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Speaker 1: Section six of nineteen eighty four by George Orwell. This

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legamous recording may be distributed and adapted freely for any purpose.

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Part one, Chapter six. Winston was writing in his diary.

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It was three years ago. It was on a dark

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evening in a narrow side street near one of the

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big railway stations. She was standing near a doorway in

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the wall, under a street lamp that hardly gave any light.

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She had a young face painted very thick. It was

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really the paint that appealed to me, the whiteness of

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it like a mask, and the bright red lips. Party

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women never paint their faces. There was nobody else in

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the street, and no telescreens. She said, two dollars I

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For the moment, it was too difficult to go on.

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He shut his eyes and pressed his fingers against them,

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trying to squeeze out the vision that kept recurring. He

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had an almost overwhelming temptation to shout a string of

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filthy words at the top of his voice, or to

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bang his head against the wall, to kick over the

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table and hurled the ink pot through the window, to

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do any violent or noisy or painful thing that might

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black out the memory that was tormenting him. Your worst enemy,

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he reflected, was your own nervous system. At any moment,

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the tension inside you was liable to translate itself into

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some visible symptom. He thought of a man whom he

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had passed in the street a few weeks back, a

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quite ordinary looking man, a party member, aged thirty five

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to forty, tallish and thin, carrying a brief case. There

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were a few meters apart when the left side of

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the man's face was suddenly contorted by a sort of spasm.

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It happened again just as they were passing one another.

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It was only a twitch, a quiver, rapid as the

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clicking of a camera shutter, but obviously habitual. He remembered

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thinking at the time that poor devil is done for.

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And what was frightening was that the action was quite

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possibly unconscious. The most deadly danger of all was talking

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in your sleep. There was no way of guarding against that,

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so far as he could see. He drew his breath

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and went on writing. I went with her through the

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doorway and across a back yard into a basement kitchen.

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There was a bed against the wall and a lamp

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on the table turned down very low. She His teeth

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was set on edge. He would have liked to spit

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simultaneously with the woman in the basement kitchen. He thought

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of Catherine, his wife. Winston was married, had been married

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at any rate, probably he still was married, so far

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as he knew his wife was not dead. He seemed

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to breathe again the warm, stuffy odor of the basement kitchen,

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an odor compounded of bugs and dirty clothes and villainous,

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cheap scent, but nevertheless alluring, because no woman of the

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party ever used scent, or could be imagined as doing so.

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Only the proles used scent. In his mind, the smell

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of it was inextricably mixed up with fornication. When he

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had gone with that woman, it had been his first

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lapse in two years or thereabouts. Consorting with prostitutes was forbidden,

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of course, but it was one of those rules that

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you could occasionally nerve yourself to break. It was dangerous,

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but it was not a life and death matter. To

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be caught with the prostitute might mean five years in

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a forced labor camp, not more if you had committed

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no other offense, and it was easy enough provided that

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you could avoid being caught in the act, the poorer

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courts swarmed with women who were ready to sell themselves.

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Some could even be purchased for a bottle of gin,

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which the proles were not supposed to drink. Tacitly, the

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Party was even inclined to encourage prostitution as an outlet

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for instincts which could not be altogether suppressed. Mere debauchery

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did not matter very much, so long as it was

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furtive and joyless and only involved the women of a

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submerged and despised class. The unforgivable crime was promiscuity between

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party members, but though this was one of the crimes

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that the accused in the Great Purges invariably confessed to,

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it was difficult to imagine any such thing actually happening.

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The aim of the Party was not merely to event

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men and women from forming loyalties which it might not

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be able to control. Its real, undeclared purpose was to

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remove all pleasure from the sexual act, not love so

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much as eroticism was the enemy inside marriage as well

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as outside it. All marriages between Party members had to

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be approved by a committee appointed for the purpose, and

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though the principle was never clearly stated, permission was always

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refused if the couple concerned gave the impression of being

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physically attracted to one another. The only recognized purpose of

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marriage was to beget children for the service of the party.

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Sexual intercourse was to be looked on as a slightly

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disgusting minor operation, like having an enemy. This again was

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never put into plain words, but in an indirect way,

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it was rubbed into every Party member from childhood onwards.

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There were even organizations such as the Junior Anti Sex League,

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which advocated complete celibacy for both sexes. All children were

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to be begotten by artificial insemination artsem, it was called

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in New speak, and brought up in public institution. This,

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Winston was aware, was not meant altogether seriously, but somehow

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it fitted in with the general ideology of the party.

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The Party was trying to kill the sex instinct, or

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if it could not be killed, then to distort it

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and dirty it. He did not know why this was so,

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but it seemed natural that it should be so, and

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as far as the women were concerned, the Party's efforts

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were largely successful. He thought again of Catherine. It must

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be nine ten, nearly eleven years since they had parted.

