George Orwell's 1984 -- Chapter 12
Chapter
12
Winston looked round the shabby
little room above Mr Charrington's shop. Beside the window the enormous bed was
made up, with ragged blankets and a coverless bolster. The old-fashioned clock
with the twelve-hour face was ticking away on the mantelpiece. In the corner,
on the gateleg table, the glass paperweight which he had bought on his last
visit gleamed softly out of the half-darkness.
In the
fender was a battered tin oilstove, a saucepan, and two cups, provided by Mr
Charrington. Winston lit the burner and set a pan of water to boil. He had
brought an envelope full of Victory Coffee and some saccharine tablets. The
clock's hands said seventeen-twenty: it was nineteen-twenty really. She was
coming at nineteen-thirty.
Folly,
folly, his heart kept saying: conscious, gratuitous, suicidal folly. Of all the
crimes that a Party member could commit, this one was the least possible to
conceal. Actually the idea had first floated into his head in the form of a
vision, of the glass paperweight mirrored by the surface of the gateleg table.
As he had foreseen, Mr Charrington had made no difficulty about letting the
room. He was obviously glad of the few dollars that it would bring him. Nor did
he seem shocked or become offensively knowing when it was made clear that
Winston wanted the room for the purpose of a love-affair. Instead he looked
into the middle distance and spoke in generalities, with so delicate an air as
to give the impression that he had become partly invisible. Privacy, he said,
was a very valuable thing. Everyone wanted a place where they could be alone
occasionally. And when they had such a place, it was only common courtesy in
anyone else who knew of it to keep his knowledge to himself. He even, seeming
almost to fade out of existence as he did so, added that there were two entries
to the house, one of them through the back yard, which gave on an alley.
Under the
window somebody was singing. Winston peeped out, secure in the protection of
the muslin curtain. The June sun was still high in the sky, and in the
sun-filled court below, a monstrous woman, solid as a Norman pillar, with
brawny red forearms and a sacking apron strapped about her middle, was stumping
to and fro between a washtub and a clothes line, pegging out a series of square
white things which Winston recognized as babies' diapers. Whenever her mouth
was not corked with clothes pegs she was singing in a powerful contralto:
It was only an 'opeless fancy.
It passed like an Ipril dye,
But a look an' a word an' the dreams they stirred!
They 'ave stolen my 'eart awye!
The tune
had been haunting London for weeks past. It was one of countless similar songs
published for the benefit of the proles by a sub-section of the Music
Department. The words of these songs were composed without any human
intervention whatever on an instrument known as a versificator. But the woman
sang so tunefully as to turn the dreadful rubbish into an almost pleasant
sound. He could hear the woman singing and the scrape of her shoes on the
flagstones, and the cries of the children in the street, and somewhere in the
far distance a faint roar of traffic, and yet the room seemed curiously silent,
thanks to the absence of a telescreen.
Folly,
folly, folly! he thought again. It was inconceivable that they could frequent
this place for more than a few weeks without being caught. But the temptation
of having a hiding-place that was truly their own, indoors and near at hand,
had been too much for both of them. For some time after their visit to the
church belfry it had been impossible to arrange meetings. Working hours had
been drastically increased in anticipation of Hate Week. It was more than a
month distant, but the enormous, complex preparations that it entailed were throwing
extra work on to everybody. Finally both of them managed to secure a free
afternoon on the same day. They had agreed to go back to the clearing in the
wood. On the evening beforehand they met briefly in the street. As usual,
Winston hardly looked at Julia as they drifted towards one another in the
crowd, but from the short glance he gave her it seemed to him that she was
paler than usual.
'It's all
off,' she murmured as soon as she judged it safe to speak. 'Tomorrow, I mean.'
'What?'
'Tomorrow
afternoon. I can't come.'
'Why not?'
'Oh, the
usual reason. It's started early this time.'
