Speaker 1: Section eight of nineteen eighty four by George Orwell. This
Speaker 1: legamis recording may be freely distributed and adapted for any purpose.
Speaker 1: Section one, chapter eight. From somewhere at the bottom of
Speaker 1: a passage, the smell of roasting coffee, real coffee, not
Speaker 1: Victory coffee, came floating out into the street. Winston paused
Speaker 1: involuntarily for perhaps two seconds. He was back in the
Speaker 1: half forgotten world of his childhood. Then a door banged,
Speaker 1: seeming to cut off the smell as abruptly as though
Speaker 1: it had been a sound. He had walked several kilometers
Speaker 1: over pavements, and his varicus alsa was throbbing. This was
Speaker 1: the second time in three weeks that he had missed
Speaker 1: an evening at the community center, a rash act, since
Speaker 1: you could be certain that the number of your attendances
Speaker 1: at the center was carefully checked. In principle, a party
Speaker 1: member had no spare time and was never alone except
Speaker 1: in bed. It was assumed that when he was not working, eating,
Speaker 1: or sleeping, he would be taking part in sight some
Speaker 1: kind of communal recreation. To do anything that suggested a
Speaker 1: taste for solitude, even to go for a walk by yourself,
Speaker 1: was always slightly dangerous. There was a word for it
Speaker 1: in New Speak own life. It was called meaning individualism
Speaker 1: and eccentricity. But this evening, as he came out of
Speaker 1: the ministry, the balminess of the april air had tempted him.
Speaker 1: The sky was a warmer blue than he had seen
Speaker 1: it that year, And suddenly the long, noisy evening at
Speaker 1: the center, the boring, exhausting games, the lectures, the creaking
Speaker 1: camaraderie oiled by gin had seemed intolerable. On impulse, he
Speaker 1: had turned away from the bus stop and wandered off
Speaker 1: into the labyrinth of London, first south, then east, then
Speaker 1: north again, losing himself among unknown streets, and hardly bothering
Speaker 1: in which direction he was going. If there is hope,
Speaker 1: he had written in the Diary, it lies in the prolls.
Speaker 1: The words kept coming back to him, statement of a
Speaker 1: mystical truth and a palpable absurdity. He was somewhere in
Speaker 1: the vague, brown colored slums to the north and east
Speaker 1: of what had once been Saint Pancras Station. He was
Speaker 1: walking up a cobbled street of little two story houses
Speaker 1: with battered doorways which gave straight on the pavement, and
Speaker 1: which were somehow curiously suggestive of rat holes. There were
Speaker 1: puddles of filthy water here and there among the cobbles,
Speaker 1: in and out of the dark doorways and down narrow
Speaker 1: alleyways that branched off on either side. People swarmed in
Speaker 1: astonishing numbers, girls in full bloom with crudely lipsticked mouths,
Speaker 1: and youths who chased the girls, and swollen, waddling women
Speaker 1: who showed you what the girls would be like in
Speaker 1: ten years time. And old bent creatures shuffling along on
Speaker 1: splayed feet, and ragged, barefooted children who played in the
Speaker 1: puddles and then scattered at angry yells from their mothers.
Speaker 1: Perhaps a quarter of the windows in the street were
Speaker 1: broken and boarded up. Most of the people paid no
Speaker 1: attention to Winston. A few eyed him with a sort
Speaker 1: of guarded curiosity. Two monstrous women with brick red forearms
Speaker 1: folded across their aprons were talking outside a doorway. Winston
Speaker 1: caught scraps of conversation as he approached. Yes, I says
Speaker 1: to her. That's all very well, I says, But if
Speaker 1: you'd have been in my place, you'd have done the
Speaker 1: same as what I've done. It's easy to criticize, I says,
Speaker 1: but you ain't got the same problems as what I got,
Speaker 1: Ah said the other. That's just it, that's just where
Speaker 1: it is. The strident voices stopped abruptly. The women studied
Speaker 1: him in hostile silence as he went past. But it
Speaker 1: was not hostility exactly, merely a kind of weariness, a
Speaker 1: momentary stiffening, as at the passing of some unfamiliar animal.
Speaker 1: The blue overalls of the party could not be a
Speaker 1: common sight in a street like this. Indeed, it was
Speaker 1: unwise to be seen in such places unless you had
Speaker 1: definite business there. The patrols might stop you if you
Speaker 1: happened to run into them. May I see your papers, comrade?
Speaker 1: What are you doing here? What time did you leave work?
Speaker 1: Is this your usual way home? And so on and
Speaker 1: so forth. Not that there was any rule against walking
Speaker 1: home by an unusual route, but it was enough to
Speaker 1: draw attention to you if the thought police heard about it.
Speaker 1: Suddenly the whole street was in commotion. There were yells
Speaker 1: of warning from all sides. People were shooting into the
Speaker 1: doorways like rabbits. A young woman leapt out of doorway
Speaker 1: a little ahead of Winston, grabbed up. A tiny child
Speaker 1: playing in a puddle, whipped her apron round it, and
Speaker 1: leaped back again, all in one movement. At the same instant,
Speaker 1: a man in a concertina like black suit, who had
Speaker 1: emerged from a side alley, ran towards Winston, pointing excitedly
Speaker 1: to the sky Steamer. He yelled, look out guv'nor bang
Speaker 1: over d lay down. Quick Steamer was a nickname which,
Speaker 1: for some reason, the Proles applied to rocket bombs. Winston
Speaker 1: promptly flung himself on his face. The proles were nearly
Speaker 1: always right when they gave you a warning of this kind.
Speaker 1: They seemed to possess some kind of instinct which told
Speaker 1: them several seconds in advance when a rocket was coming.
Speaker 1: Although the rockets supper traveled faster than sound. Winston clasped
Speaker 1: his forearms above his head. There was a roar which
Speaker 1: seemed to make the pavement heave a shower of light
Speaker 1: objects pattered on to his back. When he stood up,
Speaker 1: he found that he was covered with fragments of glass.
Speaker 1: From the nearest window he walked on, a bomb had
Speaker 1: demolished group of houses two hundred meters up the street.
