Chap­ter 7: Win­ston had wok­en up with his eyes full of tears. Julia rolled sleep­i­ly against him, mur­mur­ing some­thing that might have been “What’s the mat­ter?”

“I dreamt—” he began, and stopped short. It was too com­plex to be put into words. There was the dream itself, and there was a mem­o­ry con­nect­ed with it that had swum into his mind in the few sec­onds after wak­ing.

He lay back with his eyes shut, still sod­den in the atmos­phere of the dream. It was a vast, lumi­nous dream in which his whole life seemed to stretch out before him like a land­scape on a sum­mer evening after rain. It had all occurred inside the glass paper­weight, but the sur­face of the glass was the dome of the sky, and inside the dome every­thing was flood­ed with clear soft light in which one could see into inter­minable dis­tances. The dream had also been com­pre­hend­ed by—indeed, in some sense it had con­sist­ed in—a ges­ture of the arm made by his moth­er, and made again thir­ty years lat­er by the Jew­ish woman he had seen on the news film, try­ing to shel­ter the small boy from the bul­lets, before the heli­copter blew them both to pieces.

“Do you know,” he said, “that until this moment I believed I had mur­dered my moth­er?”

“Why did you mur­der her?” said Julia, almost asleep.

“I didn’t mur­der her. Not phys­i­cal­ly.”

In the dream he had remem­bered his last glimpse of his moth­er, and with­in a few moments of wak­ing the clus­ter of small events sur­round­ing it had all come back. It was a mem­o­ry that he must have delib­er­ate­ly pushed out of his con­scious­ness over many years. He was not cer­tain of the date, but he could not have been less than ten years old, pos­si­bly twelve, when it had hap­pened.

His father had dis­ap­peared some time ear­li­er, how much ear­li­er he could not remem­ber. He remem­bered bet­ter the rack­ety, uneasy cir­cum­stances of the time: the peri­od­i­cal pan­ics about air-raids and the shel­ter­ing in Tube sta­tions, the piles of rub­ble every­where, the unin­tel­li­gi­ble procla­ma­tions post­ed at street cor­ners, the gangs of youths in shirts all the same colour, the enor­mous queues out­side the bak­eries, the inter­mit­tent machine-gun fire in the distance—above all, the fact that there was nev­er enough to eat. He remem­bered long after­noons spent with oth­er boys in scroung­ing round dust­bins and rub­bish heaps, pick­ing out the ribs of cab­bage leaves, pota­to peel­ings, some­times even scraps of stale bread­crust from which they care­ful­ly scraped away the cin­ders; and also in wait­ing for the pass­ing of trucks which trav­elled over a cer­tain route and were known to car­ry cat­tle feed, and which, when they jolt­ed over the bad patch­es in the road, some­times spilt a few frag­ments of oil-cake.

When his father dis­ap­peared, his moth­er did not show any sur­prise or any vio­lent grief, but a sud­den change came over her. She seemed to have become com­plete­ly spir­it­less. It was evi­dent even to Win­ston that she was wait­ing for some­thing that she knew must hap­pen. She did every­thing that was needed—cooked, washed, mend­ed, made the bed, swept the floor, dust­ed the mantelpiece—always very slow­ly and with a curi­ous lack of super­flu­ous motion, like an artist’s lay-fig­ure mov­ing of its own accord. Her large shape­ly body seemed to relapse nat­u­ral­ly into still­ness. For hours at a time she would sit almost immo­bile on the bed, nurs­ing his young sis­ter, a tiny, ail­ing, very silent child of two or three, with a face made simi­an by thin­ness. Very occa­sion­al­ly she would take Win­ston in her arms and press him against her for a long time with­out say­ing any­thing. He was aware, in spite of his youth­ful­ness and self­ish­ness, that this was some­how con­nect­ed with the nev­er-men­tioned thing that was about to hap­pen.

He remem­bered the room where they lived, a dark, close-smelling room that seemed half filled by a bed with a white coun­ter­pane. There was a gas ring in the fend­er, and a shelf where food was kept, and on the land­ing out­side there was a brown earth­en­ware sink, com­mon to sev­er­al rooms. He remem­bered his mother’s stat­uesque body bend­ing over the gas ring to stir at some­thing in a saucepan. Above all he remem­bered his con­tin­u­ous hunger, and the fierce sor­did bat­tles at meal­times. He would ask his moth­er nag­ging­ly, over and over again, why there was not more food, he would shout and storm at her (he even remem­bered the tones of his voice, which was begin­ning to break pre­ma­ture­ly and some­times boomed in a pecu­liar way), or he would attempt a sniv­el­ling note of pathos in his efforts to get more than his share. His moth­er was quite ready to give him more than his share. She took it for grant­ed that he, “the boy”, should have the biggest por­tion; but how­ev­er much she gave him he invari­ably demand­ed more. At every meal she would beseech him not to be self­ish and to remem­ber that his lit­tle sis­ter was sick and also need­ed food, but it was no use. He would cry out with rage when she stopped ladling, he would try to wrench the saucepan and spoon out of her hands, he would grab bits from his sister’s plate. He knew that he was starv­ing the oth­er two, but he could not help it; he even felt that he had a right to do it. The clam­orous hunger in his bel­ly seemed to jus­ti­fy him. Between meals, if his moth­er did not stand guard, he was con­stant­ly pil­fer­ing at the wretched store of food on the shelf.

