George Orwell
1984
Abridged & adapted

© Филимонова В. Б., адаптация, сокращение, словарь, 2020

© ООО «Издательство „Антология“», 2020

Part I

Chapter 1

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen[1]. Winston Smith went quickly through the glass do ors of Victory Mansions, trying to escape the cold wind.

The hallway smelt of boiled cabbage and old rag mats. On the wall at one end of it, there was a large coloured poster. It was a picture of a huge face, more than a metre wide: the face of a strong handsome man of about forty-five, with a heavy black moustache. Winston went to the stairs. The lift was rarely working, and right now there was no electricity during the day. It was PART of the preparation for Hate Week. The flat was on the sixth floor, and Winston, who was thirty-nine and had problems with his right leg, went slowly, stopping several times on the way. On each floor, opposite the lift, there was the poster with the huge face on the wall. The man's eyes followed you when you moved. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU stood on the poster.

Inside the flat you could hear a deep and pleasant voice talking about the Ninth Three-Year Plan. It came from a piece of metal that looked like a mirror which was PART of the right-hand wall. Winston turned a switch and the voice got quieter, though you could still understand everything that it said. You could not turn off the instrument (the telescreen, it was called) completely. He moved over to the window. He looked very small in the blue uniform of the party. His hair was very fair, his skin was rough because of the soap and razor blades and the cold of the winter that had just ended.

Outside, even through the shut window, the world looked cold. The sun was shining and the sky was blue, but there seemed to be no colour in anything, except the posters that were everywhere. There was one on the house opposite Victory Mansions. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the poster said, and the dark eyes looked deep into Winston's own. Down at street level another poster with the single word INGSOC. Somewhere far away there was the police patrol, looking into people's windows. The patrols did not matter, however. Only the Thought Police mattered.

Behind Winston's back the voice from the telescreen was still talking about the Ninth Three-Year Plan. Winston knew that so long as he was within the field of vision of the telescreen, he could be seen as well as heard. You couldn't know when the Thought Police were watching you and when they were not. You could only guess. It was even possible that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could watch you whenever they wanted to. You had to live – and lived – as if every sound you made was heard, and, except in darkness, every movement seen.

Winston stood with his back turned to the telescreen. It was safer. A kilometre away there was the Ministry of Truth, his place of work. He looked at the landscape. This was London, the main city of Airstrip One, in Oceania. He tried to remember whether London had always been in ruins quite like this. But it was no use, he could only remember some people standing there in silence against no background.

The Ministry of Truth – Minitrue, in Newspeak – was different from any other object in sight. It was a huge white building, 300 metres high. From where Winston stood he could read the three slogans of the Party:

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

It was said that in the Ministry of Truth there were thousands of rooms above and below ground. In London there were just three other buildings of similar appearance and size. You could see all four of them at the same time from the roof of Victory Mansions. They were the homes of the four Ministries. The Ministry of Truth, which controlled news, entertainment, education, and the fine arts. The Ministry of Peace, which dealt with war. The Ministry of Love, which was responsible for law and order. And the Ministry of Plenty, which dealt with economic affairs. Their names, in Newspeak: Minitrue, Minipax, Miniluv, and Miniplenty.

The Ministry of Love was the really frightening one. There were no windows in it at all. Winston had never been inside the Ministry of Love or come close to it. You could only go inside on official business. It was like a maze with steel doors and hidden machine-guns. It was guarded by men in black uniforms armed with truncheons.

Winston turned round. He had the expression of quiet optimism on his face. He crossed the room into the small kitchen. By leaving the Ministry at this time of day he had missed his lunch in the canteen. There was no food in the kitchen except dark-coloured bread which he wanted to eat for tomorrow's breakfast. He took a bottle of colourless liquid with a white label that said VICTORY GIN. Winston drank it like medicine.

His face turned bright red and the water ran out of his eyes. When you drank the gin, it felt like you were hit on the back of the head. The next moment, however, the world began to look better. He took a cigarette from a packet that said VICTORY CIGARETTES and held it upright. The tobacco fell out on to the floor. With the next he was more successful. He went back to the living-room and sat down at a small table that stood to the left of the telescreen. From the table drawer he took out a pen, a bottle of ink, and a thick empty book.

For some reason the telescreen in the living-room was not in the end wall, but in the longer wall, opposite the window.

To one side of it there was an alcove in which Winston was now sitting. When he sat in the alcove and kept well back, Winston could not be seen. He could be heard, of course. He was about to do something because his room had this alcove.

He was about to do it also because he had the book. It was a beautiful book. It was old and its paper was a little yellow. Such books had not been made for the last forty years at least. He could guess, however, that the book was much older than that. He had seen it in the window of a little shop in one of the quarters of the town and had wanted to buy it at once. Party members couldn't go into such shops, but they still did. There were things, such as razor blades, which you couldn't buy anywhere else. He had made sure no one had seen him and then had gone inside and bought the book for two dollars fifty. At the time he didn't know why he wanted it. Even if there was nothing written in it, he might get into trouble, because he had bought it.

He was about to open a diary. This was not against the laws (nothing was against the laws, because there were no longer any laws), but if anyone knew, Winston would be sentenced to death, or at least to twenty-five years in a forced-labour camp. He cleaned the pen. Pens were rarely used even for signatures, and it wasn't easy to get one, but Winston felt that he had to write on the beautiful paper with a real pen instead of an ink-pencil. Actually he was not used to writing by hand. He wrote only very short notes and dictated everything else into the speakwrite. It was of course impossible to use the speakwrite for a diary. He took the pen and then stopped for just a second. It wasn't an easy decision to start writing. In small letters he wrote:

April 4th, 1984.

He felt helpless. To begin with, he wasn't sure that this was 1984. It must be round about that date. He was quite sure that his age was thirty-nine, and he believed that he had been born in 1944 or 1945; but now you could never know any date for sure.

For whom was he writing this diary? For the future, he thought. How could you communicate with the future? It was impossible. If the future were like the present, it would not listen to him; if it were different from the present, then writing the diary would be meaningless.

For some time he sat looking stupidly at the paper. The telescreen was playing military music. Winston couldn't put thoughts into words; he had even forgotten what he had wanted to say. He had thought that he would only need to be brave to write. Writing would be easy. All he had to do was to write down the monologue that had been running inside his head for years. At this moment, however, even the monologue had stopped. His leg had begun hurting again. The seconds were flying by. The page in front of him was empty, his leg hurt, he heard the music from the telescreen, and felt a bit drunk on the gin.

He began writing so quickly that didn't quite realize what he was writing down. He wrote that he had watched a war film last night. It was about a ship that was bombed somewhere in the Mediterranean. On it, there was a woman with a boy who was very frightened. When the ship sank, the viewers laughed. From where the proles were sitting, a woman shouted that they shouldn't show such films in front of the children. The police turned her out, but Winston didn't think that anything had happened to her.

