Chapter 5: The Cells

(Cont.)

 

They took him to a cell. Not his cell---a different one, larger, with a
window.

Arthur stopped in the doorway, staring. A window. He had not seen a
window since his arrest. The light that came through it was gray and
thin, but it was daylight---real daylight, filtered through clouds and
glass, marking the passage of time in a way the constant illumination of
the holding cells never did.

"Inside," the guard said.

Arthur stepped into the cell. The door closed behind him.

He walked to the window. It was small---perhaps half a meter
square---and set high in the wall, so that he had to stand on his toes
to see through it. The glass was thick and reinforced with wire mesh,
cold against his fingertips when he touched it. Beyond it, he could see
a courtyard.

The courtyard was empty. Concrete walls surrounded it on all sides,
rising to a height of perhaps ten meters. Above the walls, a narrow
strip of sky was visible---gray, featureless, but real. The sky. He was
looking at the sky.

Arthur stood at the window for a long time. His feet ached from
stretching to see. His calves burned. His fingers went numb against the
cold glass. But he did not move. The window was a gift---or a test. He
did not know which. He only knew that he could not look away from it.

The courtyard remained empty. Nothing moved. The gray light did not
change. A bird crossed the strip of visible sky---a dark shape, there
and gone in an instant---and Arthur's breath caught in his throat. A
bird. Something alive, something free, something that existed outside
these walls.

Finally, Arthur's legs gave out. He lowered himself from the window and
sat on the floor, his back against the wall, his legs trembling from the
strain.

The cell had a bench, like his old cell. It had a toilet in the corner.
It had a telescreen on each wall---four of them, watching from every
angle.

But it had a window. And through the window, he could see the sky.

#

That night---if it was night; the light from the window had faded to
something darker, something that might have been dusk---Arthur dreamed.

He had not dreamed since his arrest. Sleep had been too shallow, too
interrupted, too fragmented by the corrections of the telescreen. But
now, in this new cell with its window and its fading light, he slept
deeply for the first time in days.

And in his sleep, he dreamed of a field.

#

The grass was green. That was the first thing he noticed---the vivid,
impossible green of it, stretching away in all directions under a blue
sky.

He was running through the grass. His legs were shorter than they should
have been, his body smaller, lighter. He was a child. He was perhaps
seven years old.

Someone was running beside him. A girl---older than him, taller, with
dark hair that flew behind her as she ran. She was laughing.

"Catch me!" she shouted. "Catch me if you can!"

Arthur ran faster. The grass whipped against his legs, cool and damp
with morning dew. The sun was warm on his face---warm, not cold. Real
warmth. Real light.

The girl was ahead of him now, pulling away. Her laughter floated back
to him, high and clear.

"You can't catch me! You're too slow!"

Arthur's lungs burned. His legs ached. But he kept running, kept
chasing, because the girl was important, because catching her mattered
more than anything had ever mattered.

She reached a tree---a great oak with spreading branches, its leaves
rustling in a breeze he could feel on his skin. She spun around, her
back against the trunk, her arms spread wide.

"You caught me," she said. Her face was flushed with exertion, with
joy. "You finally caught me."

Arthur stopped in front of her. He was breathing hard. His heart was
pounding.

"Who are you?" he asked.

The girl's smile faded. Her face began to blur, the features running
together like watercolors in rain.

"You know who I am," she said. But her voice was wrong now---distant,
distorted, as if coming from very far away.

"I don't remember," Arthur said. "I can't remember."

The field was fading. The green grass was turning gray. The tree was
dissolving into mist.

"You have to remember," the girl said. Her voice was barely a whisper
now. "You have to remember, or it never happened. You have to remember,
or I was never real."

Arthur reached for her. His hand passed through her like smoke.

"Please," he said. "Please don't go. Please---"

#

"6079 Holt, A. Wake up."

Arthur's eyes opened. He was on the floor of his cell, curled against
the wall beneath the window. The telescreen hummed above him. The light
was the same---gray, even, unchanging.

"6079 Holt, A. Stand."

Arthur stood. His body ached. His face was wet, and he realized he had
been crying. The tears had left tracks on his cheeks, cold now in the
air of the cell.

"6079 Holt, A. Face forward."

Arthur faced the telescreen. Big Brother's face gazed down at
him---calm, patient, eternal.

The dream was already fading. The green grass, the running girl, the
tree---all of it dissolving like mist in sunlight. Arthur grasped at the
details, trying to hold them, but they slipped through his fingers like
water.

A field. A girl. Laughter.

His sister?

The word surfaced from somewhere deep in his memory, a word he had not
thought in years. Sister. He had a sister. Or he had had a sister once.
Someone who had run through green grass, who had laughed, who had leaned
against trees and smiled at him.

But the face was gone. The name was gone. The details were gone.

Only the feeling remained---a hollow ache in his chest, an emptiness
that seemed to have weight, that pressed against his ribs from the
inside.

Arthur stood facing the telescreen. His hands were at his sides. His
face was neutral. The tears had dried on his cheeks.

The Ministry had taken everything from him---his name, his freedom, his
place in the world. But it had also given him something: the knowledge
that there was something to take. The knowledge that he had a past, that
the past was real, that somewhere in the depths of his memory there were
things the Party had not managed to erase.

A field. A girl. A sister.

The dream was gone, but the truth of it remained.

#

The days passed. Arthur could count them now, by the light in the
window---the slow brightening of morning, the long gray stretch of
afternoon, the gradual dimming that meant night was coming. He counted
seven days before they came for him again.

Seven days of meals. Seven days of corrections. Seven days of standing
and sitting and walking and facing the telescreen. Seven days of
learning the rules of non-existence.

His name was gone---replaced by a number, spoken by a machine. His past
was gone---reduced to fragments, dreams that dissolved upon waking. His
future was gone---consumed by the endless present of the cell, the
routine that repeated without variation or end.

He was 6079 Holt, A. He was a body that occupied space. He was a set of
responses to a set of commands.

The dial was gone. The photograph was gone. Peter was gone. The girl in
the field was gone.

Only the rules remained.

Face the telescreen. Hands visible. Eyes open. Obey.

Arthur sat on his bench and faced the telescreen and kept his hands
visible and his eyes open.

He waited. Something---he did not know what---persisted beneath the
blankness. Something that would not quite disappear, no matter how many
times the telescreen called his number, no matter how many times he
obeyed.

#

On the seventh night, Arthur dreamed of the field again.

The same green grass. The same warm sun. The same girl running ahead of
him, her dark hair flying.

But this time, when he caught her, he asked a different question.

"What's your name?"

The girl looked at him. Her face was clear now---not blurred, not
dissolving. She had his eyes. She had his mother's nose. She had a
small scar on her chin from when she had fallen off a fence at age
eight.

"You know my name," she said.

"Tell me anyway."

The girl smiled. Her lips pressed together, her eyes bright with
something that might have been tears.

"Eleanor," she said. "My name is Eleanor."

And then she was gone, and Arthur was awake, and the name echoed in the
empty cell like a bell that had been struck once and would never be
struck again.

Eleanor.

His sister's name was Eleanor.