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The lobby smelled of boiled cabbage and old rugs. There was a colored poster hanging on the wall opposite the entrance, too big for the room. The poster showed a huge, more than a meter wide face - the face of a man of about forty-five, with a thick black mustache, coarse, but masculinely attractive. Winston headed for the stairs. There was no need to go to the elevator. He is even in better times rarely worked, and now during the daytime the electricity was cut off altogether. There was a savings regime - they were preparing for the Week of Hate. Winston had to overcome seven marches; he was in his forties, he had a varicose ulcer above his ankle; he climbed slowly and stopped several times to rest. On each landing, the same face looked out from the wall. The portrait was made in such a way that no matter where you went, your eyes would not let go. BIG BROTHER IS LOOKING AT YOU, the caption read.

In the apartment, a rich voice said something about the production of pig iron, read out figures. The voice came from an oblong metal plate embedded in the right wall that looked like a cloudy mirror. Winston turned the knob, his voice weakened, but the speech was still intelligible. This device (it was called a telescreen) could be turned off, but it was impossible to turn it off completely. Winston moved to the window: a small, puny man, he seemed even more frail in the blue overalls of a party member. His hair was very blond, and his ruddy face was peeling from bad soap, blunt blades, and the cold of a winter that had just ended.

The world outside, behind closed windows, breathed cold. The wind swirled dust and scraps of paper; and although the sun was shining and the sky was a stark blue, everything in the city looked colorless except for the posters plastered everywhere. From every conspicuous angle the face of the black-whiskered looked out. From the house opposite - too. BIG BROTHER IS LOOKING AT YOU - said the signature, and dark eyes looked into the eyes of Winston. Below, over the pavement, a poster with a torn off corner fluttered in the wind, now hiding, now revealing a single word: ANGSOTS. A helicopter glided between the rooftops in the distance, hovered for a moment like a cadaver fly, and swooped away along the curve. It was a police patrol looking into people's windows. But patrols didn't count. Only the Thought Police counted.

Behind Winston, the voice from the telescreen was still talking about iron smelting and overfulfillment of the ninth three-year plan. The telescreen worked for reception and transmission. He caught every word as long as it was not whispered too softly; moreover, as long as Winston remained in the field of view of the cloudy plate, he was not only heard, but also seen. Of course, no one knew whether they were watching him at the moment or not. How often and on what schedule the Thought Police connected to your cable was anyone's guess. It is possible that they followed everyone - and around the clock. In any case, they could connect at any time. You had to live - and you lived, out of habit, which turned into instinct - with the knowledge that your every word is being overheard and your every movement, until the lights went out, they are watching.

Winston kept his back to the telescreen. It's safer that way; though—he knew it—his back betrayed him too. A kilometer from his window, the white building of the Ministry of Truth, the place of his service, towered over the grubby city. Here it is, Winston thought with vague distaste, here it is London, the capital city of Airstrip I, the third most populated province in the state of Oceania. He turned back to his childhood, trying to remember if London had always been like this. Have these rows of dilapidated 19th-century houses, propped up with logs, with cardboard-patched windows, patchwork roofs, drunken walls of front gardens, always stretched into the distance? And these clearings from the bombings, where alabaster dust curled and fireweed climbed over piles of debris; and big vacant lots where bombs have cleared a place for a whole mushroom family of squalid clapboard huts that look like chicken coops? But - to no avail, he could not remember; nothing remains of childhood but fragmentary, brightly lit scenes, devoid of background and most often unintelligible.

The Ministry of Truth—in Newspeak, mini-rights—was strikingly different from everything else around. This gigantic pyramidal building, shining with white concrete, rose, ledge by ledge, to a height of three hundred meters. From his window, Winston could read three Party slogans written in elegant type on the white façade:

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS POWER

According to rumors, the Ministry of Truth contained three thousand offices above the surface of the earth and a corresponding root system in the bowels. In different parts of London there were only three other buildings of a similar type and size. They towered so high above the city that from the roof of the Pobeda residential building one could see all four at once. They housed four ministries, the entire state apparatus: the Ministry of Truth, which was in charge of information, education, leisure and the arts; the peace ministry, which was in charge of the war; the Ministry of Love, which was in charge of policing, and the Ministry of Plenty, which was in charge of the economy. In Newspeak: minilaw, miniworld, minilover and minizo.

The Ministry of Love was terrifying. There were no windows in the building. Winston never crossed his threshold, never came closer than half a kilometer to him. It was possible to get there only on official business, and even then, having overcome a whole labyrinth of barbed wire, steel doors and disguised machine-gun nests. Even the streets leading to the outer ring of fences were patrolled by black-uniformed guards who looked like gorillas and armed with jointed clubs.

Winston turned sharply. He put on an expression of calm optimism, most appropriate in front of a telescreen, and walked to the other side of the room, to the tiny kitchenette. Leaving the ministry at that hour, he sacrificed lunch in the dining room, and there was no food at home - except for a slice of black bread, which had to be saved until tomorrow morning. He took from the shelf a bottle of colorless liquid with a plain white label: Victory Gin. The smell of gin was nasty, oily, like Chinese rice vodka. Winston poured out an almost full cup, braced himself and swallowed it like medicine.

His face immediately turned red, and tears flowed from his eyes. The drink looked like nitric acid; not only that: after a sip, it felt like you were hit on the back with a rubber truncheon. But soon the burning sensation in the stomach subsided, and the world began to look more cheerful. He pulled out a cigarette from a crumpled pack marked "Victory Cigarettes", absently holding it vertically, as a result of which all the tobacco from the cigarette spilled onto the floor. Winston was more careful with the next one. He returned to the room and sat down at a table to the left of the telescreen. From a desk drawer he took out a pen, a vial of ink, and a thick note book with a red spine and marbled binding.

For some unknown reason, the telescreen in the room was not installed as usual. He was placed not in the end wall, from where he could survey the whole room, but in a long one, opposite the window. To his side was a shallow niche, probably intended for bookshelves, where Winston now sat. Sitting deeper in it, he turned out to be inaccessible to the telescreen, or rather, invisible. Of course, they could eavesdrop on him, but they could not watch him while he was sitting there. This somewhat unusual layout of the room may have given him the idea to do what he intended to do now.

But besides that, a marble-bound book prompted me. The book was amazingly beautiful. The smooth, cream-colored paper had yellowed slightly with age, the kind of paper that hadn't been produced for forty years or more. Winston suspected that the book was even older. He spotted it in a junk dealer's window in a slum neighborhood (where exactly, he'd already forgotten) and was tempted to buy it. Party members were not supposed to go to ordinary shops (this was called "purchasing goods on the free market"), but the ban was often ignored: many things, such as shoelaces and razor blades, could not be obtained otherwise. Winston looked around quickly, dived into the shop and bought a book for two dollars and fifty. Why, he didn't know yet. He furtively brought it home in a briefcase. Even empty, it compromised the owner.

