1984
for years in solitary confinement, they might send him to
a labour-camp, they might release him for a while, as they
sometimes did. It was perfectly possible that before he was
shot the whole drama of his arrest and interrogation would
be enacted all over again. The one certain thing was that
death never came at an expected moment. The tradition—
the unspoken tradition: somehow you knew it, though you
never heard it said—was that they shot you from behind;
always in the back of the head, without warning, as you
walked down a corridor from cell to cell.
One day—but ‘one day’ was not the right expression; just
as probably it was in the middle of the night: once—he fell
into a strange, blissful reverie. He was walking down the
corridor, waiting for the bullet. He knew that it was com-
ing in another moment. Everything was settled, smoothed
out, reconciled. There were no more doubts, no more argu-
ments, no more pain, no more fear. His body was healthy
and strong. He walked easily, with a joy of movement and
with a feeling of walking in sunlight. He was not any longer
in the narrow white corridors in the Ministry of Love, he
was in the enormous sunlit passage, a kilometre wide, down
which he had seemed to walk in the delirium induced by
drugs. He was in the Golden Country, following the foot-
track across the old rabbit-cropped pasture. He could feel
the short springy turf under his feet and the gentle sun-
shine on his face. At the edge of the field were the elm trees,
faintly stirring, and somewhere beyond that was the stream
where the dace lay in the green pools under the willows.
Suddenly he started up with a shock of horror. The