They had done it, they had done it at last!
The room they were standing in was long-shaped and softly
lit. The telescreen was dimmed to a low murmur; the richness of
the dark-blue carpet gave one the impression of treading on
velvet. At the far end of the room O'Brien was sitting at a
table under a green-shaded lamp, with a mass of papers on
either side of him. He had not bothered to look up when the
servant showed Julia and Winston in.
Winston's heart was thumping so hard that he doubted
whether he would be able to speak. They had done it, they had
done it at last, was all he could think. It had been a rash act
to come here at all, and sheer folly to arrive together; though
it was true that they had come by different routes and only met
on O'Brien's doorstep. But merely to walk into such a place
needed an effort of the nerve. It was only on very rare
occasions that one saw inside the dwelling-places of the Inner
Party, or even penetrated into the quarter of the town where
they lived. The whole atmosphere of the huge block of flats,
the richness and spaciousness of everything, the unfamiliar
smells of good food and good tobacco, the silent and incredibly
rapid lifts sliding up and down, the white-jacketed servants
hurrying to and fro -- everything was intimidating. Although he
had a good pretext for coming here, he was haunted at every
step by the fear that a black-uniformed guard would suddenly
appear from round the corner, demand his papers, and order him
to get out. O'Brien's servant, however, had admitted the two of
them without demur. He was a small, dark-haired man in a white
jacket, with a diamond-shaped, completely expressionless face
which might have been that of a Chinese. The passage down which
he led them was softly carpeted, with cream-papered walls and
white wainscoting, all exquisitely clean. That too was
intimidating. Winston could not remember ever to have seen a
passageway whose walls were not grimy from the contact of human
bodies.
O'Brien had a slip of paper between his fingers and seemed
to be studying it intently. His heavy face, bent down so that
one could see the line of the nose, looked both formidable and
intelligent. For perhaps twenty seconds he sat without
stirring. Then he pulled the speakwrite towards him and rapped
out a message in the hybrid jargon of the Ministries:
'Items one comma five comma seven approved fullwise stop
suggestion contained item six doubleplus ridiculous verging
crimethink cancel stop unproceed constructionwise antegetting
plusfull estimates machinery overheads stop end message.'
He rose deliberately from his chair and came towards them
across the soundless carpet. A little of the official
atmosphere seemed to have fallen away from him with the
Newspeak words, but his expression was grimmer than usual, as
though he were not pleased at being disturbed. The terror that
Winston already felt was suddenly shot through by a streak of
ordinary embarrassment. It seemed to him quite possible that he
had simply made a stupid mistake. For what evidence had he in
reality that O'Brien was any kind of political conspirator?
Nothing but a flash of the eyes and a single equivocal remark:
beyond that, only his own secret imaginings, founded on a
dream. He could not even fall back on the pretence that he had
come to borrow the dictionary, because in that case Julia's
presence was impossible to explain. As O'Brien passed the
telescreen a thought seemed to strike him. He stopped, turned
aside and pressed a switch on the wall. There was a sharp snap.
The voice had stopped.
Julia uttered a tiny sound, a sort of squeak of surprise.
Even in the midst of his panic, Winston was too much taken
aback to be able to hold his tongue.
'You can turn it off!' he said.
'Yes,' said O'Brien, 'we can turn it off. We have that
privilege.'
He was opposite them now. His solid form towered over the
pair of them, and the expression on his face was still
indecipherable. He was waiting, somewhat sternly, for Winston
to speak, but about what? Even now it was quite conceivabIe
that he was simply a busy man wondering irritably why he had
been interrupted. Nobody spoke. After the stopping of the
telescreen the room seemed deadly silent. The seconds marched
past, enormous. With difficulty Winston continued to keep his
eyes fixed on O'Brien's. Then suddenly the grim face broke down
into what might have been the beginnings of a smile. With his
characteristic gesture O'Brien resettled his spectacles on his
nose.
'Shall I say it, or will you?' he said.
'I will say it,' said Winston promptly. 'That thing is
really turned off?'
'Yes, everything is turned off. We are alone.'
'We have come here because-'
He paused, realizing for the first time the vagueness of
his own motives. Since he did not in fact know what kind of
help he expected from O'Brien, it was not easy to say why he
had come here. He went on, conscious that what he was saying
must sound both feeble and pretentious:
'We believe that there is some kind of conspiracy, some
kind of secret organization working against the Party, and that
you are involved in it. We want to join it and work for it. We
are enemies of the Party. We disbelieve in the principles of
Ingsoc. We are thought-criminals. We are also adulterers. I
tell you this because we want to put ourselves at your mercy.
