Perspective
a spin-off companion short story for George Orwell's 1984
by rayningnight
I.
She knows his name.
Although she works in the Fiction Department, Julia often passes him in the corridors. She sometimes wonders what he thinks of her oily hands and ever-present spanner, what he thinks of the other warped women in the hallways, of women and of men — but then she crashes that train of thought within the following second.
He shouldn't have caught her eye any more than the other common paper-pushers in the Records Department, but he does. He, who's nearing his forties, frail and thin and sometimes limping, a simple, common man — Julia feels like she should hate Winston Smith. Hate him like all the rest of the worshipping masses and pompous Party hypocrites and those who do not even try.
But then her eyes connects with his stare down the familiar corridors — irises a pale brown, she always thinks, like milky Victory Coffee — until they catch the fluorescent lights and there's a flash, a flicker, a glint.
A defiant out-of-place glint.
And it's exactly like Grandfather's.
II.
She wears the constricting, blood-red sash — the emblem of the Junior Anti-Sex League — with pride in her stance and primness in her bearing, and if she wounds it several times round the waist of her overalls just tightly enough to bring out the shapeliness of her hips, well, no one comments unless she wants them to.
Deception is easy for her. She knows when to be passionate and when to be silent, how to walk, how to talk, how to be. Her attitude is shaped and moulded perfectly with the atmosphere of hockey-fields and cold baths and community hikes and general clean-mindedness. All this and more! …Even though she cares not for all the politics or the military or any of those things that don't really have any business in her life. But she needs to blend in sometimes, for security, for safety. So, she becomes a chameleon — an ancient animal her grandfather spoke of in the time of Before — and matches all the women: the young and pretty and stupid, the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies and nosers-out of unorthodoxy.
But better. Superior.
Though not too superior. Just enough to dance and play and bed in circles that won't swiftly turn her over and plunge into her with something less-than-desired. Julia's already seen the knife in the back of a girl a year or two older than her, who was cuffed and fetched to Miniluv after the third tussle with Commander Samson.
She's learned from that girl's mistake.
Julia never sleeps twice with the same person, even if it's fun to string them along. All her bedtime schemes are practical and logical, airtight to all loopholes and leeways. Though she still aims high enough for the adrenaline to thrum through her veins, for the adventure and the thrill, her choices are also low enough to not be easily caught, but still with a chance, a gamble, a possibility of her coveted body being not enough to the prospect of a higher position in the Party if tattled to the Though Police—
Because what's the fun if there's no possibility?
Because what's the satisfaction if there's no possibility?
III.
Alvy, another machine operator in the Fiction Department a door over, didn't come to work.
In the morning, Julia learns the older blond is now an unperson, and she is to take over his late shift until further notice.
That is how she ends up nearly late for the Two Minutes Hate, and has to take a middle row seat, instead of that left-top corner chair taken by a man — O'Brien or something or other — one of the only spots in the room with a blind-spot to the telescreens. Julia lifts her scowl to a bland smile, which flickers into something a bit more sincere once she realizes she's sitting immediately behind Smith.
Winston Smith.
She flickers off her thoughts before they cave to her primitive desires, and allows herself to run auto-pilot. As time hits eleven hundred, a hideous, grinding screech bursts from the large telescreen at the end of the room, nearly setting her teeth on edge. Her body shakes with something that could be excitement. Her voice lifts and crawls and catches and screeches at the perfect moments and flows with the crowd. She barely feels the heavy weight of the Newspeak dictionary as she flings it at the screen. Goldstein's face is on display more than the required amount of time, and shrieking doesn't seem enough, especially when she's in the middle of the room.
Briefly, she wonders what Smith thinks of Goldstein, of Big Brother, of the Party, of her throw, of her—
And she wonders why she wonders so much about him.
IV.
Her shifts still edge to the later times, and eventually, she ends up eating during the same hour as him in the low-ceiling canteen, deep underground.
Why is she so surprised?
