looked grim as the
loopholes of a fortress. His heart quailed before the enormous pyramidal
shape. It was too strong, it could not be stormed. A thousand rocket bombs
would not batter it down. He wondered again for whom he was writing the
diary. For the future, for the past -- for an age that might be imaginary.
And in front of him there lay not death but annihilation. The diary would
be reduced to ashes and himself to vapour. Only the Thought Police would
read what he had written, before they wiped it out of existence and out of
memory. How could you make appeal to the future when not a trace of you,
not even an anonymous word scribbled on a piece of paper, could physically
survive?
The telescreen struck fourteen. He must leave in ten minutes. He had
to be back at work by fourteen-thirty.
Curiously, the chiming of the hour seemed to have put new heart into
him. He was a lonely ghost uttering a truth that nobody would ever hear.
But so long as he uttered it, in some obscure way the continuity was not
broken. It was not by making yourself heard but by staying sane that y
.
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