If you want us to incriminate ourselves in any other way, we
are ready.'
He stopped and glanced over his shoulder, with the feeling
that the door had opened. Sure enough, the little yellow-faced
servant had come in without knocking. Winston saw that he was
carrying a tray with a decanter and glasses.
'Martin is one of us,' said O'Brien impassively. 'Bring
the drinks over here, Martin. Put them on the round table. Have
we enough chairs? Then we may as well sit down and talk in
comfort. Bring a chair for yourself, Martin. This is business.
You can stop being a servant for the next ten minutes.'
The little man sat down, quite at his ease, and yet still
with a servant-like air, the air of a valet enjoying a
privilege. Winston regarded him out of the corner of his eye.
It struck him that the man's whole life was playing a part, and
that he felt it to be dangerous to drop his assumed personality
even for a moment. O'Brien took the decanter by the neck and
filled up the glasses with a dark- red liquid. It aroused in
Winston dim memories of something seen long ago on a wall or a
hoarding -- a vast bottle composed of electric lights which
seemed to move up and down and pour its contents into a glass.
Seen from the top the stuff looked almost black, but in the
decanter it gleamed like a ruby. It had a sour-sweet smell. He
saw Julia pick up her glass and sniff at it with frank
curiosity.
'It is called wine,' said O'Brien with a faint smile. 'You
will have read about it in books, no doubt. Not much of it gets
to the Outer Party, I am afraid.' His face grew solemn again,
and he raised his glass: 'I think it is fitting that we should
begin by drinking a health. To our Leader: To Emmanuel
Goldstein.'
Winston took up his glass with a certain eagerness. Wine
was a thing he had read and dreamed about. Like the glass
paperweight or Mr Charrington's half-remembered rhymes, it
belonged to the vanished, romantic past, the olden time as he
liked to call it in his secret thoughts. For some reason he had
always thought of wine as having an intensely sweet taste, like
that of blackberry jam and an immediate intoxicating effect.
Actually, when he came to swallow it, the stuff was distinctly
disappointing. The truth was that after years of gin-drinking
he could barely taste it. He set down the empty glass.
'Then there is such a person as Goldstein?' he said.
'Yes, there is such a person, and he is alive. Where, I do
not know.'
'And the conspiracy -- the organization? Is it real? It is
not simply an invention of the Thought Police?'
'No, it is real. The Brotherhood, we call it. You will
never learn much more about the Brotherhood than that it exists
and that you belong to it. I will come back to that presently.'
He looked at his wrist-watch. 'It is unwise even for members of
the Inner Party to turn off the telescreen for more than half
an hour. You ought not to have come here together, and you will
have to leave separately. You, comrade' -- he bowed his head to
Julia -- 'will leave first. We have about twenty minutes at our
disposal. You will understand that I must start by asking you
certain questions. In general terms, what are you prepared to
do?'
'Anything that we are capable of,' said Winston.
O'Brien had turned himself a little in his chair so that
he was facing Winston. He almost ignored Julia, seeming to take
it for granted that Winston could speak for her. For a moment
the lids flitted down over his eyes. He began asking his
questions in a low, expressionless voice, as though this were a
routine, a sort of catechism, most of whose answers were known
to him already.
'You are prepared to give your lives?'
'Yes.'
'You are prepared to commit murder?'
'Yes.'
'To commit acts of sabotage which may cause the death of
hundreds of innocent people?'
'Yes.'
'To betray your country to foreign powers?'
'Yes.'
'You are prepared to cheat, to forge, to blackmail, to
corrupt the minds of children, to distribute habit-forming
drugs, to encourage prostitution, to disseminate venereal
diseases -- to do anything which is likely to cause
demoralization and weaken the power of the Party?'
'Yes.'
'If, for example, it would somehow serve our interests to
throw sulphuric acid in a child's face -- are you prepared to
do that?'
'Yes.'
'You are prepared to lose your identity and live out the
rest of your life as a waiter or a dock-worker?'
'Yes.'
'You are prepared to commit suicide, if and when we order
you to do so?'
'Yes.'
'You are prepared, the two of you, to separate and never
see one another again?'
'No!' broke in Julia.
It appeared to Winston that a long time passed before he
answered. For a moment he seemed even to have been deprived of
the power of speech. His tongue worked soundlessly, forming the
opening syllables first of one word, then of the other, over
and over again. Until he had said it, he did not know which
word he was going to say. 'No,' he said finally.
'You did well to tell me,' said O'Brien. 'It is necessary
for us to know everything.'
