* Chapter Two * 



     It was the middle of the morning, and Winston had left the
cubicle to go to the lavatory.
     A  solitary  figure  was coming towards him from the other
end of the long, brightly-lit corridor. It was  the  girl  with
dark  hair.  Four  days had gone past since the evening when he
had run into her outside the junk-shop. As she came  nearer  he
saw  that  her  right  arm  was in a sling, not noticeable at a
distance because it was of the same  colour  as  her  overalls.
Probably  she  had crushed her hand while swinging round one of
the big  kaleidoscopes  on  which  the  plots  of  novels  were
'roughed   in'.  It  was  a  common  accident  in  the  Fiction
Department.
     They were perhaps four metres apart when the girl stumbled
and fell almost flat on her face. A sharp cry of pain was wrung
out of her. She must have fallen  right  on  the  injured  arm.
Winston  stopped  short.  The  girl had risen to her knees. Her
face had turned a milky yellow colour against which  her  mouth
stood out redder than ever. Her eyes were fixed on his, with an
appealing expression that looked more like fear than pain.
     A  curious emotion stirred in Winston's heart. In front of
him was an enemy who was trying to kill him: in front  of  him,
also,  was  a human creature, in pain and perhaps with a broken
bone. Already he had instinctively started forward to help her.
In the moment when he had seen her fall on the bandaged arm, it
had been as though he felt the pain in his own body.
     'You're hurt?' he said.
     'It's nothing. My arm. It'll be all right in a second.'
     She spoke as though her heart  were  fluttering.  She  had
certainly turned very pale.
     'You haven't broken anything?'
     'No, I'm all right. It hurt for a moment, that's all.'
     She  held  out her free hand to him, and he helped her up.
She had regained some of her colour,  and  appeared  very  much
better.
     'It's  nothing,'  she  repeated  shortly.  'I only gave my
wrist a bit of a bang. Thanks, comrade!'
     And with that she walked on in the direction in which  she
had  been  going,  as  briskly  as  though  it  had really been
nothing. The whole incident could not have  taken  as  much  as
half  a  minute. Not to let one's feelings appear in one's face
was a habit that had acquired the status of an instinct, and in
any case  they  had  been  standing  straight  in  front  of  a
telescreen  when  the  thing happened. Nevertheless it had been
very difficult not to betray a momentary surprise, for  in  the
two  or  three seconds while he was helping her up the girl had
slipped something into his hand. There was no question that she
had done it intentionally. It was something small and flat.  As
he  passed  through  the lavatory door he transferred it to his
pocket and felt it with the tips of his fingers. It was a scrap
of paper folded into a square.
     While he stood at the urinal he  managed,  with  a  little
more  fingering,  to get it unfolded. Obviously there must be a
message of some kind written on it. For a moment he was tempted
to take it into one of the water-closets and read it  at  once.
But that would be shocking folly, as he well knew. There was no
place where you could be more certain that the telescreens were
watched continuously.
     He  went back to his cubicle, sat down, threw the fragment
of paper casually among the other papers on the  desk,  put  on
his  spectacles  and  hitched the speakwrite towards him. 'five
minutes,' he told himself, 'five minutes at  the  very  least!'
His  heart  bumped  in  his  breast  with frightening loudness.
Fortunately the piece of  work  he  was  engaged  on  was  mere
routine,  the  rectification  of  a  long  list of figures, not
needing close attention.
     Whatever was written on the paper, it must have some  kind
of  political  meaning.  So  far as he could see there were two
possibilities. One, much the more likely, was that the girl was
an agent of the Thought Police, just as he had feared.  He  did
not  know why the Thought Police should choose to deliver their
messages in such a fashion, but perhaps they had their reasons.
The thing that was written on the paper might be  a  threat,  a
summons,   an   order   to  commit  suicide,  a  trap  of  some
description. But there was  another,  wilder  possibility  that
kept  raising  its head, though he tried vainly to suppress it.
