Part 1, Chapter 8

8 独自去偷欢

From somewhere at the bottom of a passage the smell of roasting coffee -- real coffee, not Victory Coffee -- came floating out into the street. Winston paused involuntarily. For perhaps two seconds he was back in the half-forgotten world of his childhood. Then a door banged, seeming to cut off the smell as abruptly as though it had been a sound.

在一条小巷尽头的什么地方,有一股烘咖啡豆的香味向街上传来,这是真咖啡,不是胜利牌咖啡。温斯顿不自觉地停下步来。大约有两秒钟之久,他又回到了他那遗忘过半的童年世界。接着是门砰的一响,把这香味给突然切断了,好象它是声音一样。

He had walked several kilometres over pavements, and his varicose ulcer was throbbing. This was the second time in three weeks that he had missed an evening at the Community Centre: a rash act, since you could be certain that the number of your attendances at the Centre was carefully checked. In principle a Party member had no spare time, and was never alone except in bed. It was assumed that when he was not working, eating, or sleeping he would be taking part in some kind of communal recreation: to do anything that suggested a taste for solitude, even to go for a walk by yourself, was always slightly dangerous. There was a word for it in Newspeak: ownlife, it was called, meaning individualism and eccentricity. But this evening as he came out of the Ministry the balminess of the April air had tempted him. The sky was a warmer blue than he had seen it that year, and suddenly the long, noisy evening at the Centre, the boring, exhausting games, the lectures, the creaking camaraderie oiled by gin, had seemed intolerable. On impulse he had turned away from the bus-stop and wandered off into the labyrinth of London, first south, then east, then north again, losing himself among unknown streets and hardly bothering in which direction he was going.

他在人行便道上已经走了好几公里,静脉曲张发生溃疡的地方又在发痒了。三星期以来,今天晚上是他第二次没有到邻里活动中心站去:这是一件很冒失的事,因为可以肯定,你参加中心站活动的次数,都是有人仔细记下来的。原则上,一个党员没有空暇的时间,除了在床上睡觉以外,总是有人作伴的。凡是不在工作、吃饭、睡觉的时候,他一定是在参加某种集体的文娱活动;凡是表明有离群索居的爱好的事情,哪怕是独自去散步,都是有点危险的。新话中对此有个专门的词,叫孤生(ownlife),这意味着个人主义和性格孤癖。但是今天晚上他从部里出来的时候,四月的芬芳空气引诱了他。蓝色的天空是他今年以来第一次看到比较有些暖意,于是突然之间,他觉得在中心站度过这个喧闹冗长的夜晚,玩那些令人厌倦吃力的游戏,听那些报告讲话,靠杜松子酒维持勉强的同志关系,都教他无法忍受了。他在一时冲动之下,从公共汽车站走开,漫步走进了伦敦的迷魂阵似的大街小巷,先是往南,然后往东,最质又往北,迷失在一些没有到过的街道上,也不顾朝什么方向走去。

'If there is hope,' he had written in the diary, 'it lies in the proles.' The words kept coming back to him, statement of a mystical truth and a palpable absurdity. He was somewhere in the vague, brown-coloured slums to the north and east of what had once been Saint Pancras Station. He was walking up a cobbled street of little two-storey houses with battered doorways which gave straight on the pavement and which were somehow curiously suggestive of ratholes. There were puddles of filthy water here and there among the cobbles. In and out of the dark doorways, and down narrow alley-ways that branched off on either side, people swarmed in astonishing numbers -- girls in full bloom, with crudely lipsticked mouths, and youths who chased the girls, and swollen waddling women who showed you what the girls would be like in ten years' time, and old bent creatures shuffling along on splayed feet, and ragged barefooted children who played in the puddles and then scattered at angry yells from their mothers. Perhaps a quarter of the windows in the street were broken and boarded up. Most of the people paid no attention to Winston; a few eyed him with a sort of guarded curiosity. Two monstrous women with brick-red forearms folded across thelr aprons were talking outside a doorway. Winston caught scraps of conversation as he approached.

他曾经在日记中写过,“如果有希望的话,希望在无产者身上。”他不断地回想起这句话,这说明了一个神秘的真理、明显的荒谬。他现在是在从前曾经是圣潘克拉斯车站的地方以北和以东的一片褐色贫民窟里。他走在一条鹅卵石铺的街上,两旁是小小的两层楼房,破落的大门就在人行道旁,有点奇怪地使人感到象耗子洞;在鹅卵石路面上到处有一滩滩脏水。黑黝黝的门洞的里里外外,还有两旁的狭隘的陋巷里,到处是人,为数之多,令人吃惊——鲜花盛开一般的少女,嘴上涂着鲜艳的唇膏;追逐着她们的少年;走路摇摇摆摆的肥胖的女人,使你看到这些姑娘们十年之后会成为什么样子;迈着八字脚来来往往的驼背弯腰的老头儿;衣衫褴缕的赤脚玩童,他们在污水潭中嬉戏,一听到他们母亲的怒喝又四散逃开。街上的玻璃窗大约有四分之一是打破的,用木板钉了起来。大多数人根本不理会温斯顿;有少数人小心翼翼地好奇地看他一眼。有两个粗壮的女人,两条象砖头一般发红的胳膊交叉抱在胸前,在一个门口城着闲谈。温斯顿走近的时候听到了她们谈话的片言只语。

'"Yes," I says to 'er, "that's all very well," I says. "But if you'd of been in my place you'd of done the same as what I done. It's easy to criticize," I says, "but you ain't got the same problems as what I got."'

“‘是啊,’我对她说,‘这样好是好,’我说。‘不过,要是你是我,你就也会象我一样。说别人很容易,’我说,‘可是,我要操心的事儿,你可没有。’”

'Ah,' said the other, 'that's jest it. That's jest where it is.'

“啊,”另一个女人说,“你说得对。就是这么一回事。”

The strident voices stopped abruptly. The women studied him in hostile silence as he went past. But it was not hostility, exactly; merely a kind of wariness, a momentary stiffening, as at the passing of some unfamiliar animal. The blue overalls of the Party could not be a common sight in a street like this. Indeed, it was unwise to be seen in such places, unless you had definite business there. The patrols might stop you if you happened to run into them. 'May I see your papers, comrade? What are you doing here? What time did you leave work? Is this your usual way home?' -- and so on and so forth. Not that there was any rule against walking home by an unusual route: but it was enough to draw attention to you if the Thought Police heard about it.

刺耳的说话突然停止了。那两个女人在他经过的时候怀有敌意地看着他。但是确切地说,这谈不上是敌意;只是一种警觉,暂时的僵化,象在看到不熟悉的野兽经过一样。在这样的一条街道上,党员的蓝制服不可能是常见的。的确,让人看到自己出现在这种地方是不明智的,除非你有公务在身。如果碰上巡逻队,他们一定要查问的。“给我看一看你的证件。好呀,同志?你在这里于什么?你什么时候下班的?这是你平时回家的路吗?”——如此等等。并不是说有什么规定不许走另一条路回家,但是如果思想警察知道了这件事,你就会引起他们的注意。

Suddenly the whole street was in commotion. There were yells of warning from all sides. People were shooting into the doorways like rabbits. A young woman leapt out of a doorway a little ahead of Winston, grabbed up a tiny child playing in a puddle, whipped her apron round it, and leapt back again, all in one movement. At the same instant a man in a concertina-like black suit, who had emerged from a side alley, ran towards Winston, pointing excitedly to the sky.