He turned himself toward Julia and added in a voice with
somewhat more expression in it:
'Do you understand that even if he survives, it may be as
a different person? We may be obliged to give him a new
identity. His face, his movements, the shape of his hands, the
colour of his hair -- even his voice would be different. And
you yourself might have become a different person. Our surgeons
can alter people beyond recognition. Sometimes it is necessary.
Sometimes we even amputate a limb.'
Winston could not help snatching another sidelong glance
at Martin's Mongolian face. There were no scars that he could
see. Julia had turned a shade paler, so that her freckles were
showing, but she faced O'Brien boldly. She murmured something
that seemed to be assent.
'Good. Then that is settled.'
There was a silver box of cigarettes on the table. With a
rather absent-minded air O'Brien pushed them towards the
others, took one himself, then stood up and began to pace
slowly to and fro, as though he could think better standing.
They were very good cigarettes, very thick and well-packed,
with an unfamiliar silkiness in the paper. O'Brien looked at
his wrist-watch again.
'You had better go back to your Pantry, Martin,' he said.
'I shall switch on in a quarter of an hour. Take a good look at
these comrades' faces before you go. You will be seeing them
again. I may not.
Exactly as they had done at the front door, the little
man's dark eyes flickered over their faces. There was not a
trace of friendliness in his manner. He was memorizing their
appearance, but he felt no interest in them, or appeared to
feel none. It occurred to Winston that a synthetic face was
perhaps incapable of changing its expression. Without speaking
or giving any kind of salutation, Martin went out, closing the
door silently behind him. O'Brien was strolling up and down,
one hand in the pocket of his black overalls, the other holding
his cigarette.
'You understand,' he said, 'that you will be fighting in
the dark. You will always be in the dark. You will receive
orders and you will obey them, without knowing why. Later I
shall send you a book from which you will learn the true nature
of the society we live in, and the strategy by which we shall
destroy it. When you have read the book, you will be full
members of the Brotherhood. But between the general aims that
we are fighting for and the immedi ate tasks of the moment, you
will never know anything. I tell you that the Brotherhood
exists, but I cannot tell you whether it numbers a hundred
members, or ten million. From your personal knowledge you will
never be able to say that it numbers even as many as a dozen.
You will have three or four contacts, who will be renewed from
time to time as they disappear. As this was your first contact,
it will be preserved. When you receive orders, they will come
from me. If we find it necessary to communicate with you, it
will be through Martin. When you are finally caught, you will
confess. That is unavoidable. But you will have very little to
confess, other than your own actions. You will not be able to
betray more than a handful of unimportant people. Probably you
will not even betray me. By that time I may be dead, or I shall
have become a different person, with a different face.'
He continued to move to and fro over the soft carpet. In
spite of the bulkiness of his body there was a remarkable grace
in his movements. It came out even in the gesture with which he
thrust a hand into his pocket, or manipulated a cigarette. More
even than of strength, he gave an impression of confidence and
of an understanding tinged by irony. However much in earnest he
might be, he had nothing of the single-mindedness that belongs
to a fanatic. When he spoke of murder, suicide, venereal
disease, amputated limbs, and altered faces, it was with a
faint air of persiflage. 'This is unavoidable,' his voice
seemed to say; 'this is what we have got to do, unflinchingly.
But this is not what we shall be doing when life is worth
living again.' A wave of admiration, almost of worship, flowed
out from Winston towards O'Brien. For the moment he had
forgotten the shadowy figure of Goldstein. When you looked at
O'Brien's powerful shoulders and his blunt-featured face, so
ugly and yet so civilized, it was impossible to believe that he
could be defeated. There was no stratagem that he was not equal
to, no danger that he could not foresee. Even Julia seemed to
be impressed. She had let her cigarette go out and was
listening intently. O'Brien went on:
'You will have heard rumours of the existence of the
Brotherhood. No doubt you have formed your own picture of it.
You have imagined, probably, a huge underworld of conspirators,
meeting secretly in cellars, scribbling messages on walls,
recognizing one another by codewords or by special movements of
the hand. Nothing of the kind exists. The members of the
Brotherhood have no way of recognizing one another, and it is
impossible for any one member to be aware of the identity of
more than a few others. Goldstein himself, if he fell into the
hands of the Thought Police, could not give them a complete
list of members, or any information that would lead them to a
complete list. No such list exists. The Brotherhood cannot be
wiped out because it is not an organization in the ordinary
sense. Nothing holds it together except an idea which is
indestructible. You will never have anything to sustain you,
except the idea. You will get no comradeship and no
encouragement. When finally you are caught, you will get no
help. We never help our members. At most, when it is absolutely
necessary that someone should be silenced, we are occasionally
able to smuggle a razor blade into a prisoner's cell. You will
have to get used to living without results and without hope.