Winston stopped writing, partly because of his leg. He did not know why he had just written it. But while he was writing it he had remembered something totally different. He now realized, it was the reason why he had decided to come home and begin the diary today.

It had happened that morning at the Ministry.

It was nearly eleven hundred. In the Records Department, where Winston worked, they were getting ready for the Two Minutes Hate. Two people whom he knew by sight, but had never spoken to, came into the room. One of them was a girl of about twenty-seven with freckles and thick dark hair. He did not know her name, but he knew that she worked in the Fiction Department. She had an emblem of the Junior Anti-Sex League. Winston had disliked her from the very first moment of seeing her. He disliked nearly all women, and especially the young and pretty ones. But this girl seemed to him more dangerous than most. He had even thought that she might be one of the Thought Police. But it was very unlikely. Still, he continued to feel uneasy, when she was near him.

The other person was a man named O'Brien, an important member of the Inner Party. O'Brien was a large, strong man with a thick neck. People were afraid of him, but he was charming in his own way. Winston hadn't seen O'Brien very often. He felt there was a connection between them, because he believed – or hoped – that O'Brien wasn't very politically orthodox. There was something in his face that made you believe it. Or perhaps he was just intelligent. Winston believed that O'Brien was a person that you could talk to if you could meet him somewhere without the telescreen. Winston had never tried to check whether he was right: there was no way of doing so. At this moment O'Brien looked at his watch. He saw that it was nearly eleven hundred, and decided to stay in the Records Department for the Two Minutes Hate. He sat down a couple of places away from Winston. A small woman who worked in the next cubicle to Winston was between them. The girl with dark hair was sitting immediately behind.

The next moment the Hate had started.

As usual, the face of Emmanuel Goldstein, the Enemy of the People, had appeared on the screen. The programmes of the Two Minutes Hate were different from day to day, but Goldstein was always the main figure. He had been one of the leading figures of the Party long ago (how long ago, nobody remembered), almost on a level with Big Brother himself. He then had started counter-revolutionary activities, had been sentenced to death, and had escaped and disappeared. He was still alive and planning against the Party somewhere beyond the sea or even somewhere in Oceania itself.

Winston couldn't breathe. Goldstein had white hair and a small beard. He wore glasses on his long thin nose. His Jewish face was clever, and yet stupid at the same time. He looked and sounded like a sheep. Goldstein was speaking against the doctrines of the Party and Big Brother. Somehow you couldn't take his words serious – if you were intelligent. He was demanding peace with Eurasia, freedom of speech, freedom of the Press, freedom of thought. He was crying that the revolution had been betrayed. His speech was a parody of the style of the Party. There were even Newspeak words: more Newspeak words than any Party member would normally use in real life. Behind his head on the telescreen there marched the Eurasian army.

People hated Goldstein more than either Eurasia or Eastasia, because when Oceania was at war with one of these Powers it was at peace with the other. But it was strange that he still had many followers. A day never passed when the Thought Police didn't catch spies acting under his directions. He was the leader of the Brotherhood. He also wrote a book. It didn't have a title, but everyone knew it existed. Party members didn't talk about either the book or the Brotherhood.

In the second minute of the Hate people were jumping up and down in their places and shouting loudly. Winston was shouting with the others and kicking his chair. The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was that you joined in even if you didn't want to. At one moment Winston hated Big Brother, the Party, and the Thought Police. And yet the very next moment he was shouting with the people about him, and hated Goldstein.

It was even possible, at moments, to control one's hatred. Winston no longer hated the face on the screen, he now hated the dark-haired girl behind him. Better than before he realized why he hated her. He hated her because she was young and pretty, because he wanted to go to bed with her and would never do so, because she had the symbol of the Junior AntiSex League around her waist.

The Hate was almost over. For a moment the face of Goldstein changed into that of a sheep. Then it turned into the figure of a Eurasian soldier who was about to jump out of the screen and shoot everyone in the room to death. But in the same moment, the soldier turned into the face of Big Brother, full of power and calm. Nobody heard what Big Brother was saying. Then the face of Big Brother disappeared again. On the screen, there were the three slogans of the Party:

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

You somehow felt like the face of Big Brother was still on the screen. The little woman who has been sitting next to Winston said something that sounded like «My Saviour!» and buried her face in her hands. She was saying a prayer.

At this moment everyone started shouting «B – B!.. B – B!.». – over and over again, very slowly, with a long pause between the first «B» and the second. They kept it up for as much as thirty seconds. Winston's body seemed to grow cold. He had always been afraid of this «B – B!.. B – B!». Of course he shouted with the rest: it was impossible not to. It was natural to control your face, to do what everyone else was doing. But there was a couple of seconds during which you could see his thoughts in his eyes. And it was exactly at this moment that something important happened – if it happened.

He caught O'Brien's eye. O'Brien had stood up. Their eyes met, and Winston knew – yes, he knew! – that O'Brien was thinking the same thing as himself. «I am with you», O'Brien's eyes were saying to him. «I know what you are feeling. But don't worry, I am on your side!» And then the feeling was gone, and O'Brien's face was like everybody else's.

That was all, and Winston wasn't sure anymore whether it had happened. He had gone back to his cubicle without looking at O'Brien again. Winston didn't even think of talking to him. It would have been dangerous and he didn't know how. For a second, two seconds, they had looked at each other, and that was the end of the story. But even that was important for Winston. It gave him a feeling that there were other enemies of the Party.

Winston looked at the page. He discovered that while he had been thinking he had also been writing. And it was no longer the same handwriting as before. In large capitals he had written:

DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER

DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER

DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER

DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER

DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER

over and over again.

He was afraid. The writing of those words was not more dangerous than opening the diary, but for a moment he wanted to tear out the pages and never touch the diary again.

He did not do so, however, because he knew that it was useless. Whether he wrote DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER, or whether he didn't, made no difference. Whether he continued writing the diary, or whether he did not, made no difference. The Thought Police would arrest him just the same. He had committed a thoughtcrime. You could not hide it for ever. Sooner or later they would arrest you.

It was always at night – the arrests happened at night. The hand shaking your shoulder, the lights, the ring of faces round the bed. There was rarely a trial or a report of the arrest. People just disappeared, always during the night. Your name was removed from the registers, you were forgotten. You were vapourized, that was the usual word.

For a moment he was frightened to death. He began writing quickly: they'll shoot me I don't care they'll shoot me in the back of the neck I don't care down with big brother they always shoot you in the back of the neck I don't care down with big brother…

He sat back in his chair, slightly ashamed of himself, and laid down the pen. The next moment someone knocked at the door.

Already! He sat as still as a mouse and hoped that the person would just go away. But no, the knocking was repeated. He got up and moved towards the door.

Chapter 2

As he was about to open the door Winston saw that he had left the diary open on the table. The letters DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER were big enough, and you could read the words across the room. It was a stupid thing. But, he realized, if he closed the book while the ink was wet, he would spoil the paper and he didn't want it.

