1984 - Planet eBook

for several seconds wondering vaguely what to do, thenturned round and began to retrace his steps. As he turnedit occurred to him that the girl had only passed him threeminutes ago and that by running he could probably catchup with her. He could keep on her track till they were insome quiet place, and then smash her skull in with a cobblestone.The piece of glass in his pocket would be heavyenough for the job. But he abandoned the idea immediately,because even the thought of making any physical effort wasunbearable. He could not run, he could not strike a blow.Besides, she was young and lusty and would defend herself.He thought also of hurrying to the Community Centre andstaying there till the place closed, so as to establish a partialalibi for the evening. But that too was impossible. A deadlylassitude had taken hold of him. All he wanted was to gethome quickly and then sit down and be quiet.It was after twenty-two hours when he got back to theflat. The lights would be switched off at the main at twentythreethirty. He went into the kitchen and swallowed nearlya teacupful of Victory Gin. Then he went to the table in thealcove, sat down, and took the diary out of the drawer. Buthe did not open it at once. From the telescreen a brassy femalevoice was squalling a patriotic song. He sat staring atthe marbled cover of the book, trying without success toshut the voice out of his consciousness.It was at night that they came for you, always at night. Theproper thing was to kill yourself before they got you. Undoubtedlysome people did so. Many of the disappearanceswere actually suicides. But it needed desperate courage to