'Beg pardon, dearie,' she said. 'I wouldn't 'a sat on you,
only the buggers put me there. They dono 'ow to treat a lady,
do they?' She paused, patted her breast, and belched. 'Pardon,'
she said, 'I ain't meself, quite.'
She leant forward and vomited copiously on the floor.
'Thass better,' she said, leaning back with closed eyes.
'Never keep it down, thass what I say. Get it up while it's
fresh on your stomach, like.'
She revived, turned to have another look at Winston and
seemed immediately to take a fancy to him. She put a vast arm
round his shoulder and drew him towards her, breathing beer and
vomit into his face.
'Wass your name, dearie?' she said.
'Smith,' said Winston.
'Smith?' said the woman. 'Thass funny. My name's Smith
too. Why,' she added sentimentally, 'I might be your mother!'
She might, thought Winston, be his mother. She was about
the right age and physique, and it was probable that people
changed somewhat after twenty years in a forced-labour camp.
No one else had spoken to him. To a surprising extent the
ordinary criminals ignored the Party prisoners. 'The polits,'
they called them, with a sort of uninterested contempt. The
Party prisoners seemed terrified of speaking to anybody, and
above all of speaking to one another. Only once, when two Party
members, both women, were pressed close together on the bench,
he overheard amid the din of voices a few hurriedly-whispered
words; and in particular a reference to something called 'room
one-ohone', which he did not understand.
It might be two or three hours ago that they had brought
him here. The dull pain in his belly never went away, but
sometimes it grew better and sometimes worse, and his thoughts
expanded or contracted accordingly. When it grew worse he
thought only of the pain itself, and of his desire for food.
When it grew better, panic took hold of him. There were moments
when he foresaw the things that would happen to him with such
actuality that his heart galloped and his breath stopped. He
felt the smash of truncheons on his elbows and iron-shod boots
on his shins; he saw himself grovelling on the floor, screaming
for mercy through broken teeth. He hardly thought of Julia. He
could not fix his mind on her. He loved her and would not
betray her; but that was only a fact, known as he knew the
rules of arithmetic. He felt no love for her, and he hardly
even wondered what was happening to her. He thought oftener of
O'Brien, with a flickering hope. O'Brien might know that he had
been arrested. The Brotherhood, he had said, never tried to
save its members. But there was the razor blade; they would
send the razor blade if they could. There would be perhaps five
seconds before the guard could rush into the cell. The blade
would bite into him with a sort of burning coldness, and even
the fingers that held it would be cut to the bone. Everything
came back to his sick body, which shrank trembling from the
smallest pain. He was not certain that he would use the razor
blade even if he got the chance. It was more natural to exist
from moment to moment, accepting another ten minutes' life even
with the certainty that there was torture at the end of it.
Sometimes he tried to calculate the number of porcelain
bricks in the walls of the cell. It should have been easy, but
he always lost count at some point or another. More often he
wondered where he was, and what time of day it was. At one
moment he felt certain that it was broad daylight outside, and
at the next equally certain that it was pitch darkness. In this
place, he knew instinctively, the lights would never be turned
out. It was the place with no darkness: he saw now why O'Brien
had seemed to recognize the allusion. In the Ministry of Love
there were no windows. His cell might be at the heart of the
building or against its outer wall; it might be ten floors
below ground, or thirty above it. He moved himself mentally
from place to place, and tried to determine by the feeling of
his body whether he was perched high in the air or buried deep
underground.
There was a sound of marching boots outside. The steel
door opened with a clang. A young officer, a trim black-
uniformed figure who seemed to glitter all over with polished
leather, and whose pale, straight-featured face was like a wax
mask, stepped smartly through the doorway. He motioned to the
guards outside to bring in the prisoner they were leading. The
poet Ampleforth shambled into the cell. The door clanged shut
again.
Ampleforth made one or two uncertain movements from side
to side, as though having some idea that there was another door
to go out of, and then began to wander up and down the cell. He
had not yet noticed Winston's presence. His troubled eyes were
gazing at the wall about a metre above the level of Winston's
head. He was shoeless; large, dirty toes were sticking out of
the holes in his socks. He was also several days away from a
shave. A scrubby beard covered his face to the cheekbones,
giving him an air of ruffianism that went oddly with his large
weak frame and nervous movements.
Winston roused hirnself a little from his lethargy. He
must speak to Ampleforth, and risk the yell from the
telescreen. It was even conceivable that Ampleforth was the
bearer of the razor blade.
'Ampleforth,' he said.
There was no yell from the telescreen. Ampleforth paused,
mildly startled. His eyes focused themselves slowly on Winston.
'Ah, Smith!' he said. 'You too!'
'What are you in for?'
'To tell you the truth -- ' He sat down awkwardly on the
bench opposite Winston. 'There is only one offence, is there
not?' he said.
'And have you committed it?'
'Apparently I have.'
He put a hand to his forehead and pressed his temples for
a moment, as though trying to remember something.
'These things happen,' he began vaguely. 'I have been able
to recall one instance -- a possible instance. It was an
indiscretion, undoubtedly. We were producing a definitive
edition of the poems of Kipling. I allowed the word "God" to
remain at the end of a line. I could not help it!' he added
almost indignantly, raising his face to look at Winston. 'It
was impossible to change the line. The rhyme was "rod". Do you
realize that there are only twelve rhymes to "rod" in the
entire language? For days I had racked my brains. There
was no other rhyme.'