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It was curious how seldom he thought of her. For

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days at a time, he was capable of forgetting that

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he had ever been married. They had only been together

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for about fifteen months. The party did not permit divorce,

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but it rather encouraged separation in cases where there were

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no children. Catherine was a tall, fair haired girl, very straight,

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with splendid movements. She had a bold, aquiline face, a

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face that one might have called a noble until one

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discovered that there was, as nearly as possible, nothing but

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behind it. Very early in her married life, he had decided,

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though perhaps it was only that he knew her more

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intimately than he knew most people, that she had, without exception,

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the most stupid, vulgar, empty mind that he had ever encountered.

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She had not a thought in her head that was

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not a slogan, and there was no imbecility, absolutely none

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that she was not capable of swallowing if the party

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handed it out to her. The human sound track he

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nicknamed her in his own mind. Yet he could have

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endured living with her if it had not been for

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just one thing. Sex. As soon as he touched her,

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she seemed to WinCE and stiffen to embrace her was

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like embracing a jointed, wooden image. And what was strange

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was that, even when she was clasping him against her,

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he had the feeling that she was simultaneously pushing him

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away with all her strength. The rigidity of her muscles

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managed to convey that impression. She would lie there with

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shut eyes, neither resisting nor co operating, but submitting. It

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was extraordinarily embarrassing, and after for a while, horrible. But

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even then he could have borne living with her if

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it had been agreed that they should remain celibate. But

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curiously enough, it was Catherine who refused this. They must,

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she said, produce a child if they could. So. The

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performance continued to happen once a week, quite regularly, whenever

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it was not impossible. She even used to remind him

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of it in the morning, as something which had to

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be done that evening and which must not be forgotten.

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She had two names for it. One was making a baby,

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and the other was our duty to the party. Yes,

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she had actually used that phrase. Quite soon he grew

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to have a feeling of positive dread when the appointed

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day came round, But luckily no child appeared, and in

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the end she agreed to give up trying, and soon

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afterwards they parted. Winston sighed inaudibly. He picked up his

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pen again and wrote, She threw herself down on the bed,

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and at once, without any kind of preliminary in the

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most coarse, horrible way you can imagine, pulled up her skirt. Ay.

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He saw himsel elf standing there in the dim lamp light,

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with the smell of bugs and cheap scent in his nostrils,

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and in his heart a feeling of defeat and resentment,

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which even at that moment was mixed up with the

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thought of Catherine's white body, frozen forever by the hypnotic

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power of the party. Why did it always have to

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be like this? Why could he not have a woman

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of his own instead of these filthy scuffles at intervals

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of years. But a real love affair was an almost

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unthinkable event. The women of the party were all alike.

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Chastity was as deep ingrained in them as party loyalty,

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by careful early conditioning, by games and cold water, by

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the rubbish that was dinned into them at school and

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in the spies and the youth League, by lectures, parades, songs, slogans,

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and martial music. The natural feeling had been driven out

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of them. His reason told him that there must be exceptions,

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but his heart did not believe it. They were all impregnable,

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as the party intended that they should be. And what

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he wanted, more even than to be loved, was to

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break down that wall of virtue, even if it were

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only once in his whole life. The sexual act successfully

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performed was rebellion. Desire was thought crime. Even to have

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awakened Catherine. If he could have achieved it would have

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been like a seduction, although she was his wife. But

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the rest of the story had got to be written down.

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He wrote, I turned up the lamp when I saw

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her in the light. After the darkness, the feeble light

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of the paraffin lamp had seemed very bright. For the

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first time he could see the woman properly. He had

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taken a step towards her, and then halted, full of

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lust and terror. He was painfully conscious of the risk

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he had taken in coming here. It was perfectly possible

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that the patrols would catch him on the way out.

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For that matter, they might be waiting outside the door

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at this moment. If he went away without even doing

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what he had come here to do. It had got

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to be written down, It had got to be confessed.

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What he had suddenly seen in the lamp light was

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that the woman was old. The paint was plastered so

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thick on her face that it looked as though it

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might crack, like a cardboard mask. There were streaks of

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white in her hair. But the truly dreadful detail was

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that her mouth had fallen a little open, revealing nothing

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except a cavernous blackness. She had no teeth at all,

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he wrote hurriedly in scrabbling handwriting. When I saw her

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in the light. She was quite an old woman, fifty

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years old at least. But I went ahead and did

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it just the same. He pressed his fingers against his

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eyelids again. He had written it down at last, but

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it made no difference. The therapy had not worked. The

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urge to shout filthy words at the top of his

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voice was as strong as ever. End of Section six