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It was a cold, clear April day, and the clock struck thirteen. Burying his chin in his chest to escape the evil wind, Winston Smith hurriedly darted through the glass door of the Victory apartment building, but nevertheless let in a whirlwind of granular dust.
The lobby smelled of boiled cabbage and old rugs. There was a colored poster hanging on the wall opposite the entrance, too big for the room. The poster showed a huge face, more than a meter wide, - the face of a man of about forty-five, with a thick black mustache, coarse, but manly attractive. Winston headed for the stairs. There was no need to go to the elevator. He rarely worked even at the best of times, and now, during the daytime, the electricity was turned off altogether. There was a savings regime - they were preparing for the Week of Hate. Winston had to overcome seven marches; he was forty years old, he had a varicose ulcer above his ankle: he rose slowly and stopped several times to rest. On each landing, the same face looked out from the wall. The portrait was made in such a way that no matter where you went, your eyes would not let go. BIG BROTHER IS LOOKING AT YOU, the caption read.
In the apartment, a rich voice said something about the production of pig iron, read out figures. The voice came from an oblong metal plate embedded in the right wall that looked like a cloudy mirror. Winston turned the knob, his voice weakened, but the speech was still intelligible. This device (it was called a telescreen) could be extinguished, but completely turned off - it was impossible. Winston went to the window; a short, puny man, he seemed even more puny in the blue overalls of a party member. His hair was very blond, and his ruddy face was peeling from bad soap, blunt blades, and the cold of a winter that had just ended.
The world outside, behind closed windows, breathed cold. The wind swirled dust and scraps of paper; and although the sun was shining and the sky was a stark blue, everything in the city looked colorless except for the posters plastered everywhere. From every conspicuous angle the face of the black-whiskered looked out. From the house opposite, too. BIG BROTHER IS LOOKING AT YOU, the signature said, and dark eyes looked into Winston's eyes. Below, over the pavement, a poster with a torn off corner fluttered in the wind, now hiding, now revealing a single word: ANGSOTS. A helicopter glided between the rooftops in the distance, hovered for a moment like a cadaver fly, and swooped away along the curve. It was a police patrol looking into people's windows. But patrols didn't count. Only the Thought Police counted.
Behind Winston, the voice from the telescreen was still talking about iron smelting and overfulfillment of the ninth three-year plan. The telescreen worked for reception and transmission. He caught every word as long as it was not whispered too softly; moreover, as long as Winston remained in the field of view of the cloudy plate, he was not only heard, but also seen. Of course, no one knew whether they were watching him at the moment or not. How often and on what schedule the thought police connect to your cable - one could only guess about this. It is possible that they followed everyone - and around the clock. In any case, they could connect at any time. You had to live - and you lived, out of habit, which turned into instinct - with the knowledge that your every word is being overheard and your every movement, until the lights went out, they are watching.
Winston kept his back to the telescreen. It's safer that way; although - he knew it - the back also betrays. A kilometer from his window, the white building of the Ministry of Truth, the place of his service, towered over the grubby city. Here it is, Winston thought with vague distaste, here it is London, the capital city of Airstrip I, the third most populated province in the state of Oceania. He turned back to his childhood, tried to remember if London had always been like this. Have these rows of dilapidated 19th-century houses, propped up with logs, with cardboard-patched windows, patchwork roofs, drunken walls of front gardens, always stretched into the distance? And these clearings from the bombings, where alabaster dust curled and fireweed climbed over piles of debris; and big vacant lots where bombs have cleared a place for a whole mushroom family of squalid clapboard huts that look like chicken coops? But - to no avail, he could not remember; nothing remains of childhood but fragmentary brightly lit scenes, devoid of background and most often unintelligible.
The Ministry of Truth - in Newspeak, Miniprav - was strikingly different from everything that lay around. This gigantic pyramidal building, shining with white concrete, rose, ledge by ledge, to a height of three hundred meters. From his window, Winston could read three Party slogans written in elegant type on the white façade:
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS POWER
According to rumors, the Ministry of Truth contained three thousand offices above the surface of the earth and a corresponding root system in the bowels. In different parts of London there were only three other buildings of a similar type and size. They towered so high above the city that from the roof of the Pobeda residential building one could see all four at once. They housed four ministries, the entire state apparatus: the Ministry of Truth, which was in charge of information, education, leisure and the arts; the peace ministry, which was in charge of the war; the Ministry of Love, which was in charge of policing, and the Ministry of Plenty, which was in charge of the economy. In Newspeak: minilaw, miniworld, minilover and minizo.
The Ministry of Love was terrifying. There were no windows in the building. Winston never crossed his threshold, never came closer than half a kilometer to him. It was possible to get there only on official business, and even then, having overcome a whole labyrinth of barbed wire, steel doors and disguised machine-gun nests. Even the streets leading to the outer ring of fences were patrolled by black-uniformed, gorilla-faced guards armed with jointed clubs.
Winston turned sharply. He put on an expression of calm optimism, most appropriate in front of a telescreen, and walked to the other side of the room, to the tiny kitchenette. Leaving the ministry at that hour, he sacrificed lunch in the dining room, and there was no food at home - except for a slice of black bread, which had to be saved until tomorrow morning. He took from the shelf a bottle of colorless liquid with a plain white label: Victory Gin. The smell of gin was nasty, oily, like Chinese rice vodka. Winston poured out an almost full cup, braced himself and swallowed it like medicine.
His face immediately turned red, and tears flowed from his eyes. The drink was like nitric acid; not only that: after a sip, it felt like you were hit on the back with a rubber truncheon. But soon the burning sensation in the stomach subsided, and the world began to look more cheerful. He pulled out a cigarette from a crumpled pack marked "Victory Cigarettes", absently holding it vertically, as a result of which all the tobacco from the cigarette spilled onto the floor. Winston was more careful with the next one. He returned to the room and sat down at a table to the left of the telescreen. From a desk drawer he took out a pen, a vial of ink, and a thick note book with a red spine and marbled binding.
For some unknown reason, the telescreen in the room was not installed as usual. He was placed not in the end wall, from where he could survey the whole room, but in a long one, opposite the window. To his side was a shallow niche, probably intended for bookshelves, where Winston now sat. Sitting deeper in it, he turned out to be inaccessible to the telescreen, or rather, invisible. Of course, they could eavesdrop on him, but they could not watch him while he was sitting there. This somewhat unusual layout of the room may have given him the idea to do what he intended to do now.
But besides that, a marble-bound book prompted me. The book was amazingly beautiful. The smooth, cream-colored paper has turned a little yellow with age - paper like this hasn't been produced for forty years, or even more. Winston suspected that the book was even older. He spotted it in a junk dealer's window in a slum neighborhood (where exactly, he'd forgotten) and was tempted to buy it. Party members were not supposed to go to ordinary shops (this was called "purchasing goods on the free market"), but the ban was often ignored: many things, such as shoelaces and razor blades, could not be obtained otherwise. Winston looked around quickly, dived into the shop and bought a book for two dollars and fifty. Why, he didn't know yet. He furtively brought it home in a briefcase. Even empty, it compromised the owner.
He intended now to start a diary. It was not an illegal act (there was nothing illegal at all, since there were no more laws themselves), but if the diary was discovered, Winston would face death or, at best, twenty-five years in a hard labor camp. Winston inserted a nib into the pen and licked it to remove the grease. The pen was an archaic instrument, rarely even signed, and Winston obtained his secretly and not without difficulty: this beautiful cream paper, it seemed to him, deserved to be written on with real ink, and not scratched with an ink pencil. In fact, he was not used to writing by hand. Except for the shortest notes, he dictated everything in speech writing, but dictation, of course, was not suitable here. He dipped his pen and hesitated. His stomach was seized. To touch the paper with a pen is an irreversible step. In small clumsy letters he wrote:
April 4, 1984
And leaned back. He was overcome by a sense of complete helplessness. First of all, he did not know if it was true that the year was 1984. About this - no doubt: he was almost sure that he was 39 years old, and he was born in 1944 or 45; but now it is impossible to fix any date more precisely than with an error of a year or two.
And for whom, he suddenly wondered, is this diary being written? For the future, for those who have not yet been born. His mind wandered over the dubious date written on the sheet, and suddenly stumbled upon the Newspeak word "doublethink." And for the first time he could see the full scale of his undertaking. How to communicate with the future? This is essentially impossible. Either tomorrow would be like today and then he wouldn't listen to him, or it would be different and Winston's troubles would tell him nothing.
Winston sat staring blankly at the paper. Harsh military music blared from the telescreen. It is curious: he not only lost the ability to express his thoughts, but even forgot what he wanted to say. How many weeks he had been preparing for this moment, and it did not even occur to him that more than one courage would be required here. Just write it down - what's easier? Transfer to paper the endless disturbing monologue that has been resounding in his head for years, years. And now even this monologue has dried up. And the ulcer above the ankle itched unbearably. He was afraid to scratch his leg - this always started inflammation. The seconds ticked by. Only the whiteness of the paper, and the itching over the ankle, and the rattling music, and the light drunkenness in his head - that was all that his senses now perceived.
And suddenly he began to write - just out of panic, very vaguely aware that he was coming from a pen. Beaded, but childishly clumsy lines crawled up and down the sheet, losing first capital letters, and then dots.
April 4, 1984 Yesterday at the cinema. All war movies. One very good one somewhere in the Mediterranean is bombing a ship with refugees. The audience is amused by the shots where a huge fat man tries to swim away and he is pursued by a helicopter. At first we see how he flounders like a dolphin in the water, then we see him from a helicopter through the sight, then he is all perforated and the sea around him is pink and immediately sinks as if he had taken water through the holes. When he went to the bottom, the audience roared. Then a boat full of children and a helicopter hovering over it. There, on the bow, sat a middle-aged woman who looked like a Jewess, and in her arms was a boy of about three years old. The boy screams in fear and hides his head on her chest as if he wants to screw into her, and she calms him down and covers him with her hands, although she herself turned blue with fear. All the time he tries to close it with his hands better, as if he can shield from bullets. Then a helicopter dropped a 20 kg bomb on them in a terrible explosion and the boat shattered into pieces. Then a wonderful shot of a child's hand flies up, up straight into the sky, probably it was filmed from the glass nose of a helicopter and loudly applauded in the party ranks, but where the proles were sitting, some woman raised a scandal and shouted that this should not be shown in front of children where it fits where it is suitable for children and quarreled until the police took her out, they hardly took her out, they hardly do anything to her, you never know what the prols say, no one pays a typical prol reaction to this ...
Winston stopped writing, partly because his hand was cramped. He himself did not understand why he spilled this nonsense onto paper. But it is curious that while he was moving the pen, a completely different incident stood in his memory, so much so that at least now write it down. It became clear to him that because of this incident, he decided to suddenly go home and start a diary today.
It happened in the morning in the ministry - if you can say "happened" about such a nebula.
The time was approaching eleven-zero-zero, and in the documentation department where Winston worked, the employees were taking chairs out of the booths and placing them in the middle of the hall in front of a large telescreen - they were going to have a two-minute hate. Winston prepared to take his place in the middle row, when two more suddenly appeared, familiar faces, but he did not have to talk to them. He often met the girl in the corridors. He did not know her name, knowing only that she worked in the Literature Department. From the fact that he sometimes saw her with a wrench and oily hands, she was working on one of the novel-writing machines. She was freckled, with thick dark hair, about twenty-seven; behaved self-confidently, moved swiftly in a sporty manner. The scarlet sash - the emblem of the Youth Anti-Sex Union - tightly wrapped several times around the waist of the overalls, emphasized steep hips. Winston disliked her at first sight. And he knew why. From her emanated the spirit of hockey fields, cold baths, tourist outings and, in general, orthodoxy. He disliked almost all women, especially young and pretty ones. It was the women, and the young in the first place, who were the most fanatical adherents of the party, swallowers of slogans, voluntary spies and sniffers of heresy. And this one seemed to him even more dangerous than the others. Once she met him in the corridor, looked askance - as if pierced by a glance - and black fear crept into his soul. He even had a sneaking suspicion that she was in the Thought Police. However, this was unlikely. Nevertheless, whenever she was near, Winston experienced an uneasy feeling, mixed with hostility and fear.
At the same time as the woman entered O'Brien, a member of the Inner Party, a position so high and remote that Winston had only the faintest idea of him. Seeing the black overalls of the Inner Party member, the people sitting in front of the telescreen fell silent for a moment. O'Brien was a big, stocky man with a thick neck and a rough, mocking face. Despite his formidable appearance, he was not without charm. He had a habit of adjusting his spectacles on his nose, and there was something oddly disarming in that characteristic gesture, something subtly intelligent. An eighteenth-century nobleman offering his snuffbox is what would come to the mind of someone who was still capable of thinking in such comparisons. In ten years, Winston saw O'Brien, probably a dozen times. He was drawn to O'Brien, but not only because he was puzzled by this contrast between the manners and the physique of a heavyweight boxer. Deep down, Winston suspected - or perhaps he did not suspect, but only hoped - that O'Brien was politically not quite right. His face suggested such thoughts. But again, it is possible that it was not doubt in dogmas that was written on the face, but simply intelligence. Somehow, he gave the impression of being someone you could talk to - if you were alone with him and out of sight of the telescreen. Winston never tried to test this conjecture; and it was beyond his power. O'Brien glanced at his watch, saw that it was almost 11:00, and decided to stay for two minutes of hate in the records department. He sat down in the same row with Winston, two seats behind him. Between them was a small, red-haired woman who worked next door to Winston. The dark-haired woman sat right behind him.
And now, from the big telescreen in the wall, a disgusting howl and screeching erupted - as if some monstrous unlubricated machine had been launched. The sound made his hair stand on end and his teeth hurt. The hate has begun.
As always, the enemy of the people Emmanuel Goldstein appeared on the screen. The audience hushed. The little woman with reddish hair squealed in fear and disgust. Goldstein, an apostate and a renegade, once, a long time ago (so long ago that no one even remembered when), was one of the leaders of the party, almost equal to Big Brother himself, and then embarked on the path of counter-revolution, was sentenced to death execution and mysteriously escaped, disappeared. The two-minute program changed every day, but the main actor it always had Goldstein in it. The first traitor, the main defiler of party purity. From his theories grew all further crimes against the Party, all sabotage, betrayal, heresy, deviations. It is not known where he still lived and forged sedition: perhaps overseas, under the protection of his foreign masters, or perhaps - there were such rumors - here, in Oceania, in the underground.
Winston found it difficult to breathe. Goldstein's face always gave him a complex and painful feeling. A dry Jewish face in a halo of light gray hair, a goatee - an intelligent face and at the same time inexplicably repulsive; and there was something senile about that long, gristly nose, with the spectacles slid down almost to the very tip. He was like a sheep, and there was a bleat in his voice. As always, Goldstein attacked party doctrine viciously; the attacks were so absurd and absurd that they would not deceive even a child, but they were not without persuasiveness, and the listener involuntarily feared that other people, less sober than he, might believe Goldstein. He reviled Big Brother, he denounced the dictatorship of the party. He demanded immediate peace with Eurasia, called for freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of thought; he shouted hysterically that the revolution had been betrayed, all in a pattering manner, with compound words, as if parodying the style of party orators, even with Newspeak words, moreover, they were found in him more often than in the speech of any party member. And all the time, so that there was no doubt about what was behind Goldstein's hypocritical rantings, endless Eurasian columns marched behind his face on the screen: rank after rank, thick-set soldiers with imperturbable Asian physiognomies floated out of the depths to the surface and dissolved, giving way to exactly the same . The dull rhythmic clatter of soldiers' boots accompanied Goldstein's bleating.
The hatred began some thirty seconds ago, and half of the audience could no longer hold back their furious exclamations. It was unbearable to see this self-satisfied sheep's face and behind it - the awesome power of the Eurasian troops; in addition, at the sight of Goldstein and even at the thought of him, fear and anger arose reflexively. Hatred for him was more constant than for Eurasia and Eastasia, for when Oceania was at war with one of them, it usually made peace with the other. But what is surprising is that although Goldstein was hated and despised by everyone, although every day, a thousand times a day, his teaching was refuted, smashed, destroyed, ridiculed as miserable nonsense, his influence did not diminish at all. There were new dupes all the time, just waiting for him to seduce them. Not a day passed without the Thought Police unmasking the spies and saboteurs acting on his orders. He commanded a huge underground army, a network of conspirators seeking to overthrow the regime. It was supposed to be called the Brotherhood. There was also whispering of a terrible book, a compendium of all heresies, written by Goldstein and distributed illegally. The book had no title. In conversations, it was mentioned - if it was mentioned at all - simply as a book. But such things were known only through obscure rumors. The member of the party did his best not to talk about the Brotherhood or the book.
By the second minute, the hatred turned into a frenzy. People jumped up and shouted at the top of their lungs to drown out Goldstein's intolerable bleating voice. The little woman with reddish hair turned crimson and opened her mouth like a fish on dry land. O'Brien's heavy face turned purple too. He sat erect, his powerful chest heaving and trembling as if the surf was beating against it. A dark-haired girl behind Winston screamed, “Scoundrel! Scoundrel! Scoundrel!" and then she grabbed a heavy Newspeak dictionary and flung it at the telescreen. The dictionary hit Goldstein in the nose and flew off. But the voice was indestructible. In a moment of lucidity, Winston realized that he himself was screaming along with the others and violently kicking the bar of a chair. The terrible thing about the two minutes of hate was not that you had to act out the role, but that you simply could not stay away. Some thirty seconds - and you no longer need to pretend. As if from an electrical discharge, vile writhings of fear and vindictiveness attacked the entire assembly, a frenzied desire to kill, torment, crush faces with a hammer: people grimaced and screamed, turned into madmen. At the same time, the rage was abstract and untargeted, it could be turned in any direction, like the flame of a blowtorch. And suddenly it turned out that Winston's hatred was directed not at all at Goldstein, but, on the contrary, at Big Brother, at the party, at the thought police; at such moments his heart was with that lonely, ridiculed heretic, the only guardian of sanity and truth in a world of lies. And in a second he was already at one with the others, and everything that was said about Goldstein seemed to be true. Then the secret distaste for the Elder Brother turned into adoration, and the Elder Brother rose above all - an invulnerable, fearless defender, standing like a rock before the Asian hordes, and Goldstein, despite his outcast and helplessness, despite doubts that he was still alive at all, seemed to be a sinister sorcerer, capable of destroying the building of civilization with the power of his voice alone.
And sometimes it was possible, straining, consciously to turn your hatred on one or another object. With some frenzied effort of will, as you lift your head from the pillow during a nightmare, Winston switched hatred from the screen face to the dark-haired girl behind. Beautiful clear pictures flashed through my mind. He will beat her with a rubber club. She will tie her naked to a post, shoot her with arrows, like Saint Sebastian. She will rape her and cut her throat in her last convulsions. And more clearly than before, he understood why he hated her. For being young, beautiful and sexless; for the fact that he wants to sleep with her and will never achieve this; for the fact that on a delicate thin waist, as if created in order to hug her, is not his hand, but this scarlet sash, a militant symbol of purity.
Hatred ended in convulsions. Goldstein's speech turned into a natural bleat, and his face was momentarily replaced by a sheep's snout. Then the muzzle dissolved into the Eurasian soldier: huge and terrible, he walked at them, firing from his machine gun, threatening to break through the surface of the screen - so that many recoiled in their chairs. But they immediately sighed with relief: the figure of the enemy was obscured by the influx of the head of Big Brother, black-haired, black-moustached, full of strength and mysterious calmness, so huge that it occupied almost the entire screen. What Elder Brother says, no one heard. Just a few words of encouragement, like those spoken by a chieftain in the thunder of battle—albeit inaudible in themselves, they inspire confidence by the mere fact of uttering them. Then Big Brother's face dimmed, and a clear large inscription came out - three party slogans:
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS POWER
But for a few more moments Big Brother's face seemed to stay on the screen: the imprint left by him in the eye was so bright that it could not be erased immediately. A small woman with reddish hair leaned against the back of the front chair. In a sobbing whisper, she said something like: "My Savior!" - and stretched out her hands to the telescreen. Then she covered her face with her hands. Apparently she was praying.
Then the whole assembly began to chant slowly, measuredly, in low voices: “ES-BE! .. ES-BE! .. ES-BE!” - again and again, stretched out, with a long pause between "ES" and "BE", and there was something strangely primitive in this heavy undulating sound - the clatter of bare feet and the roar of big drums seemed to be behind him. This went on for half a minute. In general, this often happened at those moments when feelings reached a special intensity. Partly it was a hymn to the greatness and wisdom of the Elder Brother, but to a greater extent self-hypnosis - people drowned their minds in rhythmic noise. Winston felt a chill in his stomach. During the two minutes of hatred, he could not help but surrender to the general madness, but this savage cry of “ES-BE! .. ES-BE!” always terrified him. Of course, he chanted with the others, otherwise it was impossible. To hide feelings, to own the face, to do the same as others - all this has become an instinct. But there was such a gap of two seconds when the expression in his eyes could well give him away. It was at this time that an amazing event occurred - if it really happened.