The expression on his face changed. The annoyance passed
out of it and for a moment he looked almost pleased. A sort of
intellectual warmth, the joy of the pedant who has found out
some useless fact, shone through the dirt and scrubby hair.
'Has it ever occurred to you,' he said, 'that the whole
history of English poetry has been determined by the fact that
the English language lacks rhymes?'
No, that particular thought had never occurred to Winston.
Nor, in the circumstances, did it strike him as very important
or interesting.
'Do you know what time of day it is?' he said.
Ampleforth looked startled again. 'I had hardly thought
about it. They arrested me -- it could be two days ago --
perhaps three.' His eyes flitted round the walls, as though he
half expected to find a window somewhere. 'There is no
difference between night and day in this place. I do not see
how one can calculate the time.'
They talked desultorily for some minutes, then, without
apparent reason, a yell from the telescreen bade them be
silent. Winston sat quietly, his hands crossed. Ampleforth, too
large to sit in comfort on the narrow bench, fidgeted from side
to side, clasping his lank hands first round one knee, then
round the other. The telescreen barked at him to keep still.
Time passed. Twenty minutes, an hour -- it was difficult to
judge. Once more there was a sound of boots outside. Winston's
entrails contracted. Soon, very soon, perhaps in five minutes,
perhaps now, the tramp of boots would mean that his own turn
had come.
The door opened. The cold-faced young officer stepped into
the cell. With a brief movement of the hand he indicated
Ampleforth.
'Room 101,' he said.
Ampleforth marched clumsily out between the guards, his
face vaguely perturbed, but uncomprehending.
What seemed like a long time passed. The pain in Winston's
belly had revived. His mind sagged round and round on the same
trick, like a ball falling again and again into the same series
of slots. He had only six thoughts. The pain in his belly; a
piece of bread; the blood and the screaming; O'Brien ; Julia;
the razor blade. There was another spasm in his entrails, the
heavy boots were approaching. As the door opened, the wave of
air that it created brought in a powerful smell of cold sweat.
Parsons walked into the cell. He was wearing khaki shorts and a
sports-shirt.
This time Winston was startled into self-forgetfulness.
'You here!' he said.
Parsons gave Winston a glance in which there was neither
interest nor surprise, but only misery. He began walking
jerkily up and down, evidently unable to keep still. Each time
he straightened his pudgy knees it was apparent that they were
trembling. His eyes had a wide-open, staring look, as though he
could not prevent himself from gazing at something in the
middle distance.
'What are you in for?' said Winston.
'Thoughtcrime!' said Parsons, almost blubbering. The tone
of his voice implied at once a complete admission of his guilt
and a sort of incredulous horror that such a word could be
applied to himself. He paused opposite Winston and began
eagerly appealing to him: 'You don't think they'll shoot me, do
you, old chap? They don't shoot you if you haven't actually
done anything -- only thoughts, which you can't help? I know
they give you a fair hearing. Oh, I trust them for that!
They'll know my record, won't they? You know what kind of chap
I was. Not a bad chap in my way. Not brainy, of course, but
keen. I tried to do my best for the Party, didn't I? I'll get
off with five years, don't you think? Or even ten years? A chap
like me could make himself pretty useful in a labour-camp. They
wouldn't shoot me for going off the rails just once?'
'Are you guilty?' said Winston.
'Of course I'm guilty !' cried Parsons with a servile
glance at the telescreen. 'You don't think the Party would
arrest an innocent man, do you?' His frog-like face grew
calmer, and even took on a slightly sanctimonious expression.
'Thoughtcrime is a dreadful thing, old man,' he said
sententiously. 'It's insidious. It can get hold of you without
your even knowing it. Do you know how it got hold of me? In my
sleep! Yes, that's a fact. There I was, working away, trying to
do my bit -- never knew I had any bad stuff in my mind at all.
And then I started talking in my sleep. Do you know what they
heard me saying?'
He sank his voice, like someone who is obliged for medical
reasons to utter an obscenity.
"Down with Big Brother!" Yes, I said that! Said it over
and over again, it seems. Between you and me, old man, I'm glad
they got me before it went any further. Do you know what I'm
going to say to them when I go up before the tribunal? "Thank
you," I'm going to say, "thank you for saving me before it was
too late."
'Who denounced you?' said Winston.
'It was my little daughter,' said Parsons with a sort of
doleful pride. 'She listened at the keyhole. Heard what I was
saying, and nipped off to the patrols the very next day. Pretty
smart for a nipper of seven, eh? I don't bear her any grudge
for it. In fact I'm proud of her. It shows I brought her up in
the right spirit, anyway.'
He made a few more jerky movements up and down, several
times, casting a longing glance at the lavatory pan. Then he
suddenly ripped down his shorts.
'Excuse me, old man,' he said. 'I can't help it. It's the
waiting.'
He plumped his large posterior into the lavatory pan.
Winston covered his face with his hands.
'Smith!' yelled the voice from the telescreen. '6079 Smith
W! Uncover your face. No faces covered in the cells.'
next