They were talking about the Lottery. Winston looked
back
when he had gone thirty metres. They were still arguing, with
vivid, passionate faces. The Lottery, with its weekly pay-out
of enormous prizes, was the one public event to which the
proles paid serious attention. It was probable that there were
some millions of proles for whom the Lottery was the principal
if not the only reason for remaining alive. It was their
delight, their folly, their anodyne, their intellectual
stimulant. Where the Lottery was concerned, even people who
could barely read and write seemed capable of intricate
calculations and staggering feats of memory. There was a whole
tribe of men who made a living simply by selling systems,
forecasts, and lucky amulets. Winston had nothing to do with
the running of the Lottery, which was managed by the Ministry
of Plenty, but he was aware (indeed everyone in the party was
aware) that the prizes were largely imaginary. Only small sums
were actually paid out, the winners of the big prizes being
non-existent persons. In the absence of any real
intercommunication between one part of Oceania and another,
this was not difficult to arrange.
But if there was hope, it lay in the proles. You had to
cling on to that. When you put it in words it sounded
reasonable: it was when you looked at the human beings passing
you on the pavement that it became an act of faith. The street
into which he had turned ran downhill. He had a feeling that he
had been in this neighbourhood before, and that there was a
main thoroughfare not far away. From somewhere ahead there came
a din of shouting voices. The street took a sharp turn and then
ended in a flight of steps which led down into a sunken alley
where a few stallkeepers were selling tired-looking vegetables.
At this moment Winston remembered where he was. The alley led
out into the main street, and down the next turning, not five
minutes away, was the junk-shop where he had bought the blank
book which was now his diary. And in a small stationer's shop
not far away he had bought his penholder and his bottle of ink.
He paused for a moment at the top of the steps. On the
opposite side of the alley there was a dingy little pub whose
windows appeared to be frosted over but in reality were merely
coated with dust. A very old man, bent but active, with white
moustaches that bristled forward like those of a prawn, pushed
open the swing door and went in. As Winston stood watching, it
occurred to him that the old man, who must be eighty at the
least, had already been middle- aged when the Revolution
happened. He and a few others like him were the last links that
now existed with the vanished world of capitalism. In the Party
itself there were not many people left whose ideas had been
formed before the Revolution. The older generation had mostly
been wiped out in the great purges of the fifties and sixties,
and the few who survived had long ago been terrified into
complete intellectual surrender. If there was any one still
alive who could give you a truthful account of conditions in
the early part of the century, it could only be a prole.
Suddenly the passage from the history book that he had copied
into his diary came back into Winston's mind, and a lunatic
impulse took hold of him. He would go into the pub, he would
scrape acquaintance with that old man and question him. He
would say to him: 'Tell me about your life when you were a boy.
What was it like in those days? Were things better than they
are now, or were they worse?'
Hurriedly, lest he should have time to become frightened,
he descended the steps and crossed the narrow street. It was
madness of course. As usual, there was no definite rule against
talking to proles and frequenting their pubs, but it was far
too unusual an action to pass unnoticed. If the patrols
appeared he might plead an attack of faintness, but it was not
likely that they would believe him. He pushed open the door,
and a hideous cheesy smell of sour beer hit him in the face. As
he entered the din of voices dropped to about half its volume.
Behind his back he could feel everyone eyeing his blue
overalls. A game of darts which was going on at the other end
of the room interrupted itself for perhaps as much as thirty
seconds. The old man whom he had followed was standing at the
bar, having some kind of altercation with the barman, a large,
stout, hook-nosed young man with enormous forearms. A knot of
others, standing round with glasses in their hands, were
watching the scene.
'I arst you civil enough, didn't I?' said the old man,
straightening his shoulders pugnaciously. 'You telling me you
ain't got a pint mug in the 'ole bleeding boozer?'
'And what in hell's name is a pint?' said the barman,
leaning forward with the tips of his fingers on the counter.
'Ark at 'im ! Calls 'isself a barman and don't know what a
pint is! Why, a pint's the 'alf of a quart, and there's four
quarts to the gallon. 'Ave to teach you the A, B, C next.'
'Never heard of 'em,' said the barman shortly. 'Litre and
half litre -- that's all we serve. There's the glasses on the
shelf in front of you.
'I likes a pint,' persisted the old man. 'You could 'a
drawed me off a pint easy enough. We didn't 'ave these bleeding
litres when I was a young man.'
'When you were a young man we were all living in the
treetops,' said the barman, with a glance at the other
customers.
There was a shout of laughter, and the uneasiness caused
by Winston's entry seemed to disappear. The old man's
whitestubbled face had flushed pink. He turned away, muttering
to himself, and bumped into Winston. Winston caught him gently
by the arm.
'May I offer you a drink?' he said.
'You're a gent,' said the other, straightening his
shoulders again. He appeared not to have noticed Winston's blue
overalls. 'Pint!' he added aggressively to the barman. 'Pint of
wallop.'
The barman swished two half-litres of dark-brown beer into
thick glasses which he had rinsed in a bucket under the
counter. Beer was the only drink you could get in prole pubs.
The proles were supposed not to drink gin, though in practice
they could get hold of it easily enough. The game of darts was
in full swing again, and the knot of men at the bar had begun
talking about lottery tickets. Winston's presence was forgotten
for a moment. There was a deal table under the window where he
and the old man could talk without fear of being overheard. It
was horribly dangerous, but at any rate there was no telescreen
in the room, a point he had made sure of as soon as he came in.
