Chapter 4: The Arrest

(Cont.)

 

The cell was small---perhaps three meters by two meters, though it was
difficult to judge without reference points. The walls were the same
glittering white porcelain he had seen throughout the building, smooth
and featureless, reflecting the light back at him from every angle. The
floor was the same. The ceiling was the same. There were no seams, no
cracks, no imperfections---just white, everywhere, pressing in on him
from all sides.

There was no furniture except a narrow bench built into one wall, and a
toilet in the corner that offered no privacy. There was no window. There
were four telescreens---one on each wall---their surfaces dark but
humming faintly with power, a sound that seemed to come from inside his
own skull.

The door closed behind him. The sound it made was soft, final. The lock
engaged with a click that seemed to come from very far away.

Arthur stood in the center of the cell. The telescreens watched him,
their dark surfaces reflecting his image back at him---gray uniform,
pale face, the number 6079 over his heart.

He sat on the bench. The surface was hard, neither warm nor cold. He
placed his hands on his knees and looked at the wall in front of him.

The wall looked back.

#

Time passed. Arthur could not have said how much.

There was no clock in the cell, no window to show the movement of the
sun, no change in the quality of the light. The illumination came from
everywhere and nowhere---the same cold, even brightness that had greeted
him in the loading bay. It did not flicker. It did not dim. It pressed
against his eyes even when he closed them, a red glow through his
eyelids that would not let him rest.

His stomach growled. His bladder filled. His muscles ached from sitting
on the hard bench. But without external markers, these sensations became
unmoored from any sense of sequence. He might have been in the cell for
three hours or thirty.

Meals arrived through a slot in the door---a tray with bread and a thin
soup that tasted of nothing, water in a metal cup that left a metallic
aftertaste on his tongue. The trays were collected through the same slot
some time later. Arthur ate because eating was something to do, and
because he understood that he would need his strength for whatever was
coming.

He did not sleep. The lights never went out, and the telescreens hummed
their constant surveillance, and the bench was too narrow and too hard
for anything resembling rest. He dozed, perhaps---brief moments when his
eyes closed and his mind drifted---but true sleep was impossible. Each
time he began to sink into unconsciousness, the light pulled him back,
bright and relentless, allowing no escape.

He thought about Peter. He wondered if Peter had sat in a cell like this
one, eating the same thin soup, staring at the same white walls. He
wondered if Peter had thought about him in those final hours before the
interrogators came.

Peter had named him. Peter had given them Arthur's name, had told them
about the photograph, had handed them everything they needed to make an
arrest. When they come, you will do whatever you have to do. That was
what Peter had said. That's not betrayal. That's survival.

Arthur sat on his bench and stared at the white wall and waited for what
was coming.

#

The first interrogation came without warning.

The door opened, and two guards entered. They did not speak. They took
Arthur by the arms and led him out of the cell, down a corridor, through
a door, into a room.

The room was larger than the cell but no less white. There was a table
with two chairs, the metal legs bolted to the floor. Arthur was placed
in one; the other remained empty. The guards withdrew, and the door
closed, and Arthur was alone.

He waited.

The room was silent except for the hum of the telescreen---a single
screen here, mounted high on the wall where he could not avoid seeing
it. The screen showed Big Brother's face, calm and benevolent, the eyes
that followed everywhere.

Arthur waited.

His hands were on the table, palms down. He could see the small tremors
running through them, the involuntary movements that betrayed his fear.
He pressed them flat against the surface, trying to still them.

He waited.

The door opened. A man entered.

Not the scarred man from the van. Someone new---older, with gray hair
and a soft, almost kind face. He wore the black overalls of the Thought
Police, but his manner was gentle, unhurried. He carried a folder in one
hand.

"Arthur," he said. "May I call you Arthur?"

Arthur nodded. His voice had stopped working again.

The man sat in the empty chair. He opened the folder and spread its
contents on the table---papers, photographs, documents that Arthur could
not read from his angle.

