Sometimes he talked to her of the Records Department and
the impudent forgeries that he committed there. Such things did
not appear to horrify her. She did not feel the abyss opening
beneath her feet at the thought of lies becoming truths. He
told her the story of Jones, Aaronson, and Rutherford and the
momentous slip of paper which he had once held between his
fingers. It did not make much impression on her. At first,
indeed, she failed to grasp the point of the story.
'Were they friends of yours?' she said.
'No, I never knew them. They were Inner Party members.
Besides, they were far older men than I was. They belonged to
the old days, before the Revolution. I barely knew them by
sight.'
'Then what was there to worry about? People are being
killed off all the time, aren't they?'
He tried to make her understand. 'This was an exceptional
case. It wasn't just a question of somebody being killed. Do
you realize that the past, starting from yesterday, has been
actually abolished? If it survives anywhere, it's in a few
solid objects with no words attached to them, like that lump of
glass there. Already we know almost literally nothing about the
Revolution and the years before the Revolution. Every record
has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten,
every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and
building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And
that process is continuing day by day and minute by minute.
History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present
in which the Party is always right. I know, of course,
that the past is falsified, but it would never be possible for
me to prove it, even when I did the falsification myself. After
the thing is done, no evidence ever remains. The only evidence
is inside my own mind, and I don't know with any certainty that
any other human being shares my memories. Just in that one
instance, in my whole life, I did possess actual concrete
evidence after the event -- years after it.'
'And what good was that?'
'It was no good, because I threw it away a few minutes
later. But if the same thing happened today, I should keep it.'
'Well, I wouldn't!' said Julia. 'I'm quite ready to take
risks, but only for something worth while, not for bits of old
newspaper. What could you have done with it even if you had
kept it?'
'Not much, perhaps. But it was evidence. It might have
planted a few doubts here and there, supposing that I'd dared
to show it to anybody. I don't imagine that we can alter
anything in our own lifetime. But one can imagine little knots
of resistance springing up here and there -- small groups of
people banding themselves together, and gradually growing, and
even leaving a few records behind, so that the next generations
can carry on where we leave off.'
'I'm not interested in the next generation, dear. I'm
interested in us.
'You're only a rebel from the waist downwards,' he told
her.
She thought this brilliantly witty and flung her arms
round him in delight.
In the ramifications of party doctrine she had not the
faintest interest. Whenever he began to talk of the principles
of Ingsoc, doublethink, the mutability of the past, and the
denial of objective reality, and to use Newspeak words, she
became bored and confused and said that she never paid any
attention to that kind of thing. One knew that it was all
rubbish, so why let oneself be worried by it? She knew when to
cheer and when to boo, and that was all one needed. If he
persisted in talking of such subjects, she had a disconcerting
habit of falling asleep. She was one of those people who can go
to sleep at any hour and in any position. Talking to her, he
realized how easy it was to present an appearance of orthodoxy
while having no grasp whatever of what orthodoxy meant. In a
way, the world-view of the Party imposed itself most
successfully on people incapable of understanding it. They
could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of
reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what
was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in
public events to notice what was happening. By lack of
understanding they remained sane. They simply swallowed
everything, and what they swallowed did them no harm, because
it left no residue behind, just as a grain of corn will pass
undigested through the body of a bird.
x x x
It had happened at last. The expected message had come.
All his life, it seemed to him, he had been waiting for this to
happen.
He was walking down the long corridor at the Ministry and
he was almost at the spot where Julia had slipped the note into
his hand when he became aware that someone larger than himself
was walking just behind him. The person, whoever it was, gave a
small cough, evidently as a prelude to speaking. Winston
stopped abruptly and turned. It was O'Brien.
At last they were face to face, and it seemed that his
only impulse was to run away. His heart bounded violently. He
would have been incapable of speaking. O'Brien, however, had
continued forward in the same movement, laying a friendly hand
for a moment on Winston's arm, so that the two of them were
walking side by side. He began speaking with the peculiar grave
courtesy that differentiated him from the majority of Inner
Party members.
