1984 Chapter 6
1984
Chapter 6
They Can’t Get Inside You
Winston looks around the little room above Mr Charrington's shop. As he thought, Mr. Charrington was happy to rent it to him. He does not even mind that Winston wants the room to meet his lover. Everyone, he said, wanted a place where they could be alone and private occasionally.
They took the room because during the month of May they made love only one more time. ("It's safe to meet anywhere twice," Julia said). Then they had to see each other in the street, in a different place every evening and never for more than half an hour at a time. The idea of having their own hiding place, indoors and near home, was exciting for both of them.
They are fools, Winston thinks again. It is impossible to come here for more than a few weeks without being caught. But he needs her and he feels he deserves her.
Julia is twenty-six years old. She lives in a Party building with thirty other girls ("Always the smell of women! I hate women!" she says) and she works, as he guessed, on the story-writing machines. She enjoys her job, looking after a powerful electric motor. She is "not clever" and "does not enjoy reading very much" but she likes machinery. Life, as she sees it, is quite simple. You want a good time, they (meaning the Party) want to stop you having it, so you break the rules as well as you can.
At that moment he hears her on the stairs outside and then she runs into the room. She is carrying a bag. She goes down on her knees, takes packets of food from the bag and puts them on the floor. She has real sugar, real bread, real jam. All the good food that nobody has seen for years. And then…
"This is the one I'm really proud of. I had to put paper around it because…"
But she does not have to tell him why she put paper around it. The smell is already filling the room. "It's coffee," he says softly. "Real coffee."
"It's Inner Party coffee. There’s a whole kilo here," she says.
"How did you get it?"
"There’s nothing those Inner Party pigs don't have. But of course waiters and servants steal things, and - look, I got a little packet of tea as well."
Winston opens the packet. "It's real tea, not fruit leaves." "Yes," she says. "But listen, dear. I want you to turn your back to me for three minutes. Go and sit on the other side of the bed. And don't turn around until I tell you."
Winston looks out of the window. He listens to a woman singing outside with deep feeling. Winston thinks he will be quite happy if that June evening never ends. He has never heard a member of the Party sing like that.
"You can turn around now" says Julia.
He turns around and for a second almost does not recognize her. He thinks she has taken her clothes off. But the change in her is more surprising than that. She has painted her face.
He thinks the make-up must be from a shop in the prole area. Her lips are red, her face is smooth; there is even something under her eyes to make them brighter. It is not well done, but Winston does not know that. He has never before seen a woman in the Party with make-up on. Julia looks prettier and much more like a woman. He takes her in his arms.
"Do you know what I'm going to do next?" she says. "I'm going to get a real woman’s dress from somewhere and wear it instead of these horrible overalls. In this room I'm going to be a woman, not a Party comrade."
After they make love they fall asleep, and when Winston wakes up the hands on the clock show nearly nine - twenty-one hours. He does not move because Julia is sleeping with her head on his arm. Most of her make-up is on the pillow or on him.
They have never talked about marriage; it is impossible, even if Katherine dies. Winston told Julia about Katherine. She was “goodthinkful” (benepensante), in Newspeak, unable to think a bad thought. She did not like sex. It was just . . .
"Our duty to the Party." Julia said it for him. Just to have children. Children who would one day spy on their parents and tell the Party if they said or did anything wrong. In this way the family had become part of the Thought Police. Katherine did not tell the Thought Police about Winston only because she was too stupid to understand his opinions.
Winston thought about killing Katherine and once nearly did. But now he and Julia are dead. When you disobey the Party you are dead. Julia wakes up and puts her hands over her eyes. "We are the dead," Winston says.
"We're not dead yet," says Julia, pressing her body against his. "We may be together for another six months — a year. When
they find us there will be nothing either of us can do for the other. We will tell them everything," she says. "Everybody always does. They make you feel so much pain."
"Even if we tell them everything, that's not a betrayal. The betrayal would only be if they made me stop loving you."
She thinks about that. "They can't do that," she says finally. "It's the one thing they can't do. They can make you say anything - anything - but they can't make you believe it. They can't get inside you."
"No," he says, a little more hopefully. "No, that’s quite true. They can't get inside you."
"I'll get up and make some coffee," she says. We've got an hour.
What time do they turn the lights off at your flats?"
"Twenty-three thirty."
"It's twenty-three hours at the Party building. But you have to get in earlier than that because..."
She suddenly reaches down from the bed to the floor, picks up a shoe and throws it hard into the corner of the room.
"What was it?" he says in surprise.
"A rat. I saw his horrible little nose. There’s a hole down there. I frightened him, I think."
"Rats!" says Winston quietly. "In this room!"
"They're everywhere," says Julia, without much interest, as she lays down again. "We’ve even got them in the kitchen at the Party
building. Did you know they attack children? In some parts of London a woman can’t leave a baby alone for two minutes. The big brown ones are the worst. They…"
"Stop! Stop!" says Winston, his eyes tightly closed.
"Dearest! You’ve gone quite pale. What's the matter?"
"They are the most horrible things in the world - rats!"
She puts her arms around him but he does not re-open his eyes immediately.
"I'm sorry," he says. "It's nothing. I don't like rats, that's all."
"Don't worry, dear. We won't have the dirty animals in here. I’ll put something over the hole before we go."
Julia gets out of bed, puts on her overalls and makes the coffee. The smell is so powerful and exciting that they shut the window, worried that somebody outside will notice it and ask questions. And they can taste the real sugar in the coffee - it is even better than the taste of the coffee itself.
Julia walks round the room with one hand in her pocket and a piece of bread and jam in the other. She looks at the books without interest. She tells Winston the best way to repair the table. She sits down in the old armchair to see if it is comfortable. She smiles at the old twelve-hour clock.
"How old is that picture over there, do you think?" she asks. "A hundred years old?"
"More. Two hundred. But It's impossible to discover the age of anything these days."
She looks at it. "What is this place?"
"It's a church. Well, that's what it used to be."
When Winston gets out of bed it is dark. The room is a world, a past world, and they are the last two people from it who are still living.