1984 - Planet eBook

Chapter 7Winston had woken up with his eyes full of tears. Juliarolled sleepily against him, murmuring somethingthat might have been ‘What’s the matter?’‘I dreamt—’ he began, and stopped short. It was too complexto be put into words. There was the dream itself, andthere was a memory connected with it that had swum intohis mind in the few seconds after waking.He lay back with his eyes shut, still sodden in the atmosphereof the dream. It was a vast, luminous dream in whichhis whole life seemed to stretch out before him like a landscapeon a summer evening after rain. It had all occurredinside the glass paperweight, but the surface of the glasswas the dome of the sky, and inside the dome everythingwas flooded with clear soft light in which one could see intointerminable distances. The dream had also been comprehendedby—indeed, in some sense it had consisted in—agesture of the arm made by his mother, and made againthirty years later by the Jewish woman he had seen on thenews film, trying to shelter the small boy from the bullets,before the helicopter blew them both to pieces.‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘that until this moment I believedI had murdered my mother?’‘Why did you murder her?’ said Julia, almost asleep.‘I didn’t murder her. Not physically.’