He drew in his breath and opened the door. A small woman, with thin hair and wrinkles on her face, was standing outside. Winston was almost glad it was her.

«Oh, comrade», she began. Her sad high voice made you feel bored, «I thought I heard you come in. Do you think you could have a look at our kitchen sink? It's got blocked up and…»

It was Mrs. Parsons, the wife of a neighbor on the same floor. (You were supposed to call everyone «comrade» – but there were some women who you called «Mrs». without realizing it.) She was a woman of about thirty, but she looked much older. You could almost see dust on her face. Winston followed her to their flat. He had to do these small repair jobs almost daily. It annoyed him. Victory Mansions were old flats, built in the 1930s, and were falling to pieces. Unless you could manage yourself, you had to get permission for repairs. It could take up to two years to get it, even if it was just a window.

«Of course it's only because Tom isn't home», said Mrs. Parsons.

The Parsons' flat was bigger than Winston's, and also dark and dirty, but in a different way. It looked as if some large violent animal had just left it. All over the floor lay hockey-sticks, boxing-gloves, a burst football, a pair of shorts turned inside out. On the table there were dirty dishes and old exercise-books. On the walls were bright red banners of the Youth League and the Spies, and a full-sized poster of Big Brother. The flat smelt of boiled-cabbage just as the whole building, but there was also a smell of sweat. You could tell at once that it was the sweat of some person not present at the moment. In another room someone was trying to play the military music from the telescreen on a comb and a piece of toilet paper.

«It's the children», said Mrs. Parsons and looked at the door. «They haven't been outside today. And of course…»

She often didn't finishing her sentences. The kitchen sink was almost full with greenish water which smelt worse than ever of cabbage. Winston knelt down and examined the pipe. He hated using his hands. He also hated that he started coughing when he had to bend down. Mrs. Parsons stood next to him. She was helpless.

«Of course if Tom was home he'd repair in a moment», she said. «He loves anything like that. He's so good with his hands».

Parsons worked with Winston at the Ministry of Truth. He was rather fat but active and more than anything else he was stupid. The Party depended on him even more than on the Thought Police. He never questioned anything. At thirty- five he was forced to leave the Youth League. Before entering the Youth League he had managed to stay in the Spies for a year longer than anyone else. The work that he did at the Ministry didn't require much intelligence. He was a leading figure on the Sports Committee and all the other committees that organized different community activities. A strong smell of sweat followed him everywhere and even remained behind him after he had gone.

«Have you got a spanner?» said Winston.

«A spanner», said Mrs. Parsons. «I don't know, I'm sure. Perhaps the children…»

With a loud noise the children ran into the living-room. Mrs. Parsons brought the spanner. Winston let out the water and removed the human hair that had blocked up the pipe. He cleaned his fingers as best he could in the cold water and went back into the other room.

«Up with your hands!» shouted a voice.

A handsome boy of nine had appeared from behind the table. In his hands he was holding a toy pistol pointed at Winston. His small sister, about two years younger, did the same with a piece of wood. Both of them were wearing the blue shorts, grey shirts, and red neckerchiefs which were the uniform of the Spies. Winston raised his hands above his head. He had a strange feeling that it was not quite a game.

«You're a traitor!» yelled the boy. «You're a thoughtcriminal! You're a Eurasian spy! I'll shoot you, I'll vapourize you!»

They both started jumping round him, shouting «Traitor!» and «Thought-criminal!» It was a bit frightening. Winston saw that the boy wanted to hit or kick him and felt that he was very nearly big enough to do so. It was a good job it was not a real pistol, Winston thought.

Mrs. Parsons nervously looked from Winston to the children and back again. In the better light of the living-room he noticed that there actually was dust on her face.

«They get so noisy», she said. «They're disappointed because they couldn't go to see the hanging, that's what it is. I'm too busy to take them, and Tom won't be back from work in time».

«Why can't we go and see the hanging?» shouted the boy.

«Want to see the hanging! Want to see the hanging!» shouted the little girl.

In the Park, they were going to hang some Eurasian prisoners that evening, Winston remembered. This happened about once a month, and was very popular among children. He said goodbye to Mrs. Parsons and went to the door. But he had not gone six steps down the passage when something hit the back of his neck. He turned around and saw that Mrs. Parsons was pulling her son back into the flat while the boy put a catapult in his pocket.

«Goldstein!» shouted the boy as the door closed on him. Mrs. Parsons looked helpless and frightened.

Back in the flat he went quickly past the telescreen and sat down at the table again. His neck still hurt. The music from the telescreen had stopped. Instead, there now was a military voice.

That woman, he thought, must be really afraid. Another year, two years, and the children would be watching her night and day for unorthodoxy. Nearly all children were horrible these days. Because of such organizations as the Spies the parents couldn't bring them under control anymore, and yet the children never rebelled against the Party. They loved the Party and everything connected with it. The songs, the banners, the hiking, the toy pistols, the slogans, the Big Brother – it was all a sort of game to them. All their violence was turned against the enemies of the State, against foreigners, traitors, thought-criminals. It was almost normal for people over thirty to be afraid of their own children. Nearly every week you could read in the Times how some «child hero» had reported its parents to the Thought Police.

The back of his neck didn't hurt anymore. He picked up his pen without real interest and wondered what he could write in the diary. Suddenly he began thinking of O'Brien again.

Years ago – how long was it? Seven years it must be – he had dreamed that he was walking through a dark room. And someone had said as he passed: «We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness». It was a statement, not a command. He hadn't stopped. At the time, in the dream, the words had not made much impression on him. They became important later. He could not now remember whether it was before or after having the dream that he had seen O'Brien for the first time. He couldn't remember either when he had first recognized the voice as O'Brien's. It was O'Brien who had spoken to him in the dark room.

Winston had never known for sure whether O'Brien was a friend or an enemy. It didn't really matter. «We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness», he had said. Winston did not know what it meant, only that in some way or another it would come true.

The voice from the telescreen paused. After a clear and beautiful trumpet call it continued:

«Attention! Your attention, please! Our forces in South India have won a glorious victory. It may well soon bring the war to the end. Here is the news…»

Bad news coming, thought Winston. After that came the announcement that from next week they would get twenty grammes of chocolate instead of thirty.

The telescreen was now playing «Oceania, it is for you». You were supposed to stand to attention. However, no one could see him where he was now.

After «Oceania, it is for you» there was some lighter music. Winston walked over to the window with his back to the telescreen. The day was still cold and clear. Somewhere far away a bomb exploded. About twenty or thirty of them a week were falling on London now.

Down in the street there was a torn poster with the word INGSOC on it. Ingsoc. The sacred principles of Ingsoc.

Newspeak, doublethink, changing the past. He felt lonely. The past was dead, and one couldn't imagine the future.

