The old-fashioned clock with the twelve-hour face was ticking away on the mantelpiece. In the corner, on the gateleg table, the glass paperweight which he had bought on his last visit gleamed softly out of the half-darkness.
In the fender was a battered tin oilstove, a saucepan, and two cups, provided by Mr Charrington. Winston lit the burner and set a pan of water to boil. He had brought an envelope full of Victory Coffee and some saccharine tablets. The clock’s hands said seventeen-twenty: it was nineteen-twenty really. She was coming at nineteen-thirty.
Folly , folly, his heart kept saying: conscious, gratuitous , suicidal folly. Of all the crimes that a Party member could commit, this one was the least possible to conceal . Actually the idea had first floated into his head in the form of a vision, of the glass paperweight mirrored by the surface of the gateleg table. As he had foreseen, Mr Charrington had made no difficulty about letting the room. He was obviously glad of the few dollars that it would bring him. Nor did he seem shocked or become offensively knowing when it was made clear that Winston wanted the room for the purpose of a love-affair. Instead he looked into the middle distance and spoke in generalities, with so delicate an air as to give the impression that he had become partly invisible. Privacy, he said, was a very valuable thing. Everyone wanted a place where they could be alone occasionally. And when they had such a place, it was only common courtesy in anyone else who knew of it to keep his knowledge to himself. He even, seeming almost to fade out of existence as he did so, added that there were two entries to the house, one of them through the back yard, which gave on an alley .
Under the window somebody was singing. Winston peeped out, secure in the protection of the muslin curtain. The June sun was still high in the sky, and in the sun-filled court below, a monstrous woman, solid as a Norman pillar, with brawny red forearms and a sacking apron strapped about her middle, was stumping to and fro between a washtub and a clothes line, pegging out a series of square white things which Winston recognized as babies’ diapers. Whenever her mouth was not corked with clothes pegs she was singing in a powerful contralto:
The tune had been haunting London for weeks past. It was one of countless similar songs published for the benefit of the proles by a sub-section of the Music Department.
The words of these songs were composed without any human intervention whatever on an instrument known as a versificator. But the woman sang so tunefully as to turn the dreadful rubbish into an almost pleasant sound. He could hear the woman singing and the scrape of her shoes on the flagstones, and the cries of the children in the street, and somewhere in the far distance a faint roar of traffic, and yet the room seemed curiously silent, thanks to the absence of a telescreen.
Folly, folly, folly! he thought again. It was inconceivable that they could frequent this place for more than a few weeks without being caught. But the temptation of having a hiding-place that was truly their own, indoors and near at hand, had been too much for both of them. For some time after their visit to the church belfry it had been impossible to arrange meetings. Working hours had been drastically increased in anticipation of Hate Week. It was more than a month distant, but the enormous, complex preparations that it entailed were throwing extra work on to everybody. Finally both of them managed to secure a free afternoon on the same day. They had agreed to go back to the clearing in the wood. On the evening beforehand they met briefly in the street. As usual, Winston hardly looked at Julia as they drifted towards one another in the crowd, but from the short glance he gave her it seemed to him that she was paler than usual.
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11
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“吹了,”她看到情况比较安全时马上低声说。“我是说明天的事。”
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’It’s all off,’ she murmured as soon as she judged it safe to speak. ’Tomorrow, I mean.’
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“什么?”
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’What?’
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“明天下午。我不能来。”
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’Tomorrow afternoon. I can’t come.’
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“为什么不能来?”
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14
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’Why not?’
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“又是那个。这次开始得早。”
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15
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’Oh, the usual reason. It’s started early this time.’
For a moment he was violently angry. During the month that he had known her the nature of his desire for her had changed. At the beginning there had been little true sensuality in it. Their first love-making had been simply an act of the will. But after the second time it was different. The smell of her hair, the taste of her mouth, the feeling of her skin seemed to have got inside him, or into the air all round him. She had become a physical necessity, something that he not only wanted but felt that he had a right to. When she said that she could not come, he had the feeling that she was cheating him. But just at this moment the crowd pressed them together and their hands accidentally met. She gave the tips of his fingers a quick squeeze that seemed to invite not desire but affection. It struck him that when one lived with a woman this particular disappointment must be a normal, recurring event; and a deep tenderness, such as he had not felt for her before, suddenly took hold of him. He wished that they were a married couple of ten years’ standing .
