Chapter 3: Peter Harmon

 

 

Peter Harmon worked in the Historical Archives section, three floors
below the Records Department. Arthur had known him for six years---or it
might have been seven. Time blurred in the Ministry, one day folding
into the next, the years accumulating like sediment at the bottom of a
glass that was never emptied.

They had met in the canteen, two men reaching for the same cup of
synthetic coffee at the same moment. A small collision, an apology, a
nod of recognition. The coffee had sloshed over the rim and onto
Arthur's fingers, lukewarm and bitter-smelling, leaving a faint stain
on his skin that he rubbed at for the rest of the morning. The kind of
encounter that happened a hundred times a day in the Ministry and was
immediately forgotten.

But Arthur had not forgotten Peter. And Peter, it seemed, had not
forgotten Arthur.

It began with glances. A look across the canteen that lasted a fraction
of a second longer than necessary. A nod in the corridor that carried
some weight beyond mere acknowledgment. The small recognitions that
passed between people who had noticed each other noticing.

They did not speak. Not at first. Speaking was dangerous---words could
be overheard, recorded, analyzed. But glances were deniable. A glance
was just a glance. Two men looking at each other in a crowded room
proved nothing.

The glances accumulated. Over weeks, over months, they developed a
vocabulary. A slight raise of the eyebrows: Did you see that? A small
shake of the head: Don't look now. A moment of eye contact held just
past the point of comfort: I know. I see it too.

Arthur did not know what Peter saw. He did not know what doubts moved
behind those careful eyes. But he knew that Peter was watching the same
world he was watching, and seeing something other than what the Party
said was there.

That was enough. In the Ministry of Truth, that was everything.

#

Their first real conversation happened in the men's lavatory on the
fourth floor.

It was not planned. Arthur had gone to relieve himself; Peter had been
washing his hands at the basin. The room was empty except for them---a
rare occurrence, a window of perhaps thirty seconds before someone else
would enter. The tile floor was damp, the grout between the tiles
stained a yellowish brown. The single light fixture buzzed overhead,
casting everything in a flat, shadowless white.

Peter looked up from the basin. His eyes met Arthur's in the mirror.

"The chocolate ration," Peter said. His voice was barely above a
whisper.

Arthur's hands went still at his sides.

"Thirty grams," he said.

"It was thirty grams last month."

"Before the reduction."

"Before the increase."

They looked at each other. The words hung in the air between
them---impossible words, dangerous words, words that acknowledged what
could not be acknowledged. The light buzzed. Water dripped from the tap
Peter had not quite closed, each drop striking the porcelain basin with
a sound like a small clock ticking.

The door opened. A clerk from the Fiction Department entered, nodding to
them both. Peter turned off the water and dried his hands on the rough
cloth that hung beside the basin. Arthur stepped to the urinal.

Nothing had happened. Two men had exchanged pleasantries about the
chocolate ration while washing their hands. Perfectly normal. Perfectly
innocent.

But Arthur's hands were shaking when he held them under the tap, and
when he looked at himself in the mirror, his face was the color of old
paper.

#

After that, they found ways to speak.

Never for long. Never in places where they might be observed. The
fourth-floor lavatory became their regular meeting point---not by
arrangement, but by a pattern that emerged without being discussed.
Arthur would go there at 10:15 each morning. Peter would arrive a few
minutes later. If the room was occupied, they would nod and leave. If it
was empty, they would have perhaps a minute of whispered conversation
before someone else entered.

A minute was enough. A minute was more than Arthur had ever had with
anyone.

They spoke in fragments, in implications, in the spaces between words.
Peter had noticed the shoe---the same shoe, thrown during each Two
Minutes Hate, collected and redistributed. Arthur had noticed the
production figures---the same increases announced repeatedly, the
baseline constantly adjusted, the triumph that never ended because it
never began.

They did not call these things doubts. They did not use words like lies
or manipulation or control. They simply described what they had seen,
and let the other draw conclusions.

Peter understood. Peter saw. Peter was awake in a world of sleepwalkers.

And Peter, Arthur realized gradually, was the only person he might call
friend.

#

Peter Harmon was forty-three years old, or so he claimed. His face was
lined in ways that suggested either hard years or premature aging---the
distinction was difficult to make in Oceania, where everyone aged faster
than they should. He had thin brown hair that was beginning to retreat
from his forehead, and a small mole on his left cheek that Arthur had
memorized without meaning to.

He walked with a slight hitch in his step---an old injury, perhaps, or
simply the way his body had learned to move. Arthur could recognize that
walk from across the canteen, from the far end of a corridor, from a
glimpse through a doorway. The rhythm of it was distinctive: step,
slight pause, step, slight pause. A signature written in movement.