How would he know whether anyone was on his side? What if the Party would be there for ever? The three slogans on the Ministry of Truth came back to him like an answer:

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

He took a twenty-five cent piece out of his pocket. The same slogans were written on it, and on the other face of the coin the head of Big Brother. Even from the coin the eyes followed you. On coins, on stamps, on the covers of books, on banners, on posters, and on cigarette packets – everywhere. Always the eyes watching you and the voice everywhere around you. Nothing was your own except what was inside your head.

Now when it was dark the Ministry of Truth looked like a fortress. It was too strong, it could not be stormed. He wondered again for whom he was writing the diary. For the future, for the past – for an imaginary age. He would not just die, he would disappear. The diary would be burnt and he would be vapourized. Only the Thought Police would read what he had written. How could you make talk to the future when you couldn't stay alive?

The telescreen struck fourteen. He must leave in ten minutes. He had to be back at work by fourteen-thirty.

Curiously, he felt better now. Nobody would ever hear the truth that he was saying. It was important for him not to be heard, but to stay sane. He went back to the table and wrote:

To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free, when men are different from one another and do not live alone – to a time when there is truth:

From the age of uniformity, from the age of loneliness, from the age of Big Brother, from the age of doublethink – hello!

He was already dead, he thought. He wrote:

Thoughtcrime does not involve death: thoughtcrime IS death.

Now he had recognized himself as a dead man and it became important to stay alive as long as possible. He had ink on two fingers of his right hand. It might betray him. He went to the bathroom and carefully washed the ink away with the dark-brown soap.

He put the diary away. He could not hide it, but he could at least make sure that it would not be discovered too quickly.

Chapter 3

Winston was dreaming of his mother.

He was ten or eleven years old when his mother had disappeared. She was a tall, rather silent woman with slow movements and beautiful fair hair. His father was dark and thin, dressed always in dark clothes and wearing spectacles. Winston remembered his mother better than his father. The two of them disappeared in the fifties. A lot of people disappeared during that time.

At this moment his mother was sitting in some place deep down under him, with his young sister in her arms. He did not remember his sister at all. Both of them were looking up at him. They were somewhere under the ground, and this place was moving downwards. They were in a sinking ship, looking up at him through the water. There was still air in the ship, they could still see him and he them. He was out in the light and air, and they were down there because he was up here. He knew it and they knew it, and he could see it in their faces. There was no reproach either in their faces or in their hearts, only the knowledge that they must die so that he was alive.

He could not remember what had happened, but he knew in his dream that his mother and his sister gave their lives for his own. When he woke up, he realized that his mother's death, nearly thirty years ago, had been tragic in a way that was no longer possible. Tragedy belonged to the ancient time, to a time when there was still love and friendship. It was tragic, because his mother had died loving him, when he was too young and selfish to love her in return. Such things, he saw, could not happen today. Today there was fear, hatred, and pain, but no deep sorrows. All this he saw in the large eyes of his mother and his sister, who looked up at him through the green water.

Suddenly he was standing on a pasture, on a summer evening. He saw this landscape in his dreams very often and he was never sure whether or not he had seen it in the real world. He called it the Golden Country.

The girl with dark hair was coming towards him across the field. She tore off her clothes and threw them aside. Her body was white and soft, but he didn't even look at it. He admired the gesture. It was graceful and careless and it also belonged to the ancient time. It seemed to him that she tore off Big Brother, and the Party, and the Thought Police. Winston woke up with the word «Shakespeare» on his lips.

From the telescreen Winston heard a whistle which continued on the same note for thirty seconds. It was nought seven fifteen, time for office workers to get up. Winston slept naked, for a member of the Outer Party received only 3,000 clothing coupons a year, and pyjamas were 600. He took his dirty clothes from a chair. The Physical Jerks would begin in three minutes. The next moment he started coughing. It happened nearly always soon after he woke up. He had to lie down on his back and breathe deeply.

«Take your places, please!» shouted a youngish woman dressed in tunic and gym-shoes from the telescreen. «Take your places, please». One had to look as if one enjoyed the exercise, because was proper during the Physical Jerks. «One, two, three, four! One, two, three, four! Come on, comrades, put a bit of life into it! One, two, three, four! One, two, three, four!.».

The rhythmic movements made Winston remember his dream. He tried to remember his early childhood, but it was very difficult. Everything that happened before the late fifties disappeared. Everything had been different then. Even the names of countries, and their shapes on the map, had been different. Airstrip One had been called England or Britain, though London, he felt fairly certain, had always been called London.

Winston could not remember a time when his country had not been at war. He remembered that there had been an air raid which had taken everyone by surprise. So during his childhood the country had been at peace for quite a long time. Perhaps it was the time when the atomic bomb had fallen on Colchester[2]. He remembered that his father had taken him by the hand and that they had hurried down, down, down into some place deep in the earth. His mother was following a long way behind them. She was carrying his baby sister – or perhaps blankets: he was not sure whether his sister had been born then. Finally they had come into a noisy place with a lot of people. He realized it had been a Tube station.

There were people sitting all over the floor, and other people were sitting on metal bunk beds, one above the other. Winston and his mother and father found themselves a place on the floor. Near them an old man and an old woman were sitting side by side. The old man smelled of gin. He looked scared and Winston could see that he was in pain. Someone whom the old man loved – a little granddaughter, perhaps – had been killed. Every few minutes the old man said to the woman that they shouldn't have trusted someone. Winston could not now remember who it had been.

Since about that time, war had continued without an end, but it had not always been the same war. But Winston could never say who was fighting whom at any given moment. At this moment, for example, in 1984 (if it was 1984), Oceania and Eastasia were at war with Eurasia. Four years ago Oceania and Eurasia had been at war with Eastasia. Officially, however, the change of partners had never happened. Oceania was at war with Eurasia: therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia.

Winston was now doing an exercise for back muscles.

What if the Party could say that this or that event had never happened? It was frightening.

The Party said that Oceania had never been at peace with Eurasia. He, Winston Smith, knew that Oceania had been at peace with Eurasia four years ago. But where did that knowledge exist? Only inside his head. And if all others accepted the lie, if all records told the same tale, then the lie became truth. «Who controls the past», ran the Party slogan, «controls the future: who controls the present controls the past». And yet the past never had been changed. It was quite simple. You just had to win against your own memory. «Reality control», they called it: in Newspeak it was called «doublethink».

The exercise was over. Winston breathed deeply. He thought about the word «doublethink». To know and not to know, to know the truth and tell lies, to have two opinions at the same time, to know that they were contradictory and to believe in both of them, to use logic against logic, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party protected democracy, to forget what it was necessary to forget, to remember it when it was necessary to remember and then to forget it again. Even to understand the word «doublethink» you had to use doublethink.

The instructress had called them to attention again. «And now let's see which of us can touch our toes!» she said. «Right over from the hips, please, comrades. One- two! One-two!.».