Illustration by Alan Harmon

Very briefly

totalitarian state. A party member tries to resist the authorities, keeping his mind from being manipulated. But thought-crime cannot be concealed, and the party subordinates man to the system.

First part

1984 London, capital of Airstrip I, Oceania. Thirty-nine-year-old short, puny Winston Smith, an experienced employee of the Ministry of Truth, goes up to his apartment. There is a poster in the lobby of a huge, rough face with thick black eyebrows. “Big Brother is watching you,” reads the caption. In Winston's room, as in any other, an apparatus (telescreen) is built into the wall, working around the clock for both reception and transmission. The Thought Police eavesdrop on every word and watches every movement. From the window you can see the facade of his ministry with party slogans: “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is power."

Winston decides to keep a diary. This crime is punishable by death or hard labor, but he needs to throw out his thoughts. It is unlikely that they will reach the future: the thought police will get to it anyway, a thought crime cannot be hidden forever. Winston doesn't know where to start. He recalls the morning two minutes of hatred at the ministry.

The main object of the two-minute hatred has always been Goldstein - a traitor, the main defiler of party purity, an enemy of the people, a counter-revolutionary: he appeared on the television screen. In the hall, Winston met a freckled girl with thick dark hair. He disliked her at first sight: so young and pretty were "the most fanatical adherents of the party, swallowers of slogans, voluntary spies and sniffers of heresy." O'Brien, a high-ranking member of the party, also entered the hall. The contrast between his upbringing and the physique of a heavyweight boxer was puzzling. Deep down, Winston suspected that O'Brien was "not entirely politically correct."

He recalls his old dream: someone told him: "We will meet where there is no darkness." It was O'Brien's voice.

“Winston could not clearly recall a time when the country had not been at war ... Officially, ally and enemy never changed ... The party says that Oceania has never entered into an alliance with Eurasia. He, Winston Smith, knows that Oceania was allied with Eurasia only four years ago. But where is this knowledge stored? Only in his mind, and he, one way or another, will soon be destroyed. And if everyone accepts the lies imposed by the party... then these lies settle down in history and become the truth.”

Now even children report on their parents: the offspring of the Winston Parsons neighbors will definitely try to catch their mother and father on ideological inconsistency.

In his office, Winston gets to work. He changes the data in the newspapers issued earlier, in accordance with today's assignment. Wrong forecasts, political mistakes of Big Brother were destroyed. The names of undesirable persons were deleted from history.

In the dining room at lunchtime, Winston meets the philologist Syme, a specialist in Newspeak. He says of his work: "It's wonderful to destroy words... Eventually we will make thought-crime simply impossible - there will be no words left for it." "Syme will surely be pulverized," thinks Winston. “You can’t say that he is unfaithful ... But some kind of little respectable odor always came from him.”

Suddenly, he notices that a girl with dark hair, whom he met yesterday at the two minutes of hate, is watching him intently.

Winston remembers his wife Katherine. They separated 11 years ago. Already at the very beginning of his life together, he realized that “I had never met a more stupid, vulgar, empty creature. The thoughts in her head were all slogans."

Smith believes that only the proles - the lowest caste of Oceania, comprising 85% of the population - can destroy the party. The proles don't even have telescreens in their apartments. "In all moral matters they are allowed to follow the customs of their ancestors."

"With the feeling that he is saying this to O'Brien," Winston writes in his diary, "Freedom is the ability to say that two and two make four."

Second part

At work, Winston meets this freckled girl again. She stumbles and falls. He helps her up, and the girl slips a note into his hand containing the words: "I love you." In the dining room, they agree on a date.

They meet outside the city, among the trees, where they cannot be overheard. Julia - that's the name of the girl - admits that she had dozens of connections with party members. Winston is delighted: it is precisely such depravity, animal instinct that can tear the party to shreds! Their loving embrace becomes a fight, a political act.

Julia is 26 years old and works in the literature department on a novel writing machine. Julia understood the meaning of party puritanism: “When you sleep with a person, you waste energy; and then you're fine and don't care at all. It's in their throats." They want the energy to be used only for party work.

Winston hires a room above Mr. Charrington's junk shop to meet with Julia - there is no telescreen. One day a rat appears from a hole. Julia treats her indifferently, Winston is disgusted by the rat: "There is nothing more terrible in the world."

Syme disappears. Syme ceased to exist; he never existed."

When Winston once mentioned a war with Eurasia, “Julia stunned him by casually saying that, in her opinion, there was no war. Rockets falling on London may be fired by the government itself "to keep the people in fear."

Finally, a fateful conversation with O'Brien takes place. He approaches Smith in the hallway and gives his address.

Winston dreams of his mother. He remembers his hungry childhood. How his father disappeared, Winston does not remember. Despite the fact that the food had to be divided between his mother, his sickly sister of two or three years, and Winston himself, he demanded more and more food and received it from his mother. One day, he took her portion of chocolate from his sister and ran away. When he returned, neither mother nor sister was gone. After that, Winston was sent to a colony for the homeless - an "educational center."

Julia decides to date Winston until the very end. Winston talks about torture if exposed: “A confession is not a betrayal. What you said or did not say is not important, only the feeling is important. If they make me stop loving you, that will be a real betrayal.

Winston and Julia visit O'Brien and confess that they are party enemies and thought criminals. O'Brien confirms that a conspiracy against the party called the Brotherhood exists. He promises that Winston will be given Goldstein's book.

On the sixth day of the Week of Hate, they announce that Oceania is not at war with Eurasia. The war is on with Eastasia. Eurasia is an ally. "Oceania is at war with Eastasia: Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia". For five days, Winston works to destroy the data of the past.

Winston begins reading Emmanuel Goldstein's Theory and Practice of Oligarchic Collectivism in a small room in Mr. Charrington's shop. Later, Julia and Winston are listening at the window as the prol woman sings. “We are the dead,” they say in turn. “You are dead,” an iron voice sounds from behind them. Julia is hit and carried away. A telescreen was hidden in the room. Enter Mr. Charrington. “He looked like his former self, but it was a different person ... It was the face of an alert, cold-blooded man of about thirty-five. Winston thought that for the first time in his life he saw with complete certainty a member of the Thought Police.

The third part

“Winston didn't know where he was. He was probably brought to the Ministry of Love, but there was no way to verify this. In his cell, where the lights are constantly on, Parsons appears. In a dream, he shouted: “Down with Big Brother!”, And the daughter informed on him. Winston is alone in the cell as O'Brien enters. "And you have them!" Winston screams. O'Brien replies: “I've been with them for a long time ... Don't be fooled. You knew it...always knew it."

The nightmare begins. Winston is beaten and tortured. He learns that he has been watched for seven years. Finally, O'Brien appears. Winston is chained to some sort of instrument of torture. O'Brien recalls a phrase written by Smith in his diary: "Freedom is the ability to say that two times two is four"? He holds up four fingers and asks Winston to tell him how many there are. Winston insists that there are four of them, although O'Brien increases the prisoner's pain with a lever. Finally, unable to bear the pain, Winston yells "Five!" But O'Brien says, "You're lying. You still think that there are four of them ... Do you understand, Winston, that the one who has been here does not leave our hands unhealed?

O'Brien says that the party seeks power only for its own sake. He is one of those who wrote the book of the Brotherhood. The party will always exist, it cannot be overthrown. “Winston, you are the last man. Your species is extinct... You are out of history, you don't exist." O'Brien notes Winston's stoop, but Winston retorts, "I didn't betray Julia." “Quite right. You didn't betray Julia," O'Brien agrees.

Winston continues to be locked up. Half-conscious, Winston cries out, "Julia, my love!" Waking up, he realizes his mistake: O'Brien does not ask him to. Winston hates Big Brother. "To die hating them is freedom." Winston is sent to room one hundred and one. A cage with disgusting rats is brought to his face - he cannot stand this: “Give them Julia! .. Not me! Julia! he shouts.

Winston is sitting at the Under the Chestnut Café. He reflects on what happened to him: "They can't fit into you," Julia said. But they were able to get in. O'Brien rightly said, "What is done to you here is done forever."

Winston met Julia after being tortured at the Ministry of Love. She changed: “The face acquired an earthy hue, a scar stretched across the entire forehead to the temple ... But that was not the point.” Her waist, when Winston hugged Julia, seemed stone: like a corpse that Winston once had to pull out from under the rubble. Both confessed their betrayal to each other. Julia noted the most important thing: when a person screams for someone else to be given instead of him, he doesn’t just say that, he wants it. Yes, Winston wanted her, not him, to be given away.

Victorious fanfares are heard in the cafe: Oceania has defeated Eurasia. Winston also wins - over himself. He loves Big Brother.

George Orwell

First part

The lobby smelled of boiled cabbage and old rugs. There was a colored poster hanging on the wall opposite the entrance, too big for the room. The poster showed a huge face, more than a meter wide, - the face of a man of about forty-five, with a thick black mustache, coarse, but manly attractive. Winston headed for the stairs. There was no need to go to the elevator. He rarely worked even at the best of times, and now, during the daytime, the electricity was turned off altogether. There was a savings regime - they were preparing for the Week of Hate. Winston had to overcome seven marches; he was forty years old, he had a varicose ulcer above his ankle: he rose slowly and stopped several times to rest. On each landing, the same face looked out from the wall. The portrait was made in such a way that no matter where you went, your eyes would not let go. BIG BROTHER IS LOOKING AT YOU, the signature read.

In the apartment, a rich voice said something about the production of pig iron, read out figures. The voice came from an oblong metal plate embedded in the right wall that looked like a cloudy mirror. Winston turned the knob, his voice weakened, but the speech was still intelligible. This device (it was called a telescreen) could be extinguished, but completely turned off - it was impossible. Winston went to the window; a short, puny man, he seemed even more puny in the blue overalls of a party member. His hair was very blond, and his ruddy face was peeling from bad soap, blunt blades, and the cold of a winter that had just ended.

The world outside, behind closed windows, breathed cold. The wind swirled dust and scraps of paper; and although the sun was shining and the sky was a stark blue, everything in the city looked colorless except for the posters plastered everywhere. From every conspicuous angle the face of the black-whiskered looked out. From the house opposite, too. BIG BROTHER IS LOOKING AT YOU said the signature, and the dark eyes looked into Winston's. Below, over the pavement, a poster with a corner torn off was fluttering in the wind, now hiding, now revealing a single word: ANGSOTS. A helicopter glided between the rooftops in the distance, hovered for a moment like a cadaver fly, and swooped away along the curve. It was a police patrol looking into people's windows. But patrols didn't count. Only the Thought Police counted.

