1984 - Planet eBook

knew of them) there was the routine of confession that hadto be gone through: the grovelling on the floor and screamingfor mercy, the crack of broken bones, the smashed teeth,and bloody clots of hair.Why did you have to endure it, since the end was alwaysthe same? Why was it not possible to cut a few daysor weeks out of your life? Nobody ever escaped detection,and nobody ever failed to confess. When once you had succumbedto thoughtcrime it was certain that by a given dateyou would be dead. Why then did that horror, which alterednothing, have to lie embedded in future time?He tried with a little more success than before to summonup the image of O’Brien. ‘We shall meet in the placewhere there is no darkness,’ O’Brien had said to him. Heknew what it meant, or thought he knew. The place wherethere is no darkness was the imagined future, which onewould never see, but which, by foreknowledge, one couldmystically share in. But with the voice from the telescreennagging at his ears he could not follow the train of thoughtfurther. He put a cigarette in his mouth. Half the tobaccopromptly fell out on to his tongue, a bitter dust which wasdifficult to spit out again. The face of Big Brother swam intohis mind, displacing that of O’Brien. Just as he had done afew days earlier, he slid a coin out of his pocket and lookedat it. The face gazed up at him, heavy, calm, protecting: butwhat kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache?Like a leaden knell the words came back at him:WAR IS PEACE