He could not help feeling a twinge of panic. It was absurd, since the writing of those particular words was not more dangerous than the initial act of opening the diary, but for a moment he was tempted to tear out the spoiled pages and abandon the enterprise altogether.
He did not do so, however, because he knew that it was useless. Whether he wrote DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER, or whether he refrained from writing it, made no difference. Whether he went on with the diary, or whether he did not go on with it, made no difference. The Thought Police would get him just the same. He had committed – would still have committed, even if he had never set pen to paper – the essential crime that contained all others in itself. Thoughtcrime, they called it. Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed for ever. You might dodge successfully for a while, even for years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you.
It was always at night – the arrests invariably happened at night. The sudden jerk out of sleep, the rough hand shaking your shoulder, the lights glaring in your eyes, the ring of hard faces round the bed. In the vast majority of cases there was no trial, no report of the arrest. People simply disappeared, always during the night. Your name was removed from the registers, every record of everything you had ever done was wiped out, your one-time existence was denied and then forgotten. You were abolished, annihilated: VAPORIZED was the usual word.
For a moment he was seized by a kind of hysteria. He began writing in a hurried untidy scrawl:
theyll shoot me i don’t care theyll shoot me in the back of the neck i dont care down with big brother they always shoot you in the back of the neck i dont care down with big brother –
He sat back in his chair, slightly ashamed of himself, and laid down the pen. The next moment he started violently. There was a knocking at the door.
Already! He sat as still as a mouse, in the futile hope that whoever it was might go away after a single attempt. But no, the knocking was repeated. The worst thing of all would be to delay. His heart was thumping like a drum, but his face, from long habit, was probably expressionless. He got up and moved heavily towards the door.
當手剛摸到門把手時，溫斯頓就看到他的日記攤開來放在桌上。上麵寫滿了“打倒老大哥”，字體非常大，幾乎從房間的另一頭都能看得很清楚。這樣做簡直是愚蠢至極。不過他意識到，即使是在驚慌失措中，他也不願意在墨跡還未幹時就合上本子，因為那樣做會弄汙那潔白細膩的紙張。
他深深地吸了一口氣，然後打開房門。突然間他全身感到一股如釋重負般的暖流。站在門外的是一個臉色蒼白憔悴的女人，她頭發稀疏，滿臉都是皺紋。
“哦，同誌，”她開始用一種疲倦的、略帶嘶啞的聲音說道，“我想我是聽到您回來了。您能不能過來幫我看一看我家廚房裏的水池子？它好像堵住了，而且——”
這是帕森斯太太，是一位住在同一層樓上的鄰居的妻子。（黨是有些反對使用“太太”這個稱呼的，——所有人都應該以“同誌”相稱——不過對於有些婦女，人們還是會不由自主地管她們叫“太太”。）她大概30歲，但看上去要老很多。她會給人這樣一種印象，就像她臉上的皺紋裏都堆滿了灰塵似的。溫斯頓跟在她後麵，向過道的另一頭走去。這種業餘修理工作幾乎成了每天都要做的討厭的事。勝利大廈是一幢老房子，大約建於1930年，現在正處於搖搖欲墜中。石膏經常會從天花板和牆上掉下來，一遇到嚴寒的天氣水管總是會凍裂，一下雪屋頂就會漏水，如果暖氣沒有出於節約的考慮而完全關閉的話，那麼通常也隻會燒得半死不活的。除非你自己動手，否則修理工作就必須得到某個高高在上的委員會的批準，而哪怕隻是要修一扇玻璃窗這種事，委員會也很有可能拖上兩年才批準。