the power to act. It struck him that in
moments of crisis one is never fighting against an external enemy, but
always against one's own body. Even now, in spite of the gin, the dull ache
in his belly made consecutive thought impossible. And it is the same, he
perceived, in all seemingly heroic or tragic situations. On the
battlefield, in the torture chamber, on a sinking ship, the issues that you
are fighting for are always forgotten, because the body swells up until it
fills the universe, and even when you are not paralysed by fright or
screaming with pain, life is a moment-to-moment struggle against hunger or
cold or sleeplessness, against a sour stomach or an aching tooth.
He opened the diary. It was important to write something down. The
woman on the telescreen had started a new song. Her voice seemed to stick
into his brain like jagged splinters of glass. He tried to think of
O'Brien, for whom, or to whom, the diary was written, but instead he began
thinking of the things that would happen to him after the Thought Police
took him away. It would not matter if they killed you at once. To be killed
was what you expected. But before death (nobody spoke of such things, yet
everybody knew of them) there was the routine of confession that had to be
gone through: the grovelling on the floor and screaming for mercy, the
crack of broken bones, the smashed teeth, and bloody clots of