突然之间,整条街道骚动起来。四面八方都有报警的惊叫声。大家都象兔子一般窜进了门洞。有今年轻妇女在温斯顿前面不远的地方从一个门洞中窜了出来,一把拉起一个在水潭中嬉戏的孩子,用围裙把他围住,又窜了回去,这一切动作都是在刹那间发生的。与此同时,有个穿着一套象六角手风琴似的黑衣服的男子从一条小巷出来,他向温斯顿跑过来,一边紧张地指着天空:

'Steamer!' he yelled. 'Look out, guv'nor! Bang over'ead! Lay down quick!'

“蒸汽机!”他嚷道。“小心,首长!头上有炸弹,快卧倒!”

'Steamer' was a nickname which, for some reason, the proles applied to rocket bombs. Winston promptly flung himself on his face. The proles were nearly always right when they gave you a warning of this kind. They seemed to possess some kind of instinct which told them several seconds in advance when a rocket was coming, although the rockets supposedly travelled faster than sound. Winston clasped his forearms above his head. There was a roar that seemed to make the pavement heave; a shower of light objects pattered on to his back. When he stood up he found that he was covered with fragments of glass from the nearest window.

“蒸汽机”是无产者不知为什么叫火箭炸弹的外号。温斯顿马上扑倒在地。碰到这种事情,无产者总是对的。他似乎有一种直觉,在好几秒钟之前能预知火箭射来,尽管火箭飞行的速度照说要比声音还快。温斯顿双臂抱住脑袋。这时一声轰隆,仿佛要把人行道掀起来似的,有什么东西象阵雨似的掉在他的背上。他站起来一看,原来是附近窗口飞来的碎玻璃。

He walked on. The bomb had demolished a group of houses 200 metres up the street. A black plume of smoke hung in the sky, and below it a cloud of plaster dust in which a crowd was already forming around the ruins. There was a little pile of plaster lying on the pavement ahead of him, and in the middle of it he could see a bright red streak. When he got up to it he saw that it was a human hand severed at the wrist. Apart from the bloody stump, the hand was so completely whitened as to resemble a plaster cast.

他继续往前走。那颗炸弹把前面两百公尺外的一些房子炸掉了。空中高悬着一股黑烟柱,下面一片墙灰腾空而起,大家已经开始团团围住那堆瓦砾了。在他前面的人行道上也有一堆墙灰,他可以看到中间有一道猩红色的东西。他走近一看,原来是一只齐腕炸断的手。除了近手腕处血污一片,那只手完全苍白,没有血色,象石膏制的一样。

He kicked the thing into the gutter, and then, to avoid the crowd, turned down a side-street to the right. Within three or four minutes he was out of the area which the bomb had affected, and the sordid swarming life of the streets was going on as though nothing had happened. It was nearly twenty hours, and the drinking-shops which the proles frequented ('pubs', they called them) were choked with customers. From their grimy swing doors, endlessly opening and shutting, there came forth a smell of urine, sawdust, and sour beer. In an angle formed by a projecting house-front three men were standing very close together, the middle one of them holding a folded-up newspaper which the other two were studying over his shoulder. Even before he was near enough to make out the expression on their faces, Winston could see absorption in every line of their bodies. It was obviously some serious piece of news that they were reading. He was a few paces away from them when suddenly the group broke up and two of the men were in violent altercation. For a moment they seemed almost on the point of blows.

他把它踢到边上,然后躲开人群,拐到右手的一条小巷里,三、四分钟以后他就离开了挨炸的地方,附近街道人来人往,一切如常,好象什么事情也没有发生一样。这时已快到二十点了,无产者光顾的小酒店里挤满了顾客。黑黑的弹簧门不断地推开又关上,飘出来一阵阵尿臊臭、锯木屑、陈啤酒的味儿。有一所房子门口凸出的地方,角落里有三个人紧紧地站在-起,中间一个人手中拿着一份折叠好的报纸,其他两个人伸着脖子从他身后瞧那报纸。温斯顿还没有走近看清他们脸上的表情,就可以知道他们是多么全神贯注。他们显然是在看一条重要的新闻。他走到距他们只有几步远的时候,这三个人突然分了开来,其中两个人发生了激烈争吵。看上去他们几乎快要打了起来。

'Can't you bleeding well listen to what I say? I tell you no number ending in seven ain't won for over fourteen months!'

“你他妈的不能好好地听我说吗?我告诉你,一年零两个月以来,末尾是七的号码没有中过彩!”

'Yes, it 'as, then!'

“中过了!”

'No, it 'as not! Back 'ome I got the 'ole lot of 'em for over two years wrote down on a piece of paper. I takes 'em down reg'lar as the clock. An' I tell you, no number ending in seven-'

“不,没有中过!我家里全有,两年多的中彩号码全都记在一张纸上。我一次不差,一次不漏,都记下来了。我告诉你,末尾是七的号码没有——”

'Yes, a seven 'as won! I could pretty near tell you the bleeding number. Four oh seven, it ended in. It were in February -- second week in February.'

“中过了,七字中过了!我可以把他妈的那个号码告诉你。四O七,最后一个数目是七。那是在二月里,二月的第二个星期。”

'February your grandmother! I got it all down in black and white. An' I tell you, no number-'

“操你奶奶的二月!我都记下来了,白纸黑字,一点不差。我告诉你——”

'Oh, pack it in!' said the third man.

“唉,别吵了!”第三个人说。

They were talking about the Lottery. Winston looked back when he had gone thirty metres. They were still arguing, with vivid, passionate faces. The Lottery, with its weekly pay-out of enormous prizes, was the one public event to which the proles paid serious attention. It was probable that there were some millions of proles for whom the Lottery was the principal if not the only reason for remaining alive. It was their delight, their folly, their anodyne, their intellectual stimulant. Where the Lottery was concerned, even people who could barely read and write seemed capable of intricate calculations and staggering feats of memory. There was a whole tribe of men who made a living simply by selling systems, forecasts, and lucky amulets. Winston had nothing to do with the running of the Lottery, which was managed by the Ministry of Plenty, but he was aware (indeed everyone in the party was aware) that the prizes were largely imaginary. Only small sums were actually paid out, the winners of the big prizes being non-existent persons. In the absence of any real inter-communication between one part of Oceania and another, this was not difficult to arrange.

他们是在谈论彩票。温斯顿走到三十公尺开外又回头看。他们仍在争论,一脸兴奋认真的样子。彩票每星期开奖一次,奖金不少,这是无产者真正关心的一件大事。可以这么说,对好几百万无产者来说,彩票如果不是他们仍旧活着的唯一理由,也是主要的理由。这是他们的人生乐趣,他们的一时荒唐,他们的止痛药,他们的脑力刺激剂。一碰到彩票,即使是目不识丁的人也似乎运算娴熟,记忆惊人。有整整一大帮人就靠介绍押宝方法、预测中奖号码、兜售吉利信物为生。温斯顿同经营彩票无关,那是富裕部的事,但是他知道(党内的人都知道)奖金基本上都是虚构的。实际付的只是一些末奖,头、二、三等奖的得主都是不存在的人。由于大洋国各地之间没有相互联系,这件事不难安排。

But if there was hope, it lay in the proles. You had to cling on to that. When you put it in words it sounded reasonable: it was when you looked at the human beings passing you on the pavement that it became an act of faith. The street into which he had turned ran downhill. He had a feeling that he had been in this neighbourhood before, and that there was a main thoroughfare not far away. From somewhere ahead there came a din of shouting voices. The street took a sharp turn and then ended in a flight of steps which led down into a sunken alley where a few stallkeepers were selling tired-looking vegetables. At this moment Winston remembered where he was. The alley led out into the main street, and down the next turning, not five minutes away, was the junk-shop where he had bought the blank book which was now his diary. And in a small stationer's shop not far away he had bought his penholder and his bottle of ink.