Behind Winston, the voice from the telescreen was still talking about iron smelting and overfulfillment of the ninth three-year plan. The telescreen worked for reception and transmission. He caught every word as long as it was not whispered too softly; moreover, as long as Winston remained in the field of view of the cloudy plate, he was not only heard, but also seen. Of course, no one knew whether they were watching him at the moment or not. How often and on what schedule the thought police connect to your cable - one could only guess about this. It is possible that they followed everyone - and around the clock. In any case, they could connect at any time. You had to live - and you lived, out of habit, which turned into instinct - with the knowledge that your every word is being overheard and your every movement, until the lights went out, they are watching.

Winston kept his back to the telescreen. It's safer that way; although - he knew it - the back also betrays. A kilometer from his window, the white building of the Ministry of Truth, the place of his service, towered over the grubby city. Here it is, Winston thought with vague distaste, here it is London, the capital city of Airstrip I, the third most populated province in the state of Oceania. He turned back to his childhood, tried to remember if London had always been like this. Have these rows of dilapidated 19th-century houses, propped up with logs, with cardboard-patched windows, patchwork roofs, drunken walls of front gardens, always stretched into the distance? And these clearings from the bombings, where alabaster dust curled and fireweed climbed over piles of debris; and big vacant lots where bombs have cleared a place for a whole mushroom family of squalid clapboard huts that look like chicken coops? But - to no avail, he could not remember; nothing remains of childhood but fragmentary brightly lit scenes, devoid of background and most often unintelligible.

The Ministry of Truth - in Newspeak, Miniprav - was strikingly different from everything that lay around. This gigantic pyramidal building, shining with white concrete, rose, ledge by ledge, to a height of three hundred meters. From his window, Winston could read three Party slogans written in elegant type on the white façade:

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS POWER

His face immediately turned red, and tears flowed from his eyes. The drink was like nitric acid; not only that: after a sip, it felt like you were hit on the back with a rubber truncheon. But soon the burning sensation in the stomach subsided, and the world began to look more cheerful. He pulled out a cigarette from a crumpled pack marked "Victory Cigarettes", absently holding it vertically, as a result of which all the tobacco from the cigarette spilled onto the floor. Winston was more careful with the next one. He returned to the room and sat down at a table to the left of the telescreen. From a desk drawer he took out a pen, a vial of ink, and a thick note book with a red spine and marbled binding.

But besides that, a marble-bound book prompted me. The book was amazingly beautiful. The smooth, cream-colored paper has turned a little yellow with age - paper like this hasn't been produced for forty years, or even more. Winston suspected that the book was even older. He spotted it in a junk dealer's window in a slum neighborhood (where exactly, he'd forgotten) and was tempted to buy it. Party members were not supposed to go to ordinary shops (this was called "purchasing goods on the free market"), but the ban was often ignored: many things, such as shoelaces and razor blades, could not be obtained otherwise. Winston looked around quickly, dived into the shop and bought a book for two dollars and fifty. Why, he didn't know yet. He furtively brought it home in a briefcase. Even empty, it compromised the owner.

Chapter VII

If there is hope (Winston wrote), then it is in the proles. If there is hope, then there is nowhere else for it to be: only in the proles, in this swirling mass in the backyards of the state, which makes up eighty-five percent of the population of Oceania, can a force capable of destroying the party be born.

The party cannot be overthrown from within. Her enemies - if she has enemies - cannot connect, cannot even recognize each other. Even if there is a legendary Brotherhood - and this is not excluded, it is impossible to imagine that its members would gather in groups of more than two or three people. Their rebellion is the expression of the eyes, the intonation in the voice; at most, a word uttered in a whisper.

And I will sell, if only they could realize their strength, conspiracies are useless. It is enough for them to stand up and shake themselves - like a horse shakes off flies. As soon as they want to - and tomorrow morning they will smash the parties to pieces. Sooner or later they will figure it out. But! .. He remembered how one day he was walking along a crowded street, and suddenly a deafening scream, a thousand throats, burst out from the alley ahead, a woman's scream. A powerful, menacing cry of anger and despair, a thick "ah-ah-ah!", buzzing like a bell.

His heart began to pound. Began! - he thought, Mutiny! Finally they rebelled! He came closer and saw a crowd: two or three hundred women huddled in front of the market stalls, their faces tragic, like passengers on a sinking steamer. Before his eyes, the crowd, united by despair, seemed to have disintegrated: it was fragmented into islands of separate quarrels. Apparently, one of the stalls was selling pots. Wretched, fragile tins - but kitchen utensils were always hard to come by. And now the goods suddenly ended.

The lucky ones, escorted by pushes and pokes, squeezed away with their pots, and the unlucky ones clamored around the stall and accused the stallkeeper of giving back, hiding under the counter. There was another scream.

Two fat women, one with loose hair, grabbed the saucepan and pulled it in different directions. Both pulled, the handle came off. Winston watched with disgust, but what a terrifying force sounded in the cry of only two or three hundred voices!

Why don't they ever yell for something worthwhile! He wrote: They will never rebel until they become conscious, and they will not become conscious until they rebel. Just like a phrase from a party textbook, he thought. The party, of course, claimed to have freed the proles from their chains.

Before the revolution, they were terribly oppressed by the capitalists, starved and flogged, women were forced to work in the mines (by the way, they still work there), children at the age of six were sold to factories. But at the same time, in accordance with the principle of doublethink, the party taught that the proles are by nature inferior beings, they, like animals, must be kept in obedience, guided by a few simple rules.

In fact, very little was known about prolah. Much and nothing to know. If only they worked and multiplied - and then let them do what they want. Left to themselves, like cattle on the plains of Argentina, they always returned to the way of life that was natural for them, followed in the footsteps of their ancestors.

They are born, they grow up in the mud, they start working at twelve, they experience a short period of physical flowering and sexuality, they marry at twenty, they are no longer young at thirty, they usually die by sixty. Hard physical labor, caring for the house and children, petty quarrels with neighbors, cinema, football, beer and, most importantly, gambling, that's all that fits in their horizons. It is not difficult to manage them; agents of the thought police always rotate among them - they identify and eliminate those who could be dangerous: but they do not seek to accustom them to the party ideology.

It is considered undesirable for the proles to have a strong interest in politics. All that is required of them is primitive patriotism to appeal to him when it comes to lengthening the working day or reducing rations. And if discontent seizes them, this has also happened, this discontent leads nowhere, because, due to the lack of general ideas, it is directed only against small specific troubles. Big troubles invariably eluded their attention.

The vast majority of the proles do not even have telescreens in their apartments. The regular police do very little with them. There is enormous crime in London, a whole state within a state; thieves, bandits, prostitutes, drug dealers, extortionists of all stripes; but since it is closed in the environment of the proles, no attention is paid to it. In all moral matters they are allowed to follow the customs of their ancestors.

Party sexual puritanism did not spread to the proles. They are not prosecuted for debauchery, divorces are allowed. In fact, religion would have been permitted if the proles had shown an inclination towards it. Proly below suspicion. As the party slogan says: "Proles and animals are free."

Winston quietly scratched the varicose ulcer. The itching started again. Willy-nilly, you always come back to one question: what was life like before the revolution? He took out of the desk a school history book borrowed from Mrs. Parsons and began copying it in his diary. In the old days, before the glorious revolution, London was not the beautiful city we know it today.

It was a dark, dirty, gloomy city, and there almost everyone lived from hand to mouth, and hundreds and thousands of poor people walked around barefoot and had no roof over their heads. Children your age had to work twelve hours a day for cruel masters: if they worked slowly, they were whipped, and they ate stale crusts and water. But in the midst of this terrible poverty, there were large beautiful houses of the rich, sometimes served by up to thirty servants.

The rich were called capitalists. They were fat, ugly people with angry faces, like the one on the next page. As you can see, he is wearing a long black jacket, which was called a tailcoat, and a strange silk hat in the shape of a chimney - the so-called top hat. It was the uniform of the capitalists, and no one else dared to wear it. The capitalists owned everything in the world, and the rest of the people were their slaves. They owned all the land, all the houses, all the factories and all the money. The one who disobeyed them was thrown into prison or expelled from work to starve to death.

When a common man spoke to a capitalist, he had to grovel, bow, take off his hat and call him "sir." The most important capitalist was called the king and... He knew this list by heart. There will be bishops with cambric sleeves, judges in robes, trimmed ermines, pillory, stocks, topchak, nine-tailed whip, a banquet at the Lord Mayor, the custom of kissing the shoe at the pope.

There was also the so-called right of the first night. but in a children's textbook it is. probably not mentioned. According to this law, the capitalist had the right to sleep with any worker in his factory. How do you know how many lies there? Perhaps the average person is indeed living better now than before the revolution. The only evidence against it is the silent protest in your gut, the instinctive feeling that the conditions of your life are unbearable, that once they must have been different.

It occurred to him that the most characteristic thing in his present life was not its cruelty or precariousness, but simply squalor, dullness, apathy. If you look around, you won't see anything resembling either the lies pouring out of the telescreens or the ideals that the Party is striving for.

Even a party member spends most of his life outside of politics, plodding in a tedious service, fighting for a place in a subway car, darning a holey sock, begging for a saccharin pill, stashing a cigarette butt.

The party ideal is something gigantic, formidable, sparkling: a world of steel and concrete, monstrous machines and terrible weapons, a country of warriors and fanatics who march in a single formation, think one thought, shout one slogan, work tirelessly, fight, triumph, punish - three hundred million man and all on the same face.

In life, however, there are slum cities, where unsatisfied people in thin shoes scurry about, dilapidated houses of the nineteenth century, where there is always the smell of cabbage and a toilet.

A vision of London appeared before him - a huge city of ruins, a city of a million dustbins - and superimposed on him was the image of Mrs. Parsons, a woman with a wrinkled face and thin hair, hopelessly picking at a clogged sewer pipe. He scratched his ankle again.

Day and night, the telescreens are lashing you in the head with statistics, proving that people today have more food, more clothes, better homes, more fun entertainment, that they live longer, work less, and themselves have become bigger, healthier, stronger, happier, smarter, more enlightened than fifty years ago.

Nothing here can be proven or refuted. The party, for example, claims that today forty percent of adult proles are literate, while before the revolution only fifteen percent were literate.

The party claims that infant mortality today is only one hundred and sixty per thousand, and before the revolution it was three hundred ... and so on. It's kind of like a single equation with two unknowns. It may very well be. that literally every word in historical books - even those that you take as self-evident, is pure fiction. Who knows, maybe there never was such a law as the right of the first night, or such a creature as a capitalist, or such a headdress as a top hat. Everything is blurred.

The past is erased, the erasure is forgotten, the lie has become the truth. Only once in his life did he have - after the events, that's what matters - clear and unambiguous evidence that a forgery had been committed. He held it in his hands for half a minute. It was, it seems, in 1973 ... in a word, at the time when he broke up with Katherine.

But it was about the events of seven or eight years ago. This story began in the mid-sixties, during the period of great purges, when the true leaders of the revolution were completely exterminated. By 1970, not a single one remained alive, except for Big Brother. All were exposed as traitors and counter-revolutionaries.

Goldstein fled and hid who knows where, someone simply disappeared, most of them, after noisy trials, where everyone confessed to their crimes, were executed. Among the last to suffer this fate were the three Jones, Aronson and Rutherford. They were taken in the year sixty-five.

As usual, they disappeared for a year or more, and no one knew whether they were alive or not: but then they were suddenly taken out so that they, as is customary, would expose themselves. They confessed to having relations with the enemy (Eurasia was also an enemy at that time), to embezzlement of public funds, to the murder of loyal party members, to digging under the leadership of the Big Brother, which they had engaged in long before the revolution, to acts of sabotage that cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.

They confessed, were pardoned, reinstated in the party and received posts that were important in name, but in fact - sinecures. All three made long penitential articles in The Times, where they examined the roots of their betrayal and promised to atone for their guilt. After their release, Winston actually saw the whole trio at the Under the Chestnut Cafe.

He watched them surreptitiously, with horror and could not open his eyes. They were much older than him - relics of the ancient world, probably the last major figures left from the early heroic days of the party. The glorious spirit of the underground struggle and civil war still hovering over them. He had a feeling - although the facts and dates were already rather blurred - that he had heard their names several years earlier than the name of Big Brother.