You will work for a while, you will be caught, you will
confess, and then you will die. Those are the only results that
you will ever see. There is no possibility that any perceptible
change will happen within our own lifetime. We are the dead.
Our only true life is in the future. We shall take part in it
as handfuls of dust and splinters of bone. But how far away
that future may be, there is no knowing. It might be a thousand
years. At present nothing is possible except to extend the area
of sanity little by little. We cannot act collectively. We can
only spread our knowledge outwards from individual to
individual, generation after generation. In the face of the
Thought Police there is no other way.'
He halted and looked for the third time at his wrist-
watch.
'It is almost time for you to leave, comrade,' he said to
Julia. 'Wait. The decanter is still half full.'
He filled the glasses and raised his own glass by the
stem.
'What shall it be this time?' he said, still with the same
faint suggestion of irony. 'To the confusion of the Thought
Police? To the death of Big Brother? To humanity? To the
future?'
'To the past,' said Winston.
'The past is more important,' agreed O'Brien gravely.
They emptied their glasses, and a moment later Julia stood
up to go. O'Brien took a small box from the top of a cabinet
and handed her a flat white tablet which he told her to place
on her tongue. It was important, he said, not to go out
smelling of wine: the lift attendants were very observant. As
soon as the door had shut behind her he appeared to forget her
existence. He took another pace or two up and down, then
stopped.
'There are details to be settled,' he said. 'I assume that
you have a hiding-place of some kind?'
Winston explained about the room over Mr Charrington's
shop.
'That will do for the moment. Later we will arrange
something else for you. It is important to change one's
hiding-place frequently. Meanwhile I shall send you a copy of
the book' -- even O'Brien, Winston noticed, seemed to
pronounce the words as though they were in italics-
'Goldstein's book, you understand, as soon as possible. It may
be some days before I can get hold of one. There are not many
in existence, as you can imagine. The Thought Police hunt them
down and destroy them almost as fast as we can produce them. It
makes very little difference. The book is indestructible. If
the last copy were gone, we could reproduce it almost word for
word. Do you carry a brief-case to work with you?' he added.
'As a rule, yes.'
'What is it like?'
'Black, very shabby. With two straps.'
'Black, two straps, very shabby -- good. One day in the
fairly near future-I cannot give a date -- one of the messages
among your morning's work will contain a misprinted word, and
you will have to ask for a repeat. On the following day you
will go to work without your brief-case. At some time during
the day, in the street, a man will touch you on the arm and say
"I think you have dropped your brief-case." The one he gives
you will contain a copy of Goldstein's book. You will return it
within fourteen days.'
They were silent for a moment.
'There are a couple of minutes before you need go,' said
O'Brien. 'We shall meet again -- if we do meet again-'
Winston looked up at him. 'In the place where there is no
darkness?' he said hesitantly.
O'Brien nodded without appearance of surprise. 'In the
place where there is no darkness,' he said, as though he had
recognized the allusion. 'And in the meantime, is there
anything that you wish to say before you leave? Any message?
Any question?.'
Winston thought. There did not seem to be any further
question that he wanted to ask: still less did he feel any
impulse to utter high-sounding generalities. Instead of
anything directly connected with O'Brien or the Brotherhood,
there came into his mind a sort of composite picture of the
dark bedroom where his mother had spent her last days, and the
little room over Mr Charrington's shop, and the glass
paperweight, and the steel engraving in its rosewood frame.
Almost at random he said:
'Did you ever happen to hear an old rhyme that begins
"Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St Clement's"?'
Again O'Brien nodded. With a sort of grave courtesy he
completed the stanza:
'Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St Clement's,
You owe me three farthings, say the bells of St Martin's,
When will you pay me? say the bells of Old Bailey
When I grow rich, say the bells of Shoreditch.'
'You knew the last line!' said Winston.
'Yes, I knew the last line. And now, I am afraid, it is
time for you to go. But wait. You had better let me give you
one of these tablets.'
As Winston stood up O'Brien held out a hand. His powerful
grip crushed the bones of Winston's palm. At the door Winston
looked back, but O'Brien seemed already to be in process of
putting him out of mind. He was waiting with his hand on the
switch that controlled the telescreen. Beyond him Winston could
see the writing-table with its green- shaded lamp and the
speakwrite and the wire baskets deep- laden with papers. The
incident was closed. Within thirty seconds, it occurred to him,
O'Brien would be back at his interrupted and important work on
behalf of the Party.
Click here to return to the table of contents
Click here to continue with the next section