但是如果有希望的话,希望在无产者身上。你得死抱住这一点。你把它用话说出来,听起来就很有道理。你看一看人行道上走过你身旁的人,这就变成了一种信仰。他拐进去的那条街往下坡走。他觉得他以前曾经来过这一带,不远还有一条大街。前面传来了一阵叫喊的声音。街道转了一个弯,尽头的地方是一个台阶,下面是一个低洼的小巷,有几个摆摊的在卖发蔫的蔬菜。这时温斯顿记起了他身在什么地方了。这条小巷通到大街上,下一个拐角,走不到五分钟,就是他买那个空白本子当作日记本的旧货铺子了。在不远的一家文具铺里,他曾经买过笔杆和墨水。

He paused for a moment at the top of the steps. On the opposite side of the alley there was a dingy little pub whose windows appeared to be frosted over but in reality were merely coated with dust. A very old man, bent but active, with white moustaches that bristled forward like those of a prawn, pushed open the swing door and went in. As Winston stood watching, it occurred to him that the old man, who must be eighty at the least, had already been middle-aged when the Revolution happened. He and a few others like him were the last links that now existed with the vanished world of capitalism. In the Party itself there were not many people left whose ideas had been formed before the Revolution. The older generation had mostly been wiped out in the great purges of the fifties and sixties, and the few who survived had long ago been terrified into complete intellectual surrender. If there was any one still alive who could give you a truthful account of conditions in the early part of the century, it could only be a prole. Suddenly the passage from the history book that he had copied into his diary came back into Winston's mind, and a lunatic impulse took hold of him. He would go into the pub, he would scrape acquaintance with that old man and question him. He would say to him: 'Tell me about your life when you were a boy. What was it like in those days? Were things better than they are now, or were they worse?'

他在台阶上面停了一会儿,小巷的那一头是一家昏暗的小酒店,窗户看上去结了霜,其实只不过是积了尘垢。一个年纪很老的人,虽然腰板挺不起来,动作却很矫捷,白色的胡子向前挺着,好象明虾的胡子一样,他推开了弹簧门,走了进去。温斯顿站在那里看着,忽然想起这个老头儿一定至少有八十岁了,革命的时候已入中年。他那样的少数几个人现在己成了同消失了的资本主义世界的最后联系了。思想在革命前已经定型的人,在党内已经不多。在五十年代和六十年代的大清洗时期,老一代的人大部分已被消灭掉,少数侥幸活下来的,也早已吓怕,在思想上完全投降。活着的人中,能够把本世纪初期的情况向你作一番如实的介绍的,如果有的话,也只可能是个无产者。突然之间,温斯顿的脑海里又浮现了他从历史教科书上抄在日记中的一段话,他一时冲动,象发疯一样:他要到那酒店里去,同那个老头儿搭讪,询问他一个究竟。他要这么对他说:“请你谈谈你小时候的事儿。那时候的日子怎么样?比现在好,还是比现在坏?”

Hurriedly, lest he should have time to become frightened, he descended the steps and crossed the narrow street. It was madness of course. As usual, there was no definite rule against talking to proles and frequenting their pubs, but it was far too unusual an action to pass unnoticed. If the patrols appeared he might plead an attack of faintness, but it was not likely that they would believe him. He pushed open the door, and a hideous cheesy smell of sour beer hit him in the face. As he entered the din of voices dropped to about half its volume. Behind his back he could feel everyone eyeing his blue overalls. A game of darts which was going on at the other end of the room interrupted itself for perhaps as much as thirty seconds. The old man whom he had followed was standing at the bar, having some kind of altercation with the barman, a large, stout, hook-nosed young man with enormous forearms. A knot of others, standing round with glasses in their hands, were watching the scene.

他急急忙忙地走下台阶,穿过狭窄的小巷,唯恐晚了一步,心中害怕起来。当然,这样做是发疯。按理,并没有具体规定,不许同无产者交谈,或者光顾他们的酒店,但是这件事太不平常,必然会有人注意到。如果巡逻队来了,他可以说是因为感到突然头晕,不过他们多半不会相信他。他推开门,迎面就是一阵走气啤酒的干酪一般的恶臭。他一进去,里面谈话的嗡嗡声就低了下来。他可以觉察到背后人人都在看他的蓝制服。屋里那一头原来有人在玩的投镖游戏,这时也停了大约有三十秒钟。他跟着进来的那个老头儿站在柜台前,同酒保好象发生了争吵,那个酒保是个体格魁梧的年轻人,长着鹰勾鼻,胳膊粗壮。另外几个人,手中拿着啤酒杯,围着看他们。

'I arst you civil enough, didn't I?' said the old man, straightening his shoulders pugnaciously. 'You telling me you ain't got a pint mug in the 'ole bleeding boozer?'

“我不是很客气地问你吗?”那个老头儿说,狠狠地挺起腰板。“你说这个捞什子的鬼地方没有一品脱装的缸子?”

'And what in hell's name is a pint?' said the barman, leaning forward with the tips of his fingers on the counter.

“他妈的什么叫一品脱?”酒保说,手指尖托着柜台。

'Ark at 'im! Calls 'isself a barman and don't know what a pint is! Why, a pint's the 'alf of a quart, and there's four quarts to the gallon. 'Ave to teach you the A, B, C next.'

'Never heard of 'em,' said the barman shortly. 'Litre and half litre -- that's all we serve. There's the glasses on the shelf in front of you.

'I likes a pint,' persisted the old man. 'You could 'a drawed me off a pint easy enough. We didn't 'ave these bleeding litres when I was a young man.'

'When you were a young man we were all living in the treetops,' said the barman, with a glance at the other customers.

There was a shout of laughter, and the uneasiness caused by Winston's entry seemed to disappear. The old man's whitestubbled face had flushed pink. He turned away, muttering to himself, and bumped into Winston. Winston caught him gently by the arm.

'May I offer you a drink?' he said.

'You're a gent,' said the other, straightening his shoulders again. He appeared not to have noticed Winston's blue overalls. 'Pint!' he added aggressively to the barman. 'Pint of wallop.'

The barman swished two half-litres of dark-brown beer into thick glasses which he had rinsed in a bucket under the counter. Beer was the only drink you could get in prole pubs. The proles were supposed not to drink gin, though in practice they could get hold of it easily enough. The game of darts was in full swing again, and the knot of men at the bar had begun talking about lottery tickets. Winston's presence was forgotten for a moment. There was a deal table under the window where he and the old man could talk without fear of being overheard. It was horribly dangerous, but at any rate there was no telescreen in the room, a point he had made sure of as soon as he came in.

"E could 'a drawed me off a pint,' grumbled the old man as he settled down behind a glass. 'A 'alf litre ain't enough. It don't satisfy. And a 'ole litre's too much. It starts my bladder running. Let alone the price.'

