George Orwell - 1984. Адаптированная книга для чтения на английском языке. Уровень B1

For whom was he writing this diary? For the future, he thought. How could you communicate with the future? It was impossible. If the future were like the present, it would not listen to him; if it were different from the present, then writing the diary would be meaningless.

For some time he sat looking stupidly at the paper. The telescreen was playing military music. Winston couldn't put thoughts into words; he had even forgotten what he had wanted to say. He had thought that he would only need to be brave to write. Writing would be easy. All he had to do was to write down the monologue that had been running inside his head for years. At this moment, however, even the monologue had stopped. His leg had begun hurting again. The seconds were flying by. The page in front of him was empty, his leg hurt, he heard the music from the telescreen, and felt a bit drunk on the gin.

He began writing so quickly that didn't quite realize what he was writing down. He wrote that he had watched a war film last night. It was about a ship that was bombed somewhere in the Mediterranean. On it, there was a woman with a boy who was very frightened. When the ship sank, the viewers laughed. From where the proles were sitting, a woman shouted that they shouldn't show such films in front of the children. The police turned her out, but Winston didn't think that anything had happened to her.

Winston stopped writing, partly because of his leg. He did not know why he had just written it. But while he was writing it he had remembered something totally different. He now realized, it was the reason why he had decided to come home and begin the diary today.

It had happened that morning at the Ministry.

It was nearly eleven hundred. In the Records Department, where Winston worked, they were getting ready for the Two Minutes Hate. Two people whom he knew by sight, but had never spoken to, came into the room. One of them was a girl of about twenty-seven with freckles and thick dark hair. He did not know her name, but he knew that she worked in the Fiction Department. She had an emblem of the Junior Anti-Sex League. Winston had disliked her from the very first moment of seeing her. He disliked nearly all women, and especially the young and pretty ones. But this girl seemed to him more dangerous than most. He had even thought that she might be one of the Thought Police. But it was very unlikely. Still, he continued to feel uneasy, when she was near him.

The other person was a man named O'Brien, an important member of the Inner Party. O'Brien was a large, strong man with a thick neck. People were afraid of him, but he was charming in his own way. Winston hadn't seen O'Brien very often. He felt there was a connection between them, because he believed – or hoped – that O'Brien wasn't very politically orthodox. There was something in his face that made you believe it. Or perhaps he was just intelligent. Winston believed that O'Brien was a person that you could talk to if you could meet him somewhere without the telescreen. Winston had never tried to check whether he was right: there was no way of doing so. At this moment O'Brien looked at his watch. He saw that it was nearly eleven hundred, and decided to stay in the Records Department for the Two Minutes Hate. He sat down a couple of places away from Winston. A small woman who worked in the next cubicle to Winston was between them. The girl with dark hair was sitting immediately behind.

The next moment the Hate had started.

As usual, the face of Emmanuel Goldstein, the Enemy of the People, had appeared on the screen. The programmes of the Two Minutes Hate were different from day to day, but Goldstein was always the main figure. He had been one of the leading figures of the Party long ago (how long ago, nobody remembered), almost on a level with Big Brother himself. He then had started counter-revolutionary activities, had been sentenced to death, and had escaped and disappeared. He was still alive and planning against the Party somewhere beyond the sea or even somewhere in Oceania itself.

Winston couldn't breathe. Goldstein had white hair and a small beard. He wore glasses on his long thin nose. His Jewish face was clever, and yet stupid at the same time. He looked and sounded like a sheep. Goldstein was speaking against the doctrines of the Party and Big Brother. Somehow you couldn't take his words serious – if you were intelligent. He was demanding peace with Eurasia, freedom of speech, freedom of the Press, freedom of thought. He was crying that the revolution had been betrayed. His speech was a parody of the style of the Party. There were even Newspeak words: more Newspeak words than any Party member would normally use in real life. Behind his head on the telescreen there marched the Eurasian army.

People hated Goldstein more than either Eurasia or Eastasia, because when Oceania was at war with one of these Powers it was at peace with the other. But it was strange that he still had many followers. A day never passed when the Thought Police didn't catch spies acting under his directions. He was the leader of the Brotherhood. He also wrote a book. It didn't have a title, but everyone knew it existed. Party members didn't talk about either the book or the Brotherhood.

In the second minute of the Hate people were jumping up and down in their places and shouting loudly. Winston was shouting with the others and kicking his chair. The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was that you joined in even if you didn't want to. At one moment Winston hated Big Brother, the Party, and the Thought Police. And yet the very next moment he was shouting with the people about him, and hated Goldstein.

It was even possible, at moments, to control one's hatred. Winston no longer hated the face on the screen, he now hated the dark-haired girl behind him. Better than before he realized why he hated her. He hated her because she was young and pretty, because he wanted to go to bed with her and would never do so, because she had the symbol of the Junior AntiSex League around her waist.

The Hate was almost over. For a moment the face of Goldstein changed into that of a sheep. Then it turned into the figure of a Eurasian soldier who was about to jump out of the screen and shoot everyone in the room to death. But in the same moment, the soldier turned into the face of Big Brother, full of power and calm. Nobody heard what Big Brother was saying. Then the face of Big Brother disappeared again. On the screen, there were the three slogans of the Party:

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

You somehow felt like the face of Big Brother was still on the screen. The little woman who has been sitting next to Winston said something that sounded like «My Saviour!» and buried her face in her hands. She was saying a prayer.

At this moment everyone started shouting «B – B!.. B – B!.». – over and over again, very slowly, with a long pause between the first «B» and the second. They kept it up for as much as thirty seconds. Winston's body seemed to grow cold. He had always been afraid of this «B – B!.. B – B!». Of course he shouted with the rest: it was impossible not to. It was natural to control your face, to do what everyone else was doing. But there was a couple of seconds during which you could see his thoughts in his eyes. And it was exactly at this moment that something important happened – if it happened.

He caught O'Brien's eye. O'Brien had stood up. Their eyes met, and Winston knew – yes, he knew! – that O'Brien was thinking the same thing as himself. «I am with you», O'Brien's eyes were saying to him. «I know what you are feeling. But don't worry, I am on your side!» And then the feeling was gone, and O'Brien's face was like everybody else's.

That was all, and Winston wasn't sure anymore whether it had happened. He had gone back to his cubicle without looking at O'Brien again. Winston didn't even think of talking to him. It would have been dangerous and he didn't know how. For a second, two seconds, they had looked at each other, and that was the end of the story. But even that was important for Winston. It gave him a feeling that there were other enemies of the Party.