Chapter 6: The Routine

(Cont.)

 

The routine continued.

Days passed. Perhaps a week. Perhaps two. The meals came and went. The
exercises were performed. The corrections were received and obeyed.
Arthur existed in the blankness he had cultivated, the empty space where
thought used to be.

But something had changed.

The examination had reminded him that he had a body. Not just a body
that sat and stood and walked on command, but a body that could be
measured, tested, evaluated. A body that was being prepared for
something.

He began to notice his body in ways he had not before. The ache in his
joints from sitting too long on the hard bench---a deep, grinding pain
that lived in his knees and hips. The hunger that gnawed at him between
meals, sharper than it had been in the early days, a hollow feeling that
never quite went away even after eating. The way his muscles had begun
to atrophy, his arms thinner, his legs weaker, the flesh slowly melting
from his frame. When he wrapped his fingers around his wrist, they
overlapped now. They had not overlapped before.

He tried to remember what he had weighed before his arrest. The number
would not come. He tried to remember the address of his flat in Victory
Mansions. The street name slipped away before he could grasp it. He
tried to remember Peter's face---the mole on his cheek, the way he held
his pencil---and found only a blur where the details should have been.

The memories were going. One by one, piece by piece, they were
dissolving like the dreams that faded each morning. Soon there would be
nothing left but the routine, the shape, the number that had replaced
his name.

Arthur noticed this. He paid attention to what was being lost, even as
he lost it. It was not resistance. It was not defiance. It was simply
awareness---the last thing he had that was truly his own.

#

The dreams continued.

Not every night. Perhaps once a week, when exhaustion finally overcame
the constant vigilance of the telescreen. But when they came, they were
vivid, intense, more present than waking life.

He dreamed of Eleanor.

She was always running, always ahead of him, always just out of reach.
The setting changed---sometimes the green field with its impossible
grass, sometimes a house with yellow curtains he did not recognize,
sometimes the corridors of the Ministry of Truth with their pneumatic
tubes and humming speakwrites. But Eleanor was constant: her dark hair
flying, her laughter echoing, her face turned away so that he could
never quite see it.

He chased her through the dreams, his legs pumping, his lungs burning.
He called her name, and sometimes she turned, and sometimes she did not.
When she turned, her face was clear---the same eyes, the same nose, the
same scar on her chin. When she did not, he woke with the image of her
back imprinted on his mind, the shape of her shoulders, the way her hair
moved in the wind.

He did not know if Eleanor was real.

What if she was not a memory but a fabrication? What if the Party had
planted her in his mind, a sister who had never existed, a love that had
never been felt?

He could not know. He had no way to verify the truth of his own
memories.

But he held onto Eleanor anyway. Real or not, she was his. Real or not,
she gave him something to remember, something to hold in the empty
spaces where the telescreen could not reach.

Eleanor. His sister. The girl who ran through green fields.

He whispered her name sometimes, in the moments before sleep took him,
his lips moving silently in the darkness.

The telescreen did not correct him. Perhaps it did not see. Perhaps it
did not care.

Perhaps some things were too small to matter, even to the Party.

#

The woman who wept stopped weeping.

Arthur noticed her absence on what might have been a Tuesday---if days
still had names, if Tuesday still meant anything. He lay in the
darkness, listening for the familiar sound, and heard only silence.

The silence was worse than the weeping had been.

He did not know what had happened to her. She might have been moved to
another cell. She might have been taken for processing. She might have
been released---though Arthur did not believe this; the released were
paraded, displayed, their rehabilitation celebrated as proof of the
Party's benevolence.

Or she might have died. People died in the Ministry of Love. It was not
discussed, but everyone knew. The bodies were disposed of efficiently,
the cells cleaned and prepared for new occupants, the numbers reassigned
as if the previous holders had never existed.

6112 Aaronson, J. 6088 Rutherford, E. Numbers that had once been people,
people who had once had names and histories and loves.

Arthur thought about his own number. 6079 Holt, A. When he was
gone---processed or released or dead---the number would be given to
someone else. Someone would sit on this bench, face this telescreen,
hear this voice speaking these commands. Someone would occupy the space
he had occupied, leaving no trace of his presence.

The man in the cell to his right laughed. The sound echoed through the
walls---harsh, broken, inhuman.

Arthur did not laugh. He did not weep.

He simply waited.

#

The exercises changed.

"6079 Holt, A. Stand."

Arthur stood.

"6079 Holt, A. Extend arms."

Arthur extended his arms. They felt heavier than they should have, the
muscles trembling even before the hold began.

"6079 Holt, A. Hold."

Arthur held. His arms trembled. The minutes stretched, each one longer
than the last. His shoulders burned. His fingers went numb. His breath
came in short, sharp gasps. Still he held.

"6079 Holt, A. Lower arms."

Arthur lowered his arms. They hung at his sides, aching, feeling as
though they belonged to someone else.

"6079 Holt, A. Extend arms."

Arthur extended his arms again.

The exercises were harder now. Longer holds, more repetitions, positions
that strained muscles already weakened by inactivity and poor food.
Arthur's body screamed at him to stop, to rest, to disobey. But
disobedience was unthinkable. Disobedience was failure. Disobedience was
whatever came after the cells, the thing he could not name, the thing he
could hear in the distant screams that filtered through the walls.

He held. He always held. When his arms dropped from exhaustion, the
telescreen corrected him, and he raised them again. When his legs
buckled during the standing holds, he caught himself against the wall,
his palm slapping the cold porcelain, and he stood again. His body was
failing, but his compliance was perfect.

The days continued. The routine continued. The shape of things remained
the same.

But the shape was wearing him away. Each exercise took something from
him that did not return. Each correction carved away another fragment of
the person he had been. He could feel it happening---not as a thought,
because thought was not permitted, but as a physical sensation, like
sand running through fingers that could not close.

He did not fight it. Fighting was impossible.

He simply let it happen.

 

End of Part One