But they were outside the law - enemies, pariahs, doomed to disappear within the next year or two. Those who had once been in the hands of the Thought Police were no longer safe. They are corpses - and just waiting to be sent to the cemetery. There was not a soul at the tables around them, it was unwise to even show up near such people. They sat in silence aa glasses of gin flavored with cloves - the signature drink of this cafe. Rutherford made the greatest impression on Winston.

Once a famous cartoonist, with his evil drawings he contributed a lot to inciting public passions during the period of revolutions. His cartoons still occasionally appeared in The Times. It was only an imitation of his former manner, extremely lifeless and unconvincing.

Rehashes of old themes: slums, huts, hungry children, street fights. The capitalists in top hats (it seems that even at the barricades they did not want to part with their top hats) - endless and hopeless attempts to return to the past. He was huge and ugly - a mane of greasy gray hair, faces with wrinkles and swelling, protruding lips. Once upon a time, he must have been distinguished by incredible strength, but now his large body is swollen in places, sagging, sagging, in places shrunken. It seemed to disintegrate before our eyes - a crumbling mountain.

It was fifteen o'clock, quiet time. Winston no longer remembered how he had been brought there at such an hour. The cafe is almost empty. Cheerful music blared from the telescreens. The three sat in their corner silently and almost motionless. The waiter, without waiting for their request, brought another glass of gin.

On their table lay a chessboard with pieces placed, but no one was playing. Suddenly something happened to the telescreens - and this went on for half a minute. The melody has changed, the mood of the music has changed. Something else has invaded... it's hard to explain what. A strange, cracked, shrill, mocking tone - Winston called it a fierce yellow tone. Then the voice sang:

Under the spreading chestnut

Sold in broad daylight

I am you and you are me.

Under the spreading chestnut

We lie in broad daylight -

You are on the right and I am on the left.

The three did not move. But when Winston looked again at Rutherford's ruined face, it turned out that there were tears in his eyes. And only now did Winston notice, with an inward shudder - not yet understanding why he shuddered, that both Aronson and Rutherford had broken noses.

A little later, all three were arrested again. It turned out that immediately after their release they entered into new conspiracies. At the second trial, they again confessed to all the previous crimes and to many new ones. They were executed, and their cause was immortalized in the history of the party for the edification of posterity.

About five years after that, in 1973, while unfolding materials that had just fallen out of a pneumatic tube onto a table, Winston discovered a random piece of paper. He understood the meaning of the scrap as soon as he spread it out on the table. It was half a page torn out of the Times about ten years ago, the top half, so the number was there, and on it was a photograph of the participants of some party celebration in New York.

Jones, Aronson and Rutherford stood out in the center of the group. It was impossible not to recognize them, and their names were listed in the caption under the photo. And at both trials, all three showed that on that day they were on the territory of Eurasia. From a secret airfield in Canada, they were taken somewhere in Siberia to meet with employees of the Eurasian General Staff, to whom they gave out important military secrets.

The date stuck in Winston's memory, because it was Midsummer's Day: however, this affair is surely described everywhere. There can be only one conclusion: their confessions were lies. Of course, not God knows what a discovery. Even then, Winston did not allow the idea that the people destroyed during the purges were, in fact, criminals. But here was the exact proof, a piece of the undone past: the way one fossil bone found in the wrong layer of sediment destroys an entire geological theory.

If this fact could be made public, its significance explained. he alone would have smashed the party to smithereens. Winston immediately set to work. Seeing the photograph and realizing what it meant, he covered it with another sheet. Luckily, the telescreen showed her upside down. He put the notebook on his knee and moved his chair away from the telescreen.

It’s easy to make an impenetrable face, you can even breathe evenly if you try, but you can’t control your heartbeat, and the telescreen, a sensitive thing, will notice. He waited, according to his calculations, ten minutes, all the while tormented by the fear that some accident would give him away - for example, a sudden draft would brush off the paper. Then, without opening the photograph, he shoved it, along with unnecessary sheets, into the memory slot.

And in a minute it must have turned to ashes. That was ten or eleven years ago. Today, he probably would have kept this photo. It is curious: although the photograph and the fact reflected in it were just a memory, the very fact that he once held it in his hands still influenced him. Could it be, he asked himself, that the party's grip on the past had been weakened by the fact that a petty evidence that no longer existed had once existed?

And today, if it were possible to resurrect the photograph, it would probably not be evidence. After all, when he saw her, Oceania was no longer at war with Eurasia, and the three deceased would have to sell their homeland to agents of Ostasia. And since then there have been more turns - two, three, he did not remember how many.

Probably, the confessions of the deceased were rewritten and rewritten, so that the original facts and dates do not mean anything at all. The past is not just changing, it is constantly changing. But the most nightmarish thing for him was that he never clearly understood what purpose this grandiose swindle pursues. The immediate benefits of forging the past are obvious, but its ultimate goal is a mystery.

He picked up the pen again and wrote: I understand HOW: I don't understand WHY. He wondered, as he had thought more than once, whether the onsam was crazy. Maybe the crazy one is the one in the minority, the one and only.

It used to be crazy to think that the earth revolved around the sun; today - that the past is unchangeable. Perhaps he alone adheres to this belief, and if he is alone, then he is crazy. But the thought that he was mad did not worry him very much: it is terrible if he is also mistaken.

He picked up a children's history book and looked at the frontispiece with Big Brother's portrait. A hypnotic gaze met him. It was as if some kind of gigantic force was pressing on you - penetrating your skull, ramming your brain, knocking your beliefs out of you with fear, forcing you not to believe your own senses. In the end, the party will announce that two plus two equals five, and you have to believe it. Sooner or later she will issue such a decree, the logic of her power inevitably leads to this.

Its philosophy tacitly denies not only the validity of your perceptions, but the very existence of the external world. Heresy of heresies is common sense. And it's not terrible that they will kill you for the opposite opinion, but the fact that they, perhaps, are morals. Indeed, how do we know that two times two is four?

Or that there is gravity. Or that the past cannot be changed. If both the past and external world exist only in consciousness, and consciousness can be controlled - then what? No! He felt an unexpected burst of courage. It is not clear by what association O'Brien's face appeared in his mind. Now he knew even more firmly that O'Brien was on his side.

He writes a diary for O'Brien to O'Brien; no one will read his endless letter, but it is intended for a certain person and colored by this. The Party told you not to believe your eyes and ears. And this is her final, most important order.

His heart sank at the thought of what a huge force was lined up against him, with what ease any party ideologist would beat him in a dispute with cunning arguments, which he would not be able to understand, let alone refute. And yet he is right! They are wrong, but he is right. The obvious, the elementary, the true must be defended. The common truth is true - and stand on it!

The world exists firmly, its laws do not change. Stones are solid, water is wet, an object without support rushes to the center of the Earth. With the feeling that he was saying this to O'Brien and putting forward an important axiom, Winston wrote: Freedom is the ability to say that twice two is four. If this is allowed, everything else follows from here.

Chapter VIII

From somewhere deep in the passage, there was a smell of roasted coffee - real coffee, not Pobeda. Winston involuntarily stopped. For two seconds he returned to the half-forgotten world of childhood. Then the door slammed and cut off the smell like a sound. He walked through the streets for several kilometers, I got an ulcer over my ankle. This was the second time in three weeks that he'd missed an evening at the community center—a rash act, visits must be monitored. In principle, a member of the party does not have free time, and he is alone with himself only in bed.

It is assumed that when he is not busy with work, eating and sleeping, he participates in social entertainment; All. in which one can see the love of loneliness, even a walk without companions, is suspicious. For this, Newspeak has the word samozhit - it means individualism and eccentricity. But this evening, leaving the ministry, he was tempted by the tenderness of the April air.

He had never seen such a soft blue tone in the sky for the past year, and the long noisy evening in the community center, boring, exhausting games, lectures, creaking, albeit smeared with gin, comradeship - all this seemed unbearable to him. On a sudden impulse, he turned away from bus stop and wandered through the labyrinth of London, first to the south, then to the east and turn to the north, got lost in unfamiliar streets and walked already where his eyes looked. "If there is hope," he wrote in his diary, then it is in the proles.

And in my head all the time this phrase was spinning - mystical truth and obvious absurdity. It was in a brown slum somewhere northeast of what had once been St. Pancras station. He walked along the cobblestone street past two-story houses with shabby doors that opened directly onto the sidewalk and for some reason suggested rat holes. There were muddy puddles here and there on the cobblestones.

And in the dark porches and narrow alleys on both sides there were surprisingly many people - mature girls with roughly painted mouths, guys chasing girls, fat-meaty aunts, at the sight of which it became clear what these girls would turn into in ten years, bent old women shuffling along trampled feet, and ragged barefoot children who played in the puddles and threw themselves in all directions from their mother's cries. Probably every fourth window was broken and boarded up. - Winston was hardly noticed, but some people followed him with a wary and curious look.

In front of the door, with folded brick-red hands in aprons, two immense women were talking. Winston, approaching them, heard snatches of conversation. Yes, I say, it's all very good, I say. But if you were me, you would do the same. It's easy, I say, to judge, but you would take a sip of mine ... - Yes, another one replied, That's it. That's the whole point. The harsh voices suddenly stopped.

In silence, the women gave him a hostile look. However, not even hostile, rather wary, frozen for a moment, as if an unknown animal was passing by, the blue overalls of the party member did not often flash on these streets. It was not worth showing up in such places without business. If you run into a patrol, they can stop you.

"Comrade, your documents. What are you doing here? What time did you leave work? Do you always go home this way?" And so on and so forth.

different roads going home was not forbidden, but if the thought police find out, that's enough to take note of you. Suddenly the whole street was in motion. Warning cries were heard from all sides. People fled to their homes like rabbits. A young woman jumped out of the door not far from Winston, picked up a small child who was playing in a puddle, threw an apron over him and rushed back.

At the same moment, a man in a black suit resembling an accordion appeared from the alley and ran up to Winston. excitedly pointing to the sky. - Steam locomotive! he shouted. - Look, director! Now on the head! Lie down quickly! For some reason, the proles called the rocket a locomotive.

Winston threw himself on the ground. In such cases, the proles were almost never wrong. It was as if instinct told them in a few seconds that a rocket was flying up, it was believed that rockets were flying faster than sound. Winston covered his head with his hands. There was a crash that shook the pavement as some debris rained down on his back. Rising, he found himself strewn with shards of window glass.

He went on. Two hundred meters away, the rocket demolished several Houses. There was a black column of smoke in the air, and under it, in a cloud of alabaster dust, people were already gathering around the ruins. Ahead was a pile of plaster, and Winston saw a bright red stain on it.

Coming closer, he saw that it was a severed hand. Except for the bloody hemp, the brush was completely white, like a plaster cast. He kicked her into the drain, and then, to get around the crowd, turned right into the alley.

After three or four minutes, he left the explosion zone, and here the street lived its miserable ant life as if nothing had happened. Time passed by twenty o'clock, the drinking shops of the Proles were bursting with customers. Their filthy doors kept opening, spilling the smell of urine, sawdust, and sour beer into the street.

Three men were standing close to each other in the corner near the protruding house, the middle one was holding a folded newspaper, and two were peering over his shoulder. From a distance, Winston could make out their facial expressions, but their posture betrayed enthusiasm.

Apparently, they read some important message. When they were a few steps away, the group suddenly split up, and the two got into a furious squabble.

It looked like she was about to go into a fight. - Yes, you listen, bastard, what they say to you! With a seven at the end, no number won in fourteen months. - And I say, won! - I say no. At home, everything was discharged in two years. I write like clockwork. I'm telling you, not one with a seven ... - No, the seven won! Yes, I will call almost the entire number. Ended at four hundred and seven.

February is the second week of February. - Your grandmother in February! I have it in black and white. Never, I say, with the seven ... - Yes, you shut up! a third intervened. They talked about the lottery. Walking away about thirty meters, Winston looked back. They continued to argue animatedly, passionately.

The lottery, with its fabulous weekly winnings, was the only social event that excited the proles. Probably, millions of people saw in her the main, if not the only thing worth living for. It was their delight, their madness, their respite, their intellectual stimulus. Here, even those who could barely read and write showed the art of the most complex calculations and supernatural memory. There was a whole clan that lived by selling systems, forecasts and talismans.

Winston had nothing to do with the work of the lottery - it was handled by the Ministry of Plenty, but he knew (everyone in the party knew) that winnings were mostly imaginary. In fact, only small amounts were paid out, and the owners of large winnings were fictitious persons. In the absence of a real connection between the individual parts of Oceania, this was not difficult to arrange, but if there is hope, then it is in the proles.

This idea must be pursued. When you express it in words, it seems sensible: when you look at those who pass by you, to believe in it is asceticism. He turned down the street, which went downhill. The place seemed vaguely familiar to him - not far away lay the main avenue.