'You must have seen great changes since you were a young man,' said Winston tentatively.

The old man's pale blue eyes moved from the darts board to the bar, and from the bar to the door of the Gents, as though it were in the bar-room that he expected the changes to have occurred.

'The beer was better,' he said finally. 'And cheaper! When I was a young man, mild beer -- wallop we used to call it -- was fourpence a pint. That was before the war, of course.'

'Which war was that?' said Winston.

'It's all wars,' said the old man vaguely. He took up his glass, and his shoulders straightened again. 'Ere's wishing you the very best of 'ealth!'

In his lean throat the sharp-pointed Adam's apple made a surprisingly rapid up-and-down movement, and the beer vanished. Winston went to the bar and came back with two more half-litres. The old man appeared to have forgotten his prejudice against drinking a full litre.

'You are very much older than I am,' said Winston. 'You must have been a grown man before I was born. You can remember what it was like in the old days, before the Revolution. People of my age don't really know anything about those times. We can only read about them in books, and what it says in the books may not be true. I should like your opinion on that. The history books say that life before the Revolution was completely different from what it is now. There was the most terrible oppression, injustice, poverty worse than anything we can imagine. Here in London, the great mass of the people never had enough to eat from birth to death. Half of them hadn't even boots on their feet. They worked twelve hours a day, they left school at nine, they slept ten in a room. And at the same time there were a very few people, only a few thousands -- the capitalists, they were called -- who were rich and powerful. They owned everything that there was to own. They lived in great gorgeous houses with thirty servants, they rode about in motor-cars and four-horse carriages, they drank champagne, they wore top hats-'

The old man brightened suddenly.

'Top 'ats!' he said. 'Funny you should mention 'em. The same thing come into my 'ead only yesterday, I dono why. I was jest thinking, I ain't seen a top 'at in years. Gorn right out, they 'ave. The last time I wore one was at my sister-in-law's funeral. And that was -- well, I couldn't give you the date, but it must'a been fifty years ago. Of course it was only 'ired for the occasion, you understand.'

“高礼帽!”他说道。“说来奇怪,你提到高礼帽。我昨天还想到它。不知为什么。我忽然想到,我已有多少年没有见到高礼帽了。过时了,高礼帽。我最后一次戴高礼帽是参加我小姨子的葬礼。那是多少年以前的事了?可惜我说不好是哪一年了,至少是五十年以前的事了。当然罗,你知道,我只是为了参加葬礼才去租来戴的。”

'It isn't very important about the top hats,' said Winston patiently. 'The point is, these capitalists -- they and a few lawyers and priests and so forth who lived on them -- were the lords of the earth. Everything existed for their benefit. You -- the ordinary people, the workers -- were their slaves. They could do what they liked with you. They could ship you off to Canada like cattle. They could sleep with your daughters if they chose. They could order you to be flogged with something called a cat-o'-nine tails. You had to take your cap off when you passed them. Every capitalist went about with a gang of lackeys who-'

“倒不是高礼帽有什么了不起,”温斯顿耐心说。“问题是,那些资本家——他们,还有少数一些靠他们为生的律师、牧师等等的人——是当家作主的。什么事情都对他们有好处。你——普通老百姓,工人——是他们的奴隶。他们对你们这种人爱怎么样就怎么样。他们可以把你们当作牲口一样运到加拿大去。他们高兴的话可以跟你们的闺女睡觉。他们可以叫人用九尾鞭打你们。你们见到他们得脱帽鞠躬。资本家每人都带着一帮走狗——”

The old man brightened again.

老头儿又眼睛一亮。

'Lackeys!' he said. 'Now there's a word I ain't 'eard since ever so long. Lackeys! That reg'lar takes me back, that does. I recollect oh, donkey's years ago -- I used to sometimes go to 'Yde Park of a Sunday afternoon to 'ear the blokes making speeches. Salvation Army, Roman Catholics, Jews, Indians -- all sorts there was. And there was one bloke -- well, I couldn't give you 'is name, but a real powerful speaker 'e was. 'E didn't 'alf give it 'em! "Lackeys!" 'e says, "lackeys of the bourgeoisie! Flunkies of the ruling class!" Parasites -- that was another of them. And 'yenas -- 'e definitely called 'em 'yenas. Of course 'e was referring to the Labour Party, you understand.'

“走狗!”他说道。“这个名称我可有好久没有听到了。狗!这常常教我想起从前的事来。我想起——唉,不知有多少年以前了——我有时星期天下午常常到海德公园去听别人在那里讲话。救世军、天主教、犹太人、印度人——各种各样的人。有一个家伙——唉,我已记不起他的名字了,可真会讲话。他讲话一点也不对他们客气!‘走狗!’他说。‘资产阶级的走狗!统治阶级的狗腿子!’还有一个名称是寄生虫。还叫鬣狗——他真的叫他们鬣狗。当然,你知道,他说的是工党。”

Winston had the feeling that they were talking at crosspurposes.

温斯顿知道他们说的不是一码事。

'What I really wanted to know was this,' he said. 'Do you feel that you have more freedom now than you had in those days? Are you treated more like a human being? In the old days, the rich people, the people at the top-'

“我要想知道,”他说。“你是不是觉得你现在比那时候更自由?他们待你更象人?在从前,有钱人,上层的人——”

'The 'Ouse of Lords,' put in the old man reminiscently.

“贵族院,”老头儿缅怀往事地说。

'The House of Lords, if you like. What I am asking is, were these people able to treat you as an inferior, simply because they were rich and you were poor? Is it a fact, for instance, that you had to call them "Sir" and take off your cap when you passed them?'

“好吧,就说贵族院吧。我要问的是,那些人就是因为他们有钱而你没有钱,可以把你看作低人一等?比如说,你碰到他们的时候,你得叫他们‘老爷’,脱帽鞠躬,是不是这样?”

The old man appeared to think deeply. He drank off about a quarter of his beer before answering.

老头儿似乎在苦苦思索。他喝了一大口啤酒才作答。

'Yes,' he said. 'They liked you to touch your cap to 'em. It showed respect, like. I didn't agree with it, myself, but I done it often enough. Had to, as you might say.'

“是啊?”他说。“他们喜欢你见到他们脱帽。这表示尊敬。我本人是不赞成那样做的,不过我还是常常这样做。你不得不这样,可以这么说。”

'And was it usual -- I'm only quoting what I've read in history books -- was it usual for these people and their servants to push you off the pavement into the gutter?'

