At each stage of his imprisonment he had known, or seemed
to know, whereabouts he was in the windowless building.
Possibly there were slight differences in the air pressure. The
cells where the guards had beaten him were below ground level.
The room where he had been interrogated by O'Brien was high up
near the roof. This place was many metres underground, as deep
down as it was possible to go.
It was bigger than most of the cells he had been in. But
he hardly noticed his surroundings. All he noticed was that
there were two small tables straight in front of him, each
covered with green baize. One was only a metre or two from him,
the other was further away, near the door. He was strapped
upright in a chair, so tightly that he could move nothing, not
even his head. A sort of pad gripped his head from behind,
forcing him to look straight in front of him.
For a moment he was alone, then the door opened and
O'Brien came in.
'You asked me once,' said O'Brien, 'what was in Room 101.
I told you that you knew the answer already. Everyone knows it.
The thing that is in Room 101 is the worst thing in the world.'
The door opened again. A guard came in, carrying something
made of wire, a box or basket of some kind. He set it down on
the further table. Because of the position in which O'Brien was
standing. Winston could not see what the thing was.
'The worst thing in the world,' said O'Brien, 'varies from
individual to individual. It may be burial alive, or death by
fire, or by drowning, or by impalement, or fifty other deaths.
There are cases where it is some quite trivial thing, not even
fatal.'
He had moved a little to one side, so that Winston had a
better view of the thing on the table. It was an oblong wire
cage with a handle on top for carrying it by. Fixed to the
front of it was something that looked like a fencing mask, with
the concave side outwards. Although it was three or four metres
away from him, he could see that the cage was divided
lengthways into two compart ments, and that there was some kind
of creature in each. They were rats.
'In your case, said O'Brien, 'the worst thing in the world
happens to be rats.'
A sort of premonitory tremor, a fear of he was not certain
what, had passed through Winston as soon as he caught his first
glimpse of the cage. But at this moment the meaning of the
mask-like attachment in front of it suddenly sank into him. His
bowels seemed to turn to water.
'You can't do that!' he cried out in a high cracked voice.
'You couldn't, you couldn't! It's impossible.'
'Do you remember,' said O'Brien, 'the moment of panic that
used to occur in your dreams? There was a wall of blackness in
front of you, and a roaring sound in your ears. There was
something terrible on the other side of the wall. You knew that
you knew what it was, but you dared not drag it into the open.
It was the rats that were on the other side of the wall.'
'O'Brien!' said Winston, making an effort to control his
voice. 'You know this is not necessary. What is it that you
want me to do?'
O'Brien made no direct answer. When he spoke it was in the
schoolmasterish manner that he sometimes affected. He looked
thoughtfully into the distance, as though he were addressing an
audience somewhere behind Winston's back.
'By itself,' he said, 'pain is not always enough. There
are occasions when a human being will stand out against pain,
even to the point of death. But for everyone there is something
unendurable -- something that cannot be contemplated. Courage
and cowardice are not involved. If you are falling from a
height it is not cowardly to clutch at a rope. If you have come
up from deep water it is not cowardly to fill your lungs with
air. It is merely an instinct which cannot be destroyed. It is
the same with the rats. For you, they are unendurable. They are
a form of pressure that you cannot withstand. even if you
wished to. You will do what is required of you.
'But what is it, what is it? How can I do it if I don't
know what it is?'
O'Brien picked up the cage and brought it across to the
nearer table. He set it down carefully on the baize cloth.
Winston could hear the blood singing in his ears. He had the
feeling of sitting in utter loneliness. He was in the middle of
a great empty plain, a flat desert drenched with sunlight,
across which all sounds came to him out of immense distances.
Yet the cage with the rats was not two metres away from him.
They were enormous rats. They were at the age when a rat's
muzzle grows blunt and fierce and his fur brown instead of
grey.
'The rat,' said O'Brien, still addressing his invisible
audience, 'although a rodent, is carnivorous. You are aware of
that. You will have heard of the things that happen in the poor
quarters of this town. In some streets a woman dare not leave
her baby alone in the house, even for five minutes. The rats
are certain to attack it. Within quite a small time they will
strip it to the bones. They also attack sick or dying people.
They show astonishing intelligence in knowing when a human
being is helpless.'
There was an outburst of squeals from the cage. It seemed
to reach Winston from far away. The rats were fighting; they
were trying to get at each other through the partition. He
heard also a deep groan of despair. That, too, seemed to come
from outside himself.
O'Brien picked up the cage, and, as he did so, pressed
something in it. There was a sharp click. Winston made a
frantic effort to tear himself loose from the chair. It was
hopeless; every part of him, even his head, was held immovably.
O'Brien moved the cage nearer. It was less than a metre from
Winston's face.
'I have pressed the first lever,' said O'Brien. 'You
understand the construction of this cage. The mask will fit
over your head, leaving no exit. When I press this other lever,
the door of the cage will slide up. These starving brutes will
shoot out of it like bullets. Have you ever seen a rat leap
through the air? They will leap on to your face and bore
straight into it. Sometimes they attack the eyes first.
Sometimes they burrow through the cheeks and devour the
tongue.'
The cage was nearer; it was closing in. Winston heard a
succession of shrill cries which appeared to be occurring in
the air above his head. But he fought furiously against his
panic. To think, to think, even with a split second left -- to
think was the only hope. Suddenly the foul musty odour of the
brutes struck his nostrils. There was a violent convulsion of
nausea inside him, and he almost lost consciousness. Everything
had gone black. For an instant he was insane, a screaming
animal. Yet he came out of the blackness clutching an idea.
There was one and only one way to save himself. He must
interpose another human being, the body of another human
being, between himself and the rats.
The circle of the mask was large enough now to shut out
the vision of anything else. The wire door was a couple of
hand-spans from his face. The rats knew what was coming now.
One of them was leaping up and down, the other, an old scaly
grandfather of the sewers, stood up, with his pink hands
against the bars, and fiercely sniffed the air. Winston could
see the whiskers and the yellow teeth. Again the black panic
took hold of him. He was blind, helpless, mindless.
'It was a common punishment in Imperial China,' said
O'Brien as didactically as ever.
The mask was closing on his face. The wire brushed his
cheek. And then -- no, it was not relief, only hope, a tiny
fragment of hope. Too late, perhaps too late. But he had
suddenly understood that in the whole world there was just
one person to whom he could transfer his punishment --
one body that he could thrust between himself and the
rats. And he was shouting frantically, over and over.
'Do it to Julia! Do it to Julia! Not me! Julia! I don't
care what you do to her. Tear her face off, strip her to the
bones. Not me! Julia! Not me!'
He was falling backwards, into enormous depths, away from
the rats. He was still strapped in the chair, but he had fallen
through the floor, through the walls of the building, through
the earth, through the oceans, through the atmosphere, into
outer space, into the gulfs between the stars -- always away,
away, away from the rats. He was light years distant, but
O'Brien was still standing at his side. There was still the
cold touch of wire against his cheek. But through the darkness
that enveloped him he heard another metallic click, and knew
that the cage door had clicked shut and not open.
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