This was, that the message did not come from the Thought Police
at all, but from some kind of underground organization. Perhaps
the Brotherhood existed after all! Perhaps the girl was part of
it! No doubt the idea was absurd, but it had  sprung  into  his
mind  in  the very instant of feeling the scrap of paper in his
hand. It was not till a couple of minutes later that the other,
more probable explanation had occurred to him.  And  even  now,
though  his  intellect told him that the message probably meant
death --  still,  that  was  not  what  he  believed,  and  the
unreasonable  hope  persisted, and his heart banged, and it was
with difficulty that he kept his voice  from  trembling  as  he
murmured his figures into the speakwrite.
     He rolled up the completed bundle of work and slid it into
the pneumatic  tube. Eight minutes had gone by. He re- adjusted
his spectacles on his nose, sighed, and drew the next batch  of
work  towards  him,  with  the  scrap of paper on top of it. He
flattened it out. On  it  was  written,  in  a  large  unformed
handwriting:
     I love you.
     For  several  seconds he was too stunned even to throw the
incriminating thing into the  memory  hole.  When  he  did  so,
although  he  knew  very  well  the  danger of showing too much
interest, he could not resist reading it once  again,  just  to
make sure that the words were really there.
     For the rest of the morning it was very difficult to work.
What was  even  worse than having to focus his mind on a series
of niggling jobs was the need to conceal his agitation from the
telescreen. He felt as though a fire were burning in his belly.
Lunch in the hot, crowded, noise- filled canteen  was  torment.
He  had  hoped  to be alone for a little while during the lunch
hour, but as bad  luck  would  have  it  the  imbecile  Parsons
flopped down beside him, the tang of his sweat almost defeating
the tinny smell of stew, and kept up a stream of talk about the
preparations  for  Hate  Week. He was particularly enthusiastic
about a papier- ma^che/ model of Big Brother's head, two metres
wide, which was being made for the occasion by  his  daughter's
troop  of Spies. The irritating thing was that in the racket of
voices Winston could hardly hear what Parsons was  saying,  and
was  constantly  having  to  ask  for some fatuous remark to be
repeated. Just once he caught a glimpse of the girl, at a table
with two other girls at the far end of the room.  She  appeared
not  to  have  seen  him, and he did not look in that direction
again.
     The afternoon was more bearable. Immediately  after  lunch
there  arrived  a delicate, difficult piece of work which would
take several hours and  necessitated  putting  everything  else
aside.  It  consisted  in  falsifying  a  series  of production
reports of two years ago, in such a way as to cast discredit on
a prominent member of the Inner Party,  who  was  now  under  a
cloud. This was the kind of thing that Winston was good at, and
for  more  than two hours he succeeded in shutting the girl out
of his mind altogether. Then the memory of her face came  back,
and  with it a raging, intolerable desire to be alone. Until he
could be alone it was impossible to think this new  development
out.  Tonight was one of his nights at the Community Centre. He
wolfed another tasteless meal in the canteen,  hurried  off  to
the  Centre,  took  part in the solemn foolery of a 'discussion
group', played two games of  table  tennis,  swallowed  several
glasses  of  gin,  and  sat  for half an hour through a lecture
entitled 'Ingsoc in relation to chess'. His soul  writhed  with
boredom,  but  for  once  he  had  had  no impulse to shirk his
evening at the Centre. At the sight  of  the  words  I  love
you  the desire to stay alive had welled up in him, and the
taking of minor risks suddenly seemed stupid. It was  not  till
twenty-three  hours,  when  he  was  home  and in bed -- in the
darkness, where you were safe even from the telescreen so  long
as you kept silent -- that he was able to think continuously.
     It  was  a  physical problem that had to be solved: how to
get in touch with the girl and arrange a meeting.  He  did  not
consider  any  longer  the possibility that she might be laying
some kind of trap for him. He knew that it was not so,  because
of  her  unmistakable  agitation  when she handed him the note.
Obviously she had been frightened out of her wits, as well  she
might  be. Nor did the idea of refusing her advances even cross
his mind. Only five nights ago he had contemplated smashing her
skull in with a cobblestone, but that was of no importance.  He
thought  of  her naked, youthful body, as he had seen it in his
dream. He had imagined her a fool like all the  rest  of  them,
her head stuffed with lies and hatred, her belly full of ice. A
kind of fever seized him at the thought that he might lose her,
the  white  youthful  body  might  slip  away from him! What he
feared more than anything else was that she would simply change
her mind if he did not get in touch with her quickly.  But  the
physical difficulty of meeting was enormous. It was like trying
to  make a move at chess when you were already mated. Whichever
way you turned, the telescreen faced  you.  Actually,  all  the
possible  ways  of  communicating  with her had occurred to him
within five minutes of reading the note; but now, with time  to
think, he went over them one by one, as though laying out a row
of instruments on a table.
