1984 | Page 8

a while, even for years, but
sooner or later they were bound to get you. It was always at night | the arrests invariably happened at night. The
sudden jerk out of sleep, the rough hand shaking your shoulder, the lights glaring
in your eyes, the ring of hard faces round the bed. In the vast ma jority of cases
there was no trial, no report of the arrest. People simply disappeared, always
during the night. Your name was removed from the registers, every record of
everything you had ever done was wiped out, your one-time existence was denied
and then forgotten. You were abolished, annihilated: vaporized was the usual
word. For a moment he was seized by a kind of hysteria. He began writing in a
hurried untidy scrawl: theyll shoot me i don't care theyll shoot me in the back of the neck i dont
care down with big brother they always shoot you in the back of the neck i dont
care down with big brother He sat back in his chair, slightly ashamed of himself, and laid down the pen.
The next moment he started violently. There was a knocking at the door. Already! He sat as still as a mouse, in the futile hope that whoever it was
might go away after a single attempt. But no, the knocking was repeated. The
worst thing of all would be to delay. His heart was thumping like a drum, but
his face, from long habit, was probably expressionless. He got up and moved
heavily towards the door.
10

Chapter 2
As he put his hand to the door-knob Winston saw that he had left the diary
open on the table. DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER was written all over it, in
letters almost big enough to be legible across the room. It was an inconceivably
stupid thing to have done. But, he realized, even in his panic he had not wanted
to smudge the creamy paper by shutting the book while the ink was wet. He drew in his breath and opened the door. Instantly a warm wave of relief
owed through him. A colourless, crushed-looking woman, with wispy hair and
a lined face, was standing outside. 'Oh, comrade,' she began in a dreary, whining sort of voice, 'I thought I
heard you come in. Do you think you could come across and have a look at our
kitchen sink? It's got blocked up and-' It was Mrs Parsons, the wife of a neighbour on the same
oor. ('Mrs' was
a word somewhat discountenanced by the Party | you were supposed to call
everyone 'comrade' | but with some women one used it instinctively.) She
was a woman of about thirty, but looking much older. One had the impression
that there was dust in the creases of her face. Winston followed her down the
passage. These amateur repair jobs were an almost daily irritation. Victory
Mansions were old
ats, built in 1930 or thereabouts, and were falling to pieces.
The plaster
aked constantly from ceilings and walls, the pipes burst in every
hard frost, the roof leaked whenever there was snow, the heating system was
usually running at half steam when it was not closed down altogether from
motives of economy. Repairs, except what you could do for yourself, had to be
sanctioned by remote committees which were liable to hold up even the mending
of a window-pane for two years. 'Of course it's only because Tom isn't home,' said Mrs Parsons vaguely.
The Parsons'
at was bigger than Winston's, and dingy in a dierent way.
Everything had a battered, trampled-on look, as though the place had just been
visited by some large violent animal. Games impedimenta | hockey-sticks,
boxing-gloves. a burst football, a pair of sweaty shorts turned inside out | lay
all over the
oor, and on the table there was a litter of dirty dishes and dog-
eared exercise-books. On the walls were scarlet banners of the Youth League
and the Spies, and a full-sized poster of Big Brother. There was the usual
boiled-cabbage smell, common to the whole building, but it was shot through
by a sharper reek of sweat, which-one knew this at the rst sni, though it was
hard to say how was the sweat of some person not present at the moment. In
another room someone with a comb and a piece of toilet paper was trying to
keep tune with the military music which was still issuing from the telescreen.
11

'It's the children,' said Mrs Parsons, casting a half-apprehensive glance at
the door. 'They haven't been out today. And of course-' She had a habit of breaking o her sentences in the middle. The kitchen
sink was full nearly to the brim with lthy greenish water which smelt worse
than ever of cabbage. Winston knelt down and examined the angle-joint of the
pipe. He hated using his hands, and he hated bending down, which was always
liable to start him coughing. Mrs Parsons looked on helplessly. 'Of course if Tom was home he'd put it right in a moment,' she said. 'He
loves anything like that. He's ever