“那些人和他们的人是不是常常把你从人行道上推到马路中间去?这只不过是从历史书上看到的。”

'One of 'em pushed me once,' said the old man. 'I recollect it as if it was yesterday. It was Boat Race night -- terribly rowdy they used to get on Boat Race night -- and I bumps into a young bloke on Shaftesbury Avenue. Quite a gent, 'e was -- dress shirt, top 'at, black overcoat. 'E was kind of zig-zagging across the pavement, and I bumps into 'im accidental-like. 'E says, "Why can't you look where you're going?" 'e says. I say, "Ju think you've bought the bleeding pavement?" 'E says, "I'll twist your bloody 'ead off if you get fresh with me." I says, "You're drunk. I'll give you in charge in 'alf a minute," I says. An' if you'll believe me, 'e puts 'is 'and on my chest and gives me a shove as pretty near sent me under the wheels of a bus. Well, I was young in them days, and I was going to 'ave fetched 'im one, only-'

“有一个人曾经推过我一次,”老头儿说。“我还记得很清楚,仿佛是昨天一般。那是举行划舟赛的晚上——在划舟赛的晚上,他们常常喝得醉醺醺的——我在沙夫茨伯雷街上遇到了一个年轻人。他是个上等人——穿着白衬衫,戴着高礼帽,外面一件黑大衣。他有点歪歪斜斜地在人行道上走,我一不小心撞到了他的怀里。他说,‘你走路不长眼睛吗?’我说,‘这人行道又不是你的。’他说,‘你再顶嘴,我宰了你。’我说,‘你喝醉了。我给你半分钟时间,快滚开。’说来不信,他举起手来,朝我当胸一推,几乎把我推到一辆公共汽车的轱辘下面。那时候我还年轻,我气上心来正想还手,这时——”

A sense of helplessness took hold of Winston. The old man's memory was nothing but a rubbish-heap of details. One could question him all day without getting any real information. The party histories might still be true, after a fashion: they might even be completely true. He made a last attempt.

温斯顿感到无可奈何。这个老头儿的记忆里只有一堆细微末节的垃圾。你问他一天,也问不出什么名堂来的。从某种意义上来说,党的历史书可能仍是正确的;也许甚至是完全正确的。他作了最后一次尝试。

'Perhaps I have not made myself clear,' he said. 'What I'm trying to say is this. You have been alive a very long time; you lived half your life before the Revolution. In 1925, for instance, you were already grown up. Would you say from what you can remember, that life in 1925 was better than it is now, or worse? If you could choose, would you prefer to live then or now?'

“可能我没有把话说清楚,”他说。“我要说的是:你年纪很大,有一半是在革命前经过的。比方说,在1925年的时候,你已几乎是个大人了。从你所记得的来说,你是不是可以说,1925年的生活比现在好,还是坏?要是可以任你挑选的话,位愿意过当时的生活还是过现在的生活?”

The old man looked meditatively at the darts board. He finished up his beer, more slowly than before. When he spoke it was with a tolerant philosophical air, as though the beer had mellowed him.

老头儿沉思不语,看着那投镖板。他喝完啤酒,不过喝得比原来要慢。等他说话的时候,他有一种大度安详的神情,好象啤酒使他心平气和起来一样。

'I know what you expect me to say,' he said. 'You expect me to say as I'd sooner be young again. Most people'd say they'd sooner be young, if you arst' 'em. You got your 'ealth and strength when you're young. When you get to my time of life you ain't never well. I suffer something wicked from my feet, and my bladder's jest terrible. Six and seven times a night it 'as me out of bed. On the other 'and, there's great advantages in being a old man. You ain't got the same worries. No truck with women, and that's a great thing. I ain't 'ad a woman for near on thirty year, if you'd credit it. Nor wanted to, what's more.'

“我知道你要我说的是什么,”他说。“你要我说想返老还童。大多数人如果你去问他,都会说想返老还童。年轻的时候,身体健康,劲儿又大。到了我这般年纪,身体就从来没有好的时候。我的腿有毛病,膀胱又不好。每天晚上要起床六、七次。但是年老有年老的好处。有的事情你就不用担心发愁了。同女人没有来往,这是件了不起的事情。我有快三十年没有同女人睡觉了,你信不信?而且,我也不想找女人睡觉。”

Winston sat back against the window-sill. It was no use going on. He was about to buy some more beer when the old man suddenly got up and shuffled rapidly into the stinking urinal at the side of the room. The extra half-litre was already working on him. Winston sat for a minute or two gazing at his empty glass, and hardly noticed when his feet carried him out into the street again. Within twenty years at the most, he reflected, the huge and simple question, 'Was life better before the Revolution than it is now?' would have ceased once and for all to be answerable. But in effect it was unanswerable even now, since the few scattered survivors from the ancient world were incapable of comparing one age with another. They remembered a million useless things, a quarrel with a workmate, a hunt for a lost bicycle pump, the expression on a long-dead sister's face, the swirls of dust on a windy morning seventy years ago: but all the relevant facts were outside the range of their vision. They were like the ant, which can see small objects but not large ones. And when memory failed and written records were falsified -- when that happened, the claim of the Party to have improved the conditions of human life had got to be accepted, because there did not exist, and never again could exist, any standard against which it could be tested.

温斯顿向窗台一靠。再继续下去没有什么用处。他正想要再去买杯啤酒,那老头儿忽然站了起来,趔趔趄趄地快步向屋子边上那间发出尿臊臭的厕所走去。多喝的半公升已在他身上发生了作用。温斯顿坐了一、两分钟,发呆地看着他的空酒杯,后来也没有注意到自己的双腿已把他送到了外面的街上。他心里想,最多再过二十年,“革命前的生活是不是比现在好”这个简单的大问题就会不再需要答复了,事实上,即使现在,这个问题也是无法答复的,因为从那“古代世界”过来的零零星星少数几个幸存者没有能力比较两个不同的时代。他们只记得许许多多没有用处的小事情,比如说,同伙伴吵架、寻找丢失的自行车打气筒、早已死掉的妹妹肠上的表情,七十年前一天早晨刮风时卷起的尘土;但是所有重要有关的事实却不在他们的视野范围以内。他们就象蚂蚁一样,可以看到小东西,却看不到大的。在记忆不到而书面记录又经窜改伪造的这样的情况下,党声称它已改善了人民的生活,你就得相信,因为不存在,也永远不会存在任何可以测定的比较标准。

At this moment his train of thought stopped abruptly. He halted and looked up. He was in a narrow street, with a few dark little shops, interspersed among dwelling-houses. Immediately above his head there hung three discoloured metal balls which looked as if they had once been gilded. He seemed to know the place. Of course! He was standing outside the junk-shop where he had bought the diary.

这时他的思路忽然中断。他停下步来抬头一看,发现自己是在一条狭窄的街道上,两旁的住房之间,零零星星有几家黑黝黝的小铺子。他的头顶上面挂着三个褪了色的铁球,看上去以前曾经是镀过金的。他觉得认识这个地方。不错!他又站在买那本日记本的旧货铺门口了。

A twinge of fear went through him. It had been a sufficiently rash act to buy the book in the beginning, and he had sworn never to come near the place again. And yet the instant that he allowed his thoughts to wander, his feet had brought him back here of their own accord. It was precisely against suicidal impulses of this kind that he had hoped to guard himself by opening the diary. At the same time he noticed that although it was nearly twenty-one hours the shop was still open.

他心中感到一阵恐慌。当初买那本日记本,本来是件够冒失的事,他心中曾经发誓再也不到这个地方来。可是他一走神,就不知不觉地走到这个地方来了。他开始记日记,原来就是希望以此来提防自己发生这种自杀性的冲动。他同时注意到,虽然时间已经快到二十一点了,这家铺子还开着门。

With the feeling that he would be less conspicuous inside than hanging about on the pavement, he stepped through the doorway. If questioned, he could plausibly say that he was trying to buy razor blades.

他觉得还是到铺子里面去好,这比在外面人行道上徘徊,可以少引起一些人的注意,他就进了门去。如果有人问他,他满可以回答他想买刮胡子的刀片。

The proprietor had just lighted a hanging oil lamp which gave off an unclean but friendly smell. He was a man of perhaps sixty, frail and bowed, with a long, benevolent nose, and mild eyes distorted by thick spectacles. His hair was almost white, but his eyebrows were bushy and still black. His spectacles, his gentle, fussy movements, and the fact that he was wearing an aged jacket of black velvet, gave him a vague air of intellectuality, as though he had been some kind of literary man, or perhaps a musician. His voice was soft, as though faded, and his accent less debased than that of the majority of proles.