Winston hated this exercise. His often started coughing after he did it. The past, he thought, had not just been changed, it had been destroyed. He tried to remember in what year he had first heard of Big Brother. He thought it must have been at some time in the sixties, but he wasn't sure. In the Party histories, of course, Big Brother was the leader of the Revolution since its very earliest days. Winston didn't know how much of this legend was true. Winston could not even remember at what date the Party itself appeared. He hadn't heard the word Ingsoc before 1960, but it was possible that in its Oldspeak form – «English Socialism» – it had been used earlier. Sometimes, indeed, you were able to understand that something was a lie. It was not true, for example, that the Party had invented aeroplanes. He remembered aeroplanes since his earliest childhood. But you could prove nothing. There was never any evidence. Just once in his whole life he had held in his hands proof there were lies in the Party histories. And then -

«Smith!» shouted the woman from the telescreen. «6079 Smith W.! Yes, you! Bend lower, please! You can do better than that. You're not trying. Lower, please! That's better, comrade. Now, comrades, watch me».

A sudden hot sweat had broken out all over Winston's body. His face didn't show any emotions. He stood watching while the woman did the exercise. She wasn't graceful, but she did it easily.

«There, comrades! That's how I want to see you doing it. Watch me again. I'm thirty-nine and I've had four children. Now look». She did it again. «You see my knees aren't bent. You can all do it if you want to», she said. «Anyone under forty-five can touch his toes. Now try again. That's better, comrade, that's much better», she added as Winston touched his toes with knees unbent, for the first time in several years.

Chapter  4

Winston sighed deeply and pulled the speakwrite towards him. He blew the dust from it, and put on his spectacles. Four small cylinders of paper had already fell out of the pneumatic tube on the right side of his desk. He unrolled them.

In the walls of the cubicle there were three holes. To the right of the speakwrite, a small pneumatic tube for written messages, to the left, a larger one for newspapers; and in the side wall, a large slit with a wire grating. This last was for waste paper. There were thousands or tens of thousands of similar slits in the building, not only in every room but also in every corridor. For some reason they were called memory holes. Warm air carried away the waste paper that you put in those holes to some place where it was burnt.

Winston examined the four pieces of paper which he had unrolled. Each contained a message of only one or two lines, in the abbreviated Newspeak words.

times 17.3.84 bb speech malreported africa rectify

times 19.12.83 forecasts 3 yp 4th quarter 83 misprints verify current issue

times 14.2.84 miniplenty malquoted chocolate rectify

times 3.12.83 reporting bb day order doubleplusungood refs unpersons rewrite fullwise upsub antefiling

Winston felt happy that he got the forth message; it was a responsible job, so he laid the fourth message aside. The other three were easy tasks.

Winston dialled «back numbers» on the telescreen and called for the Times, which appeared out of the pneumatic tube after only a few minutes. He had received messages about articles or news items which it thought necessary to change for one reason or another. The word that described the process was «to rectify». For example, it appeared in the Times of the seventeenth of March that Big Brother had said the previous day that the South Indian front would remain quiet but that a Eurasian army would shortly attack North Africa. As it happened, the Eurasian Higher Command had attacked South India and left North Africa alone. It was necessary to rewrite a small PART of Big Brother's speech, as if he had predicted the thing that had actually happened. Or again, the forecasts for the fourth quarter of 1983 in the Times of the nineteenth of December were wrong. Winston's job was to change the forecast. As for the third message, there was a very simple mistake which could be corrected in a couple of minutes. In February, the Ministry of Plenty promised that the chocolate ration would not be reduced during 1984. However, the chocolate ration was to be reduced from thirty grammes to twenty at the end of this week. He just needed to change the promise into a warning that it would probably be necessary to reduce the ration at some time in April.

As soon as Winston had dealt with each of the messages, he pushed his speakwritten corrections with the appropriate copy of the Times into the pneumatic tube. Then he threw the original message and any notes that he himself had made into the memory hole.

He didn't know in detail what happened to the corrections, but he knew in general terms. The number of the Times would be reprinted, the original copy destroyed and replaced with the corrected copy. Not only newspapers were changed, but also books, posters, films, sound-tracks, cartoons, photographs and so on. Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was corrected. It was impossible to prove that any falsification had taken place. There was the largest section of the Records Department that collected all copies of books, newspapers, and other documents which were corrected and had to be destroyed.

But actually, he thought, it was not even a falsification. It was a substitution of one piece of nonsense for another. Most of the material had no connection with anything in the real world. Statistics were a fantasy in their original version and in their corrected version. For example, according to the Ministry of Plenty's forecast, 145 million pairs of boots had been produced this quarter. In reality, it had been sixty-two millions. Winston, however, wrote that it had been only fifty-seven millions, so that it looked like they produced more boots than they had planned. In any case, sixty-two millions was no nearer the truth than fifty-seven millions, or than 145 millions. Very likely no boots had been produced at all. Or nobody knew how many had been produced, and nobody cared. One knew that millions of boots were produced on paper, while half the people in Oceania went barefoot.

Winston looked across the hall. In the cubicle on the other side a small man named Tillotson was working. He had a newspaper on his knee and his mouth was very close to the mouthpiece of the speakwrite. He looked as if he was trying to keep what he was saying a secret between himself and the telescreen. He looked at Winston in an unfriendly way.

Winston hardly knew Tillotson, and had no idea what work he did. People in the Records Department did not talk about their jobs. There were some people whom Winston saw every day, but did not even know by name. He knew that in the cubicle next to him there worked the little woman with sandy hair. She deleted from the Press the names of people who had been vapourized. She was somehow the right person to do the job. Her own husband had been vapourized a couple of years earlier. And a few cubicles away Ampleforth, a man with very hairy ears, corrected poems that were against the Party ideas, but could not be destroyed. And it was only one subsection of the Records Department. There were many more. There were many more people whose job was simply to write lists of books and magazines. There were the rooms with the corrected documents and rooms where the original copies were destroyed. And somewhere or other there were the people who coordinated the whole process.

And the Records Department was only one PART of the Ministry of Truth. Its job was to publish newspapers, films, textbooks, telescreen programmes, plays, novels for the citizens of Oceania. There were also departments that worked on proletarian literature, music, drama, and entertainment generally. They published newspapers with almost nothing except sport, crime and astrology, cheap stories, films with sex in them, and songs which were composed on a versificator, a special kind of machine. There was Pornosec that made the lowest kind of pornography, which no Party member was allowed to look at, other than those who worked on it.

While he was working, Winston got three more messages, but they were simple, and he had finished working on them before the Two Minutes Hate. After the Hate he returned to his cubicle, took the Newspeak dictionary from the shelf, pushed the speakwrite to one side, cleaned his spectacles, and started his main job of the morning.