'I had been hoping for an opportunity of talking to you,'
he said. 'I was reading one of your Newspeak articles in The
Times the other day. You take a scholarly interest in
Newspeak, I believe?'
Winston had recovered part of his self-possession. 'Hardly
scholarly,' he said. 'I'm only an amateur. It's not my subject.
I have never had anything to do with the actual construction of
the language.'
'But you write it very elegantly,' said O'Brien. 'That is
not only my own opinion. I was talking recently to a friend of
yours who is certainly an expert. His name has slipped my
memory for the moment.'
Again Winston's heart stirred painfully. It was
inconceivable that this was anything other than a reference to
Syme. But Syme was not only dead, he was abolished, an
unperson. Any identifiable reference to him would have
been mortally dangerous. O'Brien's remark must obviously have
been intended as a signal, a codeword. By sharing a small act
of thoughtcrime he had turned the two of them into accomplices.
They had continued to stroll slowly down the corridor, but now
O'Brien halted. With the curious, disarming friendliness that
he always managed to put in to the gesture he resettled his
spectacles on his nose. Then he went on:
'What I had really intended to say was that in your
article I noticed you had used two words which have become
obsolete. But they have only become so very recently. Have you
seen the tenth edition of the Newspeak Dictionary?'
'No,' said Winston. 'I didn't think it had been issued
yet. We are still using the ninth in the Records Department.'
'The tenth edition is not due to appear for some months, I
believe. But a few advance copies have been circulated. I have
one myself. It might interest you to look at it, perhaps?'
'Very much so,' said Winston, immediately seeing where
this tended.
'Some of the new developments are most ingenious. The
reduction in the number of verbs -- that is the point that will
appeal to you, I think. Let me see, shall I send a messenger to
you with the dictionary? But I am afraid I invariably forget
anything of that kind. Perhaps you could pick it up at my flat
at some time that suited you? Wait. Let me give you my
address.'
They were standing in front of a telescreen. Somewhat
absentmindedly O'Brien felt two of his pockets and then
produced a small leather-covered notebook and a gold ink-
pencil. Immediately beneath the telescreen, in such a position
that anyone who was watching at the other end of the instrument
could read what he was writing, he scribbled an address, tore
out the page and handed it to Winston.
'I am usually at home in the evenings,' he said. 'If not,
my servant will give you the dictionary.'
He was gone, leaving Winston holding the scrap of paper,
which this time there was no need to conceal. Nevertheless he
carefully memorized what was written on it, and some hours
later dropped it into the memory hole along with a mass of
other papers.
They had been talking to one another for a couple of
minutes at the most. There was only one meaning that the
episode could possibly have. It had been contrived as a way of
letting Winston know O'Brien's address. This was necessary,
because except by direct enquiry it was never possible to
discover where anyone lived. There were no directories of any
kind. 'If you ever want to see me, this is where I can be
found,' was what O'Brien had been saying to him. Perhaps there
would even be a message concealed somewhere in the dictionary.
But at any rate, one thing was certain. The conspiracy that he
had dreamed of did exist, and he had reached the outer edges of
it.
He knew that sooner or later he would obey O'Brien's
summons. Perhaps tomorrow, perhaps after a long delay -- he was
not certain. What was happening was only the working-out of a
process that had started years ago. The first step had been a
secret, involuntary thought, the second had been the opening of
the diary. He had moved from thoughts to words, and now from
words to actions. The last step was something that would happen
in the Ministry of Love. He had accepted it. The end was
contained in the beginning. But it was frightening: or, more
exactly, it was like a foretaste of death, like being a little
less alive. Even whiIe he was speaking to O'Brien, when the
meaning of the words had sunk in, a chilly shuddering feeling
had taken possession of his body. He had the sensation of
stepping into the dampness of a grave, and it was not much
better because he had always known that the grave was there and
waiting for him.
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