He had moved a little to one side, so that Winston had a
better view of the thing on the table. It was an oblong wire
cage with a handle on top for carrying it by. Fixed to the
front of it was something that looked like a fencing mask, with
the concave side outwards. Although it was three or four metres
away from him, he could see that the cage was divided
lengthways into two compart ments, and that there was some kind
of creature in each. They were rats.
'In your case, said O'Brien, 'the worst thing in the world
happens to be rats.'
A sort of premonitory tremor, a fear of he was not certain
what, had passed through Winston as soon as he caught his first
glimpse of the cage. But at this moment the meaning of the
mask-like attachment in front of it suddenly sank into him. His
bowels seemed to turn to water.
'You can't do that!' he cried out in a high cracked voice.
'You couldn't, you couldn't! It's impossible.'
'Do you remember,' said O'Brien, 'the moment of panic that
used to occur in your dreams? There was a wall of blackness in
front of you, and a roaring sound in your ears. There was
something terrible on the other side of the wall. You knew that
you knew what it was, but you dared not drag it into the open.
It was the rats that were on the other side of the wall.'
'O'Brien!' said Winston, making an effort to control his
voice. 'You know this is not necessary. What is it that you
want me to do?'
O'Brien made no direct answer. When he spoke it was in the
schoolmasterish manner that he sometimes affected. He looked
thoughtfully into the distance, as though he were addressing an
audience somewhere behind Winston's back.
'By itself,' he said, 'pain is not always enough. There
are occasions when a human being will stand out against pain,
even to the point of death. But for everyone there is something
unendurable -- something that cannot be contemplated. Courage
and cowardice are not involved. If you are falling from a
height it is not cowardly to clutch at a rope. If you have come
up from deep water it is not cowardly to fill your lungs with
air. It is merely an instinct which cannot be destroyed. It is
the same with the rats. For you, they are unendurable. They are
a form of pressure that you cannot withstand. even if you
wished to. You will do what is required of you.
'But what is it, what is it? How can I do it if I don't
know what it is?'
O'Brien picked up the cage and brought it across to the
nearer table. He set it down carefully on the baize cloth.
Winston could hear the blood singing in his ears. He had the
feeling of sitting in utter loneliness. He was in the middle of
a great empty plain, a flat desert drenched with sunlight,
across which all sounds came to him out of immense distances.
Yet the cage with the rats was not two metres away from him.
They were enormous rats. They were at the age when a rat's
muzzle grows blunt and fierce and his fur brown instead of
grey.
'The rat,' said O'Brien, still addressing his invisible
audience, 'although a rodent, is carnivorous. You are aware of
that. You will have heard of the things that happen in the poor
quarters of this town. In some streets a woman dare not leave
her baby alone in the house, even for five minutes. The rats
are certain to attack it. Within quite a small time they will
strip it to the bones. They also attack sick or dying people.
They show astonishing intelligence in knowing when a human
being is helpless.'
There was an outburst of squeals from the cage. It seemed
to reach Winston from far away. The rats were fighting; they
were trying to get at each other through the partition. He
heard also a deep groan of despair. That, too, seemed to come
from outside himself.
O'Brien picked up the cage, and, as he did so, pressed
something in it. There was a sharp click. Winston made a
frantic effort to tear himself loose from the chair. It was
hopeless; every part of him, even his head, was held immovably.
O'Brien moved the cage nearer. It was less than a metre from
Winston's face.
'I have pressed the first lever,' said O'Brien. 'You
understand the construction of this cage. The mask will fit
over your head, leaving no exit. When I press this other lever,
the door of the cage will slide up. These starving brutes will
shoot out of it like bullets. Have you ever seen a rat leap
through the air? They will leap on to your face and bore
straight into it. Sometimes they attack the eyes first.
Sometimes they burrow through the cheeks and devour the
tongue.'
The cage was nearer; it was closing in. Winston heard a
succession of shrill cries which appeared to be occurring in
the air above his head. But he fought furiously against his
panic. To think, to think, even with a split second left -- to
think was the only hope. Suddenly the foul musty odour of the
brutes struck his nostrils. There was a violent convulsion of
nausea inside him, and he almost lost consciousness. Everything
had gone black. For an instant he was insane, a screaming
animal. Yet he came out of the blackness clutching an idea.
There was one and only one way to save himself. He must
interpose another human being, the body of another human
being, between himself and the rats.
The circle of the mask was large enough now to shut out
the vision of anything else. The wire door was a couple of
hand-spans from his face. The rats knew what was coming now.
One of them was leaping up and down, the other, an old scaly
grandfather of the sewers, stood up, with his pink hands
against the bars, and fiercely sniffed the air. Winston could
see the whiskers and the yellow teeth. Again the black panic
took hold of him. He was blind, helpless, mindless.
'It was a common punishment in Imperial China,' said
O'Brien as didactically as ever.
The mask was closing on his face. The wire brushed his
cheek. And then -- no, it was not relief, only hope, a tiny
fragment of hope. Too late, perhaps too late. But he had
suddenly understood that in the whole world there was just
one person to whom he could transfer his punishment --
one body that he could thrust between himself and the
rats. And he was shouting frantically, over and over.
'Do it to Julia! Do it to Julia! Not me! Julia! I don't
care what you do to her. Tear her face off, strip her to the
bones. Not me! Julia! Not me!'