Speaker 1: A black plume of smoke hung in the sky, and
Speaker 1: below it a cloud of plaster dust, in which a
Speaker 1: crowd was already forming Around the ruins. There was a
Speaker 1: little pile of plaster lying on the pavement ahead of him,
Speaker 1: and in the middle of it he could see a
Speaker 1: bright red streak. When he got up to it, he
Speaker 1: saw that it was a human hand severed at the wrist.
Speaker 1: Apart from the bloody stump, the hand was so completely
Speaker 1: whitened as to resemble a plaster cast. He kicked the
Speaker 1: thing into the gutter, and then, to avoid the crowd,
Speaker 1: turned down a side street to the right. Within three
Speaker 1: or four minutes he was out of the area which
Speaker 1: the bomb had effected, and the sordid, swarming life of
Speaker 1: the streets was going on as though nothing had happened.
Speaker 1: It was nearly twenty hours, and the drinking shops which
Speaker 1: the proles frequented, pubs they called them, were choked with
Speaker 1: customers from their grimy swing doors, endlessly opening and shutting.
Speaker 1: There came forth a smell of urine, sawdust and sour bier.
Speaker 1: In an angle formed by a projecting house front, three
Speaker 1: men were standing very close together, the middle, one of
Speaker 1: them holding a folded up newspaper, which the other two
Speaker 1: were studying over his shoulder. Even before he was near
Speaker 1: enough to make out the expression on their faces, Winston
Speaker 1: could see absorption in every line of their bodies. It
Speaker 1: was obviously some serious piece of news that they were reading.
Speaker 1: He was a few paces away from them when suddenly
Speaker 1: the group broke up, and two of the men were
Speaker 1: in violent altercation. For a moment, they seemed almost on
Speaker 1: the point of blows. Can't you bleeding well? Listen to
Speaker 1: what I say. I tell you, no number ending in seven,
Speaker 1: ain't one for over fourteen months? Yes it has? Then,
Speaker 1: no it has not. Back home, I got the old
Speaker 1: lot of em for over two years, wrote down on
Speaker 1: a piece of paper. I take them down regular as
Speaker 1: the clock, and I tell you no number ending in seven, Yes,
Speaker 1: a seven as one. I could pretty near tell you
Speaker 1: the bleeding number four O seven had ended in it.
Speaker 1: Were in February, second week, in February February, your grandmother.
Speaker 1: I got it all downe in black and white, and
Speaker 1: I tell you no number. I'll pack it in, said
Speaker 1: the third man. They were talking about the lottery. Winston
Speaker 1: looked back. When he had gone thirty meters, they were
Speaker 1: still arguing with vivid, passionate faces. The lottery, with its
Speaker 1: weekly pay out of enormous prizes, was the one public
Speaker 1: event to which the prolls paid serious attention. It was
Speaker 1: probable that there were some millions of prolls for whom
Speaker 1: the lottery was the principle, if not the only, reason
Speaker 1: for remaining alive. It was their delight, their folly, their anodyne,
Speaker 1: their intellectual stimulant. Where the lottery was concerned. Even people
Speaker 1: who could bear barely read and write seemed capable of
Speaker 1: intricate calculations and staggering feats of memory. There was a
Speaker 1: whole tribe of men who made a living simply by
Speaker 1: selling systems, forecasts and lucky amulets. Winston had nothing to
Speaker 1: do with the running of the lottery, which was managed
Speaker 1: by the Ministry of Plenty, but he was aware, indeed
Speaker 1: every one in the Party was aware, that the prizes
Speaker 1: were largely imaginary. Only small sums were actually paid out,
Speaker 1: the winners of the big prizes being non existent persons.
Speaker 1: In the absence of any real intercommunication between one part
Speaker 1: of Oceania and another, this was not difficult to arrange,
Speaker 1: but if there was hope, it lay in the prolls.
Speaker 1: You had to cling on to that. When you put
Speaker 1: it in words, it sounded reasonable. It was when you
Speaker 1: looked at the human beings passing you on the pavement
Speaker 1: that it became an act of faith. The street into
Speaker 1: which he had turned ran downhill. He had a feeling
Speaker 1: that he had been in this neighborhood before, and that
Speaker 1: there was a main thoroughfare not far away from Somewhere
Speaker 1: ahead there came a dinner sh shouting voices. The street
Speaker 1: took a sharp turn and then ended in a flight
Speaker 1: of steps, which led down into a sunken alley where
Speaker 1: a few stall keepers were selling tired looking vegetables. At
Speaker 1: this moment, Winston remembered where he was. The alley led
Speaker 1: out into the main street and down the next turning.
Speaker 1: Not five minutes away was the junk shop where he
Speaker 1: had bought the blank book which was now his diary,
Speaker 1: And in a small stationer's shop not far away, he
Speaker 1: had bought his pen holder and his bottle of ink.
Speaker 1: He paused for a moment at the top of the steps.
Speaker 1: On the opposite side of the alley, there was a
Speaker 1: dingy little pub whose windows appeared to be frosted over.
Speaker 1: But in reality they were merely coated with dust. A
Speaker 1: very old man, bent but active, with white mustaches that
Speaker 1: bristled forward like those of a prawn, pushed open the
Speaker 1: swing door and went in. As Winston stood watching, it
Speaker 1: occurred to him that the old man, who must be
Speaker 1: eighty at the least, had already been middle aged when
Speaker 1: the Revolution happened. He and a few others like him
Speaker 1: were the last links that now existed with the vanished
Speaker 1: world of capitalism. In the Party itself, there were not
Speaker 1: many people left whose ideas had been formed before the revolution.
Speaker 1: The older generation had mostly been wiped out in the
Speaker 1: great purges of the fifties and sixties, and the few
Speaker 1: who survived had long ago been terrified into complete intellectual surrender.
