The voice repeated the phrase «our new, happy life» several times. The Ministry of Plenty had been using it quite a lot lately. Parsons was listening to the message. He didn't understand the figures, but he knew that they were in some way a reason to be happy. He had taken out a big dirty pipe which was already half full of tobacco. You couldn't fill a pipe to the top with the tobacco ration at 100 grammes a week. Winston was smoking a Victory Cigarette which he held carefully. The new ration did not start till tomorrow and he had only four cigarettes left. For the moment he ignored the noises in the canteen and was listening to the message from the telescreen. There had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother, because he had raised the chocolate ration to twenty grammes a week. And only yesterday, he thought, it had been announced that the ration would be reduced to twenty grammes a week. Was it possible that they could believe that, after only twenty-four hours? Yes, they believed it. Parsons believed it easily, as stupid as an animal. The man at the other table believed it, he would vapourize anyone who should say that last week the ration had been thirty grammes. Syme, too – in some more complex way, involving doublethink, Syme believed it. Was he, then, the only one who had a memory?
The report from the telescreen continued. This year there was more food, more clothes, more houses, more ships, more helicopters, more books, more babies – more of everything except disease, crime, and insanity. Year by year and minute by minute, everybody and everything was becoming better. Had it always been like this? Had food always tasted like this? He looked round the canteen. The low ceiling, with a lot of people in it, its walls dirty; metal tables and chairs, placed so close together that you sat with elbows touching; bent spoons, dirty trays; and a strong smell of bad gin and bad coffee and stew and dirty clothes. You always had a feeling in your stomach and in your skin that there was something that you had a right to, but didn't get. He couldn't remember anything greatly different. In any time, there had never been quite enough to eat, one had never had socks or underclothes without holes, bread had always been dark-coloured, coffee bad, cigarettes too few – you could only get enough cheap gin. And, of course, it grew worse when you became older. Was it not a sign that this was wrong? Why should one feel one couldn't bear it? Didn't it mean one had some kind of memory that things had once been different?
He looked round the canteen again. Nearly everyone was ugly, and would still have been ugly even if dressed otherwise than in the blue uniform. On the far side of the room, sitting at a table alone, a small man was drinking a cup of coffee, looking from side to side with his little eyes. It was easy to think there were people of the ideal physical type set by the Party – tall muscular youths, blond-haired, sunburnt, careless – that there were a lot of them, ifyou didn't look around, thought Winston. Actually most of the people in Airstrip One were small and dark. There were many men like this in the Ministries: little men, growing fat very early in life, with short legs, and fat faces with very small eyes.
The message from the Ministry of Plenty ended on another trumpet call and gave way to some low quality music. Parsons took his pipe out of his mouth.
«The Ministry of Plenty's done a good job this year», he said. «By the way, Smith old boy, I suppose you haven't got any razor blades?»
«Not one», said Winston. «I've been using the same blade for six weeks myself».
«Ah, well – just thought I'd ask you, old boy».
«Sorry», said Winston.
The quacking voice from the next table had started up again, as loud as ever. Winston suddenly thought of Mrs. Parsons. Within two years those children would be reporting her to the Thought Police. Mrs. Parsons would be vapourized. Syme would be vapourized. Winston would be vapourized. O'Brien would be vapourized. Parsons, on the other hand, would never be vapourized. The man with the quacking voice would never be vapourized. The little men from the Ministries, too, would never be vapourized. And the girl with dark hair, the girl from the Fiction Department – she would never be vapourized either. It seemed to him that he knew who would survive and who would die: though it was not easy to say why.
At this moment the girl at the next table turned partly round and was looking at him. It was the girl with dark hair. When she caught his eye she looked away again.
Winston felt scared. Why was she watching him? Why was she following him about? Unfortunately he could not remember whether she had already been at the table when he arrived, or had come there afterwards. But yesterday, at any rate, during the Two Minutes Hate, she had sat right behind him when there was no need to do so. Quite likely she had wanted to listen to him and make sure whether he was shouting loudly enough.
His earlier thought returned to him: probably she was not actually a member of the Thought Police, but it made her even more dangerous. He did not know how long she had been looking at him, but perhaps for as much as five minutes. It was possible that his face had not been perfectly under control. The smallest thing could give you away. To wear a wrong expression on your face (to look as if you don't believe it when there was a message of a victory, for example) was itself an offence. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime, it was called.
The girl had turned her back on him again. Perhaps after all she was not really following him about, perhaps it didn't mean anything that she had sat so close to him yesterday and was looking at him now. His cigarette had gone out, and he laid it carefully on the table. He would finish smoking it after work, if he could keep the tobacco in it. Syme had folded up his strip of paper and put it away in his pocket. Parsons had begun talking again.
«Did I ever tell you, old boy», he said, «about the time when those two kids of mine set fire to the old market-woman's skirt because they saw her wrapping up sausages in a poster of B. B.? Burned her quite badly, I believe. Troublemakers, eh? That's a good training they give them in the Spies now – better than in my day, even. They've given them ear trumpets for listening through keyholes! My little girl brought one home the other night – tried it on our sitting-room door, and said she could hear twice as much as with her ear to the hole. Of course it's only a toy. Still, gives them the right idea, eh?»
At this moment the telescreen let out a whistle. It was the signal to return to work. All three men jumped to their feet and went to the lifts, and the tobacco fell out of Winston's cigarette.
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