Once more chapter 13/3/2023 She revived, turned to have another look at Winston and seemed immediately to take a fancy to him. Get it up while it's fresh on your stomach, like.' 'Thass better,' she said, leaning back with closed eyes. She leant forward and vomited copiously on the floor. 'Pardon,' she said, 'I ain't meself, quite.' They dono 'ow to treat a lady, do they?' She paused, patted her breast, and belched. 'I wouldn't 'a sat on you, only the buggers put me there. The woman hoisted herself upright and followed them out with a yell of 'F - bastards!' Then, noticing that she was sitting on something uneven, she slid off Winston's knees on to the bench. They wrenched off the boots with which she had been trying to kick them, and dumped her down across Winston's lap, almost breaking his thigh-bones. An enormous wreck of a woman, aged about sixty, with great tumbling breasts and thick coils of white hair which had come down in her struggles, was carried in, kicking and shouting, by four guards, who had hold of her one at each corner. Some of the drunks were so violent that the other prisoners had to combine to suppress them. There was a constant come-and-go of prisoners of every description: drug-peddlers, thieves, bandits, black-marketeers, drunks, prostitutes. All the dirty jobs were done by the politicals. The positions of trust were given only to the common criminals, especially the gangsters and the murderers, who formed a sort of aristocracy. There was bribery, favouritism, and racketeering of every kind, there was homosexuality and prostitution, there was even illicit alcohol distilled from potatoes. It was 'all right' in the camps, he gathered, so long as you had good contacts and knew the ropes. ![]() ![]() There was much talk about the forced-labour camps to which most of the prisoners expected to be sent. The guards, too, treated the common criminals with a certain forbearance, even when they had to handle them roughly. On the other hand some of them seemed to be on good terms with the guards, called them by nicknames, and tried to wheedle cigarettes through the spyhole in the door. They yelled insults at the guards, fought back fiercely when their belongings were impounded, wrote obscene words on the floor, ate smuggled food which they produced from mysterious hiding-places in their clothes, and even shouted down the telescreen when it tried to restore order. The Party prisoners were always silent and terrified, but the ordinary criminals seemed to care nothing for anybody. He had sat silent against the wall, jostled by dirty bodies, too preoccupied by fear and the pain in his belly to take much interest in his surroundings, but still noticing the astonishing difference in demeanour between the Party prisoners and the others. The majority of them were common criminals, but there were a few political prisoners among them. They had put him into a cell similar to the one he was now in, but filthily dirty and at all times crowded by ten or fifteen people. He did not know how long he had been there some hours at any rate with no clocks and no daylight it was hard to gauge the time. Before being brought here he had been taken to another place which must have been an ordinary prison or a temporary lock-up used by the patrols. He sat still again, his hands crossed on his knee. '6079 Smith W.! Hands out of pockets in the cells!' 'Smith!' yelled a voice from the telescreen. In the end the temptation to find out overcame his fear he slipped a hand into his pocket. It was even possible - he thought this because from time to time something seemed to tickle his leg - that there might be a sizeable bit of crust there. He had an idea that there were a few breadcrumbs in the pocket of his overalls. What he longed for above all was a piece of bread. But the craving for food was growing upon him. If you made unexpected movements they yelled at you from the telescreen. He sat as still as he could on the narrow bench, with his hands crossed on his knee. ![]() Since he was arrested he had not been fed. He still did not know, probably never would know, whether it had been morning or evening when they arrested him. It might be twenty-four hours since he had eaten, it might be thirty-six. But he was also hungry, with a gnawing, unwholesome kind of hunger. It had been there ever since they had bundled him into the closed van and driven him away. There were four telescreens, one in each wall. A bench, or shelf, just wide enough to sit on ran round the wall, broken only by the door and, at the end opposite the door, a lavatory pan with no wooden seat. Concealed lamps flooded it with cold light, and there was a low, steady humming sound which he supposed had something to do with the air supply. He was in a high-ceilinged windowless cell with walls of glittering white porcelain. Presumably he was in the Ministry of Love, but there was no way of making certain.
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