Speaker 1: If there was any one still alive who could give
Speaker 1: you a truthful account of conditions in the early part
Speaker 1: of the century, it could only be a prol Suddenly,
Speaker 1: the passage from the history book that he had copied
Speaker 1: into his diary came back into Winston's mind, and a
Speaker 1: lunatic impulse took hold of him. He would go into
Speaker 1: the pub. He would scrape acquaintance with that old man
Speaker 1: and question him. He would say to him. Tell me
Speaker 1: about your life when you were a boy. What was
Speaker 1: it like in those days? Were things better than they
Speaker 1: are now? Or were they worse? Hurriedly, lest he should
Speaker 1: have time to become frightened, he descended the steps and
Speaker 1: crossed the narrow street. It was madness, of course, as usual.
Speaker 1: There was no definite rule against talking to polls and
Speaker 1: frequenting their pubs, but it was far too unusual an
Speaker 1: action to pass unnoticed. If the patrols appeared, he might
Speaker 1: plead an attack of faintness, but it was not likely
Speaker 1: that they would believe him. He pushed open the door,
Speaker 1: and a hideous, cheesy smell of sour bier hit him
Speaker 1: in the face. As he entered the dinner voices dropped
Speaker 1: to about half its volume. Behind his back, he could
Speaker 1: veel everyone eyeing his blue overalls. A game of darts,
Speaker 1: which was going on at the other end of the
Speaker 1: room interrupted itself for perhaps as much as thirty seconds.
Speaker 1: The old man whom he had followed was standing at
Speaker 1: the bar, having some kind of altercation with the bar man,
Speaker 1: a large, stout, hook nosed young man with enormous forearms.
Speaker 1: A knot of others standing round with glasses in their hands,
Speaker 1: were watching the scene. I asked you civil enough, didn't
Speaker 1: I said the old man, straightening his shoulders. Pugnaciously You
Speaker 1: telling me you ain't got a pint, mug in the
Speaker 1: old bleeding boozer. And what in Hell's name is a pint?
Speaker 1: Said the barman, leaning forward with the tips of his
Speaker 1: fingers on the counter. A hark at him, called his
Speaker 1: self a barman, And don't know what a pint is?
Speaker 1: Why a pint's the half of a court, and there's
Speaker 1: four courts to the gallon. Have to teach you the
Speaker 1: A B. C. Next Never heard of him, said the barman,
Speaker 1: shortly lid he a half liter. That's all we serve.
Speaker 1: There's the glasses on the shelf in front of you.
Speaker 1: I likes a pint, persisted the old man. You could
Speaker 1: have drawed me off a pint easy enough. We didn't
Speaker 1: have these bleeding leaders when I was a young man,
Speaker 1: when you were a young man. We were all living
Speaker 1: in the tree tops, said the barman, with a glance
Speaker 1: at the other customers. There was a shout of laughter,
Speaker 1: and the uneasiness caused by Winston's entry seemed to disappear.
Speaker 1: The old man's white, stubbled face had flushed pink. He
Speaker 1: turned away, muttering to himself, and bumped into Winston. Winston
Speaker 1: caught him gently by the arm. May I offer you
Speaker 1: a drink? He said, You're a gent, said the other,
Speaker 1: straightening his shoulders again. He appeared not to have noticed
Speaker 1: Winston's blue overalls. Pint, he added aggressively to the barman.
Speaker 1: Pint of wallop. The barman swished two half liters of
Speaker 1: dark brown beer into thick glasses, which he had rinsed
Speaker 1: in a bucket under the counter. Beer was the only
Speaker 1: drink you could get in proll pubs. The Pells were
Speaker 1: supposed not to drink gin, though in practice they could
Speaker 1: get hold of it easily enough. The game of darts
Speaker 1: was in full swing again, and the knot of men
Speaker 1: at the bar had begun talking about lottery tickets. Winston's
Speaker 1: presence was forgotten for a moment. There was a deal
Speaker 1: table under the window where he and the old man
Speaker 1: could talk without fear of being overheard. It was horribly dangerous,
Speaker 1: but at any rate, there was no telescreen in the room,
Speaker 1: a point he had made sure of as soon as
Speaker 1: he came in. He could have drawed me off a pint,
Speaker 1: grumbled the old man as he settled down behind a glass.
Speaker 1: A hah, fleeterer ain't enough. Don't satisfy. O'll lead us
Speaker 1: too much. It starts my bladder running. Let alone the price.
Speaker 1: You must have seen great changes since you were a
Speaker 1: young man, said Winston tentatively. The old man's pale blue
Speaker 1: eyes moved from the dart's board to the bar, and
Speaker 1: from the bar to the door of the gents, as
Speaker 1: though it were in the bar room that he expected
Speaker 1: the changes to have occurred. The bier was better, he said, finally,
Speaker 1: and cheaper. When I was a young man, mild beer
Speaker 1: wallot we used to call it was fourpence a pint.
Speaker 1: That was before the war. Of course, which war was that?
Speaker 1: Said Winston. It's all wars, said the old man vaguely.
Speaker 1: He took up his glass and his shoulders straightened again.
Speaker 1: He is wishing you the very best of ealth. In
Speaker 1: his lean throat. The sharp pointed Adam's apple made a
Speaker 1: surprisingly rapid up and down movement, and the bier vanished.
Speaker 1: Winston went to the bar and came back with two
Speaker 1: more half liters. The old man appeared to have forgotten
Speaker 1: his prejudice against drinking a full You are very much
Speaker 1: older than I am, said Winston. You must have been
Speaker 1: a grown man before I was born. You can remember
Speaker 1: what it was like in the old days before the Revolution.
Speaker 1: People of my age don't really know anything about those times.
Speaker 1: We can only read about them in books, and what
Speaker 1: it says in the books may not be true. I
Speaker 1: should like your opinion on that. The history books say
Speaker 1: that life before the Revolution was completely different from what
Speaker 1: it is now. There was the most terrible oppression in justice,
Speaker 1: poverty worse than anything we can imagine. Here in London.
Speaker 1: The great mass of people never had enough to eat
Speaker 1: from birth to death. Half of them hadn't even boots
Speaker 1: on their feet. They worked twelve hours a day, They
Speaker 1: left school at nine. They slept ten in a room.
Speaker 1: And at the same time there were very few people,
Speaker 1: only a few thousands. The capitalists they were called, who
Speaker 1: were rich and powerful. They owned everything that there was
Speaker 1: to own. They lived in great, gorgeous houses with thirty servants.