     Obviously  the  kind  of  encounter that had happened this
morning could not be repeated. If she had worked in the Records
Department it might have been comparatively simple, but he  had
only  a  very  dim idea whereabouts in the building the Fiction
Departrnent lay, and he had no pretext for going there.  If  he
had  known  where she lived, and at what time she left work, he
could have contrived to meet her somewhere on her way home; but
to try to follow her home was not safe, because it  would  mean
loitering  about  outside  the  Ministry, which was bound to be
noticed. As for sending a letter through the mails, it was  out
of  the  question.  By  a routine that was not even secret, all
letters were opened in transit. Actually, few people ever wrote
letters. For the messages that it was occasionally necessary to
send, there were printed postcards with long lists of  phrases,
and you struck out the ones that were inapplicable. In any case
he did not know the girl's name, let alone her address. Finally
he  decided  that the safest place was the canteen. If he could
get her at a table by herself, somewhere in the middle  of  the
room,  not too near the telescreens, and with a sufficient buzz
of conversation all round -- if these conditions  endured  for,
say,  thirty  seconds,  it  might be possible to exchange a few
words.
     For a week after this, life was like a restless dream.  On
the  next  day  she  did not appear in the canteen until he was
leaving it, the whistle having already  blown.  Presumably  she
had  been  changed  on to a later shift. They passed each other
without a glance. On the day after that she was in the  canteen
at  the  usual time, but with three other girls and immediately
under a telescreen. Then for three dreadful days  she  did  not
appear  at  all. His whole mind and body seemed to be afflicted
with an unbearable sensitivity, a sort of  transparency,  which
made  every  movement,  every  sound, every contact, every word
that he had to speak or listen to, an agony. Even in  sleep  he
could  not  altogether  escape from her image. He did not touch
the diary during those days. If there was any relief, it was in
his work, in which he could sometimes forget  himself  for  ten
minutes  at a stretch. He had absolutely no clue as to what had
happened to her. There was no enquiry he could make. She  might
have  been  vaporized,  she  might  have committed suicide, she
might have been transferred to the other end of Oceania:  worst
and  likeliest  of  all, she might simply have changed her mind
and decided to avoid him.
     The next day she reappeared. Her arm was out of the  sling
and  she  had  a  band of sticking-plaster round her wrist. The
relief of seeing her was so great  that  he  could  not  resist
staring  directly  at her for several seconds. On the following
day he very nearly succeeded in speaking to her. When  he  came
into  the  canteen she was sitting at a table well out from the
wall, and was quite alone. It was early, and the place was  not
very  full.  The queue edged forward till Winston was almost at
the counter, then was held up for two minutes  because  someone
in front was complaining that he had not received his tablet of
saccharine.  But  the girl was still alone when Winston secured
his tray and began to make for her table.  He  walked  casually
towards  her,  his  eyes  searching  for  a place at some table
beyond her. She was perhaps three metres away from him. Another
two seconds would do  it.  Then  a  voice  behind  him  called,
'Smith!'  He  pretended  not  to  hear.  'Smith !' repeated the
voice,  more  loudly.  It  was  no  use.  He  turned  round.  A
blond-headed,  silly-faced  young  man  named  Wilsher, whom he
barely knew, was inviting him with a smile to a vacant place at
his table. It  was  not  safe  to  refuse.  After  having  been
recognized,  he  could  not  go  and  sit  at  a  table with an
unattended girl. It was too noticeable.  He  sat  down  with  a
friendly  smile.  The silly blond face beamed into his. Winston
had a hallucination of himself smashing a pick-axe  right  into
the  middle  of  it.  The  girl's table filled up a few minutes
later.
     But she must have seen him coming towards her, and perhaps
she would take the hint. Next day he took care to arrive early.