The room is very full and deafeningly noisy. From the grille at the counter, the steam of stew came pouring forth with a sour metallic smell, which did not quite overcome the fumes of Victory Gin. On the far side of the room there was a small bar, a mere hole in the wall, where gin could be bought at ten cents the large nip.
Yet all her attention is focussed on Smith.
He has that squinty, scrunched-up look on his face, the resigned one the means he's barely tolerating a conversation but will follow through with it anyway. She's not close enough to hear what he and that sweat-looking-man are talking about, but suddenly Smith locks eyes with her.
Julia quickly looks away, and takes a mug of hot Victory Coffee, the cup fortunately masking the rising heat to her cheeks despite the acrid, high-temperature burning her tongue.
It's official.
She needs to get over this infatuation before it gets herself killed.
V.
She's not stalking.
No, really, she's not.
Julia just happened to catch him following into the Proles sector an hour ago, and since she needed to buy a new nail clipper anyway, she headed down the same narrow streets. A few dark little shops, interspersed among dilapidated dwelling-houses, were interesting enough for a quick perusal but none had a decent nail clipper, so she went deeper into the sector for higher quality merchandise. And of course, it's just coincidence when she sees a familiar man in blue overalls stepping out of a curious junk-shop not ten metres away.
She looks him straight in the face, then walks quickly on as though she has not seen him.
When she gets home, long nails digging red crescents in her palm, she realizes she never did buy that clipper.
VI.
It's a foolproof plan.
Sort of.
But she's sure enough of that glint and that stance and that face that she decides to go on with it anyway. Julia's usually more pragmatic, she knows, but she loves living in the moment more, loves the feeling of terror and right and wrong and the adrenaline is coursing and now, all for this high, this thrill — it's all totally worth it.
Four days have gone past since the evening when she'd run into him outside the junk-shop. Three days since she's crushed her own hand while swinging round one of the big kaleidoscopes on which the plots of novels were 'roughed in'.
It's a common accident in the Fiction Department.
But still, she's fortunate she didn't need to worsen her injury for more 'free time' to find Smith.
It's the middle of the morning, and it seems Smith left the cubicle to go to the lavatory or a coffee break. He's a solitary figure coming towards her from the other end of the long, brightly-lit corridor, and as she walks closer, she spots his shoulders tensing for some reason.
They were perhaps four metres apart when she trips on thin air, nearly falling flat on her face. A sharp cry of pain is wrung out of her, and she allows the unwanted blush to dye her cheeks. Julia's had worse than falling on injured limbs! Still, at least she managed part of the plan when Smith stops a little ways before her. With a sigh masked as a pant, she rises to her knees, and hopes her mask of pain still painted across her features will draw him in. Julia then decides to pull out the big guns and turns an appealing expression, large babyish eyes and hopes that the ones watching through the telescreen a few metres away doesn't catch this awful acting for what it is.
Finally, for what felt like forever, he starts forward to help her.
'You're hurt?' he says.
'It's nothing. My arm. It'll be all right in a second.'
She speak through the haze of relief and euphoria and throbbing background pain of her arm.
'You haven't broken anything?'
'No, I'm all right. It hurt for a moment, that's all.'
She holds out her free hand to him, and he helps her up. Up close, she thinks he looks quite handsome, even with the slightly crooked nose, because his bright eyes make up for it all. Almost at the last second, she remembers her plan, and quickly folds his hands over her note with casual ease and small smile.
'It's nothing,' she repeats shortly, hand retreating. 'I only gave my wrist a bit of a bang. Thanks, comrade!'
And with that she walks on in a random direction, forward, step-by-step, as briskly as though the whole experience means nothing to her.
As though she didn't just give a piece of herself to him.
I love you.
She'd written it out of sheer whimsical impulse. And yet, with it recorded on paper, she realizes that line is very much true, despite barely knowing the man.
But she knows that glint, that spark, and that's enough.
Winston walks on behind her, and after a quick recollection when she gets back into the Fiction Department, she's a little surprised that his Blank Mask had been just as good as hers. Most of those who'd experienced the time in Before aren't as good at masking as those born After. Grandfather, sneaky, clever grandfather himself didn't make it.