Winston loved his work. Most of it was boring, but there were also some difficult tasks. He could lose himself in them, he knew the principles of Ingsoc and he understood what the Party wanted him to say. Winston was good at this kind of thing. He had even rectified the Times leading articles, which were written from beginning to end in Newspeak. He unrolled the message that he had put aside earlier. It said:

times 3.12.83 reporting bb day order doubleplusungood refs unpersons rewrite fullwise upsub antefiling

In Oldspeak (or standard English) it was:

The article in the Times of December 3rd 1983 on Big Brother's Order for the Day is very unsatisfactory and makes references to non-existent persons. Rewrite it in full and submit your draft to higher authority before filing.

In his Order for the Day, Big Brother had spoken about FFCC. It was an organization, which supplied cigarettes and other things to the sailors in the Floating Fortresses. A certain Comrade Withers, a member of the Inner Party, had been awarded the Order of Conspicuous Merit, Second Class.

Three months later FFCC had suddenly stopped existing. There had been no report of it in the Press or on the telescreen. People who had done something against the Party usually simply disappeared and you never heard of them again, public trials were rare and happened only when the Party needed them. One never knew what had happened to those people. In some cases they might not even be dead. Perhaps thirty people Winston personally knew had disappeared at one time or another.

Winston was lost in thought. In the cubicle across the way Comrade Tillotson was still working. He raised his head for a moment: again the same unfriendly look. Winston asked himself whether Comrade Tillotson was doing the same job as himself. It was possible. A single person couldn't do such a job. A committee couldn't work on it either, because they would then have to admit that they falsified facts. Very likely several people were now working away on different versions of the Order for the Day. Then someone in the Inner Party would choose one of the versions, re-edit it, and then the chosen lie would become truth.

Winston did not know what had happened to Withers. There were many possibilities. What Winston knew for sure was that Withers had already been dead. He knew it from the words «refs unperson». You don't talk of someone as an unperson when they were arrested. Sometimes they were released for a year or two years before they were executed. Withers, however, did not exist: he had never existed. Winston decided that it was better to make Big Brother's speech deal with something totally different from its original subject.

Big Brother might have spoken about traitors and thoughtcriminals, about a victory at the front, or about the Ninth Three- Year Plan. But that was either too obvious or too complicated. It should rather be pure fantasy. Suddenly Winston thought of a certain Comrade Ogilvy, who had recently died in battle as a hero. Today Big Brother should speak about Comrade Ogilvy. It was true that Comrade Ogilvy didn't exist, but a few lines of print and a couple of photographs that had never been taken would soon change it.

Winston thought for a moment, then pulled the speakwrite towards him and began dictating in Big Brother's military and pedantic style. It was easy to imitate, because Big Brother often asked questions and then answered them («What lessons do we learn from this fact, comrades? The lesson that», etc., etc.).

At the age of three Comrade Ogilvy had played only with a drum, a sub-machine gun, and a model helicopter. At six – a year early – he had joined the Spies, at nine he had been a troop leader. At eleven he had reported his uncle to the Thought Police. At seventeen he had been an active member of the Junior Anti-Sex League. At nineteen he had designed a hand-grenade which the Ministry of Peace had started using and which, at its first trial, had killed thirty-one Eurasian prisoners at once. At twenty-three he had died in action. Big Brother added that Comrade Ogilvy hadn't drunk or smoked, had never been married, and had been devoted to the Party. He had only spoken to his comrades about the principles of Ingsoc, and had fought the Eurasian enemy and hunted down spies, thought-criminals, and traitors.

Winston thought for a moment whether he should award Comrade Ogilvy the Order of Conspicuous Merit, but he decided against. It would make it too complicated.

Once again he looked at Tillotson in the opposite cubicle. Winston was sure that Tillotson was busy on the same job as himself. He couldn't know whose job would be chosen as a final version, but he felt that it would be his own. Comrade Ogilvy was now a fact. Winston found it curious that you could create dead men but not living ones. Comrade Ogilvy, who had never existed in the present, now existed in the past. When the act of falsification was forgotten, he would exist just as Charlemagne[3]or Julius Caesar[4] existed.

Chapter  5

The canteen with its low ceiling was full and it was very noisy. People were waiting in line for their meal and Victory Gin.

«There you are», said a voice at Winston's back.

He turned round. It was his friend Syme, who worked in the Research Department. Perhaps «friend» was not the right word. You did not have friends anymore, you had comrades: but there were some comrades who you liked more than others. Syme was a specialist in Newspeak. He was now working on the Eleventh Edition of the Newspeak Dictionary. He was smaller than Winston, with dark hair and large eyes. It seemed that his eyes searched your face, when he spoke to you.

«Have you got any razor blades?» he asked.

«Not one!» said Winston quickly. «I've tried everywhere. They don't exist any longer».

Everyone kept asking you for razor blades. Actually he had two unused ones which he was keeping for himself. There were no razor blades anywhere for months past. There was always something that you couldn't find in the Party shops. Sometimes it was buttons, sometimes it was shoelaces; right now it was razor blades. You could only get them, if at all, by asking for them more or less secretly on the «free» market.

«I've been using the same blade for six weeks», he lied.

The queue moved forward. As they stopped he turned to Syme again. Each of them took a dirty metal tray from the counter.

«Did you go and see the prisoners hanged yesterday?» said Syme.

«I was working», said Winston. «I shall see the film, I suppose».

«It's not the same at all», said Syme.

His eyes searched Winston's face. «I know you», the eyes seemed to say, «I know very well why you didn't go». Syme was very orthodox. It was very interesting to talk to him about Newspeak, but you first had to get him away from such subjects as helicopter raids on enemy villages, and trials of thoughtcriminals. Winston turned his head a little aside to avoid the large dark eyes.

«It was a good hanging», said Syme. «I don't like it when they tie their feet together. I like to see them kicking. And above all, at the end, the bright blue tongue. That's the detail that I like».

«Nex', please!» yelled the prole behind the counter.

Winston and Syme each got their lunch – pinkish-grey stew, a large piece of bread, a cube of cheese, a mug of Victory Coffee without milk, and one saccharine tablet.

«There's a table over there, under that telescreen», said Syme. «Let's get a gin on the way».

The gin was served in china mugs with no handles. They went across the crowded room to one of the tables and put their trays on it. On one corner of the table, there was stew. It looked like vomit. Winston took up his mug of gin, paused for a moment, and drank all at once. He suddenly discovered that he was hungry. Winston and Syme didn't speak again until they finished their stew. The pinkish cubes in it were probably meat. From the table at Winston's left, a little behind his back, someone was talking and in the general noise of the room it sounded like the quacking of a duck.

«How is the Dictionary getting on?» said Winston loudly so that Syme could hear him.

«Slowly», said Syme. Winston could see he was happy to talk about Newspeak. «I'm on the adjectives».

Syme took up his bread in one hand and his cheese in the other, and leaned across the table so that he could speak without shouting.