店主人刚刚点了一盏煤油挂灯,发出一阵不干净的然而友好的气味。他年约六十,体弱背驼,鼻子很长,眼光温和,戴着一副厚玻璃眼镜。他的头发几乎全已发白,但是眉毛仍旧浓黑。他的眼镜,他的轻轻的,忙碌的动作,还有他穿的那件敝旧的黑平绒衣服,使他隐隐有一种知识分子的气味,好象他是一个文人,或者音乐家。他讲话的声音很轻,好象倒了嗓子似的,他的口音不象普通无产者那么夸。

'I recognized you on the pavement,' he said immediately. 'You're the gentleman that bought the young lady's keepsake album. That was a beautiful bit of paper, that was. Cream-laid, it used to be called. There's been no paper like that made for -- oh, I dare say fifty years.' He peered at Winston over the top of his spectacles. 'Is there anything special I can do for you? Or did you just want to look round?'

“你在外面人行道上的时候,我就认出了你,”他马上说。“你就是那位买了那本年轻太太的纪念本子的先生。那本子真不错,纸张很美。以前叫做奶油纸。唉,我敢说,五十多年来,这种纸张早已不再生产了。”他的眼光从镜架上面透过来看温斯顿。“你要买什么东西吗?还是随便瞧瞧?”

'I was passing,' said Winston vaguely. 'I just looked in. I don't want anything in particular.'

“我路过这里,”温斯顿含糊地说。“我只是进来随便瞧瞧。我没有什么东西一定要买。”

It's just as well,' said the other, 'because I don't suppose I could have satisfied you.'

“那末也好,”他说,“因为我想我也满足不了你的要求。”

He made an apologetic gesture with his softpalmed hand. 'You see how it is; an empty shop, you might say. Between you and me, the antique trade's just about finished. No demand any longer, and no stock either. Furniture, china, glass it's all been broken up by degrees. And of course the metal stuff's mostly been melted down. I haven't seen a brass candlestick in years.'

他的软软的手做了一个道歉的姿态。“你也清楚;铺子全都空了。我跟你说句老实话,旧货买卖快要完了,没有人再有这个需要,也没有货。家俱、瓷器、玻璃器皿——全都慢慢破了。还有金属的东西也都回炉烧掉。我已多年没有看到黄铜烛台了。”

The tiny interior of the shop was in fact uncomfortably full, but there was almost nothing in it of the slightest value. The floorspace was very restricted, because all round the walls were stacked innumerable dusty picture-frames. In the window there were trays of nuts and bolts, worn-out chisels, penknives with broken blades, tarnished watches that did not even pretend to be in going order, and other miscellaneous rubbish. Only on a small table in the corner was there a litter of odds and ends -- lacquered snuffboxes, agate brooches, and the like -- which looked as though they might include something interesting.

实际上,这家小小的铺子里到处塞满了东西,但是几乎没有一件东西是有什么价值的。铺子里陈列的面积有限,四面墙跟都靠着许多积满尘土的相框画架。橱窗里放着一盘盘螺母螺钉、旧凿子、破扦刀、一眼望去就知道已经停了不走的旧手表,还有许许多多没用的废品。只有在墙角的一个小桌子上放着一些零零星星的东西——漆器鼻烟匣、玛瑙饰针等等——看上去好象还有什么引人发生兴趣的东西在里面。

As Winston wandered towards the table his eye was caught by a round, smooth thing that gleamed softly in the lamplight, and he picked it up.

温斯顿在向桌子漫步过去时,他的眼光给一个圆形光滑的东西吸引住了,那东西在灯光下面发出淡淡的光辉,他把它拣了起来。

It was a heavy lump of glass, curved on one side, flat on the other, making almost a hemisphere. There was a peculiar softness, as of rainwater, in both the colour and the texture of the glass. At the heart of it, magnified by the curved surface, there was a strange, pink, convoluted object that recalled a rose or a sea anemone.

那是一块很厚的玻璃,一面成弧形,一面平滑,几乎象个半球形。不论在颜色或者质地上来说,这块玻璃都显得特别柔和,好象雨水一般。在中央,由于弧形的缘故,看上去象放大了一样,有一个奇怪的粉红色的蟠曲的东西,使人觉得象朵玫瑰花,又象海葵。

'What is it?' said Winston, fascinated.

“这是什么?”温斯顿很有兴趣地问。

'That's coral, that is,' said the old man. 'It must have come from the Indian Ocean. They used to kind of embed it in the glass. That wasn't made less than a hundred years ago. More, by the look of it.'

“那是珊瑚,”老头儿说。“这大概是从印度洋来的。他们往往把它嵌在玻璃里。这至少有一百年了。看上去还要更久一些。”

'It's a beautiful thing,' said Winston.

“很漂亮的东西,”温斯顿说。

'It is a beautiful thing,' said the other appreciatively.

“确是很漂亮的东西,”对方欣赏地说。

'But there's not many that'd say so nowadays.' He coughed. 'Now, if it so happened that you wanted to buy it, that'd cost you four dollars. I can remember when a thing like that would have fetched eight pounds, and eight pounds was -- well, I can't work it out, but it was a lot of money. But who cares about genuine antiques nowadays even the few that's left?'

“不过现在很少有人识货了。”他咳嗽着。“如果你要,就算四元钱吧。我还记得那样的东西以前可以卖八镑,而八镑——唉,我也算不出来,但总是不少钱。

Winston immediately paid over the four dollars and slid the coveted thing into his pocket. What appealed to him about it was not so much its beauty as the air it seemed to possess of belonging to an age quite different from the present one. The soft, rainwatery glass was not like any glass that he had ever seen. The thing was doubly attractive because of its apparent uselessness, though he could guess that it must once have been intended as a paperweight. It was very heavy in his pocket, but fortunately it did not make much of a bulge. It was a queer thing, even a compromising thing, for a Party member to have in his possession. Anything old, and for that matter anything beautiful, was always vaguely suspect. The old man had grown noticeably more cheerful after receiving the four dollars. Winston realized that he would have accepted three or even two.

'There's another room upstairs that you might care to take a look at,' he said. 'There's not much in it. Just a few pieces. We'll do with a light if we're going upstairs.'

He lit another lamp, and, with bowed back, led the way slowly up the steep and worn stairs and along a tiny passage, into a room which did not give on the street but looked out on a cobbled yard and a forest of chimney-pots. Winston noticed that the furniture was still arranged as though the room were meant to be lived in. There was a strip of carpet on the floor, a picture or two on the walls, and a deep, slatternly arm-chair drawn up to the fireplace. An old-fashioned glass clock with a twelve-hour face was ticking away on the mantelpiece. Under the window, and occupying nearly a quarter of the room, was an enormous bed with the mattress still on it.

'We lived here till my wife died,' said the old man half apologetically. 'I'm selling the furniture off by little and little. Now that's a beautiful mahogany bed, or at least it would be if you could get the bugs out of it. But I dare say you'd find it a little bit cumbersome.'