Surely enough, she was at a table in about the same place,  and
again  alone.  The person immediately ahead of him in the queue
was a small, swiftly-moving, beetle-like man with a  flat  face
and  tiny,  suspicious  eyes.  As  Winston turned away from the
counter with his tray, he saw that the little  man  was  making
straight  for the girl's table. His hopes sank again. There was
a vacant place at a table further away, but  something  in  the
little man's appearance suggested that he would be sufficiently
attentive to his own comfort to choose the emptiest table. With
ice  at  his  heart  Winston  followed. It was no use unless he
could get the girl alone. At this moment there was a tremendous
crash. The little man was sprawling on all fours, his tray  had
gone flying, two streams of soup and coffee were flowing across
the  floor.  He  started to his feet with a malignant glance at
Winston, whom he evidently suspected of having tripped him  up.
But  it  was  all  right. Five seconds later, with a thundering
heart, Winston was sitting at the girl's table.
     He did not look at her. He unpacked his tray and  promptly
began  eating.  It  was  all-important to speak at once, before
anyone else came, but now a terrible fear had taken  possession
of  him. A week had gone by since she had first approached him.
She would have changed her mind,  she  must  have  changed  her
mind!   It   was   impossible   that  this  affair  should  end
successfully; such things did not happen in real life. He might
have flinched altogether from speaking if at this moment he had
not seen Ampleforth, the  hairy-eared  poet,  wandering  limply
round the room with a tray, looking for a place to sit down. In
his  vague  way  Ampleforth  was attached to Winston, and would
certainly sit down at his table if  he  caught  sight  of  him.
There  was  perhaps  a minute in which to act. Both Winston and
the girl were eating steadily. The stuff they were eating was a
thin stew, actually a soup, of haricot beans. In a  low  murmur
Winston  began  speaking.  Neither  of them looked up; steadily
they spooned the watery stuff into their  mouths,  and  between
spoonfuls   exchanged   the   few   necessary   words   in  low
expressionless voices.
     'What time do you leave work?'
     'Eighteen-thirty.'
     'Where can we meet?'
     'Victory Square, near the monument.
     'It's full of telescreens.'
     'It doesn't matter if there's a crowd.'
     'Any signal?'
     'No. Don't come up to me until you see me among a  lot  of
people. And don't look at me. Just keep somewhere near me.'
     'What time?'
     'Nineteen hours.'
     'All right.'
     Ampleforth  failed  to see Winston and sat down at another
table. They did not speak again, and, so far as it was possible
for two people sitting on opposite sides  of  the  same  table,
they  did  not look at one another. The girl finished her lunch
quickly  and  made  off,  while  Winston  stayed  to  smoke   a
cigarette.
     Winston  was  in Victory Square before the appointed time.
He wandered round the base of the enormous  fluted  column,  at
the  top  of which Big Brother's statue gazed southward towards
the skies where he had vanquished the Eurasian aeroplanes  (the
Eastasian  aeroplanes,  it  had  been,  a few years ago) in the
Battle of Airstrip One. In the street in front of it there  was
a  statue of a man on horseback which was supposed to represent
Oliver Cromwell. At five minutes past the  hour  the  girl  had
still  not  appeared.  Again  the  terrible  fear  seized  upon
Winston. She was not coming,  she  had  changed  her  mind!  He
walked slowly up to the north side of the square and got a sort
of  pale-coloured pleasure from identifying St Martin's Church,
whose bells, when it had bells, had chimed 'You  owe  me  three
farthings.'  Then  he  saw the girl standing at the base of the
monument, reading or pretending to  read  a  poster  which  ran
spirally  up  the  column. It was not safe to go near her until
some more people had accumulated. There  were  telescreens  all
round  the  pediment.  But  at  this  moment there was a din of
shouting and a zoom of heavy vehicles  from  somewhere  to  the
left. Suddenly everyone seemed to be running across the square.
The  girl  nipped  nimbly  round  the  lions at the base of the
monument and joined in the rush. Winston followed. As  he  ran,
he gathered from some shouted remarks that a convoy of Eurasian
prisoners was passing.
     Already a dense mass of people was blocking the south side
of the  square. Winston, at normal times the kind of person who
gravitates to the outer edge of any kind of scrimmage,  shoved,
butted,  squirmed  his way forward into the heart of the crowd.
