Part
Three
Chapter
5
At
each stage of his imprisonment he had known, or seemed to know,
whereabouts he was in the windowless building. Possibly there
were slight differences in the air pressure. The cells where the
guards had beaten him were below ground level. The room where
he had been interrogated by O'Brien was high up near the roof.
This place was many metres underground, as deep down as it was
possible to go.
It was bigger than most of the cells he had been in. But he hardly
noticed his surroundings. All he noticed was that there were two
small tables straight in front of him, each covered with green
baize. One was only a metre or two from him, the other was further
away, near the door. He was strapped upright in a chair, so tightly
that he could move nothing, not even his head. A sort of pad gripped
his head from behind, forcing him to look straight in front of
him.
For a moment he was alone, then the door opened and O'Brien came
in.
'You asked me once,' said O'Brien, 'what was in Room 101. I told
you that you knew the answer already. Everyone knows it. The thing
that is in Room 101 is the worst thing in the world.'
The door opened again. A guard came in, carrying something made
of wire, a box or basket of some kind. He set it down on the further
table. Because of the position in which O'Brien was standing.
Winston could not see what the thing was.
'The worst thing in the world,' said O'Brien, 'varies from individual
to individual. It may be burial alive, or death by fire, or by
drowning, or by impalement, or fifty other deaths. There are cases
where it is some quite trivial thing, not even fatal.'
He had moved a little to one side, so that Winston had a better
view of the thing on the table. It was an oblong wire cage with
a handle on top for carrying it by. Fixed to the front of it was
something that looked like a fencing mask, with the concave side
outwards. Although it was three or four metres away from him,
he could see that the cage was divided lengthways into two compartments,
and that there was some kind of creature in each. They were rats.
'In your case,' said O'Brien, 'the worst thing in the world happens
to be rats.'
A sort of premonitory tremor, a fear of he was not certain what,
had passed through Winston as soon as he caught his first glimpse
of the cage. But at this moment the meaning of the mask-like attachment
in front of it suddenly sank into him. His bowels seemed to turn
to water.
'You can't do that!' he cried out in a high cracked voice. 'You
couldn't, you couldn't! It's impossible.'
'Do you remember,' said O'Brien, 'the moment of panic that used
to occur in your dreams? There was a wall of blackness in front
of you, and a roaring sound in your ears. There was something
terrible on the other side of the wall. You knew that you knew
what it was, but you dared not drag it into the open. It was the
rats that were on the other side of the wall.'
'O'Brien!' said Winston, making an effort to control his voice.
'You know this is not necessary. What is it that you want me to
do?'
O'Brien made no direct answer. When he spoke it was in the schoolmasterish
manner that he sometimes affected. He looked thoughtfully into
the distance, as though he were addressing an audience somewhere
behind Winston's back.
'By itself,' he said, 'pain is not always enough. There are occasions
when a human being will stand out against pain, even to the point
of death. But for everyone there is something unendurable -- something
that cannot be contemplated. Courage and cowardice are not involved.
If you are falling from a height it is not cowardly to clutch
at a rope. If you have come up from deep water it is not cowardly
to fill your lungs with air. It is merely an instinct which cannot
be destroyed. It is the same with the rats. For you, they are
unendurable. They are a form of pressure that you cannot withstand,
even if you wished to. You will do what is required of you.
'But what is it, what is it? How can I do it if I don't know what
it is?'
O'Brien picked up the cage and brought it across to the nearer
table. He set it down carefully on the baize cloth. Winston could
hear the blood singing in his ears. He had the feeling of sitting
in utter loneliness. He was in the middle of a great empty plain,
a flat desert drenched with sunlight, across which all sounds
came to him out of immense distances. Yet the cage with the rats
was not two metres away from him. They were enormous rats. They
were at the age when a rat's muzzle grows blunt and fierce and
his fur brown instead of grey.
'The rat,' said O'Brien, still addressing his invisible audience,
'although a rodent, is carnivorous. You are aware of that. You
will have heard of the things that happen in the poor quarters
of this town. In some streets a woman dare not leave her baby
alone in the house, even for five minutes. The rats are certain
to attack it. Within quite a small time they will strip it to
the bones. They also attack sick or dying people. They show astonishing
intelligence in knowing when a human being is helpless.'
There was an outburst of squeals from the cage. It seemed to reach
Winston from far away. The rats were fighting; they were trying
to get at each other through the partition. He heard also a deep
groan of despair. That, too, seemed to come from outside himself.
O'Brien picked up the cage, and, as he did so, pressed something
in it. There was a sharp click. Winston made a frantic effort
to tear himself loose from the chair. It was hopeless; every part
of him, even his head, was held immovably. O'Brien moved the cage
nearer. It was less than a metre from Winston's face.
'I have pressed the first lever,' said O'Brien. 'You understand
the construction of this cage. The mask will fit over your head,
leaving no exit. When I press this other lever, the door of the
cage will slide up. These starving brutes will shoot out of it
like bullets. Have you ever seen a rat leap through the air? They
will leap on to your face and bore straight into it. Sometimes
they attack the eyes first. Sometimes they burrow through the
cheeks and devour the tongue.'
The cage was nearer; it was closing in. Winston heard a succession
of shrill cries which appeared to be occurring in the air above
his head. But he fought furiously against his panic. To think,
to think, even with a split second left -- to think was the only
hope. Suddenly the foul musty odour of the brutes struck his nostrils.
There was a violent convulsion of nausea inside him, and he almost
lost consciousness. Everything had gone black. For an instant
he was insane, a screaming animal. Yet he came out of the blackness
clutching an idea. There was one and only one way to save himself.
He must interpose another human being, the body of another human
being, between himself and the rats.
The circle of the mask was large enough now to shut out the vision
of anything else. The wire door was a couple of hand-spans from
his face. The rats knew what was coming now. One of them was leaping
up and down, the other, an old scaly grandfather of the sewers,
stood up, with his pink hands against the bars, and fiercely sniffed
the air. Winston could see the whiskers and the yellow teeth.
Again the black panic took hold of him. He was blind, helpless,
mindless.
'It was a common punishment in Imperial China,' said O'Brien as
didactically as ever.
The mask was closing on his face. The wire brushed his cheek.
And then -- no, it was not relief, only hope, a tiny fragment
of hope. Too late, perhaps too late. But he had suddenly understood
that in the whole world there was just one person to whom
he could transfer his punishment -- one body that he could thrust
between himself and the rats. And he was shouting frantically,
over and over.
'Do it to Julia! Do it to Julia! Not me! Julia! I don't care what
you do to her. Tear her face off, strip her to the bones. Not
me! Julia! Not me!'
He was falling backwards, into enormous depths, away from the
rats. He was still strapped in the chair, but he had fallen through
the floor, through the walls of the building, through the earth,
through the oceans, through the atmosphere, into outer space,
into the gulfs between the stars -- always away, away, away from
the rats. He was light years distant, but O'Brien was still standing
at his side. There was still the cold touch of wire against his
cheek. But through the darkness that enveloped him he heard another
metallic click, and knew that the cage door had clicked shut and
not open.
.. .... ..
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