«We're getting the language into its final shape», he said, «the shape it's going to have when nobody speaks anything else. When we've finished with it, people like you will have to learn it all over again. We do not invent new words. We're destroying words – hundreds of them, every day. The Eleventh Edition won't contain any words that will be out of use before the year 2050».

He bit into his bread and continued speaking passionately. His thin dark face had become happy; his eyes weren't searching Winston's face anymore.

«It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. We get rid mostly of the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be destroyed as well. It isn't only the synonyms; there are also the antonyms. After all, why do you need a word which is simply the opposite of some other word? Take ‘good', for example. If you have a word like ‘good', what need is there for a word like ‘bad'? ‘Ungood' is better, because it's an exact opposite, and ‘bad' is not. Or again, if you want a stronger version of ‘good', you just have to say ‘plusgood' or ‘doubleplusgood' if you want something stronger still. Of course we use those words already. But in the final version of Newspeak there'll be nothing else. There will only be six words to express goodness and badness – in reality, only one word. Don't you see the beauty of that, Winston? It was B. B.'s idea, of course», he added.

Syme saw that Winston was not really interested.

«You don't understand the importance of Newspeak, Winston», he said almost sadly. «Even when you write it you're still thinking in Oldspeak. I've read some of those pieces that you write in the Times from time to time. They're good enough, but they're translations. In your heart you prefer Oldspeak. You don't see the beauty of the destruction of words. Do you know that Newspeak is the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year?»

Winston did know that, of course. He smiled, but didn't speak. Syme bit off another piece of the dark-coloured bread, and went on:

«Don't you see that thoughtcrime will be impossible in the end because of Newspeak? There will be no words in which to express it. It narrows the range of thought. Every word will only have one meaning. Already, in the Eleventh Edition, we're not far from it. But the process will still be continuing long after you and I are dead. Every year fewer and fewer words, and less and less thoughtcrime. Even now, of course, there's no reason or excuse for thoughtcrime. It's just a question of self-discipline, reality-control. But in the end there won't be any need even for that. The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect. Newspeak is Ingsoc and Ingsoc is Newspeak», he added. «Can you imagine, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, there won't be a single human who could understand our conversation?»

«Except…» began Winston in doubt, and he stopped.

He almost said, «Except the proles», but he wasn't sure that this was not unorthodox. Syme, however, had guessed what he wanted to say.

«The proles are not humans», he said. «By 2050 – earlier, probably – all real knowledge of Oldspeak will have disappeared. There will be no literature of the past. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron – they'll exist only in Newspeak versions. But they will be changed into something quite opposite. Even the literature of the Party will change. Even the slogans will change. How could you have a slogan like ‘freedom is slavery' when there's no idea of freedom? The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking – not needing to think».

One of these days, thought Winston, Syme will be vapourized. He is too intelligent. He sees too clearly and speaks too openly. The Party does not like such people. One day he will disappear. It is written in his face.

Winston had finished his bread and cheese. He turned a little to the side in his chair to drink his mug of coffee. At the table on his left the man was still talking. A young woman was sitting at the same table with her back to Winston and listening to the man. She was perhaps his secretary and seemed to agree with everything that he was saying. From time to time she said «I think you're so right, I do so agree with you». But the other voice never stopped, even when the girl was speaking. Winston had seen the man before. He was a man of about thirty. Winston knew that he held some important post in the Fiction Department, but nothing else. Winston couldn't hear what the man was talking about, he just once caught a phrase – «they should finally destroy Goldsteinism». For the rest it was just a noise, a quack-quack-quacking. And yet, you knew what he was talking about. You could be certain that every word of it was pure orthodoxy, pure Ingsoc. It was not the man's brain that was speaking, it was his throat. What he was saying consisted of words, but it was not speech in the true sense: it was a noise, like the quacking of a duck.

Syme was silent. The voice from the other table quacked, Winston and Syme could hear it in spite of the noise.

«There is a word in Newspeak», said Syme, «I don't know whether you know it: duckspeak, to quack like a duck. It is one of those interesting words that have two opposite meanings. If you say it to your opponent, it is negative, if you say it to someone you agree with, it is positive».

There's no doubt that Syme will be vapourized, Winston thought again. He thought it with a kind of sadness. He knew well that Syme disliked him, and could report him as a thoughtcriminal if he saw any reason for it. There was something wrong with Syme. There was something that he lacked: a sort of saving stupidity. You could not say that he was unorthodox. He believed in the principles of Ingsoc, he respected Big Brother, he hated thought-criminals. Yet there was something wrong with him. He said things that you shouldn't say, he had read too many books, he often went to the Chestnut Tree Café, where painters and musicians went. There was no law against going to the Chestnut Tree Café, yet you knew that you shouldn't. The old leaders of the Party had been used to go there before they were destroyed. Goldstein himself, it was said, had sometimes been seen there, years ago. Winston knew what would happen to Syme. And yet if Syme learnt Winston's secret opinions, he would report him to the Thought Police at once. So would anybody else: but Syme more than most.

Syme looked up. «Here comes Parsons», he said.

Something in the tone of his voice seemed to add, «that fool». Parsons, who lived in the same block of Victory Mansions as Winston, was in fact coming across the room. At thirty-five he was already getting fat at neck and waist. His movements and his whole appearance was that of a little boy grown large. He greeted them both with a happy «Hullo, hullo!» and sat down at the table. Winston and Syme felt a strong smell of sweat. He always sweated a lot. At the Community Centre you could always tell when he had been playing table-tennis, because the bat handle was wet. Syme had taken a strip of paper with a long list of words, and was studying it with an ink-pencil between his fingers.

«Look at him working away in the lunch hour», said Parsons, pushing Winston with his elbow. «What's that you've got there, old boy? Something a bit too clever for me, I expect. Smith, old boy, I'll tell you why I'm here. It's that sub you forgot to give me».

«Which sub is that?» said Winston, looking for money. About a quarter of one's salary had to be given for voluntary subscriptions. There were so many that it was difficult to remember all of them.

«For Hate Week. I'm in charge of our block. We're going to put on a great show. I tell you, it won't be my fault if old Victory Mansions doesn't have the biggest number of flags in the whole street. Two dollars you promised me».

Winston found and gave him two notes, which Parsons put in a small notebook.

«By the way, old boy», he said. «I hear that my little boy hit you with his catapult yesterday. I told him I'd take the catapult away if he does it again».

«I think he was a little upset at not going to the hanging», said Winston.

«Ah, well – troublemakers they are, both of them! All they think about is the Spies, and the war, of course. Do you know what that little girl of mine did last Saturday on a hike? She made two other girls to go with her and spent the whole afternoon following a strange man. They followed him for two hours, right through the woods, and then reported him to the patrols».

