1984 - Planet eBook

ways in your stomach and in your skin there was a sort ofprotest, a feeling that you had been cheated of somethingthat you had a right to. It was true that he had no memoriesof anything greatly different. In any time that he could accuratelyremember, there had never been quite enough toeat, one had never had socks or underclothes that were notfull of holes, furniture had always been battered and rickety,rooms underheated, tube trains crowded, houses falling topieces, bread dark-coloured, tea a rarity, coffee filthy-tasting,cigarettes insufficient—nothing cheap and plentifulexcept synthetic gin. And though, of course, it grew worseas one’s body aged, was it not a sign that this was NOT thenatural order of things, if one’s heart sickened at the discomfortand dirt and scarcity, the interminable winters, thestickiness of one’s socks, the lifts that never worked, thecold water, the gritty soap, the cigarettes that came to pieces,the food with its strange evil tastes? Why should one feelit to be intolerable unless one had some kind of ancestralmemory that things had once been different?He looked round the canteen again. Nearly everyone wasugly, and would still have been ugly even if dressed otherwisethan in the uniform blue overalls. On the far side of theroom, sitting at a table alone, a small, curiously beetle-likeman was drinking a cup of coffee, his little eyes darting suspiciousglances from side to side. How easy it was, thoughtWinston, if you did not look about you, to believe that thephysical type set up by the Party as an ideal—tall muscularyouths and deep-bosomed maidens, blond-haired, vital,sunburnt, carefree—existed and even predominated. Ac-