Speaker 1: They rode about in motor cars and four horse carriages.
Speaker 1: They drank champagne. They wore top hats. The old man
Speaker 1: brightened suddenly, top hats. He said, funny, you should mention
Speaker 1: em the same thing coming to my aid only yesterday.
Speaker 1: I don't know why. I was just thinking, I ain't
Speaker 1: seen a top hat in years. Gone Right out they have.
Speaker 1: The last time I wore one was at my sister
Speaker 1: in law's funeral, and that was well. I couldn't give
Speaker 1: you the date, but it must have been fifty years ago.
Speaker 1: Of course, it was only I had for the occasion.
Speaker 1: You understand, it isn't very important about the top hats,
Speaker 1: said Winston patiently. The point is these capitalists, they and
Speaker 1: a few lawyers and priests and so forth who lived
Speaker 1: on them, were the lords of the earth. Everything existed
Speaker 1: for their benefit. You, the ordinary people, the workers, were
Speaker 1: their slaves. They could do what they liked with you.
Speaker 1: They could ship you off to Canada like cattle. They
Speaker 1: could sleep with your daughters if they chose. They could
Speaker 1: order you to be flogged with something called a cat'nine tails.
Speaker 1: You had to take your cap off when you passed them.
Speaker 1: Very capitalists went about with a gang of lackeys, who
Speaker 1: the old man brightened again. Lackeys, he said. Now there's
Speaker 1: a word I ain't heerd since ever so long. Lackeys
Speaker 1: that regular takes me back, that does I recollect ooh donkeys?
Speaker 1: Years ago I used to go sometimes to ide Park
Speaker 1: of a Sunday afternoon to hear the blokes making speeches Salvation, Army,
Speaker 1: Roman Catholics, Jews, Indians, all sorts there was. And there
Speaker 1: was one bloke, well, I couldn't give you his name,
Speaker 1: but a real powerful speaker he was. He didn't half
Speaker 1: give it him. Lackeys, he says, lackeys of the bourgeoisie,
Speaker 1: flunkys of the ruling class, parasites. That was another of
Speaker 1: em and dienas he definitely called him hyaenas of course
Speaker 1: he was referring to the Labor Party. You understand, Winston
Speaker 1: had the feeling that they were talking at cross purposes.
Speaker 1: What I really wanted to know was this, He said,
Speaker 1: do you feel that you have more freedom now than
Speaker 1: you had in those days? You treated me like a
Speaker 1: human being in the old days? The rich people, the
Speaker 1: people at the top, the ass of lords put in
Speaker 1: the old Man reminiscently the House of Lords. If you like,
Speaker 1: What I am asking is, were these people able to
Speaker 1: treat you as an inferior simply because they were rich
Speaker 1: and you were poor? Is it a fact, for instance,
Speaker 1: that you had to call them sir and take off
Speaker 1: your cap when you passed them. The old man appeared
Speaker 1: to think deeply. He drank off about a quarter of
Speaker 1: his bier before answering yes. He said, they liked you
Speaker 1: to touch your cap to em. It showed respect, Like
Speaker 1: I didn't agree with it myself, but I'd done it
Speaker 1: often enough. Add to as you might say, and was
Speaker 1: it usual? I'm only quoting what I've read in history books.
Speaker 1: Was it usual for these people and their servants to
Speaker 1: push you off the pavement into the gutter? One of
Speaker 1: em pushed me once, said the old man. I recollected,
Speaker 1: as if it was yesterday. It was the boat race night,
Speaker 1: terribly rowdy. They used to get on boat race. And
Speaker 1: I bumps into a young bloke on Shafts re Avenue,
Speaker 1: quite a gent. He was dressed shirt top, hat, black overcoat.
Speaker 1: He was kind of zig zagging across the pavement and
Speaker 1: I bumps into an accidental like. He says, why can't
Speaker 1: you look where you're going? He says, I say, do
Speaker 1: you think you've bought the bleeding pavement? He says, I'll
Speaker 1: twist your bloody head off if you get fresh with me,
Speaker 1: I says, you're drunk. I'll give you in charge in
Speaker 1: half a minute, I says, And if you'll believe me,
Speaker 1: he puts his hand on my chest and gives me
Speaker 1: a shove as pretty near sent me under the wheels
Speaker 1: of a bus. Well, I was young in them days,
Speaker 1: and I was going to have fetched him one. Only
Speaker 1: a sense of helplessness took hold of Winston. The old
Speaker 1: Man's memory was nothing but a rubbish heap of details.
Speaker 1: One could question him all day without getting any real information.
Speaker 1: The party histories might still be true, after a fashion,
Speaker 1: they might even be completely true. He made a last attempt.
Speaker 1: Perhaps I've not made myself clear, he said. What I'm
Speaker 1: trying to say is this. You've been alive a very
Speaker 1: long time. You lived half your life before the revolution
Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty five, for instance, you were already grown up.
Speaker 1: Would you say, from what you can remember, that life
Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty five was better than it is now
Speaker 1: or worse? If you could choose, would you prefer to
Speaker 1: live then or now? The old man looked meditatively at
Speaker 1: the dart sport. He finished up his bier more slowly
Speaker 1: than before. When he spoke it was with a tolerant,
Speaker 1: philosophical air, as though the beer had mellowed him. I
Speaker 1: know what you expect me to say, he said, you
Speaker 1: expect me to say, I'd sooner be young again. Most
Speaker 1: people would say they'd sooner be young if you asked em.
Speaker 1: You got your health and strength when you're young. When
Speaker 1: you get to my time of life, you ain't never well.
Speaker 1: I suffer something wicked from my feet and my bladder's
Speaker 1: jest terrible, six and seven times a night. It has
Speaker 1: me out of bed. On the other hand, there's great
Speaker 1: advantages in being an old man. You ain't got the
Speaker 1: same worries. No truck with women, and that's a great thing.
