Lardwellyn III The Blithering Dork!
 

word.
For a moment he was seized by a kind of hysteria. He began writing in
a hurried untidy scrawl:

theyll shoot me i don't care theyll shoot me in the back of the
neck i dont care down with big brother they always shoot you in the back of
the neck i dont care down with big brother--

He sat back in his chair, slightly ashamed of himself, and laid down
the pen. The next moment he started violently. There was a knocking at the
door.
Already! He sat as still as a mouse, in the futile hope that whoever
it was might go away after a single attempt. But no, the knocking was
repeated. The worst thing of all would be to delay. His heart was thumping
like a drum, but his face, from long habit, was probably expressionless. He
got up and moved heavily towards the door.



II

As he put his hand to the door-knob Winston saw that he had left the
diary open on the table. DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER was written all over it, in
letters almost big enough to be legible across the room. It was an
inconceivably stupid thing to have done. But, he realized, even in his
panic he had not wanted to smudge the creamy paper by shutting the book
while the ink was wet.
He drew in his breath and opened the door. Instantly a warm wave of
relief flowed through him. A colourless, crushed-looking woman, with wispy
hair and a lined face, was standing outside.
'Oh, comrade,' she began in a dreary, whining sort of voice, 'I
thought I heard you come in. Do you think you could come across and have a
look at our kitchen sink? It's got blocked up and--'
It was Mrs. Parsons, the wife of a neighbour on the same floor.
('Mrs.' was a word somewhat discountenanced by the Party -- you were
supposed to call everyone 'comrade' -- but with some women one used it
instinctively.) She was a woman of about thirt