One day a choco­late ration was issued. There had been no such issue for weeks or months past. He remem­bered quite clear­ly that pre­cious lit­tle morsel of choco­late. It was a two-ounce slab (they still talked about ounces in those days) between the three of them. It was obvi­ous that it ought to be divid­ed into three equal parts. Sud­den­ly, as though he were lis­ten­ing to some­body else, Win­ston heard him­self demand­ing in a loud boom­ing voice that he should be giv­en the whole piece. His moth­er told him not to be greedy. There was a long, nag­ging argu­ment that went round and round, with shouts, whines, tears, remon­strances, bar­gain­ings. His tiny sis­ter, cling­ing to her moth­er with both hands, exact­ly like a baby mon­key, sat look­ing over her shoul­der at him with large, mourn­ful eyes. In the end his moth­er broke off three-quar­ters of the choco­late and gave it to Win­ston, giv­ing the oth­er quar­ter to his sis­ter. The lit­tle girl took hold of it and looked at it dul­ly, per­haps not know­ing what it was. Win­ston stood watch­ing her for a moment. Then with a sud­den swift spring he had snatched the piece of choco­late out of his sister’s hand and was flee­ing for the door.

“Win­ston, Win­ston!” his moth­er called after him. “Come back! Give your sis­ter back her choco­late!”

He stopped, but did not come back. His mother’s anx­ious eyes were fixed on his face. Even now he was think­ing about the thing, he did not know what it was that was on the point of hap­pen­ing. His sis­ter, con­scious of hav­ing been robbed of some­thing, had set up a fee­ble wail. His moth­er drew her arm round the child and pressed its face against her breast. Some­thing in the ges­ture told him that his sis­ter was dying. He turned and fled down the stairs, with the choco­late grow­ing sticky in his hand.

He nev­er saw his moth­er again. After he had devoured the choco­late he felt some­what ashamed of him­self and hung about in the streets for sev­er­al hours, until hunger drove him home. When he came back his moth­er had dis­ap­peared. This was already becom­ing nor­mal at that time. Noth­ing was gone from the room except his moth­er and his sis­ter. They had not tak­en any clothes, not even his mother’s over­coat. To this day he did not know with any cer­tain­ty that his moth­er was dead. It was per­fect­ly pos­si­ble that she had mere­ly been sent to a forced-labour camp. As for his sis­ter, she might have been removed, like Win­ston him­self, to one of the colonies for home­less chil­dren (Recla­ma­tion Cen­tres, they were called) which had grown up as a result of the civ­il war, or she might have been sent to the labour camp along with his moth­er, or sim­ply left some­where or oth­er to die.

The dream was still vivid in his mind, espe­cial­ly the envelop­ing pro­tect­ing ges­ture of the arm in which its whole mean­ing seemed to be con­tained. His mind went back to anoth­er dream of two months ago. Exact­ly as his moth­er had sat on the dingy white-quilt­ed bed, with the child cling­ing to her, so she had sat in the sunken ship, far under­neath him, and drown­ing deep­er every minute, but still look­ing up at him through the dark­en­ing water.

He told Julia the sto­ry of his mother’s dis­ap­pear­ance. With­out open­ing her eyes she rolled over and set­tled her­self into a more com­fort­able posi­tion.

“I expect you were a beast­ly lit­tle swine in those days,” she said indis­tinct­ly. “All chil­dren are swine.”

“Yes. But the real point of the sto­ry——”