He was holdlng the lamp high up, so as to illuminate the whole room, and in the warm dim light the place looked curiously inviting. The thought flitted through Winston's mind that it would probably be quite easy to rent the room for a few dollars a week, if he dared to take the risk. It was a wild, impossible notion, to be abandoned as soon as thought of; but the room had awakened in him a sort of nostalgia, a sort of ancestral memory. It seemed to him that he knew exactly what it felt like to sit in a room like this, in an arm-chair beside an open fire with your feet in the fender and a kettle on the hob; utterly alone, utterly secure, with nobody watching you, no voice pursuing you, no sound except the singing of the kettle and the friendly ticking of the clock.

'There's no telescreen!' he could not help murmuring.

'Ah,' said the old man, 'I never had one of those things. Too expensive. And I never seemed to feel the need of it, somehow. Now that's a nice gateleg table in the corner there. Though of course you'd have to put new hinges on it if you wanted to use the flaps.'

There was a small bookcase in the other corner, and Winston had already gravitated towards it. It contained nothing but rubbish. The hunting-down and destruction of books had been done with the same thoroughness in the prole quarters as everywhere else. It was very unlikely that there existed anywhere in Oceania a copy of a book printed earlier than 1960. The old man, still carrying the lamp, was standing in front of a picture in a rosewood frame which hung on the other side of the fireplace, opposite the bed.

'Now, if you happen to be interested in old prints at all-' he began delicately.

Winston came across to examine the picture. It was a steel engraving of an oval building with rectangular windows, and a small tower in front. There was a railing running round the building, and at the rear end there was what appeared to be a statue. Winston gazed at it for some moments. It seemed vaguely familiar, though he did not remember the statue.

'The frame's fixed to the wall,' said the old man, 'but I could unscrew it for you, I dare say.'

'I know that building,' said Winston finally. 'It's a ruin now. It's in the middle of the street outside the Palace of Justice.'

'That's right. Outside the Law Courts. It was bombed in -- oh, many years ago. It was a church at one time, St Clement Danes, its name was.' He smiled apologetically, as though conscious of saying something slightly ridiculous, and added: 'Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St Clement's!'

'What's that?' said Winston.

'Oh- "Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St Clement's." That was a rhyme we had when I was a little boy. How it goes on I don't remember, but I do know it ended up, "Here comes a candle to light you to bed, Here comes a chopper to chop off your head." It was a kind of a dance. They held out their arms for you to pass under, and when they came to "Here comes a chopper to chop off your head" they brought their arms down and caught you. It was just names of churches. All the London churches were in it -- all the principal ones, that is.'

Winston wondered vaguely to what century the church belonged. It was always difficult to determine the age of a London building. Anything large and impressive, if it was reasonably new in appearance, was automatically claimed as having been built since the Revolution, while anything that was obviously of earlier date was ascribed to some dim period called the Middle Ages. The centuries of capitalism were held to have produced nothing of any value. One could not learn history from architecture any more than one could learn it from books. Statues, inscriptions, memorial stones, the names of streets -- anything that might throw light upon the past had been systematically altered.

'I never knew it had been a church,' he said.

'There's a lot of them left, really,' said the old man, 'though they've been put to other uses. Now, how did that rhyme go? Ah! I've got it!

"Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St Clement's,

You owe me three farthings, say the bells of St Martin's -- "

there, now, that's as far as I can get. A farthing, that was a small copper coin, looked something like a cent.'

'Where was St Martin's?' said Winston.

'St Martin's? That's still standing. It's in Victory Square, alongside the picture gallery. A building with a kind of a triangular porch and pillars in front, and a big flight of steps.'

Winston knew the place well. It was a museum used for propaganda displays of various kinds -- scale models of rocket bombs and Floating Fortresses, wax-work tableaux illustrating enemy atrocities, and the like.

'St Martin's-in-the-Fields it used to be called,' supplemented the old man, 'though I don't recollect any fields anywhere in those parts.'

Winston did not buy the picture. It would have been an even more incongruous possession than the glass paperweight, and impossible to carry home, unless it were taken out of its frame. But he lingered for some minutes more, talking to the old man, whose name, he discovered, was not Weeks -- as one might have gathered from the inscription over the shop-front -- but Charrington. Mr Charrington, it seemed, was a widower aged sixty-three and had inhabited this shop for thirty years. Throughout that time he had been intending to alter the name over the window, but had never quite got to the point of doing it. All the while that they were talking the half-remembered rhyme kept running through Winston's head. Oranges and lemons say the bells of St Clement's, You owe me three farthings, say the bells of St Martin's! It was curious, but when you said it to yourself you had the illusion of actually hearing bells, the bells of a lost London that still existed somewhere or other, disguised and forgotten. From one ghostly steeple after another he seemed to hear them pealing forth. Yet so far as he could remember he had never in real life heard church bells ringing.

He got away from Mr Charrington and went down the stairs alone, so as not to let the old man see him reconnoitring the street before stepping out of the door. He had already made up his mind that after a suitable interval -- a month, say -- he would take the risk of visiting the shop again. It was perhaps not more dangerous than shirking an evening at the Centre. The serious piece of folly had been to come back here in the first place, after buying the diary and without knowing whether the proprietor of the shop could be trusted. However-!

Yes, he thought again, he would come back. He would buy further scraps of beautiful rubbish. He would buy the engraving of St Clement Danes, take it out of its frame, and carry it home concealed under the jacket of his overalls. He would drag the rest of that poem out of Mr Charrington's memory. Even the lunatic project of renting the room upstairs flashed momentarily through his mind again. For perhaps five seconds exaltation made him careless, and he stepped out on to the pavement without so much as a preliminary glance through the window. He had even started humming to an improvised tune --

他又想,是啊,他是要再来的。他要再买一些美丽而没有实用的小东西。他要买那幅圣克利门特的丹麦人教堂蚀刻版画,把它从画框上卸下来,塞在蓝制服的上衣里面带回家去。他要从却林顿先生的记忆中把那首歌谣全部都挖出来。甚至把楼上房间租下来这个疯狂的念头,也一度又在他脑海中闪过。大概有五秒钟之久,他兴高采烈得忘乎所以,他事先也没有从玻璃窗里看一眼外面街上,就走了出去。他甚至临时编了一个小调哼了起来——

Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St Clement's,

橘子和柠檬,圣克利门特教堂的钟声说,

You owe me three farthings, say the --

你欠我三个铜板!

Suddenly his heart seemed to turn to ice and his bowels to water. A figure in blue overalls was coming down the pavement, not ten metres away. It was the girl from the Fiction Department, the girl with dark hair. The light was failing, but there was no difficulty in recognizing her. She looked him straight in the face, then walked quickly on as though she had not seen him.

他忽然心里一沉,吓得屁滚尿流。前面人行道上,不到十公尺的地方,来了一个身穿蓝制服的人。那是小说司的那个黑头发姑娘。路灯很暗,但是不难看出是她。她抬头看了他一眼,就装得好象没有见到他一样很快地走开了。

For a few seconds Winston was too paralysed to move. Then he turned to the right and walked heavily away, not noticing for the moment that he was going in the wrong direction. At any rate, one question was settled. There was no doubting any longer that the girl was spying on him. She must have followed him here, because it was not credible that by pure chance she should have happened to be walking on the same evening up the same obscure backstreet, kilometres distant from any quarter where Party members lived. It was too great a coincidence. Whether she was really an agent of the Thought Police, or simply an amateur spy actuated by officiousness, hardly mattered. It was enough that she was watching him. Probably she had seen him go into the pub as well.