There was a din somewhere up ahead. The street turned sharply and ended in a staircase that descended into an alley where hawkers sold sluggish vegetables. Winston remembered this place. The lane led to the main street, and around the next turn, five minutes away, was the junk shop where he bought the book that became a diary. A little further, in a stationery shop, he bought ink and a pen.

He stopped in front of the stairs. On the other side of the alley was a run-down alehouse with windows that seemed to be frosted but were actually just dusty. An ancient old man, bent but energetic, with a gray mustache sticking out like a cancer, flung open the door and disappeared into the pub. It occurred to Winston that this old man, now at least eighty, had caught the revolution as a grown man.

He, and a few like him, is the last link to the vanished world of capitalism. And there are few in the party whose views were formed before the revolution. The older generation is almost all killed in the great purges of the fifties and sixties, and the survivors are intimidated into complete mental capitulation. And if there is a living person who is able to tell the truth about the first half a century, then it can only be a break.

Winston suddenly remembered a passage from a children's history book copied into his diary and fired up with a crazy idea. He will enter the pub, strike up an acquaintance with the old man and ask him: "Tell me how you lived as a child. What was life like? Better than today, or worse?" Quickly, so as not to have time to be frightened, he went down to the stairs and crossed to the other side of the alley. Crazy, of course.

Talking to the proles and visiting their pubs was also, of course, not forbidden, but such a strange trick would not go unnoticed. If a patrol comes in, you can pretend that you have become ill, but they hardly believe it. He pushed open the door, and beer sourness hit him in the nose. When he entered, the noise in the pub was half as quiet. He felt behind his back that all eyes were staring at his blue jumpsuit.

The men who were throwing darts at the target stopped their game for a full half a minute. The old man for whom he had come was bickering at the counter with the bartender, a large, overweight young man with hook-nosed and thick-armed arms.

There were listeners standing around with their glasses. - They ask you as a person, the old man cocked and puffed out his chest, - Are you telling me that there is no pint mug in your tavern? - Yes, what the hell is this - a pint? - objected the bartender, resting his fingers on the bar. - No, you heard? The bartender is called - what is a pint, does not know! A pint is a half quart and four quarts is a gallon.

Maybe teach you the alphabet? - I never heard of it, - the bartender snapped. - We serve a liter, we serve half a liter and that's it. There are dishes on the shelf. “I want a pint,” said the old man. Is it hard to draw a pint? In my time there were none of your liters.

In your time, we all lived on branches, - the bartender replied, looking back at the audience. There was loud laughter, and the awkwardness caused by the appearance of Winston passed. The old man's face went red. He turned, grumbling, and charged into Winston. Winston politely took his arm. - Allow me to treat you? - he said. “A noble man,” he answered, puffing out his chest again.

He didn't seem to notice the blue overalls on Winston. "A pint!" - belligerently he ordered the bartender - Pint poke. The bartender rinsed two thick half-litre glasses in the keg with a glass of water and poured the dark beer. In addition to beer, nothing was served in these establishments.

Selling gin was not supposed to, but they mined it without much difficulty. The dart-throwing resumed, and the people at the counter started talking about lottery tickets. Winston was forgotten for a while. There was a pine table by the window where you could talk to the old man face to face. The risk is terrible; but at least there was no telescreen, which Winston knew as soon as he entered. “You could have poured me a pint,” grumbled the old man, sitting down with a glass. Half a liter is not enough - you will not get drunk.

A liter is a lot. You run often. Not to mention expensive. "Since your youth, you must have seen many changes," Winston began cautiously. With faded blue eyes, the old man looked at the dartboard, then at the stall, then at the door of the men's room, as if he wanted to find these changes here in the pub. - The beer was better, he said at last. And cheaper!

When I was young, a weak beer - we called it a poke - cost fourpence a pint. But that was before the war, of course. - To what? Winston asked. “Well, there is always war,” the old man explained vaguely. He took the glass and puffed out his chest again. The Adam's apple on his skinny neck jumped surprisingly fast, and the beer was gone. Winston went to the bar and brought two more glasses.

The old man seemed to have forgotten his prejudice against the whole liter. “You are much older than me,” said Winston. And you can remember the old life, before the revolution. People of my age, in fact, do not know anything about that time. You can only read it in books, but who knows whether they write the truth in books. I would like to hear from you.

The history books say that life before the revolution was very different from today. Terrible oppression, injustice, poverty - such that we cannot even imagine. Here in London, a huge number of people from birth to death have never eaten their fill. Half went barefoot. They worked twelve hours, left school at nine, slept ten people in a room.

And at the same time, a minority - some few thousand, the so-called capitalists - disposed of wealth and power. They owned everything that could be owned. They lived in luxurious houses, kept thirty servants, drove around in cars and fours, drank champagne, wore top hats ...

The old man suddenly perked up. - Cylinders! - he said. - How did you remember it? Just yesterday I was thinking. I don't know why all of a sudden. How many years, I think, have not seen the cylinder. Completely gone.

And the last time I wore it was for my daughter-in-law's funeral. That's when else ... I won't tell you a year, but fifty years ago. Rent, of course, taken on such an occasion. "Cylinders are not that important," Winston observed patiently. - The main thing is that the capitalists ... they and the priests, lawyers and others who lived under them, were the owners of the land. Everything in the world was for them.

You, ordinary working people, were their slaves. They could do anything to you. They could ship you to Canada like cattle. Sleep with your daughters if you like. Order to be flogged with some kind of nine-tailed whip. When you met them, you took off your hat. Each capitalist went around with a pack of lackeys... The old man perked up again. - Lackeys! How many years have not heard this word, huh? Lackeys.

You remember your youth, honestly. I remember ... howling back when ... going to Hyde Park on Sundays to listen to speeches. Whom there just was not and the Salvation Army, and Catholics, and Jews, and Hindus. And there was one ... I don’t remember the name now, but he performed strongly! Oh, he sneeze them.

Lackey, he says. Lackeys of the bourgeoisie! Henchmen of the ruling class!

Is the attitude towards you more human? In the old days, rich people, people in power ... - The House of Lords, - the old man put in thoughtfully. - House of Lords, if you like, I ask, could these people treat you like an inferior just because they are rich, and winning?

Is it true, for example, that you had to say "sir" to them and take off your hat when you met? The old man thought hard. And he answered no sooner than he drank a quarter of a glass. "Yes," he said. "They liked you to touch the cap." Seemed to show respect. To tell the truth, I didn’t like it - but I did it, not without it.

Where are you going, you can tell. - And it was accepted - I retell what I read in history books -. was it customary among these people and their servants to push you down the sidewalk into the gutter? “One of these pushed me once,” the old man answered. As I remember yesterday. The evening after the rowing race... they were terribly rowdy after the rowing races... I run into a guy on Shaftaubury Avenue. Looks noble - full dress, top hat and black coat.

He walks along the sidewalk, wags, and I accidentally ran into him. Says: "Can't you see where you're going?" - speaks. I say: "Did you buy a sidewalk?" And he: "Are you going to be rude to me? I'll turn my head, to hell."

I say: "You're drunk," I say. "I'll hand you over to the police, you won't have time to look back." And, believe me, he takes me by the chest and shoves me so hard that I almost got hit by a bus. Well, when I was young then I would have hung him, but here ... Winston felt despair. The old man's memory was just a jumble of small details. You can question him all day and you won't get any worthwhile information.

So, the history of the party may be true in some sense, or maybe it is completely true. He made one last attempt, - I must be unclear, he said. Here's what I want to say. You have been living in the world for a very long time, you lived half your life before the revolution.

For example, in 1925 you were already an adult. From what you remember, how, in your opinion, in the twenty-fifth year was life better than now, or worse? If you could choose when would you rather live then or now?

The old man looked thoughtfully at the target. I finished my beer - quite slowly. And finally he answered with philosophical reconciliation, as if the beer softened him: - I know what words you expect from me. You think I'll say that I want to be young again.

Ask people: most will tell you that they would like to be young. In youth, health, strength, everything is with you. Whoever lived to my age is always unwell. And my legs hurt another time, even cry and bladder - worse than ever. You run six or seven times at night.

But old age also has its joys. Those worries are gone. There is no need to mess with women - this is a big deal. Believe me, I haven't had a woman for thirty years. And reluctance, the mouth is the main thing. Winston leaned back against the windowsill.

There was no point in continuing. He was about to grab another beer when the old man suddenly stood up and shuffled quickly into a stinking booth against the side wall. The extra half liter did the trick. For a minute or two Winston looked into the empty glass, and then he did not even notice how his legs carried him out into the street.

Twenty years from now, he reflected, the great and simple question would be: "Was life better before the revolution?" will eventually become unresolvable. And even now it is, in essence, unsolvable: casual witnesses of the old world are not able to compare one era with another.

They remember a lot of useless facts: a quarrel with a co-worker, the loss and search for a bicycle pump, the expression on the face of a long-dead sister, a whirlwind of dust on a windy morning seventy years ago: but what is important is beyond their horizons.

They are like an ant that sees the small and does not see the big. And when memory fails and written testimonies are forged, then one must agree with the party's assertions that it has improved people's lives - after all, there is no and never will be the initial data for verification. Here his thoughts were interrupted. He stopped and looked up.

He stood in a narrow street, where a few dark shops were squeezed between residential buildings. Hanging above his head are three shabby metal balls, which must have been gilded at one time. He seemed to recognize this street. Well, of course! In front of him was a junk shop where he bought a diary. Fear kicked in. Buying the book was a rash act, and Winston swore off approaching this place.

But now, as soon as he thought, his legs themselves brought him here. But for this he kept a diary, in order to protect himself from such suicidal impulses. The shop was still open, although the time was approaching twenty-one. He thought he'd be more likely to draw attention walking on the sidewalk than in a shop, and he entered. They will ask - I wanted to buy blades.

The owner had just lighted a hanging kerosene lamp, which emitted an unclean, but somehow cozy smell. He was a man of about sixty, slender, round-shouldered, with a long, friendly nose, and behind the thick lenses of his spectacles his eyes seemed large and meek.

His hair was almost completely gray, and his eyebrows were thick and still black. Glasses, good fussiness, an old black velvet jacket - all this gave him an intelligent look: not that of a writer, not that of a musician. He spoke in a low, faded voice, and didn't twist his words like most proles. - I recognized you on the sidewalk, - he immediately said. - It was you who bought a gift album for girls.

Excellent paper, excellent. They called it cream verge. They don't make paper like that, I think... it's been fifty years. He looked at Winston over his glasses. "Do you need something specific?" Or just wanted to see things? - Walked by, evasively answered Winston. Decided to take a look.

I don't need anything specific. - So much the better - I could hardly satisfy you. As if apologetically, he turned up his soft hand. You can see for yourself: one might say, an empty shop. Between us, the antiques trade has almost dried up. There is no demand, and there is nothing to offer. Furniture, porcelain, crystal - all this, little by little, was interrupted and broken. And most of the metal was melted down.

How many years have I not seen a brass candlestick. In fact, the cramped shop was crammed with things, but they did not represent the slightest value. There was almost no free space left - dusty picture frames lay in piles near all the walls.

In the window - trays with bolts and nuts, ground chisels, broken penknives, peeling clocks that did not even pretend to be in working order, and various other rubbish. Some interest could only arouse a trifle lying on a table in the corner, lacquered snuff boxes, agate brooches and the like. Winston walked up to the table, and his eye was drawn to a smooth, round thing that gleamed dully in the light of the lamp; he took it.

It was a heavy piece of glass, flat on one side and convex on the other - almost a hemisphere. And in the color and in the structure of the glass there was an incomprehensible softness - it resembled rainwater. And in the core, enlarged by a bulge, was a strange pink object of patterned structure, resembling a rose or a sea anemone. - What is this? asked the enchanted Winston. - This? It's coral, the old man replied. - Presumably from the Indian Ocean. Previously, they were sometimes poured into glass. Made at least a hundred years ago.

Looks even earlier. "A beautiful thing," said Winston. - A beautiful thing, - gratefully picked up the junk dealer. - But these days, few people appreciate it. He coughed. If you suddenly want to buy, it costs four dollars. There was a time when they gave eight pounds for such a thing, and eight pounds ... well, now I can’t say for sure - it was a lot of money.

But who now needs genuine antiquities - although there are so few of them, Winston immediately paid four dollars and dropped the coveted toy into his pocket. It was not so much the beauty of the thing that tempted him, but the aroma of an age that was not at all like the present. He had never seen glass with such rainy softness.

The best thing about the thing was its uselessness, although Winston guessed it had once served as a paperweight. The glass stretched the pocket, but, fortunately, did not stick out too much. This is a strange item, even a compromising item for a party member. Everything old and, for that matter, everything beautiful aroused some suspicion.

The owner. having received four dollars, he noticeably cheered up. Winston realized that he could bargain for three or even two. - If you want to see, I have another room upstairs, said the old man. - There's nothing special. Just a few items.

