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

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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Час дня, 13:00 (обозначение времени, принятое в армии; так называемое «военное время», Military Time).

Колчестер – город и одноимённый район в графстве Эссекс на юго-востоке Англии, на реке Колн.

Карл I Великий – франкский король в 768–814 гг. (император с 800 г.) из династии Каролингов (751–987). Основал огромную империю в Западной Европе, в которую входили Северная Испания, Франция, Германия, Северная и Центральная Италия.

Гай Юлий Цезарь.