. But he hardly noticed his
surroundings. All he noticed was that there were two small tables straight in
front of him, each covered with green baize. One was only a metre or two from
him, the other was further away, near the door. He was strapped upright in a
chair, so tightly that he could move nothing, not even his head. A sort of pad
gripped his head from behind, forcing him to look straight in front of him.
For
a moment he was alone, then the door opened and O'Brien came in.
'You
asked me once,' said O'Brien, 'what was in Room 101. I told you that you knew
the answer already. Everyone knows it. The thing that is in Room 101 is the
worst thing in the world.'
The
door opened again. A guard came in, carrying something made of wire, a box or
basket of some kind. He set it down on the further table. Because of the
position in which O'Brien was standing. Winston could not see what the thing
was.
'The
worst thing in the world,' said O'Brien, 'varies from individual to individual.
It may be burial alive, or death by fire, or by drowning, or by impalement, or
fifty other deaths. There are cases where it is some quite trivial thing, not
even fatal.'
He
had moved a little to one side, so that Winston had a better view of the thing
on the table. It was an oblong wire cage with a handle on top for carrying it
by. Fixed to the front of it was something that looked like a fencing mask,
with the concave side outwards. Although it was three or four metres away from
him, he could see that the cage was divided lengthways into two compartments,
and that there was some kind of creature in each. They were rats.
'In
your case, said O'Brien, 'the worst thing in the world happens to be rats.'
A
sort of premonitory tremor, a fear of he was not certain what, had passed
through Winston as soon as he caught his first glimpse of the cage. But at this
moment the meaning of the mask-like attachment in front of it suddenly sank
into him. His bowels seemed to turn to water.
'You
can't do that!' he cried out in a high cracked voice. 'You couldn't, you
couldn't! It's impossible.'
'Do
you remember,' said O'Brien, 'the moment of panic that used to occur in your
dreams? There was a wall of blackness in front of you, and a roaring sound in
your ears. There was something terrible on the other side of the wall. You knew
that you knew what it was, but you dared not drag it into the open. It was the
rats that were on the other side of the wall.'
'O'Brien!'
said Winston, making an effort to control his voice. 'You know this is not
necessary. What is it that you want me to do?'
O'Brien
made no direct answer. When he spoke it was in the schoolmasterish manner that
he sometimes affected. He looked thoughtfully into the distance, as though he
were addressing an audience somewhere behind Winston's back.
'By
itself,' he said, 'pain is not always enough. There are occasions when a human
being will stand out against pain, even to the point of death. But for everyone
there is something unendurable — something that cannot be contemplated.
Courage and cowardice are not involved. If you are falling from a height it is
not cowardly to clutch at a rope. If you have come up from deep water it is not
cowardly to fill your lungs with air. It is merely an instinct which cannot be
destroyed. It is the same with the rats. For you, they are unendurable. They
are a form of pressure that you cannot withstand. even if you wished to. You
will do what is required of you.
'But
what is it, what is it? How can I do it if I don't know what it is?'
O'Brien
picked up the cage and brought it across to the nearer table. He set it down
carefully on the baize cloth. Winston could hear the blood singing in his ears.
He had the feeling of sitting in utter loneliness. He was in the middle of a
great empty plain, a flat desert drenched with sunlight, across which all
sounds came to him out of immense distances. Yet the cage with the rats was not
two metres away from him. They were enormous rats. They were at the age when a
rat's muzzle grows blunt and fierce and his fur brown instead of grey.
'The
rat,' said O'Brien, still addressing his invisible audience, 'although a
rodent, is carnivorous. You are aware of that. You will have heard of the
things that happen in the poor quarters of this town. In some streets a woman
dare not leave her baby alone in the house, even for five minutes. The rats are
certain to attack it. Within quite a small time they will strip it to the
bones. They also attack sick or dying people. They show astonishing
intelligence in knowing when a human being is helpless.'
There
was an outburst of squeals from the cage. It seemed to reach Winston from far
away. The rats were fighting; they were trying to get at each other through the
partition. He heard also a deep groan of despair. That, too, seemed to come
from outside himself.
O'Brien
picked up the cage, and, as he did so, pressed something in it. There was a
sharp click. Winston made a frantic effort to tear himself loose from the
chair. It was hopeless; every part of him, even his head, was held immovably.
O'Brien moved the cage nearer. It was less than a metre from Winston's face.
'I
have pressed the first lever,' said O'Brien. 'You understand the construction
of this cage. The mask will fit over your head, leaving no exit. When I press
this other lever, the door of the cage will slide up. These starving brutes
will shoot out of it like bullets. Have you ever seen a rat leap through the
air? They will leap on to your face and bore straight into it. Sometimes they
attack the eyes first. Sometimes they burrow through the cheeks and devour the
tongue.'
The
cage was nearer; it was closing in. Winston heard a succession of shrill cries
which appeared to be occurring in the air above his head. But he fought
furiously against his panic. To think, to think, even with a split second left
— to think was the only hope. Suddenly the foul musty odour of the brutes
struck his nostrils. There was a violent convulsion of nausea inside him, and
he almost lost consciousness. Everything had gone black. For an instant he was
insane, a screaming animal. Yet he came out of the blackness clutching an idea.
There was one and only one way to save himself. He must interpose another human
being, the body of another human being, between himself and the rats.
The
circle of the mask was large enough now to shut out the vision of anything
else. The wire door was a couple of hand-spans from his face. The rats knew
what was coming now. One of them was leaping up and down, the other, an old
scaly grandfather of the sewers, stood up, with his pink hands against the
bars, and fiercely sniffed the air. Winston could see the whiskers and the
yellow teeth. Again the black panic took hold of him. He was blind, helpless,
mindless.
'It
was a common punishment in Imperial China,' said O'Brien as didactically as
ever.
The
mask was closing on his face. The wire brushed his cheek. And then — no, it was
not relief, only hope, a tiny fragment of hope. Too late, perhaps too late. But
he had suddenly understood that in the whole world there was just one person to
whom he could transfer his punishment — one body that he could thrust between
himself and the rats. And he was shouting frantically, over and over.
'Do
it to Julia! Do it to Julia! Not me! Julia! I don't care what you do to her.
Tear her face off, strip her to the bones. Not me! Julia! Not me!'
He
was falling backwards, into enormous depths, away from the rats. He was still
strapped in the chair, but he had fallen through the floor, through the walls
of the building, through the earth, through the oceans, through the atmosphere,
into outer space, into the gulfs between the stars — always away, away, away
from the rats. He was light years distant, but O'Brien was still standing at
his side. There was still the cold touch of wire against his cheek. But through
the darkness that enveloped him he heard another metallic click, and knew that
the cage door had clicked shut and not open.
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