With that first blow on the elbow the nightmare had
started. Later he was to realize that all that then happened
was merely a preliminary, a routine interrogation to which
nearly all prisoners were subjected. There was a long range of
crimes -- espionage, sabotage, and the like -- to which
everyone had to confess as a matter of course. The confession
was a formality, though the torture was real. How many times he
had been beaten, how long the beatings had continued, he could
not remember. Always there were five or six men in black
uniforms at him simultaneously. Sometimes it was fists,
sometimes it was truncheons, sometimes it was steel rods,
sometimes it was boots. There were times when he rolled about
the floor, as shameless as an animal, writhing his body this
way and that in an endless, hopeless effort to dodge the kicks,
and simply inviting more and yet more kicks, in his ribs, in
his belly, on his elbows, on his shins, in his groin, in his
testicles, on the bone at the base of his spine. There were
times when it went on and on until the cruel, wicked,
unforgivable thing seemed to him not that the guards continued
to beat him but that he could not force hirnself into losing
consciousness. There were times when his nerve so forsook him
that he began shouting for mercy even before the beating began,
when the mere sight of a fist drawn back for a blow was enough
to make him pour forth a confession of real and imaginary
crimes. There were other times when he started out with the
resolve of confessing nothing, when every word had to be forced
out of him between gasps of pain, and there were times when he
feebly tried to compromise, when he said to himself: 'I will
confess, but not yet. I must hold out till the pain becomes
unbearable. Three more kicks, two more kicks, and then I will
tell them what they want.' Sometimes he was beaten till he
could hardly stand, then flung like a sack of potatoes on to
the stone floor of a cell, left to recuperate for a few hours,
and then taken out and beaten again. There were also longer
periods of recovery. He remembered them dimly, because they
were spent chiefly in sleep or stupor. He remembered a cell
with a plank bed, a sort of shelf sticking out from the wall,
and a tin wash-basin, and meals of hot soup and bread and
sometimes coffee. He remembered a surly barber arriving to
scrape his chin and crop his hair, and businesslike,
unsympathetic men in white coats feeling his pulse, tapping his
reflexes, turning up his eyelids, running harsh fingers over
him in search for broken bones, and shooting needles into his
arm to make him sleep.
The beatings grew less frequent, and became mainly a
threat, a horror to which he could be sent back at any moment
when his answers were unsatisfactory. His questioners now were
not ruffians in black uniforms but Party intellectuals, little
rotund men with quick movements and flashing spectacles, who
worked on him in relays over periods which lasted -- he
thought, he could not be sure -- ten or twelve hours at a
stretch. These other questioners saw to it that he was in
constant slight pain, but it was not chiefly pain that they
relied on. They slapped his face, wrung his ears. pulled his
hair, made him stand on one leg, refused him leave to urinate,
shone glaring lights in his face until his eyes ran with water;
but the aim of this was simply to humiliate him and destroy his
power of arguing and reasoning. Their real weapon was the
merciless questioning that went on and on, hour after hour,
tripping him up, laying traps for him, twisting everything that
he said, convicting him at every step of lies and
self-contradiction until he began weeping as much from shame as
from nervous fatigue Sometimes he would weep half a dozen times
in a single session. Most of the time they screamed abuse at
him and threatened at every hesitation to deliver him over to
the guards again; but sometimes they would suddenly change
their tune, call him comrade, appeal to him in the name of
Ingsoc and Big Brother, and ask him sorrowfully whether even
now he had not enough loyalty to the Party left to make him
wish to undo the evil he had done. When his nerves were in rags
after hours of questioning, even this appeal could reduce him
to snivelling tears. In the end the nagging voices broke him
down more completely than the boots and fists of the guards. He
became simply a mouth that uttered, a hand that signed,
whatever was demanded of him. His sole concern was to find out
what they wanted him to confess, and then confess it quickly,
before the bullying started anew. He confessed to the
assassination of eminent Party members, the distribution of
seditious pamphlets, embezzlement of public funds, sale of
military secrets, sabotage of every kind. He confessed that he
had been a spy in the pay of the Eastasian government as far
back as 1968. He confessed that he was a religious believer, an
admirer of capitalism, and a sexual pervert. He confessed that
he had murdered his wife, although he knew, and his questioners
must have known, that his wife was still alive. He confessed
that for years he had been in personal touch with Goldstein and
had been a member of an underground organization which had
included almost every human being he had ever known. It was
easier to confess everything and implicate everybody. Besides,
in a sense it was all true. It was true that he had been the
enemy of the Party, and in the eyes of the Party there was no
distinction between the thought and the deed.
There were also memories of another kind. They stood out
in his mind disconnectedly, like pictures with blackness all
round them.
He was in a cell which might have been either dark or
light, because he could see nothing except a pair of eyes. Near
at hand some kind of instrument was ticking slowly and
regularly. The eyes grew larger and more luminous. Suddenly he
floated out of his seat, dived into the eyes, and was swallowed
up.
He was strapped into a chair surrounded by dials, under
dazzling lights. A man in a white coat was reading the dials.