Soon he was within arm's length of the girl, but  the  way  was
blocked  by  an  enormous  prole and an almost equally enormous
woman, presumably his wife, who seemed to form an  impenetrable
wall  of  flesh.  Winston wriggled himself sideways, and with a
violent lunge managed to drive his shoulder between them. For a
moment it felt as though his entrails were being ground to pulp
between the two muscular hips,  then  he  had  broken  through,
sweating  a little. He was next to the girl. They were shoulder
to shoulder, both staring fixedly in front of them.
     A long line of trucks, with wooden-faced guards armed with
sub-machine guns standing upright in each corner,  was  passing
slowly  down  the  street.  In  the trucks little yellow men in
shabby greenish uniforms were squatting, jammed close together.
Their sad, Mongolian faces gazed out  over  the  sides  of  the
trucks  utterly  incurious.  Occasionally  when  a truck jolted
there was a clankclank of metal: all the prisoners were wearing
leg-irons. Truckload after truck-load of the sad faces  passed.
Winston   knew   they   were   there   but  he  saw  them  only
intermittently. The girl's shoulder, and her arm right down  to
the  elbow, were pressed against his. Her cheek was almost near
enough for him to feel its warmth. She  had  immediately  taken
charge  of  the situation, just as she had done in the canteen.
She began speaking in the same expressionless voice as  before,
with  lips  barely  moving, a mere murmur easily drowned by the
din of voices and the rumbling of the trucks.
     'Can you hear me?'
     'Yes.'
     'Can you get Sunday afternoon off?'
     'Yes.'
     'Then listen carefully. You'll have to remember  this.  Go
to Paddington Station-'
     With a sort of military precision that astonished him, she
outlined  the  route that he was to follow. A half-hour railway
journey; turn left outside the station;  two  kilometres  along
the  road:  a  gate  with  the top bar missing; a path across a
field; a grass-grown lane; a track between bushes; a dead  tree
with  moss  on  it.  It  was as though she had a map inside her
head. 'Can you remember all that?' she murmured finally.
     'Yes.'
     'You turn left, then  right,  then  left  again.  And  the
gate's got no top bar.'
     'Yes. What time?'
     'About  fifteen.  You  may have to wait. I'll get there by
another way. Are you sure you remember everything?'
     'Yes.'
     'Then get away from me as quick as you can.'
     She need not have told him that. But for the  moment  they
could  not extricate themselves from the crowd. The trucks were
still filing post, the people still insatiably gaping.  At  the
start  there  had  been a few boos and hisses, but it came only
from the Party members among the crowd, and had  soon  stopped.
The   prevailing  emotion  was  simply  curiosity.  Foreigners,
whether from Eurasia or from Eastasia, were a kind  of  strange
animal.  One  literally  never  saw them except in the guise of
prisoners, and even as prisoners one  never  got  more  than  a
momentary  glimpse  of  them.  Nor  did one know what became of
them, apart from the few who were hanged as  war-criminals:  te
others  simply  vanished,  presumably into forced-labour camps.
The round Mogol faces had given way to faces of a more European
type,  dirty,  bearded  and  exhausted.   From   over   scrubby
cheekbones  eyes  looked into Winston's, sometimes with strange
intensity, and flashed away again. The convoy was drawing to an
end. In the last truck he could see an aged  man,  his  face  a
mass  of grizzled hair, standing upright with wrists crossed in
front of him, as though he  were  used  to  having  them  bound
together.  It was almost time for Winston and the girl to part.
But at the last moment, while the crowd still hemmed  them  in,
her hand felt for his and gave it a fleeting squeeze.
     It  could  not  have been ten seconds, and yet it seemed a
long time that their hands were clasped together. He  had  time
to  learn  every  detail  of  her  hand.  He  explored the long
fingers, the shapely nails, the work-hardened palm with its row
of callouses, the smooth flesh under  the  wrist.  Merely  from
feeling it he would have known it by sight. In the same instant
it  occurred to him that he did not know what colour the girl's
eyes were. They were probably brown, but people with dark  hair
sometimes had blue eyes. To turn his head and look at her would
have  been  inconceivable  folly.  With  hands locked together,
invisible among the press of bodies, they  stared  steadily  in
front of them, and instead of the eyes of the girl, the eyes of
the  aged  prisoner gazed mournfully at Winston out of nests of
hair.

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