For a
moment he was violently angry. During the month that he had known her the
nature of his desire for her had changed. At the beginning there had been
little true sensuality in it. Their first love-making had been simply an act of
the will. But after the second time it was different. The smell of her hair,
the taste of her mouth, the feeling of her skin seemed to have got inside him,
or into the air all round him. She had become a physical necessity, something
that he not only wanted but felt that he had a right to. When she said that she
could not come, he had the feeling that she was cheating him. But just at this
moment the crowd pressed them together and their hands accidentally met. She
gave the tips of his fingers a quick squeeze that seemed to invite not desire
but affection. It struck him that when one lived with a woman this particular
disappointment must be a normal, recurring event; and a deep tenderness, such
as he had not felt for her before, suddenly took hold of him. He wished that
they were a married couple of ten years' standing. He wished that he were
walking through the streets with her just as they were doing now but openly and
without fear, talking of trivialities and buying odds and ends for the
household. He wished above all that they had some place where they could be
alone together without feeling the obligation to make love every time they met.
It was not actually at that moment, but at some time on the following day, that
the idea of renting Mr Charrington's room had occurred to him. When he
suggested it to Julia she had agreed with unexpected readiness. Both of them
knew that it was lunacy. It was as though they were intentionally stepping nearer
to their graves. As he sat waiting on the edge of the bed he thought again of
the cellars of the Ministry of Love. It was curious how that predestined horror
moved in and out of one's consciousness. There it lay, fixed in future times,
preceding death as surely as 99 precedes 100. One could not avoid it, but one
could perhaps postpone it: and yet instead, every now and again, by a
conscious, wilful act, one chose to shorten the interval before it happened.
At this
moment there was a quick step on the stairs. Julia burst into the room. She was
carrying a tool-bag of coarse brown canvas, such as he had sometimes seen her
carrying to and fro at the Ministry. He started forward to take her in his
arms, but she disengaged herself rather hurriedly, partly because she was still
holding the tool-bag.
'Half a
second,' she said. 'Just let me show you what I've brought. Did you bring some
of that filthy Victory Coffee? I thought you would. You can chuck it away
again, because we shan't be needing it. Look here.'
She fell
on her knees, threw open the bag, and tumbled out some spanners and a
screwdriver that filled the top part of it. Underneath were a number of neat
paper packets. The first packet that she passed to Winston had a strange and
yet vaguely familiar feeling. It was filled with some kind of heavy, sand-like
stuff which yielded wherever you touched it.
'It isn't
sugar?' he said.
'Real
sugar. Not saccharine, sugar. And here's a loaf of bread proper white bread,
not our bloody stuff — and a little pot of jam. And here's a tin of milk — but
look! This is the one I'm really proud of. I had to wrap a bit of sacking round
it, because-'
But she
did not need to tell him why she had wrapped it up. The smell was already
filling the room, a rich hot smell which seemed like an emanation from his
early childhood, but which one did occasionally meet with even now, blowing
down a passage-way before a door slammed, or diffusing itself mysteriously in a
crowded street, sniffed for an instant and then lost again.
'It's
coffee,' he murmured, 'real coffee.'
'It's
Inner Party coffee. There's a whole kilo here, she said.
'How did
you manage to get hold of all these things?'
'It's all
Inner Party stuff. There's nothing those swine don't have, nothing. But of
course waiters and servants and people pinch things, and — look, I got a little
packet of tea as well.'
Winston
had squatted down beside her. He tore open a corner of the packet.
'It's real
tea. Not blackberry leaves.'
'There's
been a lot of tea about lately. They've captured India, or something,' she
said vaguely. 'But listen, dear. I want you to turn your back on me for three
minutes. Go and sit on the other side of the bed. Don't go too near the window.
And don't turn round till I tell you.'
Winston
gazed abstractedly through the muslin curtain. Down in the yard the red-armed
woman was still marching to and fro between the washtub and the line. She took
two more pegs out of her mouth and sang with deep feeling:
They sye that time 'eals all things,
They sye you can always forget;
But the smiles an' the tears across the years
They twist my 'eart-strings yet!
She knew
the whole drivelling song by heart, it seemed. Her voice floated upward with
the sweet summer air, very tuneful, charged with a sort of happy melancholy.
One had the feeling that she would have been perfectly content, if the June
evening had been endless and the supply of clothes inexhaustible, to remain
there for a thousand years, pegging out diapers and singing rubbish. It struck
him as a curious fact that he had never heard a member of the Party singing
alone and spontaneously. It would even have seemed slightly unorthodox, a
dangerous eccentricity, like talking to oneself. Perhaps it was only when
people were somewhere near the starvation level that they had anything to sing
about.
