Winston was writing in his diary:
  It was three years ago. It was on a dark evening, in  a
narrow  side-street  near  one of the big railway stations. She
was standing near a doorway in the wall, under  a  street  lamp
that  hardly gave any light. She had a young face, painted very
thick. It was  really  the  paint  that  appealed  to  me,  the
whiteness  of  it,  like a mask, and the bright red lips. Party
women never paint their faces. There was  nobody  else  in  the
street, and no telescreens. She said two dollars. I
     For  the moment it was too difficult to go on. He shut his
eyes and pressed his fingers against them,  trying  to  squeeze
out   the   vision  that  kept  recurring.  He  had  an  almost
overwhelming temptation to shout a string of  filthy  words  at
the  top of his voice. Or to bang his head against the wall, to
kick over the table, and hurl the inkpot through the window  --
to  do  any  violent or noisy or painful thing that might black
out the memory that was tormenting him.
     Your worst enemy,  he  reflected,  was  your  own  nervous
system.  At  any  moment  the  tension inside you was liable to
translate itself into some visible symptom. He thought of a man
whom he had passed in the street a  few  weeks  back;  a  quite
ordinary-looking  man,  a  Party  member,  aged  thirty-five to
forty, tallish and thin, carrying a brief-case. They were a few
metres apart when the left side of the man's face was  suddenly
contorted  by  a  sort of spasm. It happened again just as they
were passing one another: it was only a twitch, a quiver, rapid
as the clicking of a camera shutter, but obviously habitual. He
remembered thinking at the time: That poor devil is  done  for.
And what was frightening was that the action was quite possibly
unconscious.  The most deadly danger of all was talking in your
sleep. There was no way of guarding against that, so far as  he
could see.
     He drew his breath and went on writing:
  I  went  with  her  through  the  doorway  and across a
backyard into a basement kitchen. There was a bed  against  the
wall, and a lamp on the table, turned down very low. She
     His  teeth  were set on edge. He would have liked to spit.
Simultaneously with  the  woman  in  the  basement  kitchen  he
thought of Katharine, his wife. Winston was married -- had been
married,  at any rate: probably he still was married, so far as
he knew his wife was not dead. He seemed to breathe  again  the
warm  stuffy odour of the basement kitchen, an odour compounded
of bugs and dirty  clothes  and  villainous  cheap  scent,  but
nevertheless  alluring, because no woman of the Party ever used
scent, or could be imagined as doing so. Only the  proles  used
scent.  In  his  mind the smell of it was inextricably mixed up
with fornication.
     When he had gone with that woman it  had  been  his  first
lapse  in two years or thereabouts. Consorting with prostitutes
was forbidden, of course, but it was one of  those  rules  that
you   could  occasionally  nerve  yourself  to  break.  It  was
dangerous, but it was not a life-and-death matter. To be caught
with a prostitute might mean  five  years  in  a  forced-labour
camp:  not  more, if you had committed no other offence. And it
was easy enough, provided that you could avoid being caught  in
the  act. The poorer quarters swarmed with women who were ready
to sell themselves. Some could even be purchased for  a  bottle
of  gin,  which  the proles were not supposed to drink. Tacitly
the Party was even inclined to encourage  prostitution,  as  an
outlet  for instincts which could not be altogether suppressed.
Mere debauchery did not matter very much, so  long  as  it  was
furtive  and joyless and only involved the women of a submerged
and despised class.  The  unforgivable  crime  was  promiscuity
between Party members. But -- though this was one of the crimes
that the accused in the great purges invariably confessed to --
it was difficult to imagine any such thing actually happening.
     The  aim  of  the  Party was not merely to prevent men and
women from forming loyalties which it  might  not  be  able  to
control.  Its  real,  undeclared  purpose  was  to  remove  all
pleasure from the sexual act. Not love so much as eroticism was
the enemy, inside marriage as well as outside it. All marriages
between Party  members  had  to  be  approved  by  a  committee
appointed  for  the  purpose,  and  -- though the principle was
never clearly stated -- permission was always  refused  if  the
couple  concerned  gave  the  impression  of  being  physically
attracted to  one  another.  The  only  recognized  purpose  of
marriage  was  to  beget children for the service of the Party.
Sexual intercourse was to be looked on as a slightly disgusting
minor operation, like having an enema. This again was never put
into plain words, but in an indirect way  it  was  rubbed  into
every  Party  member  from  childhood  onwards. There were even
organizations  such  as  the  Junior  Anti-Sex  League,   which
advocated  complete  celibacy for both sexes. All children were
to be begotten by artificial  insemination  (artsem,  it
was  called in Newspeak) and brought up in public institutions.
This, Winston was aware, was not  meant  altogether  seriously,
but  somehow  it  fitted  in  with  the general ideology of the
Party. The Party was trying to kill the sex instinct, or, if it
could not be killed, then to distort it and dirty  it.  He  did
not  know why this was so, but it seemed natural that it should
be so. And as far as the  women  were  concerned,  the  Party's
efforts were largely successful.
