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The music from the telescreen stopped and a voice took over. Winston raised his head to listen. No
bulletin from the front, however. It was merely a brief announcement from the Ministry of Plenty. In
the preceding quarter, it appeared, the Tenth Three-Year Plan's quota for bootlaces had been
overfulfilled by ninety-eight per cent.
He examined the chess problem and set out the pieces. It was a tricky ending, involving a couple of
knights. "White to play and mate in two moves." Winston looked up at the portrait of Big Brother.
White always mates, he thought with a sort of cloudy mysticism. Always, without exception, it is so
arranged. In no chess problem since the beginning of the world has black ever won. Did it not
symbolize the eternal, unvarying triumph of Good over Evil? The huge face gazed back at him, full of
calm power. White always mates.
The voice from the telescreen paused and added in a different and much graver tone: "You are
warned to stand by for an important announcement at fifteen-thirty. Fifteen-thirty! This is news of the
highest importance. Take care not to miss it. Fifteen-thirty!" The tinkling music struck up again.
Winston's heart stirred. That was the bulletin from the front; instinct told him that it was bad news
that was coming. All day, with little spurts of excitement, the thought of a smashing defeat in Africa
had been in and out of his mind. He seemed actually to see the Eurasian army swarming across the
never-broken frontier and pouring down into the tip of Africa like a column of ants. Why had it not
been possible to outflank them in some way? The outline of the West African coast stood out vividly
in his mind. He picked up the white knight and moved it across the board. There was the proper spot.
Even while he saw the black horde racing southward he saw another force, mysteriously assembled,
suddenly planted in their rear, cutting their comunications by land and sea. He felt that by willing it he
was bringing that other force into existence. But it was necessary to act quickly. If they could get
control of the whole of Africa, if they had airfields and submarine bases at the Cape, it would cut
Oceania in two. It might mean anything: defeat, breakdown, the redivision of the world, the
destruction of the Party! He drew a deep breath. An extraordinary medley of feelings—but it was not
a medley, exactly; rather it was successive layers of feeling, in which one could not say which layer
was undermost—struggled inside him.
The spasm passed. He put the white knight back in its place, but for the moment he could not settle
down to serious study of the chess problem. His thoughts wandered again. Almost unconsciously he
traced with his finger in the dust on the table:
2 + 2 = 5.
"They can't get inside you," she had said. But they could get inside you. "What happens to you here
is forever;" O'Brien had said. That was a true word. There were things, your own acts, from which
you could not recover. Something was killed in your breast; burnt out, cauterized out.
He had seen her; he had even spoken to her. There was no danger in it. He knew as though
instinctively that they now took almost no interest in his doings. He could have arranged to meet her a
second time if either of them had wanted to. Actually it was by chance that they had met. It was in the