With a mental sigh, she shoves those thoughts away and thinks more, plots more, and schemes more.
She makes contingency plans for contingency plans, after all.
VII.
For most of the day afterward, they barely see glimpses of each other.
The first time he almost catches her, she purposefully sits by herself at a table. But then a silly blond man snatches him to vacant seat and Julia mentally curses.
The second time he almost catches her, she sits by herself again with small hope. But the person immediately ahead of him in the queue is a small, swiftly-moving, beetle-like man with a flat face and tiny, suspicious eyes and as Winston turns away from the counter with his tray, the little man makes straight for her table. She curses.
—only to see the beetle man suddenly sprawled on all fours, tray gone flying with two streams of soup and coffee flowing across the floor around him.
She catches the determined glint in Winston's eyes and her mask nearly shatters with a nearly irresistible smile almost curling her lip.
Julia thinks she'll have him for keeps.
VIII.
'What time do you leave work?'
'Eighteen-thirty.'
'Where can we meet?'
'Victory Square, near the monument.'
'It's full of telescreens.'
'It doesn't matter if there's a crowd.'
'Any signal?'
'No. don't come up to me until you see me among a lot of people. And don't look at me. Just keep somewhere near me.'
'What time?'
'Nineteen hours.'
'All right.'
IX.
She sees her in her peripheral vision as she pretends to read a poster spirally up the column at the base of the monument. It's not safe to be near until some more people accumulate. Telescreens are all around the pediment. But suddenly there's a din of shouting and a zoom of heavy vehicles from somewhere to the north, and everyone seems to be running across the square. Julia nimbly rounds the lions at the base of the monument and joins in the rush towards the opposite direction and hopes Winston will follow.
She finds that he does end up doing so, and a bubbly feeling wells in her stomach as he scrimmages, shoves, butts, and squirms his way forward into the heart of the crowd even though she knows he's the type to stay on the side. Soon he's within an arm's length of her, but the way is blocked just so by an enormous prole and an almost equally enormous woman, presumably his wife. Winston wriggles himself sideways, and with a violent lunge, he manages to drive his shoulder between them — and Julia swallow the bubbling laughter at that. Between the two muscular hips and his slowly reddening face, Julia lets odd thoughts wander in and out of her head like a schoolgirl of Before, but then then Winston breaks through, sweating a little, and the funny spectacle is over so she shutters her mask down before her thoughts leak to her face.
Finally they're shoulder to shoulder, both staring fixedly in front of them.
She cares not for the speeches and politics and all that around them. It's not as if they really matter compared to her and Winston. He's beautiful, now that she's close enough to see. Beautiful in the sense of simplicity wrapped in unique defiance found in the oddest corners of Oceania, and she wants to wrap around that.
When the crowd within earshot turns to their own business or stare at those Mongolian prisoners or whatever else that finally takes away their eyes off her and him, Julia is finally able to press in close and pass on her directions.
They are simple enough for a simple man to remember.
X.
She eventually takes him to her most favourite spot, the one with bluebells flooding the pathway and the whispers of sweetened wind, of familiar bogs and fresh leaves and filtered sunshine, the place of her first passionate tumble—
'Here we are,' she says.
—and her last lover.
She finds it funny and sad and yet she only feels indifference as she thinks back to the time when she thought she could take the world as a storm, as a passionate Juliet to a simplistic Romeo, but it seems their love was not as strong as their pain and their betrayal.
'We must meet again,' he says.
'Yes,' she says, 'we must meet again.'
But then her eyes connects with his — irises a pale brown, she always thinks, like milky Victory Coffee — until they catch the bright sunlight and there's no flash, no flicker, no glint.
And it's exactly like her own.
Notes:
Honestly, this was an extra-credit project for English class. No idea where I was actually going with this anymore... And was it just me, or did 1984 seem really, really depressing after you put the book down? I was so not expecting what had happened. It was like... an anti-climax. And then a thrown-up end.