'You can
turn round now,' said Julia.
He turned
round, and for a second almost failed to recognize her. What he had actually
expected was to see her naked. But she was not naked. The transformation that
had happened was much more surprising than that. She had painted her face.
She must
have slipped into some shop in the proletarian quarters and bought herself a
complete set of make-up materials. Her lips were deeply reddened, her cheeks
rouged, her nose powdered; there was even a touch of something under the eyes
to make them brighter. It was not very skilfully done, but Winston's standards
in such matters were not high. He had never before seen or imagined a woman of
the Party with cosmetics on her face. The improvement in her appearance was
startling. With just a few dabs of colour in the right places she had become
not only very much prettier, but, above all, far more feminine. Her short hair
and boyish overalls merely added to the effect. As he took her in his arms a
wave of synthetic violets flooded his nostrils. He remembered the half-darkness
of a basement kitchen, and a woman's cavernous mouth. It was the very same
scent that she had used; but at the moment it did not seem to matter.
'Scent
too!' he said.
'Yes,
dear, scent too. And do you know what I'm going to do next? I'm going to get
hold of a real woman's frock from somewhere and wear it instead of these bloody
trousers. I'll wear silk stockings and high-heeled shoes! In this room I'm
going to be a woman, not a Party comrade.'
They flung
their clothes off and climbed into the huge mahogany bed. It was the first time
that he had stripped himself naked in her presence. Until now he had been too
much ashamed of his pale and meagre body, with the varicose veins standing out
on his calves and the discoloured patch over his ankle. There were no sheets,
but the blanket they lay on was threadbare and smooth, and the size and
springiness of the bed astonished both of them. 'It's sure to be full of bugs,
but who cares?' said Julia. One never saw a double bed nowadays, except in the
homes of the proles. Winston had occasionally slept in one in his boyhood:
Julia had never been in one before, so far as she could remember.
Presently they fell asleep for a
little while. When Winston woke up the hands of the clock had crept round to
nearly nine. He did not stir, because Julia was sleeping with her head in the
crook of his arm. Most of her make-up had transferred itself to his own face or
the bolster, but a light stain of rouge still brought out the beauty of her
cheekbone. A yellow ray from the sinking sun fell across the foot of the bed
and lighted up the fireplace, where the water in the pan was boiling fast. Down
in the yard the woman had stopped singing, but the faint shouts of children
floated in from the street. He wondered vaguely whether in the abolished past
it had been a normal experience to lie in bed like this, in the cool of a
summer evening, a man and a woman with no clothes on, making love when they
chose, talking of what they chose, not feeling any compulsion to get up, simply
lying there and listening to peaceful sounds outside. Surely there could never
have been a time when that seemed ordinary? Julia woke up, rubbed her eyes, and
raised herself on her elbow to look at the oilstove.
'Half that
water's boiled away,' she said. 'I'll get up and make some coffee in another
moment. We've got an hour. What time do they cut the lights off at your flats?'
'Twenty-three
thirty.'
'It's
twenty-three at the hostel. But you have to get in earlier than that, because —
Hi! Get out, you filthy brute!'
She
suddenly twisted herself over in the bed, seized a shoe from the floor, and
sent it hurtling into the corner with a boyish jerk of her arm, exactly as he
had seen her fling the dictionary at Goldstein, that morning during the Two
Minutes Hate.
'What was
it?' he said in surprise.
'A rat. I
saw him stick his beastly nose out of the wainscoting. There's a hole down
there. I gave him a good fright, anyway.'
'Rats!'
murmured Winston. 'In this room!'
'They're
all over the place,' said Julia indifferently as she lay down again. 'We've
even got them in the kitchen at the hostel. Some parts of London are swarming
with them. Did you know they attack children? Yes, they do. In some of these
streets a woman daren't leave a baby alone for two minutes. It's the great huge
brown ones that do it. And the nasty thing is that the brutes always-'
'Don't go
on!' said Winston, with his eyes tightly shut.
'Dearest!
You've gone quite pale. What's the matter? Do they make you feel sick?'
'Of all
horrors in the world — a rat!'
