[tony sayer]

When once you
had succumbed to thoughtcrime it was certain that by a given date you would
be dead. Why then did that horror, which altered nothing, have to lie
embedded in future time?
He tried with a little more success than before to summon up the image
of O'Brien. 'We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness,'
O'Brien had said to him. He knew what it meant, or thought he knew. The
place where there is no darkness was the imagined future, which one would
never see, but which, by foreknowledge, one could mystically share in. But
with the voice from the telescreen nagging at his ears he could not follow
the train of thought further. He put a cigarette in his mouth. Half the
tobacco promptly fell out on to his tongue, a bitter dust which was
difficult to spit out again. The face of Big Brother swam into his mind,
displacing that of O'Brien. Just as he had done a few days earlier, he slid
a coin out of his pocket and looked at it. The face gazed up at him, heavy,
calm, protecting: but what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark
moustache? Like a leaden knell the words came back at him:

WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

* * *



PART II

I

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