Speaker 1: I ain't ad a woman for near on thirty years,
Speaker 1: if you'd credit it, nor wanted to. What's more, Winston
Speaker 1: sat back against the window sill. It was no use
Speaker 1: going on. He was about to buy some more beer
Speaker 1: when the old man suddenly got up and shuffled rapidly
Speaker 1: into the stinking urinal at the side of the room.
Speaker 1: The extra half liter was already working on him. Winston
Speaker 1: sat for a minute or two gazing at his empty glass,
Speaker 1: and hardly noticed when his feet carried him out into
Speaker 1: the street again within twenty years at the most. He
Speaker 1: reflected the huge and simple question, was life better before
Speaker 1: the Revolution than it is now? Would have ceased once
Speaker 1: and for all to be answerable, But in effect it
Speaker 1: was unanswerable even now, since the few scattered survivors from
Speaker 1: the ancient world were incapable of comparing one age with another.
Speaker 1: There remembered a million useless things, a quarrel with a workmate,
Speaker 1: a hunt for a lost bicycle pump, the expression on
Speaker 1: a long dead sister's face, the swells of dust on
Speaker 1: a wind day morning seventy years ago. But all the
Speaker 1: relevant facts were outside the range of their vision. They
Speaker 1: were like the ant, which can see small objects but
Speaker 1: not large ones. And when memory failed and written records
Speaker 1: were falsified. When that happened, the claim of the party
Speaker 1: to have improved the conditions of human life had got
Speaker 1: to be accepted, because they did not exist, and never
Speaker 1: again could exist, any standard against which it could be tested.
Speaker 1: At this moment, his train of thoughts stopped abruptly. He
Speaker 1: halted and looked up. He was in a narrow street
Speaker 1: with a few dark little shops interspersed among dwelling houses.
Speaker 1: Immediately above his head. There hung three discolored metal balls,
Speaker 1: which looked as if they had once been gilded. He
Speaker 1: seemed to know the place. Of course, he was standing
Speaker 1: outside the junk shop where he had bought the diary.
Speaker 1: A twinge of fear went through him. It had been
Speaker 1: a sufficiently rash act to buy the book in the beginning,
Speaker 1: and he had sworn never to come near the place again.
Speaker 1: And yet the instant that he allowed his thoughts to
Speaker 1: wander his feet had broughtrought him back here of their
Speaker 1: own accord. It was precisely against suicidal impulses of this
Speaker 1: kind that he had hoped to guard himself by opening
Speaker 1: the Diary. At the same time, he noticed that, although
Speaker 1: it was nearly twenty one hours, the shop was still open.
Speaker 1: With the feeling that he would be less conspicuous inside
Speaker 1: than hanging about on the pavement, he stepped through the doorway.
Speaker 1: If questioned, he could plausibly say that he was trying
Speaker 1: to buy razor blades. The proprietor had just lighted a
Speaker 1: hanging oil lamp, which gave off an unclean but friendly smell.
Speaker 1: He was a man of perhaps sixty frail, and bowed
Speaker 1: with a long, benevolent nose and mild eyes distorted by
Speaker 1: thick spectacles. His hair was almost white, but his eyebrows
Speaker 1: were bushy and still black. His spectacles, his gentle, fussy movements,
Speaker 1: and the fact that he was wearing an age jacket
Speaker 1: of black velvet gave him a vague air of intellectuality,
Speaker 1: as though he had been some kind of literary man,
Speaker 1: or perhaps a musician. His voice was soft, as though faded,
Speaker 1: and his accent less debased than that of the majority
Speaker 1: of prolls. I recognized you on the pavement, he said, immediately.
Speaker 1: You're the gentleman that bought the Young Lady's Keepsake album.
Speaker 1: That was a beautiful bit of paper. That was cream
Speaker 1: lad it used to be called. There's been no paper
Speaker 1: like that made for oh, I dare say fifty years.
Speaker 1: He peered at Winston over the top of his spectacles.
Speaker 1: Is there anything special I can do for you? Or
Speaker 1: did you just want to look around I was passing,
Speaker 1: said Winston vaguely. I just looked in. I don't want
Speaker 1: anything in particulars, just as well said the other, because
Speaker 1: I don't suppose I could have satisfied you. He made
Speaker 1: an apologetic gesture with his soft palmed hand. You see
Speaker 1: how it is an empty shop. You might say, between
Speaker 1: you and me, the antique trades just about finished, no
Speaker 1: demand any longer, and no stock either. Furniture, china, glass,
Speaker 1: it's all been broken up by degrees, and of course
Speaker 1: the metal stuff's mostly been melted down. I haven't seen
Speaker 1: a brass candlestick in years. The tiny interior of the
Speaker 1: shop was in fact uncomfortably full, but there was almost
Speaker 1: nothing in it of the slightest value. The floor space
Speaker 1: was very restricted because all round the walls were stacked
Speaker 1: innumerable dusty picture frames. In the window, there were trays
Speaker 1: of nuts and bolts, worn out chisels, pen knives with
Speaker 1: broken blades, tarnished watches that did not even pretend to
Speaker 1: be in going order, and other miscellaneous rubbish. Only on
Speaker 1: a small table in the corner was there a litter
Speaker 1: of odds and ends, lacquered snuff boxes, agate brooches and
Speaker 1: the like, which looked as though there might include something interesting.
Speaker 1: As Winston wandered towards the table, his eye was caught
Speaker 1: by a round, smooth thing that gleamed softly in the
Speaker 1: lamp light, and he picked it up. It was a
Speaker 1: heavy lump of glass, curved on one side, flat on
Speaker 1: the other, making almost a hemisphere. There was a peculiar softness,
Speaker 1: as of rain water in both the color and the
Speaker 1: texture of the glass. At the heart of it, magnified
Speaker 1: by the curved surface, there was a strange, pink, convoluted
Speaker 1: object that recalled a rose or a sea anemone. What
Speaker 1: is it? Said Winston, fascinated. That's coral, that is, said
Speaker 1: the old man. It must have come from the Indian Ocean.
Speaker 1: They used to kind of embed it in the glass
Speaker 1: that wasn't made less than a hundred years ago. More.
Speaker 1: By the look of it, it's a beautiful thing, said Winston.