«What did they do that for?» said Winston, surprised. Parsons continued:

«My kid made sure he was some kind of enemy spy – might have used a parachute, for instance. But here's the point, old boy. Why do you think she followed? She saw that he was wearing a funny kind of shoes – said she'd never seen anyone wearing shoes like that before. So the chances were he was a foreigner. Pretty smart for a child of seven, eh?»

«What happened to the man?» said Winston.

«Ah, I don't know, of course. But I guess…» Parsons made the motion of aiming a rifle, and clicked his tongue for the explosion.

«Good», said Syme without looking up from his strip of paper.

«Of course we can't risk», agreed Winston.

«What I mean to say, there is a war on», said Parsons.

At this very moment they heard a trumpet call from the telescreen just above their heads. However, it was not news of a military victory this time, but a message from the Ministry of Plenty.

«Comrades!» cried a youthful voice. «Attention, comrades! We have great news for you. We have won the battle for production! The standard of living has risen by 20 percent over the past year. All over Oceania this morning there were demonstrations when workers came out of factories and offices and went through the streets with banners to express their gratitude to Big Brother for our new, happy life. Here are some of the figures…»

The voice repeated the phrase «our new, happy life» several times. The Ministry of Plenty had been using it quite a lot lately. Parsons was listening to the message. He didn't understand the figures, but he knew that they were in some way a reason to be happy. He had taken out a big dirty pipe which was already half full of tobacco. You couldn't fill a pipe to the top with the tobacco ration at 100 grammes a week. Winston was smoking a Victory Cigarette which he held carefully. The new ration did not start till tomorrow and he had only four cigarettes left. For the moment he ignored the noises in the canteen and was listening to the message from the telescreen. There had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother, because he had raised the chocolate ration to twenty grammes a week. And only yesterday, he thought, it had been announced that the ration would be reduced to twenty grammes a week. Was it possible that they could believe that, after only twenty-four hours? Yes, they believed it. Parsons believed it easily, as stupid as an animal. The man at the other table believed it, he would vapourize anyone who should say that last week the ration had been thirty grammes. Syme, too – in some more complex way, involving doublethink, Syme believed it. Was he, then, the only one who had a memory?

The report from the telescreen continued. This year there was more food, more clothes, more houses, more ships, more helicopters, more books, more babies – more of everything except disease, crime, and insanity. Year by year and minute by minute, everybody and everything was becoming better. Had it always been like this? Had food always tasted like this? He looked round the canteen. The low ceiling, with a lot of people in it, its walls dirty; metal tables and chairs, placed so close together that you sat with elbows touching; bent spoons, dirty trays; and a strong smell of bad gin and bad coffee and stew and dirty clothes. You always had a feeling in your stomach and in your skin that there was something that you had a right to, but didn't get. He couldn't remember anything greatly different. In any time, there had never been quite enough to eat, one had never had socks or underclothes without holes, bread had always been dark-coloured, coffee bad, cigarettes too few – you could only get enough cheap gin. And, of course, it grew worse when you became older. Was it not a sign that this was wrong? Why should one feel one couldn't bear it? Didn't it mean one had some kind of memory that things had once been different?

He looked round the canteen again. Nearly everyone was ugly, and would still have been ugly even if dressed otherwise than in the blue uniform. On the far side of the room, sitting at a table alone, a small man was drinking a cup of coffee, looking from side to side with his little eyes. It was easy to think there were people of the ideal physical type set by the Party – tall muscular youths, blond-haired, sunburnt, careless – that there were a lot of them, ifyou didn't look around, thought Winston. Actually most of the people in Airstrip One were small and dark. There were many men like this in the Ministries: little men, growing fat very early in life, with short legs, and fat faces with very small eyes.

The message from the Ministry of Plenty ended on another trumpet call and gave way to some low quality music. Parsons took his pipe out of his mouth.

«The Ministry of Plenty's done a good job this year», he said. «By the way, Smith old boy, I suppose you haven't got any razor blades?»

«Not one», said Winston. «I've been using the same blade for six weeks myself».

«Ah, well – just thought I'd ask you, old boy».

«Sorry», said Winston.

The quacking voice from the next table had started up again, as loud as ever. Winston suddenly thought of Mrs. Parsons. Within two years those children would be reporting her to the Thought Police. Mrs. Parsons would be vapourized. Syme would be vapourized. Winston would be vapourized. O'Brien would be vapourized. Parsons, on the other hand, would never be vapourized. The man with the quacking voice would never be vapourized. The little men from the Ministries, too, would never be vapourized. And the girl with dark hair, the girl from the Fiction Department – she would never be vapourized either. It seemed to him that he knew who would survive and who would die: though it was not easy to say why.

At this moment the girl at the next table turned partly round and was looking at him. It was the girl with dark hair. When she caught his eye she looked away again.

Winston felt scared. Why was she watching him? Why was she following him about? Unfortunately he could not remember whether she had already been at the table when he arrived, or had come there afterwards. But yesterday, at any rate, during the Two Minutes Hate, she had sat right behind him when there was no need to do so. Quite likely she had wanted to listen to him and make sure whether he was shouting loudly enough.

His earlier thought returned to him: probably she was not actually a member of the Thought Police, but it made her even more dangerous. He did not know how long she had been looking at him, but perhaps for as much as five minutes. It was possible that his face had not been perfectly under control. The smallest thing could give you away. To wear a wrong expression on your face (to look as if you don't believe it when there was a message of a victory, for example) was itself an offence. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime, it was called.

The girl had turned her back on him again. Perhaps after all she was not really following him about, perhaps it didn't mean anything that she had sat so close to him yesterday and was looking at him now. His cigarette had gone out, and he laid it carefully on the table. He would finish smoking it after work, if he could keep the tobacco in it. Syme had folded up his strip of paper and put it away in his pocket. Parsons had begun talking again.

«Did I ever tell you, old boy», he said, «about the time when those two kids of mine set fire to the old market-woman's skirt because they saw her wrapping up sausages in a poster of B. B.? Burned her quite badly, I believe. Troublemakers, eh? That's a good training they give them in the Spies now – better than in my day, even. They've given them ear trumpets for listening through keyholes! My little girl brought one home the other night – tried it on our sitting-room door, and said she could hear twice as much as with her ear to the hole. Of course it's only a toy. Still, gives them the right idea, eh?»

At this moment the telescreen let out a whistle. It was the signal to return to work. All three men jumped to their feet and went to the lifts, and the tobacco fell out of Winston's cigarette.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.

Примечания

1

Час дня, 13:00 (обозначение времени, принятое в армии; так называемое «военное время», Military Time).

Back

2

Колчестер – город и одноимённый район в графстве Эссекс на юго-востоке Англии, на реке Колн.

Back

3

Карл I Великий – франкский король в 768–814 гг. (император с 800 г.) из династии Каролингов (751–987). Основал огромную империю в Западной Европе, в которую входили Северная Испания, Франция, Германия, Северная и Центральная Италия.

Back

4

Гай Юлий Цезарь.

Back