"E could 'a drawed me off a pint,' grumbled the old man as
he settled down behind a glass. 'A 'alf litre ain't enough. It
don't satisfy. And a 'ole litre's too much. It starts my
bladder running. Let alone the price.'
'You must have seen great changes since you were a young
man,' said Winston tentatively.
The old man's pale blue eyes moved from the darts board to
the bar, and from the bar to the door of the Gents, as though
it were in the bar-room that he expected the changes to have
occurred.
'The beer was better,' he said finally. 'And cheaper! When
I was a young man, mild beer -- wallop we used to call it --
was fourpence a pint. That was before the war, of course.'
'Which war was that?' said Winston.
'It's all wars,' said the old man vaguely. He took up his
glass, and his shoulders straightened again. "Ere's wishing you
the very best of 'ealth!'
In his lean throat the sharp-pointed Adam's apple made a
surprisingly rapid up-and-down movement, and the beer vanished.
Winston went to the bar and came back with two more
half-litres. The old man appeared to have forgotten his
prejudice against drinking a full litre.
'You are very much older than I am,' said Winston. 'You
must have been a grown man before I was born. You can remember
what it was like in the old days, before the Revolution. People
of my age don't really know anything about those times. We can
only read about them in books, and what it says in the books
may not be true. I should like your opinion on that. The
history books say that life before the Revolution was
completely different from what it is now. There was the most
terrible oppression, injustice, poverty worse than anything we
can imagine. Here in London, the great mass of the people never
had enough to eat from birth to death. Half of them hadn't even
boots on their feet. They worked twelve hours a day, they left
school at nine, they slept ten in a room. And at the same time
there were a very few people, only a few thousands -- the
capitalists, they were called -- who were rich and powerful.
They owned everything that there was to own. They lived in
great gorgeous houses with thirty servants, they rode about in
motor-cars and four-horse carriages, they drank champagne, they
wore top hats-'
The old man brightened suddenly.
'Top 'ats!' he said. 'Funny you should mention 'em. The
same thing come into my 'ead only yesterday, I dono why. I was
jest thinking, I ain't seen a top 'at in years. Gorn right out,
they 'ave. The last time I wore one was at my sister-in-law's
funeral. And that was -- well, I couldn't give you the date,
but it must'a been fifty years ago. Of course it was only 'ired
for the occasion, you understand.'
'It isn't very important about the top hats,' said Winston
patiently. 'The point is, these capitalists -- they and a few
lawyers and priests and so forth who lived on them -- were the
lords of the earth. Everything existed for their benefit. You
-- the ordinary people, the workers -- were their slaves. They
could do what they liked with you. They could ship you off to
Canada like cattle. They could sleep with your daughters if
they chose. They could order you to be flogged with something
called a cat-o'-nine tails. You had to take your cap off when
you passed them. Every capitalist went about with a gang of
lackeys who-'
The old man brightened again.
'Lackeys !' he said. 'Now there's a word I ain't 'eard
since ever so long. Lackeys! That reg'lar takes me back, that
does. I recollect oh, donkey's years ago -- I used to sometimes
go to 'Yde Park of a Sunday afternoon to 'ear the blokes making
speeches. Salvation Army, Roman Catholics, Jews, Indians -- all
sorts there was. And there was one bloke -- well, I couldn't
give you 'is name, but a real powerful speaker 'e was. 'E
didn't 'alf give it 'em! "Lackeys!" 'e says, "lackeys of the
bourgeoisie! Flunkies of the ruling class!" Parasites -- that
was another of them. And 'yenas -- 'e definitely called 'em
'yenas. Of course 'e was referring to the Labour Party, you
understand.'
Winston had the feeling that they were talking at
crosspurposes.
'What I really wanted to know was this,' he said. 'Do you
feel that you have more freedom now than you had in those days?
Are you treated more like a human being? In the old days, the
rich people, the people at the top-'
'The 'Ouse of Lords,' put in the old man reminiscently.
'The House of Lords, if you like. What I am asking is,
were these people able to treat you as an inferior, simply
because they were rich and you were poor? Is it a fact, for
instance, that you had to call them "Sir" and take off your cap
when you passed them?'
The old man appeared to think deeply. He drank off about a
quarter of his beer before answering.
'Yes,' he said. 'They liked you to touch your cap to 'em.
It showed respect, like. I didn't agree with it, myself, but I
done it often enough. Had to, as you might say.'
'And was it usual -- I'm only quoting what I've read in
history books -- was it usual for these people and their
servants to push you off the pavement into the gutter?'
'One of 'em pushed me once,' said the old man. 'I
recollect it as if it was yesterday. It was Boat Race night --
terribly rowdy they used to get on Boat Race night -- and I
bumps into a young bloke on Shaftesbury Avenue. Quite a gent,
'e was -- dress shirt, top 'at, black overcoat. 'E was kind of
zig-zagging across the pavement, and I bumps into 'im
accidental-like. 'E says, "Why can't you look where you're
going?" 'e says. I say, "Ju think you've bought the bleeding
pavement?" 'E says, "I'll twist your bloody 'ead off if you get
fresh with me." I says, "You're drunk. I'll give you in charge
in 'alf a minute," I says. An' if you'll believe me, 'e puts
'is 'and on my chest and gives me a shove as pretty near sent
me under the wheels of a bus. Well, I was young in them days,
and I was going to 'ave fetched 'im one, only-'
next