He wished that he were walking through the streets with her just as they were doing now but openly and without fear, talking of trivialities and buying odds and ends for the household. He wished above all that they had some place where they could be alone together without feeling the obligation to make love every time they met. It was not actually at that moment, but at some time on the following day, that the idea of renting Mr Charrington’s room had occurred to him. When he suggested it to Julia she had agreed with unexpected readiness. Both of them knew that it was lunacy. It was as though they were intentionally stepping nearer to their graves. As he sat waiting on the edge of the bed he thought again of the cellars of the Ministry of Love. It was curious how that predestined horror moved in and out of one’s consciousness. There it lay, fixed in future times, preceding death as surely as 99 precedes 100.
One could not avoid it, but one could perhaps postpone it: and yet instead, every now and again, by a conscious, wilful act, one chose to shorten the interval before it happened.
At this moment there was a quick step on the stairs. Julia burst into the room. She was carrying a tool-bag of coarse brown canvas, such as he had sometimes seen her carrying to and fro at the Ministry. He started forward to take her in his arms, but she disengaged herself rather hurriedly, partly because she was still holding the tool-bag.
’Half a second,’ she said. ’Just let me show you what I’ve brought. Did you bring some of that filthy Victory Coffee? I thought you would. You can chuck it away again, because we shan’t be needing it. Look here.’
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21
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她跪了下来,打开工具包,掏出面上的一些扳子,旋凿。
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She fell on her knees, threw open the bag, and tumbled out some spanners and a screwdriver that filled the top part of it.
Underneath were a number of neat paper packets. The first packet that she passed to Winston had a strange and yet vaguely familiar feeling. It was filled with some kind of heavy, sand-like stuff which yielded wherever you touched it.
’Real sugar. Not saccharine, sugar. And here’s a loaf of bread proper white bread, not our bloody stuff -- and a little pot of jam. And here’s a tin of milk -- but look! This is the one I’m really proud of. I had to wrap a bit of sacking round it, because -’
But she did not need to tell him why she had wrapped it up. The smell was already filling the room, a rich hot smell which seemed like an emanation from his early childhood, but which one did occasionally meet with even now, blowing down a passage-way before a door slammed, or diffusing itself mysteriously in a crowded street, sniffed for an instant and then lost again.
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“这是咖啡,”他喃喃地说,“真正的咖啡。”
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’It’s coffee,’ he murmured, ’real coffee.’
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“这是核心党的咖啡。这里有整整一公斤,”她说。
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’It’s Inner Party coffee. There’s a whole kilo here,’ she said.
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“这些东西你怎么弄到的?”
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’How did you manage to get hold of all these things?’
’It’s all Inner Party stuff. There’s nothing those swine don’t have, nothing. But of course waiters and servants and people pinch things, and -- look, I got a little packet of tea as well.’
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温斯顿在她身旁蹲了下来。他把那个纸包撕开一角。
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Winston had squatted down beside her. He tore open a corner of the packet.
There has been a lot of tea about lately. They have captured India, or something, she said vaguely. “But listen, dear. I want you to turn your back on me for three minutes. Go and sit on the other side of the bed. Do not go too near the window. And donot turn round till I tell you.”
Winston gazed abstractedly through the muslin curtain. Down in the yard the red-armed woman was still marching to and fro between the washtub and the line. She took two more pegs out of her mouth and sang with deep feeling:
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34
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“他们说时间能治疗一切,他们说你总是能够忘掉一切;但是这些年来的笑容和泪痕仍使我心痛象刀割一样!”
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They sye that time ’eals all things,They sye you can always forget;But the smiles an’ the tears acrorss the years They twist my ’eart-strings yet!
She knew the whole drivelling song by heart, it seemed. Her voice floated upward with the sweet summer air, very tuneful, charged with a sort of happy melancholy . One had the feeling that she would have been perfectly content, if the June evening had been endless and the supply of clothes inexhaustible, to remain there for a thousand years, pegging out diapers and singing rubbish. It struck him as a curious fact that he had never heard a member of the Party singing alone and spontaneously. It would even have seemed slightly unorthodox, a dangerous eccentricity , like talking to oneself. Perhaps it was only when people were somewhere near the starvation level that they had anything to sing about.
He turned round, and for a second almost failed to recognize her. What he had actually expected was to see her naked. But she was not naked. The transformation that had happened was much more surprising than that. She had painted her face.
She must have slipped into some shop in the proletarian quarters and bought herself a complete set of make-up materials. Her lips were deeply reddened, her cheeks rouged , her nose powdered; there was even a touch of something under the eyes to make them brighter. It was not very skilfully done, but Winston’s standards in such matters were not high. He had never before seen or imagined a woman of the Party with cosmetics on her face. The improvement in her appearance was startling. With just a few dabs of colour in the right places she had become not only very much prettier, but, above all, far more feminine. Her short hair and boyish overalls merely added to the effect. As he took her in his arms a wave of synthetic violets flooded his nostrils . He remembered the half-darkness of a basement kitchen, and a woman’s cavernous mouth. It was the very same scent that she had used; but at the moment it did not seem to matter.