If we go, we'll need light. He lit another lamp, then, bending over, he slowly climbed the worn steps and led Winston through a tiny corridor into the room; its window did not look at the street, but at the paved courtyard and at the thicket of chimneys with caps.

Winston noticed that the furniture was arranged here, as in a living room. There is a path on the floor, two or three paintings on the walls, a deep untidy armchair by the fireplace. On the mantelpiece ticked an antique glass clock with a twelve-hour dial.

Under the window, occupying almost a quarter of the room, stood a huge bed, and with a mattress. “We lived here until my wife died,” the old man explained, as if apologizing. I am selling some furniture. Here is an excellent mahogany bed ... That is, it would be excellent if the bugs were evicted from it. However, to you, probably, it seems cumbersome.

He lifted the lamp over his head to illuminate the entire room, and in the warm, dim light it looked even cozy. You could rent it for a few dollars a week, Winston thought, if he dared. It was a wild, absurd thought, and it died as quickly as it was born; but the room awakened in him a kind of nostalgia, a kind of stomping memory that slumbered in his blood.

It seemed to him that he knew this sensation well when you sit in such a room, in an armchair in front of a burning fireplace, with your feet on the grate, a kettle on the fire, and you are completely one, complete security, no one is watching you, no one's voice misses you, only the kettle sings in the fireplace and the clock ticks friendly. There's no telescreen here, he blurted out.

Oh, that, answered the old man. I've never had. They are expensive. And, you know, I never felt the need. There's a nice folding table in the corner. True, in order to use the sidewalls, it is necessary to replace the hinges.

In the other corner stood bookshelf, and Winston was already attracted to them. There was only rubbish on the shelf. Book-hunting and destruction were as thorough in the Prole neighborhoods as elsewhere. There is hardly a single copy of a book published before 1960 in the whole of Oceania.

An old man with a lamp in his hand stood in front of a picture in a rosewood frame; she hung on the other side of the fireplace, opposite the bed. By the way, if you're interested in vintage engravings... he began delicately. Winston stepped closer. It was a steel engraving: a building with a gable gable, rectangular windows, and a tower in front. There was a fence around the building, and at the back stood, apparently, a statue.

Winston looked up. The building seemed vaguely familiar, but he didn't remember the statue. - The frame is screwed to the wall, - said the old man, - but if you want, I'll make it clear. “I know this building,” Winston said at last, “it is destroyed. In the middle of the street, behind the Palace of Justice. - Right. Behind the House of Justice. It was bombed... well, many years ago. It was a church.

"Here I will light a couple of candles - you can lie in bed. Here I will take a sharp sword - and your head will be off your shoulders." The game was like a dance. They stood holding hands, and you walked under your arms, and when they got to "I'll take a sharp sword - and your head is off your shoulders," your hands dropped and caught you.

There were only names of churches. All London churches ... That is, the most famous. Winston wondered absently what century this church might have been. It is always difficult to determine the age of London houses. All large and impressive and more or less new in appearance were considered, of course, built after the revolution, and everything that was obviously older was attributed to some distant, obscure time called the Middle Ages.

Thus, the centuries of capitalism have produced nothing worthwhile. It was as impossible to learn history from architecture as it was from books. Statues, monuments, plaques, street names - everything that could shed light on the past was systematically remade. “I didn't know it was a church,” he said. In fact, there are a lot of them left, the old man said, - they are only used for other needs. How is this verse? A! I remembered.

Oranges like honey

St. Clement strikes the bell.

And St. Martin calls:

Give me a farthing!

Again, I don't remember. A farthing was a small copper coin, like a cent. - Where's Saint Martin? Winston asked... St. Martin? This one is still worth it. On Victory Square, next to the picture gallery. Building with a portico and columns, with a wide staircase. Winston knew this building well.

It was a museum dedicated to various propaganda exhibitions: models of rockets and floating fortresses, wax panoramas depicting enemy atrocities, and the like. - It was called St. Martha in the fields, - the old man added, - although I don’t remember any fields in this area.

Winston did not buy the engraving. The object was even more unsuitable than a glass paperweight, and you couldn't take it home, unless it was frameless. But he lingered for a few more minutes, talking with the old man, and found out that his name was not Weeks, as the inscription on the bench suggested, but Charrington. It turned out that Mr. Charrington was sixty-three years old, a widower, and had been in the shop for thirty years.

All these years he was going to change the sign, but never did. While they were talking, Winston kept repeating to himself the beginning of the rhyme: "Oranges are like honey, St. Clement beats the bell. And St. Martin rings: give me the farthing!"

It is curious: when he recited a rhyme to himself, it seemed to him that the bells themselves sounded - the bells of the disappeared London, which still exists somewhere, invisible and forgotten. And he heard how they raise the ringing, one after another, ghostly bell towers.

Meanwhile, for as long as he could remember, he had never heard church bells. He said goodbye to Mr. Charrington and went down the stairs alone so the old man wouldn't see him looking around the street before going out the door. He had already decided that, after waiting for time - at least a month, he would venture to visit the shop again. It is hardly more dangerous than missing an evening at the community center. It was already a great recklessness that after buying a book he came here again, not knowing whether the owner could be trusted.

And yet! .. Yes, he said to himself, he will have to come again. He will buy an engraving of the Church of St. Clement from the Danes, take it out of the frame and take it home under his overalls. Make Mr. Charrington remember the rhyme to the end. And again the mad thought flashed to rent the upper room. From delight, he forgot about caution for about five seconds - he went out into the street, confining himself to a cursory glance out the window.

And he even began to sing to a homemade tune:

Oranges like honey

St. Kpement strikes the bell.

And St. Martin calls:

Give me a farthing!

Suddenly his heart sank with fear, his stomach seized. Some ten meters away, a figure in blue overalls walks towards him. It was a girl from the Literature Department, dark-haired. It was getting dark, but Winston recognized her without difficulty. She looked him straight in the eyes and quickly moved on as if she hadn't noticed. For several seconds he could not move, as if his legs were paralyzed.

Then he turned to the right and walked with difficulty, not noticing that he was going in the wrong direction. One thing at least became clear. There could be no doubt: the girl was spying on him. She tracked him down - you can't believe that she, by sheer chance, wandered that same evening into the same seedy street a few kilometers from the area where the party members live. Too many matches.

And she serves in the police of thoughts, or if it is amateur performance - it does not matter. She follows him, that's enough. Maybe even saw him go into the pub. Walking was hard. The glass weight in his pocket thumped against his thigh with every step, and Winston was tempted to throw it away. But worst of all was the stomach cramps. For several minutes it seemed to him that if he found a toilet for his wife now, he would die. But in such an area there could not be a public restroom.

Then the spasm passed, only a deaf pain remained. The street was a dead end. Winston stopped, stood for a few seconds, wondering absently what to do, then turned back. When he turned, it occurred to him that he had missed the girl some three minutes ago. and if you run, you can catch up with her. You can follow her to some quiet place, and then break her skull with a cobblestone.

A glass paperweight will work too. it is heavy. But he immediately abandoned this plan: even the thought of making a physical effort was unbearable. There is no strength to run, no strength to hit. In addition, the girl is young and strong, she will defend herself. Then he thought that he should immediately go to the community center and stay there until closing - to provide himself with at least a partial alibi. But this is also impossible. A deadly lethargy took over. I wanted one thing: to return to my apartment and do nothing.

He came home only at the twenty-third hour. The current in the network was supposed to be turned off at twenty-three thirty. He went to the kitchen and drank almost a whole cup of Victory gin. Then he went to the table in the niche, sat down and took the diary out of the drawer. But he didn't open it right away. The woman on the telescreen sang a patriotic song in a languid voice. Winston stared at the marble binding, trying unsuccessfully to ignore the voice.

They come for you at night, always at night. The best thing to do is to commit suicide before they take you. Surely many have done so. Many disappearances were actually suicides. But in a country where neither firearms nor reliable poison can be obtained, it takes desperate courage to commit suicide.

He thought with surprise that pain and fear were biologically useless, thought of the treachery of the human body, numbing at the very moment when special effort is required. He could have got rid of the dark-haired woman if he had got down to business right away, but precisely because of that. that the danger was extreme, he lost his strength.

It occurred to him that in critical moments a person fights not with an external Enemy, but always with his own body. Even now, despite the gin, the dull pain in his stomach kept him from thinking coherently. And the same thing, he realized. in all tragic or apparently heroic situations.

On the battlefield, in the torture chamber, in the sinking ship, what you fought for is always forgotten - your body grows and fills the universe, and even when you are not paralyzed with fear and screaming in pain, life is a minute-by-minute struggle with hunger or cold, with insomnia, heartburn or toothache. He opened the diary. It's important to write something down. The woman on the telescreen burst into song.

The voice pierced his brain like sharp pieces of glass. He tried to think about O'Brien, for whom - to whom - a diary was being written, but instead he began to think what would happen to him when the thought police arrested him. If they killed him right away, half the trouble. Death is a foregone conclusion.

But before death (no one spread about it, but everyone knew) there would be a routine confession with crawling on the floor with pleas for mercy, with a crunch of broken bones, with broken teeth and bloody tangles in the hair. Why do you have to go through with it if the outcome is known anyway?

Why can't you shorten your life by a few days or weeks? Not a single one escaped exposure, and every single one confessed. The moment you transgress in thought, you have already signed your death warrant. So "why are these torments waiting for you in the future if they don't change anything?

He tried again to evoke the image of O'Brien, and now he succeeded. "We'll meet there. where there is no darkness," O'Brien told him. Winston understood his words - it seemed to him that he understood. Where there is no darkness is an imaginary future; you will not see him in your lifetime, but, foreseeing, you can mystically partake of him. The voice from the telescreen beat on the ears did not allow me to think this thought through to the end.

Winston took a cigarette in his mouth. Half of the tobacco immediately spilled onto his tongue - it would take a long time to spit out this bitterness. Before him, displacing O'Brien, the face of Big Brother appeared. Just as a few days ago, Winston took a coin out of his pocket and peered. The face looked at him heavily, calmly, paternally, but what kind of smile is hiding in a black mustache? the words rang out:

WARRIOR IS THE WORLD

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS POWER

* PART TWO *

It was still morning: Winston went from his cabin to the lavatory. A man was moving along the empty, brightly lit corridor. It turned out to be a dark-haired girl. It had been four days since that meeting at the junk shop. Coming closer, Winston saw that her right arm was in a sling; From a distance, he did not see it, because the bandage was blue, like overalls. Probably, the girl broke her arm, turning a large kaleidoscope, where the plots of the novels were "attacked".

Common trauma in the literary department. When they were already separated by some five steps, she stumbled and almost fell flat. She let out a cry of pain. Apparently she dropped her broken arm. Winston froze. The girl got on her knees. Her face was incessantly milky yellow, and her red mouth stood out even brighter, she looked at Winston pleadingly, and in her eyes there was more fear than pain.

Winston had conflicting feelings. Before him was an enemy who tried to kill him; at the same time there was a man in front of him - a man in pain, perhaps a broken bone. Without hesitation, he went to help her. The moment she fell on her bandaged arm, he himself seemed to feel the pain. - Are you hurt? - It's OK. Hand.

It will pass now.” She spoke as if her heart was pounding. And her face was very pale. - You didn't break anything? - No. Everything is whole. It hurt and it went away. She held out her good hand to Winston, and he helped her to her feet.

Her face turned a little pink; Apparently, it has become easier for her. "It's okay," she repeated. "I hurt my wrist a little, that's all." Thanks, comrade! With these words, she walked on - so cheerfully, as if nothing had really happened. And the whole scene lasted probably less than half a minute.

The habit of not showing his feelings was so ingrained that it became an instinct, and all this happened right in front of the telescreen. Still, Winston only with great difficulty restrained his surprise: in the two or three seconds while he was helping the girl to her feet, she thrust something into his hand.

There was no question of chance here. Something small and flat. Entering the dressing room, Winston put this thing in his pocket and felt it there. A piece of paper folded into a square. In front of the urinal, after some fiddling in his pocket, he managed to straighten the paper. In all likelihood, something is written there. He was tempted to go into the booth at once and read.

But that, of course, would be pure madness. Where, if not here, the telescreens are watched continuously! He went back to his room, sat down, casually tossed the paper on the table among the other papers, put on his spectacles, and moved the speech closer. Five minutes, he told himself, five minutes at the very least!

The pounding of his heart in his chest was frighteningly loud. Fortunately, the work was routine - to clarify a long column of numbers - and did not require concentration. Whatever the note is, it must be political. Winston could imagine two options. One, more plausible: the woman is a Thought Police agent, which is what he was afraid of. It is not clear why the Thought Police would resort to such mail, but apparently there are reasons for this.

