1984 | Page 9

so good with his hands, Tom is.'
Parsons was Winston's fellow-employee at the Ministry of Truth. He was a
fattish but active man of paralysing stupidity, a mass of imbecile enthusiasms |
one of those completely unquestioning, devoted drudges on whom, more even
than on the Thought Police, the stability of the Party depended. At thirty-
ve he had just been unwillingly evicted from the Youth League, and before
graduating into the Youth League he had managed to stay on in the Spies for
a year beyond the statutory age. At the Ministry he was employed in some
subordinate post for which intelligence was not required, but on the other hand
he was a leading gure on the Sports Committee and all the other committees
engaged in organizing community hikes, spontaneous demonstrations, savings
campaigns, and voluntary activities generally. He would inform you with quiet
pride, between whis of his pipe, that he had put in an appearance at the
Community Centre every evening for the past four years. An overpowering
smell of sweat, a sort of unconscious testimony to the strenuousness of his life,
followed him about wherever he went, and even remained behind him after he
had gone. `Have you got a spanner?' said Winston, ddling with the nut on the angle-
joint. `A spanner,' said Mrs Parsons, immediately becoming invertebrate. `I don't
know, I'm sure. Perhaps the children -' There was a trampling of boots and another blast on the comb as the children
charged into the living-room. Mrs Parsons brought the spanner. Winston let
out the water and disgustedly removed the clot of human hair that had blocked
up the pipe. He cleaned his ngers as best he could in the cold water from the
tap and went back into the other room. 'Up with your hands!' yelled a savage voice.
A handsome, tough-looking boy of nine had popped up from behind the
table and was menacing him with a toy automatic pistol, while his small sister,
about two years younger, made the same gesture with a fragment of wood. Both
of them were dressed in the blue shorts, grey shirts, and red neckerchiefs which
were the uniform of the Spies. Winston raised his hands above his head, but
with an uneasy feeling, so vicious was the boy's demeanour, that it was not
altogether a game. `You're a traitor!' yelled the boy. `You're a thought-criminal! You're a
Eurasian spy! I'll shoot you, I'll vaporize you, I'll send you to the salt mines!'
Suddenly they were both leaping round him, shouting 'Traitor!' and 'Thought-
criminal!' the little girl imitating her brother in every movement. It was some-
how slightly frightening, like the gambolling of tiger cubs which will soon grow
up into man-eaters. There was a sort of calculating ferocity in the boy's eye,
a quite evident desire to hit or kick Winston and a consciousness of being very
nearly big enough to do so. It was a good job it was not a real pistol he was
12

holding, Winston thought.
Mrs Parsons' eyes
itted nervously from Winston to the children, and back
again. In the better light of the living-room he noticed with interest that there
actually was dust in the creases of her face. 'They do get so noisy,' she said. 'They're disappointed because they couldn't
go to see the hanging, that's what it is. I'm too busy to take them. and Tom
won't be back from work in time.' 'Why can't we go and see the hanging?' roared the boy in his huge voice.
'Want to see the hanging! Want to see the hanging!' chanted the little girl,
still capering round. Some Eurasian prisoners, guilty of war crimes, were to be hanged in the
Park that evening, Winston remembered. This happened about once a month,
and was a popular spectacle. Children always clamoured to be taken to see
it. He took his leave of Mrs Parsons and made for the door. But he had not
gone six steps down the passage when something hit the back of his neck an
agonizingly painful blow. It was as though a red-hot wire had been jabbed into
him. He spun round just in time to see Mrs Parsons dragging her son back into
the doorway while the boy pocketed a catapult. 'Goldstein!' bellowed the boy as the door closed on him. But what most
struck Winston was the look of helpless fright on the woman's greyish face. Back in the
at he stepped quickly past the telescreen and sat down at the
table again, still rubbing his neck. The music from the telescreen had stopped.
Instead, a clipped military voice was reading out, with a sort of brutal relish, a
description of the armaments of the new Floating Fortress which had just been
anchored between lceland and the Faroe lslands. With those children, he thought, that wretched woman must lead a life of
terror. Another year, two years, and they would be watching her night and
day for symptoms of unorthodoxy. Nearly all children nowadays were horrible.
What was worst of all was that by means of such organizations as the Spies
they were systematically turned into ungovernable