"My name is O'Brien," the man said. "I'll be conducting your
initial assessment. Please understand that this is not an interrogation.
Not yet. This is simply a conversation. I want to understand who you
are, Arthur. I want to help you."

Arthur said nothing.

"You've been with the Ministry of Truth for eleven years," O'Brien
continued, glancing at the papers. "A clerk in the Records Department.
Your productivity has been adequate, your conduct unremarkable. You've
never been disciplined, never been promoted, never drawn attention to
yourself in any way." He looked up. "Until recently."

"I didn't do anything," Arthur said. The words came out hoarse,
barely audible.

"No? Let me show you something."

O'Brien pushed one of the photographs across the table. Arthur looked
at it.

It was the photograph. London, 1952. The clean street, the whole
buildings, the people smiling.

"This was found in your mattress," O'Brien said. "It's a very old
photograph, Arthur. Very rare. The original was destroyed decades ago,
along with all copies. Except this one." He paused. "Where did you get
it?"

Arthur looked at the photograph. The smiling faces looked back at
him---ghosts from a world that no longer existed, that had perhaps never
existed, that the Party insisted was nothing but a lie.

"I found it," he said.

"Where?"

"On the street. In the prole sector."

O'Brien nodded slowly. "Yes. That's what you told the officers who
arrested you. A convenient story. But we both know it's not true,
don't we?"

Arthur said nothing.

"Peter Harmon gave you this photograph," O'Brien said. "He gave it
to you in the men's lavatory on the fourth floor of the Ministry of
Truth, approximately six months ago. You hid it in your flat, and you
kept it, even though you knew that possessing such materials was a
capital offense."

The room was very quiet. Arthur could hear his own breathing, too fast,
too shallow.

"Peter told us everything," O'Brien continued. "He was very
cooperative, in the end. He told us about the photograph, about the
conversations you shared, about the doubts you expressed. He gave us
names, dates, locations. He was very thorough."

Arthur thought about Peter's face---the tired eyes, the mole on his
cheek, the way he held his pencil. He thought about Peter's voice in
the fourth-floor lavatory, barely above a whisper, saying words that
could not be unsaid.

"The question," O'Brien said, leaning forward, "is what you are
going to do now. You can cooperate, as Peter did. You can tell us what
you know, help us understand the extent of your thoughtcrime, assist us
in identifying others who share your... condition. Or you can resist.
You can maintain your innocence, deny what we already know, force us to
extract the truth through other means."

He paused. His soft face was almost sympathetic.

"I should tell you, Arthur, that the second path is very painful. And
it always ends the same way. Everyone cooperates eventually. The only
question is how much suffering you choose to endure before you do."

Arthur looked at the photograph on the table. The clean street. The
whole buildings. The smiling faces.

He looked at O'Brien's soft face, his kind eyes, his patient
expression.

"I don't know anything," Arthur said. "The photograph---I found it.
Peter---I barely knew him. We talked about the weather, about work.
Nothing important. Nothing political."

O'Brien sighed. It was a small sound, almost sad.

"I'm sorry to hear that," he said. "I had hoped we could do this the
easy way."

He gathered the papers and returned them to the folder. He stood,
pushing his chair back from the table.

"You'll have time to reconsider," he said. "The Ministry is patient.
We have all the time in the world."

He walked to the door. Paused.

"The lights in your cell will remain on," he said. "They will always
remain on. In the Ministry of Love, there is no darkness. Remember that,
Arthur. When you're ready to talk, the darkness will be waiting. But
first---" He smiled. "First, there is the light."

The door closed behind him.

Arthur sat alone at the table, the telescreen humming above him, Big
Brother's face gazing down with infinite patience.

The light was very bright. The light was everywhere.

And somewhere in the Ministry's files, a small plastic bag contained a
mechanical dial that had once belonged to a speakwrite---the only piece
of his old life that remained, tagged and catalogued and waiting to be
used against him.