Peter had a habit of holding his pencil between two fingers and tapping
it against his palm when he was thinking. The pencil was Ministry-issue,
identical to every other pencil in the building, but Peter's way of
holding it was his own. Arthur had watched him do it a hundred times
during the Two Minutes Hate, the pencil tapping out a quiet rhythm
against his skin while his face performed the required fury.

These details were dangerous to know. These details meant that Arthur
had been watching Peter with an attention that went beyond casual
observation. If the Thought Police ever asked what he knew about Peter
Harmon, these details would betray him.

Arthur knew them anyway. He could not stop himself from knowing them.

#

The contraband appeared three months into their acquaintance.

Peter brought it to the fourth-floor lavatory in his pocket, wrapped in
a scrap of newspaper. He pressed it into Arthur's hand without a word,
and Arthur felt the shape of it through the paper---small, hard,
unfamiliar. The newspaper was damp from Peter's palm. The ink had begun
to smear.

"Don't open it here," Peter whispered. "Tonight. In your flat."

Then he was gone, out the door before Arthur could respond, leaving
Arthur standing at the basin with something forbidden in his hand.

Arthur put it in his pocket. The weight of it was negligible---lighter
than the speakwrite dial, smaller than a coin. He walked back to the
Records Department with his pulse loud in his ears, certain that
everyone could see the bulge in his overalls, certain that the
telescreen had somehow observed the exchange.

Nothing happened. No one looked at him. The day continued as days always
continued, and Arthur spoke his corrections into the speakwrite and ate
his lunch in the canteen and walked home through the gray streets and
climbed the seven flights to his flat.

Only then, with his back to the telescreen and his hands hidden in his
lap, did he unwrap the newspaper.

It was a photograph.

Black and white, faded, creased from years of folding. The image showed
a street scene---a row of shops, a group of people walking, a sign above
a doorway that read WOOLWORTH'S in letters Arthur did not recognize.
The edges of the photograph were soft with handling, worn smooth by many
fingers over many years.

The street was clean. The buildings were intact. The people were
smiling.

Arthur stared at the photograph. His hands had begun to tremble.

He had never seen a street like this. He had never seen buildings
without bomb damage, without shored-up walls and patched windows. He had
never seen people walking with that easy, unguarded posture---as if they
had nowhere particular to go, as if time belonged to them.

The sign said WOOLWORTH'S. Arthur did not know what a Woolworth's was.
The word had no meaning in Newspeak, no entry in any dictionary he had
ever seen. It was a word from before---from the time that existed only
in fragments, in memories that could not be trusted, in photographs like
this one that should not exist.

He turned it over. On the back, in faded pencil, someone had written:
London, 1952.

1952. Thirty years ago. Or forty. Or yesterday. Time was difficult in
Oceania.

Arthur looked at the photograph for a long time. The clean street. The
whole buildings. The people who were smiling. A woman in the foreground
wore a hat with a small feather. A man carried a parcel under his arm,
brown paper tied with string. They looked like people who expected to be
alive tomorrow.

Then he folded it carefully, matching the creases to the creases that
were already there, and put it in his pocket, next to the speakwrite
dial.

#

"Where did you get it?" Arthur asked the next day, in the fourth-floor
lavatory.

Peter shook his head. "Better not to know."

"But---"

"It's from the Archives. That's all I'll say. Things get misfiled.
Things end up in the wrong boxes. The system isn't perfect."

The system isn't perfect. The words hung between them, heavy with
implication.

"Why?" Arthur asked. "Why give it to me?"

Peter was quiet for a moment. His hand went to his pocket, and Arthur
knew he was touching something there---another photograph, perhaps, or
some other piece of the past that should have been destroyed.

"Because you see it," Peter said finally. "The cracks. The places
where the surface doesn't match what's underneath. I've been watching
you for months, and you see it. You're the only person I've met in ten
years who sees it."

Arthur's throat was tight. "I see a shoe," he said. "I see a
chocolate ration. I don't see---"

"You see enough." Peter's eyes met his. "That's the only thing that
matters. You see enough to know that what they tell us isn't what is."

The door opened. A young woman from the Fiction Department entered,
barely glancing at them. Peter turned on the water, rinsed his hands,
dried them on the rough cloth that hung beside the basin.

"Same time tomorrow," he murmured as he passed Arthur on his way out.

Arthur nodded. His hand was in his pocket, touching the photograph
through the fabric of his overalls.

London, 1952. A world that had existed. A world that had been erased. A
world that was still there, folded in his pocket, proof that the Party
could not destroy everything.

#

(Cont.)