Then suddenly as he fixed the miserable rags round himself a feeling of pity for his ruined body overcame him.
Before he knew what he was doing he had collapsed on to a small stool that stood beside the bed and burst into tears.
He was aware of his ugliness, his gracelessness, a bundle of bones in filthy underclothes sitting weeping in the harsh white light: but he could not stop himself.
O'Brien laid a hand on his shoulder, almost kindly.
'It will not last for ever,' he said. 'You can escape from it whenever you choose. Everything depends on yourself.'
'You did it!' sobbed Winston. 'You reduced me to this state.'
'No, Winston, you reduced yourself to it.
This is what you accepted when you set yourself up against the Party.
It was all contained in that first act.
Nothing has happened that you did not foresee.'
He paused, and then went on:
'We have beaten you, Winston.
We have broken you up.
You have seen what your body is like.
Your mind is in the same state.
I do not think there can be much pride left in you.
You have been kicked and flogged and insulted, you have screamed with pain, you have rolled on the floor in your own blood and vomit.
You have whimpered for mercy, you have betrayed everybody and everything.
Can you think of a single degradation that has not happened to you?'
Winston had stopped weeping, though the tears were still oozing out of his eyes.
He looked up at O'Brien.
'I have not betrayed Julia,' he said.
O'Brien looked down at him thoughtfully.
'No,' he said; 'no; that is perfectly true.
You have not betrayed Julia.'
The peculiar reverence for O'Brien, which nothing seemed able to destroy, flooded Winston's heart again.
How intelligent, he thought, how intelligent!
Never did O'Brien fail to understand what was said to him.
Anyone else on earth would have answered promptly that he HAD betrayed Julia.
For what was there that they had not screwed out of him under the torture?
He had told them everything he knew about her, her habits, her character, her past life; he had confessed in the most trivial detail everything that had happened at their meetings, all that he had said to her and she to him, their black-market meals, their adulteries, their vague plottings against the Party--everything.
And yet, in the sense in which he intended the word, he had not betrayed her.
He had not stopped loving her; his feelings towards her had remained the same.
O'Brien had seen what he meant without the need for explanation.
'Tell me,' he said, 'how soon will they shoot me?'
'It might be a long time,' said O'Brien. 'You are a difficult case.
But don't give up hope.
Everyone is cured sooner or later.
In the end we shall shoot you.'
Chapter 4
He was much better.
He was growing fatter and stronger every day, if it was proper to speak of days.
The white light and the humming sound were the same as ever, but the cell was a little more comfortable than the others he had been in.
There was a pillow and a mattress on the plank bed, and a stool to sit on.
They had given him a bath, and they allowed him to wash himself fairly frequently in a tin basin.
They even gave him warm water to wash with.
They had given him new underclothes and a clean suit of overalls.
They had dressed his varicose ulcer with soothing ointment.
They had pulled out the remnants of his teeth and given him a new set of dentures.
Weeks or months must have passed.