Chapter 1: The Two Minutes

(Cont.)

Victory Mansions was seven flights of stairs with a lift that had not
worked in anyone's memory. The sign on the lift doors---OUT OF
ORDER---had been there so long that the paper had yellowed and curled at
the edges. Arthur climbed past landing after landing, past Big Brother
posters at every floor, past the smell of boiled cabbage that seemed to
seep from the walls themselves, from the peeling green paint and the
water-stained plaster.

His flat was on the seventh floor. A single room with a kitchen barely
large enough to stand in. The telescreen dominated the main wall---an
oblong metal plaque like a dulled mirror, receiving and transmitting
simultaneously. There was no place in the room that was not visible to
it. No alcove, no corner, no blind spot where a man might sit unseen.
The telescreen saw everything. The telescreen heard everything. The
telescreen was always on.

Arthur had lived here for six years. The walls were damp in winter and
hot in summer. The window didn't close properly. The ceiling had a
crack that grew a little longer each year.

He heated his evening meal on the tiny stove: more of the gray stew,
reheated from a tin he had bought with ration coupons. The telescreen
murmured behind him---a program about boot production in the factories
of Airstrip One, how the workers were exceeding their quotas through
devotion to Big Brother, how production had increased fifteen percent
over the previous quarter. The same program, Arthur thought, that had
run last week. Or a different program that said the same things.

Arthur ate standing at the window. Outside, London sprawled in its
eternal grayness. Victorian houses leaned against each other, their
sides shored up with timber, their windows patched with cardboard and
corrugated iron. Bomb craters from wars no one accurately remembered
pocked the streets. Willow-herb grew in the rubble heaps. In the
distance, the white pyramids of the Ministries rose above
everything---Truth, Peace, Love, Plenty---too large to be human, too
permanent to be questioned.

A rocket bomb had fallen somewhere to the east last week. Or perhaps two
weeks ago. The fires had burned for a day, and then the rubble had been
cleared, and the dead had been counted or not counted, and life had
continued. Life always continued. That was the only certainty.

Arthur washed his plate in the tiny sink. The water was cold---it was
always cold---and the soap was a thin, gritty thing that barely
lathered. He dried his hands on a rag that had been a towel once, before
the fabric had worn thin and gray. The rag smelled of mildew.

The telescreen shifted to the evening news. Victories on the Malabar
Front. Eurasian prisoners paraded through the streets of captured
cities. Production figures. Betrayals. Executions. The boot of Oceania
stamping on the enemy's face, forever.

Arthur sat in his single chair and watched without watching. The images
flickered past---soldiers marching, bombs falling, Big Brother's face
appearing between segments to remind them all that he was there, he was
watching, he would keep them safe.

The woman's shoe.

His hands tightened on the arms of the chair. He should not be thinking
about it. He should not have noticed. But he had noticed, and now the
noticing was lodged in his mind like a splinter beneath the skin.

The same shoe. The same scuff mark. Thrown yesterday, thrown today,
collected after each Hate, redistributed before the next.

Arthur stood and walked to the window. The telescreen was behind him,
watching. It was always watching. He kept his face neutral, his
breathing even. Outside, the sky was darkening toward night. Somewhere
in the distance, a train rumbled past, carrying goods or people or
prisoners to destinations no one would ever name.

The Party controlled everything. That was the point. The Party
controlled the past and the present and the future. The Party controlled
what was true and what was false. The Party controlled the very words
you could use to think.

And somewhere, in some office Arthur would never see, someone had
decided that the shoes would be collected and redistributed. Someone had
made that choice, and the choice had become policy, and the policy had
become invisible---just another part of the ritual, just another thing
that happened without being noticed.

Except Arthur had noticed.

He returned to his chair. The telescreen was showing a documentary about
chocolate production. The ration had been increased from twenty grams to
thirty grams, and the workers in the factories were celebrating this
generosity. They held signs. They cheered. Big Brother had given them
more chocolate.

Arthur remembered when the ration had been thirty grams. He was almost
certain it had been thirty grams last year, before it was reduced to
twenty grams, before the reduction was forgotten, before the increase to
thirty grams became cause for celebration.

He should not remember that. Memory was unreliable. Memory was a
saboteur, planting false images of a past that had never existed. Only
the Party's records were true, and the Party's records said the ration
had been twenty grams, and now it was thirty, and everyone should be
grateful.

Arthur was grateful. He was always grateful.

He sat in his chair until the telescreen's evening programming ended
and the screen shifted to its nighttime mode---a low hum, a faint glow,
the perpetual reminder that sleep was a privilege the Party allowed, not
a right citizens possessed.

Arthur lay in his narrow bed and stared at the ceiling. The springs
creaked beneath him. The walls were thin, and he could hear his
neighbors' telescreens murmuring their own endless programs. Somewhere,
a child cried briefly and was silenced.

Tomorrow, there would be more corrections to make. More history to be
adjusted. More Two Minutes Hates to perform.

And the woman would throw her shoe.

The same shoe. The same scuff mark. The same small crack in the system
that nobody was supposed to see.

Arthur lay in the darkness and listened to the city breathe around
him---the telescreens murmuring, the trains rumbling in the distance,
the occasional crack of a rocket bomb falling somewhere in the prole
sectors.

He had noticed. And he could not unsee it.

***