’Yes, dear, scent too. And do you know what I’m going to do next? I’m going to get hold of a real woman’s frock from somewhere and wear it instead of these bloody trousers.
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我要穿丝袜,高跟鞋!在这间屋子里我要做一个女人,不做党员同志。”
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I’ll wear silk stockings and high-heeled shoes! In this room I’m going to be a woman, not a Party comrade.’
They flung their clothes off and climbed into the huge mahogany bed. It was the first time that he had stripped himself naked in her presence. Until now he had been too much ashamed of his pale and meagre body, with the varicose veins standing out on his calves and the discoloured patch over his ankle. There were no sheets, but the blanket they lay on was threadbare and smooth, and the size and springiness of the bed astonished both of them. ’It’s sure to be full of bugs , but who cares?’ said Julia. One never saw a double bed nowadays, except in the homes of the proles. Winston had occasionally slept in one in his boyhood: Julia had never been in one before, so far as she could remember.
Presently they fell asleep for a little while. When Winston woke up the hands of the clock had crept round to nearly nine. He did not stir, because Julia was sleeping with her head in the crook of his arm. Most of her make-up had transferred itself to his own face or the bolster, but a light stain of rouge still brought out the beauty of her cheekbone. A yellow ray from the sinking sun fell across the foot of the bed and lighted up the fireplace, where the water in the pan was boiling fast.
Down in the yard the woman had stopped singing, but the faint shouts of children floated in from the street. He wondered vaguely whether in the abolished past it had been a normal experience to lie in bed like this, in the cool of a summer evening, a man and a woman with no clothes on, making love when they chose, talking of what they chose, not feeling any compulsion to get up, simply lying there and listening to peaceful sounds outside. Surely there could never have been a time when that seemed ordinary?
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45
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裘莉亚醒了过来,揉一揉眼睛,撑着手肘抬起身子来看一眼煤油炉。
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Julia woke up, rubbed her eyes, and raised herself on her elbow to look at the oilstove.
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46
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“水烧干了一半,”她说。“我马上起来做咖啡。我们还有一个小时。你家里什么时候断电熄灯?”
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’Half that water’s boiled away,’ she said. ’I’ll get up and make some coffee in another moment. We’ve got an hour. What time do they cut the lights off at your flats?’
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47
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“二十三点三十分。”
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’Twenty-three thirty.’
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“宿舍里是二十三点。不过你得早些进门,因为——嗨,去你的,你这个脏东西!”
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’It’s twenty-three at the hostel . But you have to get in earlier than that, because -- Hi! Get out, you filthy brute !’
She suddenly twisted herself over in the bed, seized a shoe from the floor, and sent it hurtling into the corner with a boyish jerk of her arm, exactly as he had seen her fling the dictionary at Goldstein, that morning during the Two Minutes Hate.
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“那是什么?”他吃惊地问。
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’What was it?’ he said in surprise.
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“一只老鼠。我瞧见它从板壁下面钻出鼻子来。那边有个洞。我把它吓跑了。”
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’A rat. I saw him stick his beastly nose out of the wainscoting. There’s a hole down there. I gave him a good fright, anyway.’
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“老鼠!”温斯顿喃喃自语。“在这间屋子里!”
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’Rats!’ murmured Winston. ’In this room!’
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“到处都有老鼠,”裘莉亚又躺了下来,满不在乎地说。
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’They’re all over the place,’ said Julia indifferently as she lay down again. ’We’ve even got them in the kitchen at the hostel. Some parts of London are swarming with them. Did you know they attack children? Yes, they do. In some of these streets a woman daren’t leave a baby alone for two minutes. It’s the great huge brown ones that do it. And the nasty thing is that the brutes always-’
She pressed herself against him and wound her limbs round him, as though to reassure him with the warmth of her body. He did not reopen his eyes immediately. For several moments he had had the feeling of being back in a nightmare which had recurred from time to time throughout his life. It was always very much the same. He was standing in front of a wall of darkness, and on the other side of it there was something unendurable, something too dreadful to be faced. In the dream his deepest feeling was always one of self-deception, because he did in fact know what was behind the wall of darkness. With a deadly effort, like wrenching a piece out of his own brain, he could even have dragged the thing into the open. He always woke up without discovering what it was: but somehow it was connected with what Julia had been saying when he cut her short.