温斯顿一时吓得动弹不得,好象瘫了一样。然后他向右转弯,拖着沉重的脚步往前走,也不知道走错了方向。无论如何,有一个问题已经解决了。不再有什么疑问,那个姑娘是在侦察他。她一定跟着他到了这里,因为她完全不可能是偶然正好在同一个晚上到这同一条不知名的小街上来散步的,这条街距离党员住的任何地方都有好几公里远。这不可能是巧合。她究竟是不是思想警察的特务,还是过分热心的业余侦探,那没有关系。光是她在监视他这一点就已经够了。她大概也看到了他进那家小酒店。

It was an effort to walk. The lump of glass in his pocket banged against his thigh at each step, and he was half minded to take it out and throw it away. The worst thing was the pain in his belly. For a couple of minutes he had the feeling that he would die if he did not reach a lavatory soon. But there would be no public lavatories in a quarter like this. Then the spasm passed, leaving a dull ache behind.

现在走路也很费劲。他口袋里那块玻璃,在他每走一步的时候就碰一下他的大腿,他简直要想把它掏出来扔掉。最糟糕的是他肚子痛。他好几分钟都觉得,如果不赶紧找个厕所他就憋不住了。可是在这样的地方是找不到公共厕所的。接着肚痛过去了,只留下一阵麻木的感觉。

The street was a blind alley. Winston halted, stood for several seconds wondering vaguely what to do, then turned round and began to retrace his steps. As he turned it occurred to him that the girl had only passed him three minutes ago and that by running he could probably catch up with her. He could keep on her track till they were in some quiet place, and then smash her skull in with a cobblestone. The piece of glass in his pocket would be heavy enough for the job. But he abandoned the idea immediately, because even the thought of making any physical effort was unbearable. He could not run, he could not strike a blow. Besides, she was young and lusty and would defend herself. He thought also of hurrying to the Community Centre and staying there till the place closed, so as to establish a partial alibi for the evening. But that too was impossible. A deadly lassitude had taken hold of him. All he wanted was to get home quickly and then sit down and be quiet.

这条街道是条死胡同。温斯顿停下步来,站了几秒钟,不知怎么才好,然后又转过身来往回走。他转身的时候想起那姑娘碰到他还只有三分钟,他跑上去可能还赶得上她。他可以跟着她到一个僻静的地方,然后用一块石头猛击她的脑袋。他口袋里的那块玻璃也够沉的,可以干这个事儿。但是他马上放弃了这个念头,因为即使这样的念头也教他受不了。他不能跑,他不能动手打人。何况,她年纪轻、力气大,一定会自卫。他又想到赶紧到活动中心站去,一直呆到关门,这样可以有人作旁证,证明他那天晚上在那里,但是这也办不到。他全身酸软无力。他一心只想快些回家,安安静静地坐下来。

It was after twenty-two hours when he got back to the flat. The lights would be switched off at the main at twenty-three thirty. He went into the kitchen and swallowed nearly a teacupful of Victory Gin. Then he went to the table in the alcove, sat down, and took the diary out of the drawer. But he did not open it at once. From the telescreen a brassy female voice was squalling a patriotic song. He sat staring at the marbled cover of the book, trying without success to shut the voice out of his consciousness.

他回家已二十二点了。到二十三点三十分电门总闸就要关掉。他到厨房去,喝了足足一茶匙的杜松子酒。然后到壁龛前的桌边坐下来,从抽屉里拿出日记。但是他没有马上打开来。电幕上一个低沉的女人声音在唱一支爱国歌曲。他呆呆地坐在那里,看着日记本的云石纸封面,徒劳无功地要想把那歌声从他的意识中排除出去。

It was at night that they came for you, always at night. The proper thing was to kill yourself before they got you. Undoubtedly some people did so. Many of the disappearances were actually suicides. But it needed desperate courage to kill yourself in a world where firearms, or any quick and certain poison, were completely unprocurable. He thought with a kind of astonishment of the biological uselessness of pain and fear, the treachery of the human body which always freezes into inertia at exactly the moment when a special effort is needed. He might have silenced the dark-haired girl if only he had acted quickly enough: but precisely because of the extremity of his danger he had lost 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.

他们是在夜里来逮你的,总是在夜里。应该在他们逮到你之前就自杀。没有疑问,有人这样做。许多失踪的人实际上是自杀了。但是在一个完全弄不到枪械、或者随便哪种能够迅速致命的毒物的世界里,自杀需要极大的勇气。他奇怪地发现,痛楚和恐惧在生物学上完全无用,人体不可捉摸,因为总是在需要它作特别的努力的时候,它却僵化不动了。他当初要是动作迅速,本来是可以把那黑发始娘灭口的;但是正是由于他处于极端危险的状态,却使他失去了采取行动的毅力。他想到碰到危急状态,你要对借的从来不是那个外部的敌人,而是自已的身体,即使到现在,尽管喝了杜松子酒,肚子里的隐痛也使他不可能有条理地思索。他想,在所有从外表看来似乎是英雄或悲剧的场合,情况也是这样的。

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.

在战场上,在刑房里,在沉船上,你要为之奋斗的原则,往往被忘掉了,因为身体膨胀起来,充满了宇宙,即使你没有吓得瘫痪不动或者痛得大声号叫,生命也不过是对饥饿、寒冷、失眠,对肚子痛或牙齿痛的一场暂时的斗争。

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.

他打开日记本。必须写下几句话来。电幕上那个女人开始唱一首新歌。她的声音好象碎玻璃片一样刺进他的脑海。

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 hair.

他努力想奥勃良,这本日记就是为他,或者对他写的,但是他开始想到的却是思想警察把他带走以后会发生什么预知先见而神秘地能够分享。

Why did you have to endure it, since the end was always the same? Why was it not possible to cut a few days or weeks out of your life? Nobody ever escaped detection, and nobody ever failed to confess. When once you had succumbed to thoughtcrime it was certain that by a given date you would be dead. Why then did that horror, which altered nothing, have to lie embedded in future time?

He tried with a little more success than before to summon up the image of O'Brien. 'We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness,' O'Brien had said to him. He knew what it meant, or thought he knew. The place where there is no darkness was the imagined future, which one would never see, but which, by foreknowledge, one could mystically share in.

But with the voice from the telescreen nagging at his ears he could not follow the train of thought further. He put a cigarette in his mouth. Half the tobacco promptly fell out on to his tongue, a bitter dust which was difficult to spit out again. The face of Big Brother swam into his mind, displacing that of O'Brien. Just as he had done a few days earlier, he slid a coin out of his pocket and looked at it. The face gazed up at him, heavy, calm, protecting: but what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache? Like a leaden knell the words came back at him:

但是由于电幕上的声音在他耳旁聒噪不休,他无法再照这个思路想下去。他把一支香烟放在嘴里,一半烟丝就掉在舌上,这是一种发苦的粉末,很难吐干净。他的脑海里浮现出老大哥的脸,代替了奥勃良的脸。正如他几天前所做的那样,他从口袋里掏出一块辅币来瞧。辅币上的脸也看着他,线条粗犷,神色镇静,令人宽心,但是藏在那黑胡子背后的是什么样的一种笑容?象沉闷的钟声一样,那几句话又在他耳边响起:

WAR IS PEACE

战争即和平

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

自由即奴役

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH 

无知即力量。