She
pressed herself against him and wound her limbs round him, as though to
reassure him with the warmth of her body. He did not reopen his eyes
immediately. For several moments he had had the feeling of being back in a
nightmare which had recurred from time to time throughout his life. It was
always very much the same. He was standing in front of a wall of darkness, and
on the other side of it there was something unendurable, something too dreadful
to be faced. In the dream his deepest feeling was always one of self-deception,
because he did in fact know what was behind the wall of darkness. With a deadly
effort, like wrenching a piece out of his own brain, he could even have dragged
the thing into the open. He always woke up without discovering what it was: but
somehow it was connected with what Julia had been saying when he cut her short.
'I'm
sorry,' he said, 'it's nothing. I don't like rats, that's all.'
'Don't worry,
dear, we're not going to have the filthy brutes in here. I'll stuff the hole
with a bit of sacking before we go. And next time we come here I'll bring some
plaster and bung it up properly.'
Already the black instant of panic
was half-forgotten. Feeling slightly ashamed of himself, he sat up against the
bedhead. Julia got out of bed, pulled on her overalls, and made the coffee. The
smell that rose from the saucepan was so powerful and exciting that they shut
the window lest anybody outside should notice it and become inquisitive. What
was even better than the taste of the coffee was the silky texture given to it
by the sugar, a thing Winston had almost forgotten after years of saccharine.
With one hand in her pocket and a piece of bread and jam in the other, Julia
wandered about the room, glancing indifferently at the bookcase, pointing out
the best way of repairing the gateleg table, plumping herself down in the
ragged arm-chair to see if it was comfortable, and examining the absurd
twelve-hour clock with a sort of tolerant amusement. She brought the glass
paperweight over to the bed to have a look at it in a better light. He took it
out of her hand, fascinated, as always, by the soft, rainwatery appearance of
the glass.
'What is
it, do you think?' said Julia.
'I don't
think it's anything-I mean, I don't think it was ever put to any use. That's
what I like about it. It's a little chunk of history that they've forgotten to
alter. It's a message from a hundred years ago, if one knew how to read it.'
'And that
picture over there' — she nodded at the engraving on the opposite wall-'would
that be a hundred years old?'
'More. Two
hundred, I dare say. One can't tell. It's impossible to discover the age of
anything nowadays.'
She went
over to look at it. 'Here's where that brute stuck his nose out,' she said,
kicking the wainscoting immediately below the picture. 'What is this place?
I've seen it before somewhere.'
'It's a
church, or at least it used to be. St Clement Danes its name was.' The fragment
of rhyme that Mr Charrington had taught him came back into his head, and he
added half-nostalgically: "Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St
Clement's!"
To his
astonishment she capped the line:
'You owe me three farthings, say the bells of St
Martin's,
When will you pay me? say the bells of Old Bailey — '
'I can't
remember how it goes on after that. But anyway I remember it ends up,
"Here comes a candle to light you to bed, here comes a chopper to chop off
your head!"
It was
like the two halves of a countersign. But there must be another line after 'the
bells of Old Bailey'. Perhaps it could be dug out of Mr Charrington's memory,
if he were suitably prompted.
'Who
taught you that?' he said.
'My
grandfather. He used to say it to me when I was a little girl. He was vaporized
when I was eight — at any rate, he disappeared. I wonder what a lemon was,' she
added inconsequently. 'I've seen oranges. They're a kind of round yellow fruit
with a thick skin.'
'I can
remember lemons,' said Winston. 'They were quite common in the fifties. They
were so sour that it set your teeth on edge even to smell them.'
'I bet
that picture's got bugs behind it,' said Julia. 'I'll take it down and give it
a good clean some day. I suppose it's almost time we were leaving. I must start
washing this paint off. What a bore! I'll get the lipstick off your face
afterwards.'
Winston
did not get up for a few minutes more. The room was darkening. He turned over
towards the light and lay gazing into the glass paperweight. The inexhaustibly interesting
thing was not the fragment of coral but the interior of the glass itself. There
was such a depth of it, and yet it was almost as transparent as air. It was as
though the surface of the glass had been the arch of the sky, enclosing a tiny
world with its atmosphere complete. He had the feeling that he could get inside
it, and that in fact he was inside it, along with the mahogany bed and the
gateleg table, and the clock and the steel engraving and the paperweight
itself. The paperweight was the room he was in, and the coral was Julia's life
and his own, fixed in a sort of eternity at the heart of the crystal.
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