LITMIR.BIZ

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creature, in pain and perhaps with a broken bone.

      “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. The whole incident could not have taken as much as half a minute. For Winston, 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. A scrap of paper folded into a square.

      While he stood at the urinal he managed to get it unfolded. He was tempted to take it into one of the water-closets and read it at once. But that would be shocking folly. 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.

      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. 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!

      He rolled up the completed bundle of work and slid it into the pneumatic tube. Eight minutes had gone by. He readjusted 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 large 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. 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 Parsons flopped down beside him. Once, Winston 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. 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. 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. 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 that he was able to think continuously.

      It was a physical problem that had to be solved: how to arrange a meeting with the girl. He did not longer consider the possibility that she might be laying some kind of trap for him. Obviously she had been frightened out of her wits,. 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. 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.

      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 Department lay, and he had no reason for going there. If he had known where she lived, and at what time she left work, he could have meet her somewhere on her way home; but to try to follow her home was not safe. Sending a letter was out of the question. 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,, 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. 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 near a telescreen. Then for three dreadful days she did not appear at all. He did not touch the diary during those days. He had absolutely no clue as to what had happened to her.

      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. He walked casually towards her, his eyes searching for a place at some table beyond her. She was perhaps three metres away from him, when 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. He sat down with a friendly smile.

      Next day he took care [9]to arrive early. Surely enough, she was at a table alone. The person immediately ahead of him in the queue was a small, swiftly-moving, man. As Winston turned away from the counter with his tray, he saw that the little man was making straight for the girl’s 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, Winston was sitting at the girl’s table.

      He did not look at her. He unpacked his tray and promptly began eating. 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 for this affair to end successfully. There was perhaps a minute in which to act. Both Winston and the girl were eating steadily. Neither of them looked up; they spooned the watery food 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.”

      They did not speak again. The girl finished her lunch quickly and made off, while Winston stayed to smoke a cigarette.

      Winston

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