     He  thought  again  of  Katharine. It must be nine, ten --
nearly eleven years since they had parted. It was  curious  how
seldom  he thought of her. For days at a time he was capable of
forgetting that he had ever been married. They  had  only  been
together  for  about  fifteen  months. The Party did not permit
divorce, but it rather encouraged  separation  in  cases  where
there were no children.
     Katharine  was  a  tall,  fair-haired girl, very straight,
with splendid movements. She had a bold, aquiline face, a  face
that  one  might  have  called  noble until one discovered that
there was as nearly as possible nothing behind it.  Very  early
in  her  married  life  he had decided -- though perhaps it was
only that he knew her more intimately than he knew most  people
-- that  she  had  without  exception  the most stupid, vulgar,
empty mind that he had ever encountered. She had not a  thought
in her head that was not a slogan, and there was no imbecility,
absolutely  none  that she was not capable of swallowing if the
Party  handed  it  out  to  her.  'The  human  sound-track'  he
nicknamed her in his own mind. Yet he could have endured living
with her if it had not been for just one thing -- sex.
     As soon as he touched her she seemed to wince and stiffen.
To embrace  her  was like embracing a jointed wooden image. And
what was strange was  that  even  when  she  was  clasping  him
against  her  he  had  the  feeling that she was simultaneously
pushing him away with all her strength.  The  rigidlty  of  her
muscles  managed to convey that impression. She would lie there
with  shut  eyes,  neither  resisting  nor   co-operating   but
submitting.  It  was  extraordinarily embarrassing, and,
after a while, horrible. But even  then  he  could  have  borne
living  with  her if it had been agreed that they should remain
celibate. But curiously enough it  was  Katharine  who  refused
this.  They  must,  she said, produce a child if they could. So
the  performance  continued  to  happen,  once  a  week   quite
regulariy,  whenever  it  was  not impossible. She even used to
remind him of it in the morning, as something which had  to  be
done  that evening and which must not be forgotten. She had two
names for it. One was 'making a baby', and the other  was  'our
duty  to  the  Party' (yes, she had actually used that phrase).
Quite soon he grew to have a feeling of positive dread when the
appointed day came round. But luckily no child appeared, and in
the end she agreed to give up trying, and soon afterwards  they
parted.
     Winston  sighed  inaudibly. He picked up his pen again and
wrote:
  She threw herself down on the bed, and at once, without
any kind of preliminary in the most coarse,  horrible  way  you
can imagine, pulled up her skirt. I
     He  saw  himself standing there in the dim lamplight, with
the smell of bugs and cheap scent in his nostrils, and  in  his
heart  a  feeling  of  defeat and resentment which even at that
moment was mixed up with the thought of Katharine's white body,
frozen for ever by the hypnotic power of the Party. Why did  it
always  have  to be like this? Why could he not have a woman of
his own instead of these filthy scuffles at intervals of years?
But a real love affair was an  almost  unthinkable  event.  The
women  of  the  Party  were  all  alike.  Chastity  was as deep
ingrained  in  them  as  Party  loyalty.   By   careful   early
conditioning,  by games and cold water, by the rubbish that was
dinned into them at school and  in  the  Spies  and  the  Youth
League,  by  lectures,  parades,  songs,  slogans,  and martial
music, the natural feeling had been driven  out  of  them.  His
reason  told  him  that there must be exceptions, but his heart
did not believe it. They were all  impregnable,  as  the  Party
intended  that  they  should  be. And what he wanted, more even
than to be loved, was to break down that wall of  virtue,  even
if  it  were  only  once  in  his  whole  life. The sexual act,
successfully performed, was rebellion. Desire was thoughtcrime.
Even to have awakened Katharine, if he could have achieved  it,
would have been like a seduction, although she was his wife.
     But  the  rest of the story had got to be written down. He
wrote:
  I turned up the lamp. When I saw her in the light
     After the darkness the feeble light of the  paraffin  lamp
had  seemed  very  bright.  For the first time he could see the
woman properly. He had  taken  a  step  towards  her  and  then
halted,  full of lust and terror. He was painfully conscious of
the risk he had taken in coming here. It was perfectly possible
that the patrols would catch him  on  the  way  out:  for  that
matter  they  might be waiting outside the door at this moment.
If he went away without even doing what he had come here to  do
-- !
     It had got to be written down, it had got to be confessed.
What he  had  suddenly seen in the lamplight was that the woman
was old. The paint was plastered so thick  on  her  face
that  it looked as though it might crack like a cardboard mask.
There were streaks of white in her hair; but the truly dreadful
detail was that her mouth had fallen a little  open,  revealing
nothing except a cavernous blackness. She had no teeth at all.
     He wrote hurriedly, in scrabbling handwriting:
  When I saw her in the light she was quite an old woman,
fifty  years old at least. But I went ahead and did it just the
same.
     He pressed his fingers against his eyelids again.  He  had
written it down at last, but it made no difference. The therapy
had  not  worked.  The urge to shout filthy words at the top of
his voice was as strong as ever.

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