Speaker 1: It is a beautiful thing, said the other appreciatively. But
Speaker 1: there's not many that did say so nowadays, he coughed. Now,
Speaker 1: if it so happened that you wanted to buy it,
Speaker 1: that had cost you four dollars, I can remember when
Speaker 1: a thing like that would have fetched eight pounds, and
Speaker 1: eight pounds was well, I can't work it out, but
Speaker 1: it was a lot of money. But who cares about
Speaker 1: genuine antiques nowadays, even the few that's left. Winston immediately
Speaker 1: paid over the four dollars and slid the coveted thing
Speaker 1: into his pocket. What a pealed to him about it
Speaker 1: was not so much its beauty as the air it
Speaker 1: seemed to possess, of belonging to an age quite different
Speaker 1: from the present one. The soft, rain watery glass was
Speaker 1: not like any glass that he had ever seen. The
Speaker 1: thing was doubly attractive because of its apparent uselessness, though
Speaker 1: he could guess that it must once have been intended
Speaker 1: as a paper weight. It was very heavy in his pocket,
Speaker 1: but fortunately it did not make much of a bulge.
Speaker 1: It was a queer thing, even a compromising thing, for
Speaker 1: a party member to have in his possession. Anything old,
Speaker 1: and for that matter, anything beautiful, was always vaguely suspect.
Speaker 1: The old man had grown noticeably more cheerful after receiving
Speaker 1: the four dollars. Winston realized that he would have accepted
Speaker 1: three or even two. There's another room upstairs that you
Speaker 1: might care to take a look at, he said. There's
Speaker 1: not much in it, just a few pieces. We'll do
Speaker 1: with the light if we're going upstairs. He lit another lamp,
Speaker 1: and with bowed back, led the way slowly up the
Speaker 1: steep and worn stairs and along a tiny passage into
Speaker 1: a room which did not give on the street, but
Speaker 1: looked out on a cobbled yard and a forest of
Speaker 1: chimney pots. Winston noticed that the furniture was still arranged
Speaker 1: as though the room were meant to be lived in.
Speaker 1: There was a strip of carpet on the floor, a
Speaker 1: picture or two on the walls, and a deep slatternly
Speaker 1: armed chair drawn up to the fireplace. An old fashioned
Speaker 1: glass clock with a twelve hour face was sticking away
Speaker 1: on the mantelpiece under the window, and occupying nearly a
Speaker 1: quarter of the room was an enormous bed, with the
Speaker 1: mattress still on it. We lived here till my wife died,
Speaker 1: said the old man, half apologetically. I'm selling the furniture
Speaker 1: off by little and little. Now that's a beautiful mahogany bed,
Speaker 1: or at least it would be if you could get
Speaker 1: the bugs out of it. But I dare say you'd
Speaker 1: find it a little bit cumbersome. He was holding the
Speaker 1: lamp high up so as to illuminate the whole room,
Speaker 1: and in the warm dim lights the place looked curiously inviting.
Speaker 1: The thought flitted through Winston's mind that it would probably
Speaker 1: be quite easy to rent the room for a few
Speaker 1: dollars a week if he dared to take the risk.
Speaker 1: It was a wild impossible notion to be abandoned as
Speaker 1: soon as thought of. But the room had awakened in
Speaker 1: him a sort of nostalgia, a sort of ancestral memory.
Speaker 1: It seemed to him that he knew exactly what it
Speaker 1: felt like to sit in a room like this, in
Speaker 1: an arm chair beside an open fire, with your feet
Speaker 1: in the fender and a kettle on the hob, utterly alone,
Speaker 1: utterly secure, with nobody watching you, no voice pursuing you,
Speaker 1: no sound except the singing of the kettle and the
Speaker 1: friendly ticking of the clock. There's no telescreen. He could
Speaker 1: not help murmuring, ah, said the old man. I never
Speaker 1: had one of those things. Too expensive, and I never
Speaker 1: seemed to feel the need of it somehow. Now that's
Speaker 1: a nice gate leg table in the corner there, though
Speaker 1: of course you'd have to put new hinges on it
Speaker 1: if you wanted to use the flaps. There was a
Speaker 1: small bookcase in the other corner, and Winston had already
Speaker 1: gravitated towards it. It contained nothing but rubbish. The hunting
Speaker 1: down and destruction of books had been done with the
Speaker 1: same thoroughness in the prole quarters as everywhere else. It
Speaker 1: was very unlikely that there existed anywhere in Oceania a
Speaker 1: copy of a book printed earlier than nineteen sixty. The
Speaker 1: old man, still carrying the lamp, was standing in front
Speaker 1: of a picture in a rosewood frame, which hung on
Speaker 1: the other side of the fireplace, opposite the bed. Now,
Speaker 1: if you happen to be interested in old Prince at all,
Speaker 1: he began delicately. Winston came across to examine the picture.
Speaker 1: It was the steel engraving of an oval building with
Speaker 1: rectangular windows and a small tower in front. There was
Speaker 1: a railing running round the building, and at the rear
Speaker 1: end there was what appeared to be a statue. Winston
Speaker 1: gazed at it for some moments. It seemed vaguely familiar,
Speaker 1: though he did not remember the statue. The frames fixed
Speaker 1: to the wall, said the old man. But I could
Speaker 1: unscrew it for you. I dare say I know that building,
Speaker 1: said Winston. Finally, it's a ruin. Now. It's in the
Speaker 1: middle of the street, outside the Palace of Justice. That's
Speaker 1: right outside the law courts. It was bombed in oh
Speaker 1: many years ago. It was a church at one time
Speaker 1: Saint Clement Danes its name was, He smiled apologetically, as
Speaker 1: though conscious of saying something slightly ridiculous, and added, oranges
Speaker 1: and lemons say the bells of Saint Clement's. What's that,
Speaker 1: said Winston? Oh, oranges and lemons say the bells of
Speaker 1: Saint Clement's. That was a rhyme we had when I
Speaker 1: was a little boy. How it goes on, I don't remember,
Speaker 1: but I do know how it ended up. Here comes
Speaker 1: a candle to light you to bed, Here comes a
Speaker 1: chopper to chop off your head. It was a kind
Speaker 1: of dance. They held out their arms for you to
Speaker 1: pass under, and when they came to here comes a
Speaker 1: chopper to chop off your head, they brought their arms
Speaker 1: down and caught you. It was just names of churches.
