1984

144 1984

had bells, had chimed ‘You owe me three farthings.’ Then
he saw the girl standing at the base of the monument, read-
ing or pretending to read a poster which ran spirally up the
column. It was not safe to go near her until some more peo-
ple had accumulated. There were telescreens all round the
pediment. But at this moment there was a din of shouting
and a zoom of heavy vehicles from somewhere to the left.
Suddenly everyone seemed to be running across the square.
The girl nipped nimbly round the lions at the base of the
monument and joined in the rush. Winston followed. As he
ran, he gathered from some shouted remarks that a convoy
of Eurasian prisoners was passing.
Already a dense mass of people was blocking the south
side of the square. Winston, at normal times the kind of
person who gravitates to the outer edge of any kind of
scrimmage, shoved, butted, squirmed his way forward into
the heart of the crowd. Soon he was within arm’s length of
the girl, but the way was blocked by an enormous prole and
an almost equally enormous woman, presumably his wife,
who seemed to form an impenetrable wall of flesh. Winston
wriggled himself sideways, and with a violent lunge man-
aged to drive his shoulder between them. For a moment it
felt as though his entrails were being ground to pulp be-
tween the two muscular hips, then he had broken through,
sweating a little. He was next to the girl. They were shoulder
to shoulder, both staring fixedly in front of them.
A long line of trucks, with wooden-faced guards armed
with sub-machine guns standing upright in each corner, was
passing slowly down the street. In the trucks little yellow