He was falling backwards, into enormous depths, away from
the rats. He was still strapped in the chair, but he had fallen
through the floor, through the walls of the building, through
the earth, through the oceans, through the atmosphere, into
outer space, into the gulfs between the stars -- always away,
away, away from the rats. He was light years distant, but
O'Brien was still standing at his side. There was still the
cold touch of wire against his cheek. But through the darkness
that enveloped him he heard another metallic click, and knew
that the cage door had clicked shut and not open.
x x x
The Chestnut Tree was almost empty. A ray of sunlight
slanting through a window fell on dusty table-tops. It was the
lonely hour of fifteen. A tinny music trickled from the
telescreens.
Winston sat in his usual corner, gazing into an empty
glass. Now and again he glanced up at a vast face which eyed
him from the opposite wall. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the
caption said. Unbidden, a waiter came and filled his glass up
with Victory Gin, shaking into it a few drops from another
bottle with a quill through the cork. It was saccharine
flavoured with cloves, the speciality of the cafe/.
Winston was listening to the telescreen. At present only
music was coming out of it, but there was a possibility that at
any moment there might be a special bulletin from the Ministry
of Peace. The news from the African front was disquieting in
the extreme. On and off he had been worrying about it all day.
A Eurasian army (Oceania was at war with Eurasia: Oceania had
always been at war with Eurasia) was moving southward at
terrifying speed. The mid-day bulletin had not mentioned any
definite area, but it was probable that already the mouth of
the Congo was a battlefield. Brazzaville and Leopoldville were
in danger. One did not have to look at the map to see what it
meant. It was not merely a question of losing Central Africa:
for the first time in the whole war, the territory of Oceania
itself was menaced.
A violent emotion, not fear exactly but a sort of
undifferentiated excitement, flared up in him, then faded
again. He stopped thinking about the war. In these days he
could never fix his mind on any one subject for more than a few
moments at a time. He picked up his glass and drained it at a
gulp. As always, the gin made him shudder and even retch
slightly. The stuff was horrible. The cloves and saccharine,
themselves disgusting enough in their sickly way, could not
disguise the flat oily smell; and what was worst of all was
that the smell of gin, which dwelt with him night and day, was
inextricably mixed up in his mind with the smell of those-
He never named them, even in his thoughts, and so far as
it was possible he never visualized them. They were something
that he was half-aware of, hovering close to his face, a smell
that clung to his nostrils. As the gin rose in him he belched
through purple lips. He had grown fatter since they released
him, and had regained his old colour -- indeed, more than
regained it. His features had thickened, the skin on nose and
cheekbones was coarsely red, even the bald scalp was too deep a
pink. A waiter, again unbidden, brought the chessboard and the
current issue of The Times, with the page turned down at
the chess problem. Then, seeing that Winston's glass was empty,
he brought the gin bottle and filled it. There was no need to
give orders. They knew his habits. The chessboard was always
waiting for him, his corner table was always reserved; even
when the place was full he had it to himself, since nobody
cared to be seen sitting too close to him. He never even
bothered to count his drinks. At irregular intervals they
presented him with a dirty slip of paper which they said was
the bill, but he had the impression that they always
undercharged him. It would have made no difference if it had
been the other way about. He had always plenty of money
nowadays. He even had a job, a sinecure, more highly-paid than
his old job had been.
The music from the telescreen stopped and a voice took
over. Winston raised his head to listen. No bulletins from the
front, however. It was merely a brief announcement from the
Ministry of Plenty. In the preceding quarter, it appeared, the
Tenth ThreeYear Plan's quota for bootlaces had been
overfulfilled by 98 per cent.
He examined the chess problem and set out the pieces. It
was a tricky ending, involving a couple of knights. 'White to
play and mate in two moves.' Winston looked up at the portrait
of Big Brother. White always mates, he thought with a sort of
cloudy mysticism. Always, without exception, it is so arranged.
In no chess problem since the beginning of the world has black
ever won. Did it not symbolize the eternal, unvarying triumph
of Good over Evil? The huge face gazed back at him, full of
calm power. White always mates.
The voice from the telescreen paused and added in a
different and much graver tone: 'You are warned to stand by for
an important announcement at fifteen-thirty. Fifteen- thirty!
This is news of the highest importance. Take care not to miss
it. Fifteen-thirty !' The tinking music struck up again.
Winston's heart stirred. That was the bulletin from the
front; instinct told him that it was bad news that was coming.
All day, with little spurts of excitement, the thought of a
smashing defeat in Africa had been in and out of his mind. He
seemed actually to see the Eurasian army swarming across the
never-broken frontier and pouring down into the tip of Africa
like a column of ants. Why had it not been possible to outflank
them in some way? The outline of the West African coast stood
out vividly in his mind. He picked up the white knight and
moved it across the board. There was the proper spot.
Even while he saw the black horde racing southward he saw
another force, mysteriously assembled, suddenly planted in
their rear, cutting their comunications by land and sea. He
felt that by willing it he was bringing that other force into
existence. But it was necessary to act quickly. If they could
get control of the whole of Africa, if they had airfields and
submarine bases at the Cape, it would cut Oceania in two. It
might mean anything: defeat, breakdown, the redivision of the
world, the destruction of the Party! He drew a deep breath. An
extraordinary medley of feeling-but it was not a medley,
exactly; rather it was successive layers of feeling, in which
one could not say which layer was undermost struggled inside
him.
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