Speaker 1: All the London churches were in it, all the principal ones.
Speaker 1: That is, Winston wondered vaguely to what century the church belonged.
Speaker 1: It was always difficult to determine the age of a
Speaker 1: London building. Anything large and impressive, if it was reasonably
Speaker 1: new in appearance, was automatical, aimed as having been built
Speaker 1: since the Revolution, while anything that was obviously of earlier
Speaker 1: date was ascribed to some dim period called the Middle Ages.
Speaker 1: The centuries of capitalism were held to have produced nothing
Speaker 1: of any value. One could not learn history from architecture
Speaker 1: any more than one could learn it from books, statues, inscriptions,
Speaker 1: memorial stones, the names of streets, anything that might throw
Speaker 1: light upon the past had been systematically altered. I never
Speaker 1: knew it had been a church, he said. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of them left, really, said the old man. Though
Speaker 1: they've been put to other uses. Now, how did that
Speaker 1: rhyme go? Ah, I've got it. Oranges and lemons, say
Speaker 1: the bells of Saint Clement's. You owe me three farthings,
Speaker 1: say the bells of Saint Martin's. Then that's as far
Speaker 1: as I can get a farthing. That was a small
Speaker 1: copper Coyn looked something like a scent. Where was Saint Martin's,
Speaker 1: said Winston. Saint Martin's that's still standing. It's in Victory Square,
Speaker 1: alongside the Picture Gallery, a building with a kind of
Speaker 1: triangular watch and pillars in front, and a big flight
Speaker 1: of steps. Minston knew the place well. It was a
Speaker 1: museum used for propaganda displays of various kinds, scale models
Speaker 1: of rocket bombs and floating fortresses, waxwork tableaus illustrating enemy atrocities,
Speaker 1: and the like. Saint Martin's in the fields it used
Speaker 1: to be called supplemented the old man, though I don't
Speaker 1: recollect any fields anywhere in those parts. Winston did not
Speaker 1: buy the picture. It would have been an even more
Speaker 1: incongruous possession than the glass paper weight, and impossible to
Speaker 1: carry home unless it were taken out of its frame.
Speaker 1: But he lingered for some minutes more, talking to the
Speaker 1: old man, whose name he discovered was not Weeks, as
Speaker 1: one might have gathered from the inscription over the shop front,
Speaker 1: but Charrington. Mister Charrington had seemed, was a widower, aged
Speaker 1: sixty three, and had inhabited this shop for thirty years.
Speaker 1: Throughout that time he had been intending to alter the
Speaker 1: name over the window, but had never quite got to
Speaker 1: the point of doing it. All the while that they
Speaker 1: were talking, the half remembered rime kept running through Winston's head.
Speaker 1: Oranges and lemons say the bells of Saint Clement's, You
Speaker 1: owe me three farthings, say the bells of Saint Martin's.
Speaker 1: It was curious, but when you said it to yourself,
Speaker 1: you had the illusion of actually hearing bells, the bells
Speaker 1: of a lost London that still existed somewhere or other,
Speaker 1: Disguised and forgotten. From one ghostly steeple after another, he
Speaker 1: seemed to hear them pealing forth. Yet, so far as
Speaker 1: he could remember, he had never in real life heard
Speaker 1: church bells ringing. He got away from mister Charrington and
Speaker 1: went down the stairs alone, so as not to let
Speaker 1: the old man see him reconnoitering the street. Before stepping
Speaker 1: out of the door, he had already made up his
Speaker 1: mind that after a suitable interval, a month's say, he
Speaker 1: would take the risk of visiting the shop again. It
Speaker 1: was perhaps not more dangerous than shirking an evening at
Speaker 1: the center. The serious piece of folly had been to
Speaker 1: come back here in the first place, after buying the diary,
Speaker 1: and without knowing whether the proprietor of the shop could
Speaker 1: be trusted. However, Yes, thought again, he would come back.
Speaker 1: He would buy further scraps of beautiful rubbish. He would
Speaker 1: buy the engraving of Saint Clement Danes, take it out
Speaker 1: of its frame, and carry it home concealed under the
Speaker 1: jacket of his overalls. He would drag the rest of
Speaker 1: that poem out of mister Charrington's memory. Even the lunatic
Speaker 1: project of renting the room upstairs flashed momentarily through his
Speaker 1: mind again for perhaps five seconds. Exultation made him careless,
Speaker 1: and he stepped out on to the pavement without so
Speaker 1: much as a preliminary glance through the window. He had
Speaker 1: even started humming to an improvised tune Oranges and Lemens
Speaker 1: say the bells of Saint Clement's You Owe Me Three
Speaker 1: Farthings say that suddenly his heart seemed to turn to
Speaker 1: ice and his bowels to water. A figure in blue
Speaker 1: overalls was coming down the pavement not ten meters away.
Speaker 1: It was the girl from the fiction department, the girl
Speaker 1: with dark hair. The light was failing, but there was
Speaker 1: no difficulty in recognizing her. She looked him straight in
Speaker 1: the face, then walked quickly on, as though she had
Speaker 1: not seen him. For a few seconds, Winston was too
Speaker 1: paralyzed to move. Then he turned to the right and
Speaker 1: walked heavily away, not noticing for the moment that he
Speaker 1: was going in the wrong direction. At any rate, one
Speaker 1: question was settled. There was no doubting any longer that
Speaker 1: the girl was spying on him. She must have followed
Speaker 1: him here, because it was not credible that, by pure chance,
Speaker 1: she should have happened to be walking on the same evening,
Speaker 1: up the same obscure back street, kilometers distant from any
Speaker 1: quarter where party members lived. It was too great a coincidence.
Speaker 1: Whether she was really an agent of the thought police
Speaker 1: or simply an amateur spy actuated by officiousness hardly mattered.