There was a tramp of heavy boots outside. The door clanged
open. The waxed-faced officer marched in, followed by two
guards.
'Room 101,' said the officer.
The man in the white coat did not turn round. He did not
look at Winston either; he was looking only at the dials.
He was rolling down a mighty corridor, a kilometre wide,
full of glorious, golden light, roaring with laughter and
shouting out confessions at the top of his voice. He was
confessing everything, even the things he had succeeded in
holding back under the torture. He was relating the entire
history of his life to an audience who knew it already. With
him were the guards, the other questioners, the men in white
coats, O'Brien, Julia, Mr Charrington, all rolling down the
corridor together and shouting with laughter. Some dreadful
thing which had lain embedded in the future had somehow been
skipped over and had not happened. Everything was all right,
there was no more pain, the last detail of his life was laid
bare, understood, forgiven.
He was starting up from the plank bed in the half-
certainty that he had heard O'Brien's voice. All through his
interrogation, although he had never seen him, he had had the
feeling that O'Brien was at his elbow, just out of sight. It
was O'Brien who was directing everything. It was he who set the
guards on to Winston and who prevented them from killing him.
It was he who decided when Winston should scream with pain,
when he should have a respite, when he should be fed, when he
should sleep, when the drugs should be pumped into his arm. It
was he who asked the questions and suggested the answers. He
was the tormentor, he was the protector, he was the inquisitor,
he was the friend. And once -- Winston could not remember
whether it was in drugged sleep, or in normal sleep, or even in
a moment of wakefulness -- a voice murmured in his ear: 'Don't
worry, Winston; you are in my keeping. For seven years I have
watched over you. Now the turning-point has come. I shall save
you, I shall make you perfect.' He was not sure whether it was
O'Brien's voice; but it was the same voice that had said to
him, 'We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness,'
in that other dream, seven years ago.
He did not remember any ending to his interrogation. There
was a period of blackness and then the cell, or room, in which
he now was had gradually materialized round him. He was almost
flat on his back, and unable to move. His body was held down at
every essential point. Even the back of his head was gripped in
some manner. O'Brien was looking down at him gravely and rather
sadly. His face, seen from below, looked coarse and worn, with
pouches under the eyes and tired lines from nose to chin. He
was older than Winston had thought him; he was perhaps
forty-eight or fifty. Under his hand there was a dial with a
lever on top and figures running round the face.
'I told you,' said O'Brien, 'that if we met again it would
be here.'
'Yes,' said Winston.
Without any warning except a slight movement of O'Brien's
hand, a wave of pain flooded his body. It was a frightening
pain, because he could not see what was happening, and he had
the feeling that some mortal injury was being done to him. He
did not know whether the thing was really happening, or whether
the effect was electrically produced ; but his body was being
wrenched out of shape, the joints were being slowly torn apart.
Although the pain had brought the sweat out on his forehead,
the worst of all was the fear that his backbone was about to
snap. He set his teeth and breathed hard through his nose,
trying to keep silent as long as possible.
'You are afraid,' said O'Brien, watching his face, 'that
in another moment something is going to break. Your especial
fear is that it will be your backbone. You have a vivid mental
picture of the vertebrae snapping apart and the spinal fluid
dripping out of them. That is what you are thinking, is it not,
Winston?'
Winston did not answer. O'Brien drew back the lever on the
dial. The wave of pain receded almost as quickly as it had
come.
'That was forty,' said O'Brien. 'You can see that the
numbers on this dial run up to a hundred. Will you please
remember, throughout our conversation, that I have it in my
power to inflict pain on you at any moment and to whatever
degree I choose? If you tell me any lies, or attempt to
prevaricate in any way, or even fall below your usual level of
intelligence, you will cry out with pain, instantly. Do you
understand that?'
'Yes,' said Winston.
O'Brien's manner became less severe. He resettled his
spectacles thoughtfully, and took a pace or two up and down.
When he spoke his voice was gentle and patient. He had the air
of a doctor, a teacher, even a priest, anxious to explain and
persuade rather than to punish.
'I am taking trouble with you, Winston,' he said, 'because
you are worth trouble. You know perfectly well what is the
matter with you. You have known it for years, though you have
fought against the knowledge. You are mentally deranged. You
suffer from a defective memory. You are unable to remember real
events and you persuade yourself that you remember other events
which never happened. Fortunately it is curable. You have never
cured yourself of it, because you did not choose to. There was
a small effort of the will that you were not ready to make.
Even now, I am well aware, you are clinging to your disease
under the impression that it is a virtue. Now we will take an
example. At this moment, which power is Oceania at war with?'
'When I was arrested, Oceania was at war with Eastasia.
'With Eastasia. Good. And Oceania has always been at war
with Eastasia, has it not?'
Winston drew in his breath. He opened his mouth to speak
and then did not speak. He could not take his eyes away from
the dial.
'The truth, please, Winston. Your truth. Tell me
what you think you remember.'
'I remember that until only a week before I was arrested,
we were not at war with Eastasia at all. We were in alliance
with them. The war was against Eurasia. That had lasted for
four years. Before that -- '
O'Brien stopped him with a movement of the hand.
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