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“对不起,”他说,“没有什么。我只是不喜欢老鼠而已。”
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’I’m sorry,’ he said, ’it’s nothing. I don’t like rats, that’s all.’
’Don’t worry, dear, we’re not going to have the filthy brutes in here. I’ll stuff the hole with a bit of sacking before we go. And next time we come here I’ll bring some plaster and bung it up properly.’
Already the black instant of panic was half-forgotten. Feeling slightly ashamed of himself, he sat up against the bedhead. Julia got out of bed, pulled on her overalls, and made the coffee. The smell that rose from the saucepan was so powerful and exciting that they shut the window lest anybody outside should notice it and become inquisitive . What was even better than the taste of the coffee was the silky texture given to it by the sugar, a thing Winston had almost forgotten after years of saccharine.
With one hand in her pocket and a piece of bread and jam in the other, Julia wandered about the room, glancing indifferently at the bookcase, pointing out the best way of repairing the gateleg table, plumping herself down in the ragged arm-chair to see if it was comfortable, and examining the absurd twelve-hour clock with a sort of tolerant amusement.
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62
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她把玻璃镇纸拿到床上来凑着光线看。他把它从她手中取过来,又被它的柔和的、雨水般的色泽吸引住了。
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She brought the glass paperweight over to the bed to have a look at it in a better light. He took it out of her hand, fascinated, as always, by the soft, rainwatery appearance of the glass.
’I don’t think it’s anything -- I mean, I don’t think it was ever put to any use. That’s what I like about it. It’s a little chunk of history that they’ve forgotten to alter. It’s a message from a hundred years ago, if one knew how to read it.’
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65
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“还有那边的画片——”她朝着对面墙上的蚀刻画点一点头。“那也有一百年的历史了吗?”
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’And that picture over there’ -- she nodded at the engraving on the opposite wall -- ’would that be a hundred years old?’
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“还要更久。大概有两百年了。我说不好。如今什么东西你都无法知道有多久的历史了。”
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’More. Two hundred, I dare say. One can’t tell. It’s impossible to discover the age of anything nowadays.’
She went over to look at it. ’Here’s where that brute stuck his nose out,’ she said, kicking the wainscoting immediately below the picture. ’What is this place? I’ve seen it before somewhere.’
’It’s a church, or at least it used to be. St Clement Danes its name was.’ The fragment of rhyme that Mr Charrington had taught him came back into his head, and he added half-nostalgically:
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69
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“圣克利门特教堂的钟声说,橘子和柠檬。”
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69
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"Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St Clement’s!"
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使他感到惊奇的是,她把这句歌词唱完了:
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To his astonishment she capped the line:
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71
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“圣马丁教堂的钟声说,你欠我三个铜板,老巴莱教堂的钟声说,你什么时候归还?——
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71
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’You owe me three farthings, say the bells of St Martin’s,When will you pay me? say the bells of Old Bailey -- ’
’I can’t remember how it goes on after that. But anyway I remember it ends up, "Here comes a candle to light you to bed, here comes a chopper to chop off your head!"’
It was like the two halves of a countersign . But there must be another line after ’the bells of Old Bailey’. Perhaps it could be dug out of Mr Charrington’s memory, if he were suitably prompted.
’My grandfather. He used to say it to me when I was a little girl. He was vaporized when I was eight -- at any rate, he disappeared. I wonder what a lemon was,’ she added inconsequently. ’I’ve seen oranges. They’re a kind of round yellow fruit with a thick skin.’
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76
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“我还记得柠檬,”温斯顿说。“在五十年代很普通。很酸,闻一下也教你的牙齿发软。”
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’I can remember lemons,’ said Winston. ’They were quite common in the fifties. They were so sour that it set your teeth on edge even to smell them.’
’I bet that picture’s got bugs behind it,’ said Julia. ’I’ll take it down and give it a good clean some day. I suppose it’s almost time we were leaving. I must start washing this paint off. What a bore! I’ll get the lipstick off your face afterwards.’
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温斯顿在床上又懒了一会儿。屋子里慢慢地黑了下来。
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Winston did not get up for a few minutes more. The room was darkening.
He turned over towards the light and lay gazing into the glass paperweight. The inexhaustibly interesting thing was not the fragment of coral but the interior of the glass itself. There was such a depth of it, and yet it was almost as transparent as air. It was as though the surface of the glass had been the arch of the sky, enclosing a tiny world with its atmosphere complete. He had the feeling that he could get inside it, and that in fact he was inside it, along with the mahogany bed and the gateleg table, and the clock and the steel engraving and the paperweight itself. The paperweight was the room he was in, and the coral was Julia’s life and his own, fixed in a sort of eternity at the heart of the crystal.