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could not remember nothing remained of his childhood except a series of bright lit Tableau occurring against no
background and mostly unintelligible the ministry of Truth miniu in news Peak was startlingly
different from any other object in sight it was an enormous pyramidal structure
of glittering white concrete soaring up Terrace after Terrace 300 M into the air
from where Winston stood it was just possible to read picked out on its white face in elegant lettering the three
slogans of the party war is peace freedom is slavery ignorance is
strength the ministry of Truth contained it was said 3,000 rooms above ground
level and corresponding ramifications below scattered about London there were
just three other buildings of similar appearance and size so completely did they dwarf the surrounding architecture
that from the roof of Victory Mansions you could see all four of them simultaneously they were the homes of
the four Ministries between which the entire apparatus of government was divided the ministry of Truth which
concerned itself with news entertainment education and the Fine Arts the ministry
of Peace which concerned itself with war the ministry of Love which maintained
Law and Order and the ministry of Plenty which was responsible for economic
Affairs their names in news Peak mini true mini packs mini love and mini
plenty the ministry of love was the really frightening one there were no windows in it at all Winston had never
been inside the Ministry of Love nor within half a kilometer of it it was a place impossible to enter except on
official business and then only by penetrating through a maze of barbed wire entanglements steel doors and
hidden machine gun nests even the streets leading up to its outer barriers were roamed by Gorilla guards in black
uniforms armed with jointed trunion Winston turned round abruptly he had set
his features into the expression of quiet optimism which it was advisable to wear when facing the telescreen he
crossed the room into the tiny kitchen by leaving the ministry at this time of day he had sacrificed his lunch in the
canteen and he was aware that there was no food in the kitchen except a hunk of dark colored bread which had got to be
saved for tomorrow's breakfast he took down from the Shelf a bottle of colorless liquid with a plain white
label marked Victory Jin it gave off a sickly oily smell as of Chinese rice
Spirit Winston poured out nearly a teacupful nerved himself for a shock and
gulped it down like a dose of medicine instantly his face turned scarlet and
the water ran out of his eyes the stuff was like nitric acid and moreover in
swallowing it one had the sensation of being hit on the back of the head with a rubber club the next moment however the
burning in his belly died down and the world began to look more cheerful he
took a cigarette from a crumpled packet marked Victory cigarettes and incautiously held it upright whereupon
the tobacco fell out onto the floor with the next he was more
successful he went back to the living room and sat down at a small table that stood to the left of the telescreen from
the table drawer he took out a pen holder a bottle of ink and a thick quarterized blank book with a red back
and a marbled cover for some reason the telescreen in the the living room was in an unusual position instead of being
placed as was normal in the end wall where it could command the whole room it was in the longer wall opposite the
window to one side of it there was a shallow Al Cove in which Winston was now sitting and which when the flats were
built had probably been intended to hold bookshelves by sitting in the AL Cove
and keeping well back Winston was able to remain outside the range of the telescreen so far as sight
he could be heard of course but so long as he stayed in his present position he could not be seen it was partly the
unusual geography of the room that had suggested to him the thing that he was now about to do but it had also been
suggested by the book that he had just taken out of the drawer it was a peculiarly beautiful book its smooth
creamy paper a little yellowed by age was of a kind that had not been manufactured for at least 40 years past
he could guess however that the book was much older than that he had seen it lying in the window of a frowsy little
junk shop in a slummy quarter of the town just what quarter he did not now remember and had been stricken
immediately by an overwhelming desire to possess it party members were supposed
not to go into ordinary shops dealing on the free market it was called but the
rule was not strictly kept because there were various things such as shoelaces
and razor blades which it was impossible to get hold of in any other way he had
given a quick glance up and down the street and then had slipped inside and bought the book for
$250 at the time he was not conscious of wanting it for any particular purpose he
had carried it guiltily home in his briefcase even with nothing written in it it was a compromising possession the
thing that he was about to do was to open a diary this was not illegal nothing was illegal since there were no
longer any laws but if detected it was reasonably certain that it would be punished by death or at least by 25
years in a forced labor camp Winston fitted a nib into the pen holder and
sucked it to get the grease off the pen was an archaic instrument seldom used
even for signatures and he had procured one furtively and with some difficulty simply because of a feeling that the
beautiful creamy paper deserved to be written on with a real nib instead of being scratched with an ink pencil
actually he was not used to writing by hand apart from very short notes it was
usual to dictate everything into the speak right which was of course impossible for his present purpose he
dipped the pen into the ink and then faltered for just a second a Tremor had gone through his bowels to Mark the
paper was the decisive act in small clumsy letters he wrote April 4th 1984
he sat back a sense of complete helplessness had descended upon him to
begin with he didn't know with any certainty that this was 1984 it must be
round about that date since he was fairly sure that his age was 39 and he believed that he had been born in 1944
or 1945 but it was never possible nowadays to pin down any date within a year or
two for whom it suddenly occurred to him to wonder was he writing this diary for
the future for The Unborn his mind hovered for a moment round the doubtful
date on the page and then fetched up with a bump against the news Peak word double think for the first time the
magnitude of what he had undertaken came home to him how could you communicate with the future it was of its nature
impossible either the future would resemble the present in which case it would not listen to him or it would be
different from it and his predicament would be meaningless for some time he sat gazing
stupidly at the paper the telescreen had changed over to strident military music
it was curious that he seemed not merely to have lost the power of expressing himself but even to have forgotten what
it was that he had originally intended to say for weeks P he had been making
ready for this moment and it had never crossed his mind that anything would be needed except Courage the actual writing
would be easy all he had to do was to transfer to paper the interminable Restless monologue that had been running
inside his head literally for years at this moment however even the monologue
had dried up moreover his varicose ulcer had begun itching unbearably he dared
not scratch it because if he did so it always became inflamed the seconds were
ticking by he was conscious of nothing except the blankness of the page in front of him the itching of the skin
above his ankle the blaring of the music and a slight booziness caused by the Jin
suddenly he began writing in sheer Panic only imperfectly aware of what he was
setting down his small but childish handwriting straggled up and down the page shedding first its capital letters
and finally even its full stops April 4th
1984 last night to the flicks all war films one very good one of a ship full
of refugees being bombed somewhere in the Mediterranean audience much amused
by shots of a great huge fat man trying to swim away with a helicopter after him
first you saw him wallowing along in the water like a porpus then you saw him through the helicopter's gunsights then
he was full of holes and the Sea around him turned pink and he sank as suddenly as though the holes had let in the water
audience shouting with laughter when he said sank then you saw a Lifeboat full of children with a helicopter hovering
over it there was a middle-aged woman might have been a jewess sitting up in the bow with a little boy about 3 years
old in her arms little boy screaming with fright and hiding his head between
her breasts as if he was trying to burrow right into her and the woman putting her arms around him and
comforting him although she was blue with fright herself all the time covering him up as much as possible as
if she thought her arms could keep the bullets off him then the helicopter planted a 20 kilo bomb in among them
terrific Flash and the boat went all to matchwood then there was a wonderful shot of a child's arm going up up up
right up into the air a helicopter with a camera in its nose must have followed it up and there was a lot of Applause
from the party seats but a woman down in the pr part of the House suddenly started kicking up a fuss and shouting
they didn't order to have showed it not in front of kids they didn't it ain't right not in front of kids it ain't
until the police turned her turned her out I don't suppose anything happened to her nobody cares what the PRS say