The note may contain a threat, a challenge, an order to commit suicide, a trap of some kind. There was another, wild assumption, Winston drove him away from himself, but it stubbornly climbed into his head. The note is not from the Thought Police at all, but from some underground organization. May be. Brotherhood still exists! And the girl, maybe from there! The idea, of course, was ridiculous, but it arose as soon as he felt the piece of paper. A more plausible version came to his mind only a few minutes later.

And even now, when his mind told him that the note might mean death, he still didn’t want to believe it, the senseless hope did not go out, his heart rattled, and, dictating the figures of the promise, he could hardly contain the trembling in his voice. He rolled up the sheets of finished work and pushed them into the pneumatic tube. Eight minutes have passed. He adjusted his spectacles, sighed, and pulled the new stack of tasks to him, on which lay that sheet. Straightened out the sheet. It was written in large, unsettled handwriting: I love you.

He was so taken aback that he did not even immediately throw the evidence into the nest of memory. Realizing how dangerous it was to show excessive interest in a piece of paper, he nevertheless could not resist and read it again - to make sure that he had not imagined it. Before the break it was very hard to work. He couldn't concentrate on tedious tasks, but worse, he had to hide his confusion from the telescreen.

It's like a fire in his stomach. Dinner in a stuffy, crowded, noisy dining room was a torment. He expected to be alone, but, as luck would have it, the idiot Parsons plopped down next to him, almost drowning out the tinny smell of stew with a sharp smell of sweat, and started talking about preparations for Hate Week.

He especially admired the huge two-meter head of Big Brother made of papier-mâché, which was made for the holidays by his daughter's detachment. Most annoying of all, because of the uproar, Winston could not hear Parsons well.

I had to ask again and hear the same stupidity twice. At the far end of the hall, he saw a dark-haired woman - at a table with two more girls. She didn't seem to notice him, and he didn't look there anymore. The second half of the day was easier. Immediately after the break they sent a thin and difficult task- for several hours, - and all extraneous thoughts had to be set aside.

It was necessary to falsify the production reports of two years ago in such a way as to cast a shadow on a major figure in the internal party who fell out of favor. With such work, Winston coped well, and for more than two hours he managed to forget about the dark-haired woman. But then her face again appeared before her eyes, and insanely, to the point of unbearability, she wanted to be alone.

Until he is alone, it is impossible to consider this event. He was supposed to be present at the community center today. He ate a tasteless dinner in the cafeteria, rushed to the center, participated in a stupid solemn "group discussion", played two games of table tennis, drank a few gins, and sat through a half-hour lecture on "Chess and its relation to angsots."

His soul writhed with boredom, but contrary to his usual habit, he did not want to slip away from the center. From the layer of "I love you" a desire to prolong my life surged, and now even a small risk seemed stupid. Only at twenty-three o'clock, when he returned and lay down in bed - in the dark even a telescreen is not terrible if you are silent - he regained the ability to think.

We had to solve a technical problem: how to contact her and arrange a meeting. The suggestion that the woman was setting a trap for him, he had already discarded. He realized that she was not: she was definitely worried when she gave him the note.

She did not remember herself from fear - and this is quite understandable. It was not in his mind to evade her advances. Just five days ago, he was thinking about an atom to break through her head with a cobblestone, but that's a thing of the past.

He mentally touched her vopri, thrilled her young body - as then in a dream. But at first he considered her a fool like the rest - stuffed with lies and hatred, with a frozen bottom. At the thought that you can lose her, that he will not get a young white body.

Winston was in a fever. But meeting her was unthinkable. It's like making a move in chess when you're checkmated. Wherever you turn, the telescreen is watching from everywhere. All possible ways to arrange a date came to his mind within five minutes of reading the note; now, when he had time to think, he began to sort through them one by one, as if laying out the tools on the table.

Obviously, a meeting like today's could not be repeated. If a woman worked in the documentation department, it would be more or less simple, and in what part of the building the literature department was located, he had little idea. and there was no reason to go there.

If he knew where she lives and what time she finishes work, he could intercept her on the way home; it is not safe to follow her - you have to hang around near the ministry, and this will surely be noticed. It is not possible to send a letter by mail. After all, it's no secret that all mail is opened.

Now almost no one writes letters. And if you need to communicate with someone, there are postcards with printed ready-made phrases, and you just cross out the unnecessary ones. He doesn't even know her last name, let alone her address. In the end, he decided that the dining room would be the surest place.

If he could sit next to her when she was alone, and the table was in the middle of the room, not too close to the TV screens, and the room was noisy enough... if they were allowed to be alone for at least thirty seconds, then perhaps he could exchange with her in a few words.

All week after that, his life was like a restless dream. The next day, a woman appeared in the dining room, when he was already leaving after the whistle. She must have been moved to a later shift. They parted without looking at each other. The next day she dined at the usual time, but with three other women and right under the TV screen.

Then there were three terrible days - she did not appear at all. His mind and body seemed to have acquired an unbearable sensitivity, permeability, and every movement, every sound, every touch, every heard and spoken word turned into torture. Even in the spring, he could not get rid of her image. During these days he did not touch the diary. Only work brought relief - for it he could sometimes forget himself for as long as ten minutes. He didn't understand what had happened to her.

There was nowhere to ask. Maybe she was sprayed, maybe she committed suicide, she could be transferred to the other side of Oceania: but the most likely and worst thing is that she simply changed her mind and decided to avoid him. On the fourth day she appeared. The arm was not in a sling, only a band-aid around the wrist. He felt so relieved that he couldn't help but stare at her for a few seconds.

The next day, he almost managed to talk to her. When he entered the dining room, she was sitting alone and quite far from the wall. The hour was early, the dining room was not yet full. The line moved forward, Winston was almost at the distribution, but then he got stuck for two minutes: someone in front complained that he had not been given a saccharin tablet.

However, when Winston received his tray and walked towards her, she was still alone. He walked, looking overhead, as if looking for an empty seat behind her desk. She is already some three meters away. Two more seconds - and he is at the target. Behind him, someone called, "Smith!" He pretended not to hear. "Smith!" - repeated from behind even louder. No, don't get rid of it.

He turned around. A young, stupid-faced, blond named Wilsher, whom he barely knew, smiled and invited him to an empty seat at his table. It was not safe to refuse. After being recognized, he could not sit down with a woman who dined alone.

It would draw attention. He sat down with a friendly smile. The stupid face beamed in response. He imagined how he hit him with a pickaxe - exactly in the middle. A few minutes later, the woman also had a neighbor, But she probably saw that he was walking towards her - and, perhaps, she understood. The next day he tried to come early. And in vain: she was sitting in approximately the same place and again alone.

In line ahead of him stood a small, nimble, beetle-like man with a flat face and suspicious eyes. When Winston turned away from the counter with the tray, he saw the little one making his way to her table. Hope faded again. There was also an empty seat at a table farther away, but the little one's habit said that he would take care of his thinness and choose a table where there were the fewest people.

With a heavy heart, Winston moved behind the nurse. Until he is left alone with her, nothing will come of it. There was a terrible roar. The little one was on all fours, his tray was still flying, and two streams flowed across the floor - soup and coffee. He jumped up and looked around angrily, apparently suspecting that Winston had tripped him.

But it didn't matter. Five seconds later, with a thundering heart, Winston was already seated at her desk. He didn't look at her. He emptied the tray and immediately began to eat. It was important to speak at once, no one approached the priest, but a wild fear attacked Winston.

It's been a week since the first meeting. She might have changed her mind, she must have changed her mind! Nothing will come out of this story - it does not happen in life. Perhaps he would not have dared to speak if he had not seen Ampfort, the poet with woolen ears, who was trudging along the tray, looking for a free place with his eyes. Absent-minded Ampleforth was attached to Winston in his own way and, if he noticed him, he would probably get hooked.

There was less than a minute left. Both Winston and the woman ate diligently. They ate a liquid stew - rather a soup with beans. Winston spoke in an undertone. Both did not raise their eyes: measuredly scooping up the stew and sending it to their mouths, they quietly and without any expression exchanged a few necessary words.

When do you finish work?

At eighteen thirty.

Where can we meet?

On Victory Square, near the monument.

There are telescreens all around.

If in a crowd, it doesn't matter.

No. Don't come near until you see me in the midst of people. And not

look at me. Just be close.

At what time?

At nineteen.

Ampleforth ignored Winston and sat down at another table. The woman finished her dinner quickly and left, while Winston remained smoking. They didn't talk anymore and, as far as it was possible for two people sitting face to face across the table, didn't look at each other. Winston arrived at Victory Square ahead of time. He wandered around the base of a huge grooved column, from the top of which the Big Brother statue looked to the south of the sky, to where in the battle for the Runway one - he defeated the Eurasian aviation (a few years ago it was Eastasian). Opposite in the street stood an equestrian statue of what was believed to be Oliver Cromwell.

Five minutes passed after the appointed hour, and the woman was not there. Wild fear again attacked Winston. No, she changed her mind! - called: "Give me a farthing."

Then I saw a woman: she was standing under the monument and reading, or pretending to read, a poster that spiraled around a column. While people gathered there, it was risky to approach. They stood around the pedestal. telescreens. But suddenly, somewhere in the trail, people began to roar and the rumble of heavy vehicles was heard. Everyone in the square rushed in that direction. The woman quickly circled the lions at the foot of the column and also ran. Winston followed. On the run, he realized from the cries that they were carrying captured Eurasians.

The southern part of the square was already crowded with a crowd. Winston, who belonged to that breed of people who, in any scuffle, strives to be on the edge, screwed in, squeezed through, made his way into the very thick of the people. The woman was already close - you can get it with your hand. - but then, with a blank wall of meat, the path was blocked by an immense family and the same immense woman - apparently his wife.

Winston twisted and with all his strength drove his shoulder between them. It seemed to him that two muscular sides would crush his insides into mush, and yet he broke through, sweating a little. Felt next to her. They stood shoulder to shoulder and looked ahead with a motionless gaze. Trucks were crawling along the street in a long line, and submachine gunners were standing in trucks in all four corners with frozen faces.

Small yellow men in tattered green uniforms squatted close between them. Their Mongolian faces looked over the sides sadly and without any interest. If the truck was tossed up, there was a clang of metal - the prisoners were in leg irons.

Trucks full of sad people drove by one after another. Winston heard them go, but saw them only occasionally. The woman's shoulder, her hand pressed against his shoulder and hand. The cheek was so close that he could feel its warmth. She immediately took the initiative, as in the dining room. She spoke, barely moving her lips, in the same inexpressive voice as then, and this half-whisper was drowned in the general uproar and growl of trucks.

Do you hear me?

Can you get out on Sunday?

Then listen carefully. You must remember.

Go to Paddington Station ... With a military precision that amazed Winston, she described the route. Half an hour by train: from the station - to the left; two kilometers along the road, a gate without a crossbar: a path through the field; a path under the trees, overgrown with grass; path in the bush: a fallen mossy tree. It was like she had a map in her head.

Did everyone remember? she finally whispered.

Turn left, then right, then left again. And at the gate

no crossbar.

Yes. Time?

About fifteen. You may have to wait. I will get there by another way. Are you sure you remember everything?

Then leave quickly.

There was no need for these words. But the crowd did not allow them to disperse. The column went on, people stared insatiably. At first, the shouts of ismet were heard, but only the party members were noisy, and soon they too fell silent. The prevailing feeling was simple curiosity. Foreigners - whether from Eurasia, from Eastasia - were something like outlandish animals. You have never seen them - only in the role of prisoners of war, and even then briefly.

Their fate was also unknown - except for those who were hanged as war criminals; the rest simply disappeared - presumably in hard labor camps. Round Mongolian faces were replaced by more European ones, dirty, unshaven, exhausted.

Sometimes the overgrown face caught Winston with an unusually fixed gaze, and at once he glided on. The column was coming to an end. In the last truck, Winston saw an elderly man with a gray beard up to his eyes, standing on his feet with his arms folded in front of his stomach, as if he was used to being shackled.

It was time to move away from the woman. But at the last moment, while the crowd was still squeezing them, she found his hand and shook it imperceptibly. It lasted less than ten seconds, but it seemed to him that they were holding each other's hands for a very long time. Winston had time to study her hand in every detail. He touched the long fingers, the elongated nails, the hardened, callused palm, the delicate skin of the wrist.

He had so studied that hand by touch that now he would have recognized it by sight. It occurred to him that he hadn't noticed what color her eyes were. Probably brown, although dark-haired people sometimes have blue ones. To turn your head and look at her would be utterly reckless.

Pressed together by the crowd, imperceptibly holding on to their hands, they looked straight ahead, and not her eyes, but the eyes of an elderly prisoner stared wistfully at Winston from a thicket of tangled hair.

What does Africa give to the world? Only AIDS. Author - Kevin Myers

Very briefly

First part

Second part

The third part

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