1 1984
business. You can stop being a servant for the next ten min-
utes.’
The little man sat down, quite at his ease, and yet still
with a servant-like air, the air of a valet enjoying a priv-
ilege. Winston regarded him out of the corner of his eye.
It struck him that the man’s whole life was playing a part,
and that he felt it to be dangerous to drop his assumed per-
sonality even for a moment. O’Brien took the decanter by
the neck and filled up the glasses with a dark-red liquid. It
aroused in Winston dim memories of something seen long
ago on a wall or a hoarding—a vast bottle composed of elec-
tric lights which seemed to move up and down and pour its
contents into a glass. Seen from the top the stuff looked al-
most black, but in the decanter it gleamed like a ruby. It had
a sour-sweet smell. He saw Julia pick up her glass and sniff
at it with frank curiosity.
‘It is called wine,’ said O’Brien with a faint smile. ‘You
will have read about it in books, no doubt. Not much of it
gets to the Outer Party, I am afraid.’ His face grew solemn
again, and he raised his glass: ‘I think it is fitting that we
should begin by drinking a health. To our Leader: To Em-
manuel Goldstein.’
Winston took up his glass with a certain eagerness. Wine
was a thing he had read and dreamed about. Like the glass
paperweight or Mr Charrington’s half-remembered rhymes,
it belonged to the vanished, romantic past, the olden time
as he liked to call it in his secret thoughts. For some reason
he had always thought of wine as having an intensely sweet
taste, like that of blackberry jam and an immediate intoxi-