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"Yes, dear, you would have. I would have, if I'd been the same person then as I am now. Or perhaps I would—I'm not certain." "Are you sorry you didn't?" "Yes. On the whole I'm sorry I didn't." They were sitting side by side on the dusty floor. He pulled her closer against him. Her head rested on his shoulder, the pleasant smell of her hair conquering the pigeon dung. She was very young, he thought, she still expected something from life, she did not understand that to push an inconvenient person over a cliff solves nothing. "Actually it would have made no difference," he said. "Then why are you sorry you didn't do it?" "Only because I prefer a positive to a negative. In this game that we're playing, we can't win. Some kinds of failure are better than other kinds, that's all." He felt her shoulders give a wriggle of dissent. She always contradicted him when he said anything of this kind. She would not accept it as a law of nature that the individual is always defeated. In a way she realized that she herself was doomed, that sooner or later the Thought Police would catch her and kill her, but with another part of her mind she believed that it was somehow possible to construct a secret world in which you could live as you chose. All you needed was luck and cunning and boldness. She did not understand that there was no such thing as happiness, that the only victory lay in the far future, long after you were dead, that from the moment of declaring war on the Party it was better to think of yourself as a corpse. "We are the dead," he said. "We're not dead yet," said Julia prosaically. "Not physically. Six months, a year—five years, conceivably. I am afraid of death. You are young, so presumably you're more afraid of it than I am. Obviously we shall put it off as long as we can. But it makes very little difference. So long as human beings stay human, death and life are the same thing." "Oh, rubbish! Which would you sooner sleep with, me or a skeleton? Don't you enjoy being alive? Don't you like feeling: This is me, this is my hand, this is my leg, I'm real, I'm solid, I'm alive! Don't you like this?" She twisted herself round and pressed her bosom against him. He could feel her breasts, ripe yet firm, through her overalls. Her body seemed to be pouring some of its youth and vigor into his. "Yes, I like that," he said.
"Then stop talking about dying. And now listen, dear, we've got to fix up about the next time we meet. We may as well go back to the place in the wood. We've given it a good long rest. But you must get there by a different way this time. I've got it all planned out. You take the train—but look, I'll draw it out for you." And in her practical way she scraped together a small square of dust, and with a twig from a pigeon's nest began drawing a map on the floor. IV WINSTON LOOKED ROUND the shabby little room above Mr. Charrington's shop. Beside the window the enormous bed was made up, with ragged blankets and a coverless bolster. The old-fashioned clock with the twelve-hour face was ticking away on the mantelpiece. In the corner, on the gateleg table, the glass paperweight which he had bought on his last visit gleamed softly out of the half-darkness. In the fender was a battered tin oilstove, a saucepan, and two cups, provided by Mr. Charrington. Winston lit the burner and set a pan of water to boil. He had brought an envelope full of Victory Coffee and some saccharine tablets. The clock's hands said seven-twenty, it was nineteen-twenty really. She was coming at nineteen-thirty. Folly, folly, his heart kept saying: conscious, gratuitous, suicidal folly. Of all the crimes that a Party member could commit, this one was the least possible to conceal. Actually the idea had first floated into his head in the form of a vision of the glass paperweight mirrored by the surface of the gateleg table. As he had foreseen, Mr. Charrington had made no difficulty about letting the room. He was obviously glad of the few dollars that it would bring him. Nor did he seem shocked or become offensively knowing when it was made clear that Winston wanted the room for the purpose of a love affair. Instead he looked into the middle distance and spoke in generalities, with so delicate an air as to give the impression that he had become partly invisible. Privacy, he said, was a very valuable thing. Everyone wanted a place where they could be alone occasionally. And when they had such a place, it was only common courtesy in anyone else who knew of it to keep his knowledge to himself. He even, seeming almost to fade out of existence as he did so, added that there were two entries to the house, one of them through the backyard, which gave on an alley. Under the window somebody was singing. Winston peeped out, secure in the protection of the muslin curtain. The June sun was still high in the sky, and in the sun-filled court below, a monstrous woman, solid as a Norman pillar, with brawny red forearms and a sacking apron strapped about her middle, was stumping to and fro between a washtub and a clothesline, pegging out a series of square white things which Winston recognized as babies' diapers. Whenever her mouth was not corked with clothes pegs she was singing in a powerful contralto: "It was only an 'opeless fanty, It passed like an Ipril dye, But a look an' a word an' the dreams they stirred They 'ave stolen my 'eart awye!"
- Page 92 and 93: "Not one!" said Winston with a sort
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"Yes, dear, you would have. I would have, if I'd been the same person then as I am now. Or perhaps<br />
I would—I'm not certain."<br />
"Are you sorry you didn't?"<br />
"Yes. On the whole I'm sorry I didn't."<br />
They were sitting side by side on the dusty floor. He pulled her closer against him. Her head rested<br />
on his shoulder, the pleasant smell of her hair conquering the pigeon dung. She was very young, he<br />
thought, she still expected something from life, she did not understand that to push an inconvenient<br />
person over a cliff solves nothing.<br />
"Actually it would have made no difference," he said.<br />
"Then why are you sorry you didn't do it?"<br />
"Only because I prefer a positive to a negative. In this game that we're playing, we can't win. Some<br />
kinds of failure are better than other kinds, that's all."<br />
He felt her shoulders give a wriggle of dissent. She always contradicted him when he said anything<br />
of this kind. She would not accept it as a law of nature that the individual is always defeated. In a<br />
way she realized that she herself was doomed, that sooner or later the Thought Police would catch her<br />
and kill her, but with another part of her mind she believed that it was somehow possible to construct<br />
a secret world in which you could live as you chose. All you needed was luck and cunning and<br />
boldness. She did not understand that there was no such thing as happiness, that the only victory lay in<br />
the far future, long after you were dead, that from the moment of declaring war on the Party it was<br />
better to think of yourself as a corpse.<br />
"We are the dead," he said.<br />
"We're not dead yet," said Julia prosaically.<br />
"Not physically. Six months, a year—five years, conceivably. I am afraid of death. You are young,<br />
so presumably you're more afraid of it than I am. Obviously we shall put it off as long as we can. But<br />
it makes very little difference. So long as human beings stay human, death and life are the same thing."<br />
"Oh, rubbish! Which would you sooner sleep with, me or a skeleton? Don't you enjoy being alive?<br />
Don't you like feeling: This is me, this is my hand, this is my leg, I'm real, I'm solid, I'm alive! Don't<br />
you like this?"<br />
She twisted herself round and pressed her bosom against him. He could feel her breasts, ripe yet<br />
firm, through her overalls. Her body seemed to be pouring some of its youth and vigor into his.<br />
"Yes, I like that," he said.
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