1984. Книга для чтения на английском языке

“And that picture over there” – she nodded at the engraving on the opposite wall – “would that be a hundred years old?”

“More. Two hundred, I dare say. One can’t tell. It’s impossible to discover the age of anything nowadays.”

She went over to look at it. “Here’s where that brute stuck his nose out,” she said, kicking the wainscoting immediately below the picture. “What is this place? I’ve seen it before somewhere.”

“It’s a church, or at least it used to be. St. Clement’s Danes its name was.” The fragment of rhyme that Mr. Charrington had taught him came back into his head, and he added half-nostalgically: ‘Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St. Clement’s!’”

To his astonishment she capped the line:

“You owe me three farthings, say the bells of St. Martin’s,

“When will you pay me? say the bells of Old Bailey —

“I can’t remember how it goes on after that. But anyway I remember it ends up, ‘Here comes a candle to light you to bed, Here comes a chopper to chop off your head!’”

It was like the two halves of a countersign. But there must be another line after “the bells of Old Bailey”. Perhaps it could be dug out of Mr. Charrington’s memory, if he were suitably prompted.

“Who taught you that?” he said.

“My grandfather. He used to say it to me when I was a little girl. He was vaporized when I was eight – at any rate, he disappeared. I wonder what a lemon was,” she added inconsequently. “I’ve seen oranges. They’re a kind of round yellow fruit with a thick skin.”

“I can remember lemons,” said Winston. “They were quite common in the fifties. They were so sour that it set your teeth on edge even to smell them.”

“I bet that picture’s got bugs behind it,” said Julia. “I’ll take it down and give it a good clean some day. I suppose it’s almost time we were leaving. I must start washing this paint off. What a bore! I’ll get the lipstick off your face afterwards.”

Winston did not get up for a few minutes more. The room was darkening. He turned over towards the light and lay gazing into the glass paperweight. The inexhaustibly interesting thing was not the fragment of coral but the interior of the glass itself. There was such a depth of it, and yet it was almost as transparent as air. It was as though the surface of the glass had been the arch of the sky, enclosing a tiny world with its atmosphere complete. He had the feeling that he could get inside it, and that in fact he was inside it, along with the mahogany bed and the gateleg table, and the clock and the steel engraving and the paperweight itself. The paperweight was the room he was in, and the coral was Julia’s life and his own, fixed in a sort of eternity at the heart of the crystal.

V

Syme had vanished. A morning came, and he was missing from work: a few thoughtless people commented on his absence. On the next day nobody mentioned him. On the third day Winston went into the vestibule of the Records Department to look at the notice-board. One of the notices carried a printed list of the members of the Chess Committee, of whom Syme had been one. It looked almost exactly as it had looked before – nothing had been crossed out – but it was one name shorter. It was enough. Syme had ceased to exist: he had never existed.

The weather was baking hot. In the labyrinthine Ministry the windowless, air-conditioned rooms kept their normal temperature, but outside the pavements scorched one’s feet and the stench of the Tubes at the rush hours[90] was a horror. The preparations for Hate Week were in full swing[91], and the staffs of all the Ministries were working overtime. Processions, meetings, military parades, lectures, waxworks, displays, film shows, telescreen programmes all had to be organized; stands had to be erected, effigies built, slogans coined, songs written, rumours circulated, photographs faked. Julia’s unit in the Fiction Department had been taken off the production of novels and was rushing out a series of atrocity pamphlets. Winston, in addition to his regular work, spent long periods every day in going through back files of the Times and altering and embellishing news items which were to be quoted in speeches. Late at night, when crowds of rowdy proles roamed the streets, the town had a curiously febrile air. The rocket bombs crashed oftener than ever, and sometimes in the far distance there were enormous explosions which no one could explain and about which there were wild rumours.