Speaker 1: It was enough that she was watching him. Probably she
Speaker 1: had seen him go into the pub as well. It
Speaker 1: was an effort to walk. The lump of glass in
Speaker 1: his pocket banged against his thigh at each step, and
Speaker 1: he was half minded to take it out and throw
Speaker 1: it away. The worst thing was the pain in his belly.
Speaker 1: For a couple of minutes, he had the feeling that
Speaker 1: he was to die if he did not reach a
Speaker 1: lavatory soon, But there would be no public lavatories in
Speaker 1: a quarter like this. Then the spasm passed, leaving a
Speaker 1: dull ach behind the street was a blind alley. Winston halted,
Speaker 1: stood for several seconds, wondering vaguely what to do, then
Speaker 1: turned round and began to retrace his steps. As he
Speaker 1: turned it occurred to him that the girl had only
Speaker 1: passed him three minutes ago, and that by running he
Speaker 1: could probably catch up with her. He could keep on
Speaker 1: her track till they were in some quiet place and
Speaker 1: then smash her skull in with a cobblestone. The piece
Speaker 1: of glass in his pocket would be heavy enough for
Speaker 1: the job. But he abandoned the idea immediately because even
Speaker 1: the thought of making any physical effort was unbearable. He
Speaker 1: could not run, he could not strike a blow. Besides,
Speaker 1: she was young and lusty and would defend herself. He
Speaker 1: thought also of hurrying to the community center and staying
Speaker 1: there till the place closed, so as to establish a
Speaker 1: partial alibi for the evening, but that too was impossible.
Speaker 1: A deadly lassitude had take hold of him. All he
Speaker 1: wanted was to get home quickly and then sit down
Speaker 1: and be quiet. It was after twenty two hours when
Speaker 1: he got back to the flat. The lights would be
Speaker 1: switched off at the main at twenty three thirty. He
Speaker 1: went into the kitchen and swallowed nearly a teacupful of
Speaker 1: victory gin. Then he went to the table in the alcove,
Speaker 1: sat down, and took the diary out of the drawer,
Speaker 1: but he did not open it at once from the telescreen,
Speaker 1: a brassy female voice was squalling a patriotic song. He
Speaker 1: sat staring at the marbled cover of the book, trying
Speaker 1: without success to shut the voice out of his consciousness.
Speaker 1: It was at night that they came for you, Always
Speaker 1: at night. The proper thing was to kill yourself before
Speaker 1: they got you. Undoubtedly some people did so. Many of
Speaker 1: the disappearances were actually suicides. But it needed desperate courage
Speaker 1: to kill yourself in a world where firearms or any
Speaker 1: quick and certain poison were completely unprocurable. He thought with
Speaker 1: the kind of astonishment of the biological uselessness of pain
Speaker 1: and fear, the treachery of the human body, which always
Speaker 1: freezes into inertia at exactly the moment when a special
Speaker 1: effort is needed. He might have silenced the dark haired
Speaker 1: girl if only he had acted quickly enough. But precisely
Speaker 1: because of the extremity of his danger, he had lost
Speaker 1: the power to act. It struck him that in moments
Speaker 1: of crisis, one is never fighting against an external enemy,
Speaker 1: but always against one's own body. Even now, in spite
Speaker 1: of the gin, the dull ache in his belly made
Speaker 1: consecutive thought impossible, And it is the same he perceived
Speaker 1: in all seemingly heroic or tragic situations on the battlefield,
Speaker 1: in the torture chamber, on a sinking ship, the issues
Speaker 1: that you are fighting for are always forgotten because the
Speaker 1: body swells up until it fills the universe. And even
Speaker 1: when you are not paralyzed by fright or screaming with pain,
Speaker 1: life is a moment to moment struggle against hunger or cold,
Speaker 1: or sleeplessness, against a sour stomach or an aching tooth.
Speaker 1: He opened the diary. It was important to write something down.
Speaker 1: The woman on the telescreen had started a new song.
Speaker 1: Her voice seemed to stick into his brain like jagged
Speaker 1: splinters of glass. He tried to think of O'Brien, for
Speaker 1: whom or to whom the diary was written, but instead
Speaker 1: he began thinking of the things that would happen to
Speaker 1: him after the thought police took him away. It would
Speaker 1: not matter if they killed you at once. To be
Speaker 1: killed was what you expected. But before death nobody spoke
Speaker 1: of such things. Yet everybody knew of them. There was
Speaker 1: the routine of confession that had to be gone through
Speaker 1: the groveling on the floor and screaming for mercy. The
Speaker 1: crack of broken bones, the smashed teeth, and bloody clots
Speaker 1: of hair. Why did you have to endure it? Since
Speaker 1: the end was always the same. Why was it not
Speaker 1: possible to cut a few days or weeks out of
Speaker 1: your life? Nobody ever escaped detection, and nobody ever failed
Speaker 1: to confess when once you had succumbed to thought crime,
Speaker 1: it was certain that by a given date you would
Speaker 1: be dead. Why then, did that horror, which altered nothing,
Speaker 1: have to lie embedded in future time? He tried, with
Speaker 1: a little more success than before, to summon up the
Speaker 1: image of O'Brien. We shall meet in the place where
Speaker 1: there is no darkness, O'Brien had said to him. He
Speaker 1: knew what it meant, or thought. He knew the place
Speaker 1: where there is no darkness was the imagined future, which
Speaker 1: one would never see, but which by foreknowledge one could
Speaker 1: mystically share in. But with the voice from the telescreen
Speaker 1: nagging at his ears, he could not follow the train
Speaker 1: of thought further. He put a cigarette in his mouth.
Speaker 1: Half the tobacco promptly fell out onto his tongue, a
Speaker 1: bitter dust which was difficult to spit out again. The
Speaker 1: face of big brother swam into his mind, displacing that
Speaker 1: of O'Brien, just as he had done a few days earlier.
Speaker 1: He slid a coin out of his pocket and looked
Speaker 1: at it. The face gazed up at him, heavy, calm, protecting,
Speaker 1: But what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark mustache,
Speaker 1: Like a leaden knell. The words came back at him.
Speaker 1: Or is peace? Freedom? Is slavery? Ignorance his strength? End
Speaker 1: of Section eight.