Orwell George

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, three
thousand 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
Newspeak: Minitrue, Minipax, Miniluv, and Miniplenty.
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 kilometre 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-faced guards in black uniforms, armed with jointed
truncheons.
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-coloured
bread which had got to be saved for tomorrow`s breakfast. He
took down from the shelf a bottle of colourless liquid with a
plain white label marked VICTORY GIN. It gave off a sickly,
oily smell, as of Chinese ricespirit. 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 on to 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 penholder, a bottle of ink, and a
thick, quarto-sized blank book with a red back and a marbled
cover.
For some reason the telescreen in 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 alcove in which Winston was now sitting, and
which, when the flats were built, had probably been intended to
hold bookshelves. By sitting in the alcove, and keeping well
back, Winston was able to remain outside the range of the
telescreen, so far as sight went. 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 forty 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
two dollars fifty. 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 twenty-five
years in a forcedlabour camp. Winston fitted a nib into the
penholder 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 speakwrite which was of course impossible

Orwell George - 1984