1984 - Planet eBook

‘You turn left, then right, then left again. And the gate’sgot no top bar.’‘Yes. What time?’‘About fifteen. You may have to wait. I’ll get there by anotherway. Are you sure you remember everything?’‘Yes.’‘Then get away from me as quick as you can.’She need not have told him that. But for the momentthey could not extricate themselves from the crowd. Thetrucks were still filing past, the people still insatiably gaping.At the start there had been a few boos and hisses, butit came only from the Party members among the crowd,and had soon stopped. The prevailing emotion was simplycuriosity. Foreigners, whether from Eurasia or from Eastasia,were a kind of strange animal. One literally never sawthem except in the guise of prisoners, and even as prisonersone never got more than a momentary glimpse of them.Nor did one know what became of them, apart from thefew who were hanged as war-criminals: the others simplyvanished, presumably into forced-labour camps. The roundMogol faces had given way to faces of a more European type,dirty, bearded and exhausted. From over scrubby cheekboneseyes looked into Winston’s, sometimes with strangeintensity, and flashed away again. The convoy was drawingto an end. In the last truck he could see an aged man, hisface a mass of grizzled hair, standing upright with wristscrossed in front of him, as though he were used to havingthem bound together. It was almost time for Winston andthe girl to part. But at the last moment, while the crowd still