From her breath­ing it was evi­dent that she was going off to sleep again. He would have liked to con­tin­ue talk­ing about his moth­er. He did not sup­pose, from what he could remem­ber of her, that she had been an unusu­al woman, still less an intel­li­gent one; and yet she had pos­sessed a kind of nobil­i­ty, a kind of puri­ty, sim­ply because the stan­dards that she obeyed were pri­vate ones. Her feel­ings were her own, and could not be altered from out­side. It would not have occurred to her that an action which is inef­fec­tu­al there­by becomes mean­ing­less. If you loved some­one, you loved him, and when you had noth­ing else to give, you still gave him love. When the last of the choco­late was gone, his moth­er had clasped the child in her arms. It was no use, it changed noth­ing, it did not pro­duce more choco­late, it did not avert the child’s death or her own; but it seemed nat­ur­al to her to do it. The refugee woman in the boat had also cov­ered the lit­tle boy with her arm, which was no more use against the bul­lets than a sheet of paper. The ter­ri­ble thing that the Par­ty had done was to per­suade you that mere impuls­es, mere feel­ings, were of no account, while at the same time rob­bing you of all pow­er over the mate­r­i­al world. When once you were in the grip of the Par­ty, what you felt or did not feel, what you did or refrained from doing, made lit­er­al­ly no dif­fer­ence. What­ev­er hap­pened you van­ished, and nei­ther you nor your actions were ever heard of again. You were lift­ed clean out of the stream of his­to­ry. And yet to the peo­ple of only two gen­er­a­tions ago this would not have seemed all-impor­tant, because they were not attempt­ing to alter his­to­ry. They were gov­erned by pri­vate loy­al­ties which they did not ques­tion. What mat­tered were indi­vid­ual rela­tion­ships, and a com­plete­ly help­less ges­ture, an embrace, a tear, a word spo­ken to a dying man, could have val­ue in itself. The pro­les, it sud­den­ly occurred to him, had remained in this con­di­tion. They were not loy­al to a par­ty or a coun­try or an idea, they were loy­al to one anoth­er. For the first time in his life he did not despise the pro­les or think of them mere­ly as an inert force which would one day spring to life and regen­er­ate the world. The pro­les had stayed human. They had not become hard­ened inside. They had held on to the prim­i­tive emo­tions which he him­self had to re-learn by con­scious effort. And in think­ing this he remem­bered, with­out appar­ent rel­e­vance, how a few weeks ago he had seen a sev­ered hand lying on the pave­ment and had kicked it into the gut­ter as though it had been a cab­bage-stalk.

“The pro­les are human beings,” he said aloud. “We are not human.”

“Why not?” said Julia, who had wok­en up again.

He thought for a lit­tle while. “Has it ever occurred to you,” he said, “that the best thing for us to do would be sim­ply to walk out of here before it’s too late, and nev­er see each oth­er again?”

“Yes, dear, it has occurred to me, sev­er­al times. But I’m not going to do it, all the same.”

“We’ve been lucky,” he said “but it can’t last much longer. You’re young. You look nor­mal and inno­cent. If you keep clear of peo­ple like me, you might stay alive for anoth­er fifty years.”

“No. I’ve thought it all out. What you do, I’m going to do. And don’t be too down­heart­ed. I’m rather good at stay­ing alive.”

“We may be togeth­er for anoth­er six months—a year—there’s no know­ing. At the end we’re cer­tain to be apart. Do you real­ize how utter­ly alone we shall be? When once they get hold of us there will be noth­ing, lit­er­al­ly noth­ing, that either of us can do for the oth­er. If I con­fess, they’ll shoot you, and if I refuse to con­fess, they’ll shoot you just the same. Noth­ing that I can do or say, or stop myself from say­ing, will put off your death for as much as five min­utes. Nei­ther of us will even know whether the oth­er is alive or dead. We shall be utter­ly with­out pow­er of any kind. The one thing that mat­ters is that we shouldn’t betray one anoth­er, although even that can’t make the slight­est dif­fer­ence.”

“If you mean con­fess­ing,” she said, “we shall do that, right enough. Every­body always con­fess­es. You can’t help it. They tor­ture you.”

“I don’t mean con­fess­ing. Con­fes­sion is not betray­al. What you say or do doesn’t mat­ter: only feel­ings mat­ter. If they could make me stop lov­ing you—that would be the real betray­al.”

She thought it over. “They can’t do that,” she said final­ly. “It’s the one thing they can’t do. They can make you say any­thing—any­thing—but they can’t make you believe it. They can’t get inside you.”

“No,” he said a lit­tle more hope­ful­ly, “no; that’s quite true. They can’t get inside you. If you can feel that stay­ing human is worth while, even when it can’t have any result what­ev­er, you’ve beat­en them.”

He thought of the tele­screen with its nev­er-sleep­ing ear. They could spy upon you night and day, but if you kept your head you could still out­wit them. With all their clev­er­ness they had nev­er mas­tered the secret of find­ing out what anoth­er human being was think­ing. Per­haps that was less true when you were actu­al­ly in their hands. One did not know what hap­pened inside the Min­istry of Love, but it was pos­si­ble to guess: tor­tures, drugs, del­i­cate instru­ments that reg­is­tered your ner­vous reac­tions, grad­ual wear­ing-down by sleep­less­ness and soli­tude and per­sis­tent ques­tion­ing. Facts, at any rate, could not be kept hid­den. They could be tracked down by enquiry, they could be squeezed out of you by tor­ture. But if the object was not to stay alive but to stay human, what dif­fer­ence did it ulti­mate­ly make? They could not alter your feel­ings: for that mat­ter you could not alter them your­self, even if you want­ed to. They could lay bare in the utmost detail every­thing that you had done or said or thought; but the inner heart, whose work­ings were mys­te­ri­ous even to your­self, remained impreg­nable.