"Here we are," she said.
He was facing her at several paces' distance. As yet he did not dare move nearer to her.
"I didn't want to say anything in the lane," she went on, "in case there's a mike hidden there. I don't suppose there is, but there could be. There's always the chance of one of those swine recognizing your voice. We're all right here."
He still had not the courage to approach her. "We're all right here?" he repeated stupidly.
"Yes. Look at the trees." They were small ashes, which at some time had been cut down and had sprouted up again into a forest of poles, none of them thicker than one's wrist. "There's nothing big enough to hide a mike in. Besides, I've been here before."
They were only making conversation. He had managed to move closer to her now. She stood before him very upright, with a smile on her face that looked faintly ironical, as though she were wondering why he was so slow to act. The bluebells had cascaded on to the ground. They seemed to have fallen of their own accord. He took her hand.
"Would you believe," he said, "that till this moment I didn't know what color your eyes were?" They were brown, he noted, a rather light shade of brown, with dark lashes.
"Now that you've seen what I'm really like, can you bear to look at me?"
"Yes, easily."
"I'm thirty-nine years old. I've got a wife that I can't get rid of. I've got varicose veins. I've got five false teeth."
"I couldn't care less," said the girl.
The next moment, it was hard to say by whose act, she was in his arms. At the beginning he had no feeling except sheer incredulity. The youthful body was strained against his own, the mass of dark hair was against his face, and yes! actually she had turned her face up and he was kissing the wide red mouth. She had clasped her arms about his neck, she was calling him darling, precious one, loved one. He had pulled her down on to the ground, she was utterly unresisting, he could do what he liked with her. But the truth was that he had no physical sensation except that of mere contact. All he felt was incredulity and pride. He was glad that this was happening, but he had no physical desire. It was too soon, her youth and prettiness had frightened him, he was too much used to living without women—he did not know the reason. The girl picked herself up and pulled a bluebell out of her hair. She sat against him, putting her arm round his waist.
"Never mind, dear. There's no hurry. We've got the whole afternoon. Isn't this a splendid hideout? I found it when I got lost once on a community hike. If anyone was coming you could hear them a hundred meters away."
"What is your name?" said Winston.
"Julia. I know yours. It's Winston—Winston Smith."
"How did you find that out?"
"I expect I'm better at finding things out than you are, dear. Tell me, what did you think of me before that day I gave you the note?"
He did not feel any temptation to tell lies to her. It was even a sort of love offering to start off by telling the worst.
"I hated the sight of you," he said. "To look at your face was to give myself the urge to vomit, to remind myself of some sort of depraved, hideous bastard child birthed from the unholy union of an ogre and a harpy. And when I first saw you, I really just wanted to rape you. Violently. Probably through orifices that were never meant to be used in that manner. Then, I was going to murder you. And it wouldn't have been a swift and painless death, either, like the one achieved from cleanly slitting a throat. No, no. I would have strapped you down into a chair, with your arms, legs, and neck completely immobile. I would then proceed to attach alligator clamps connected to a battery with ridiculously high voltage to your nipples. Then I would shock them until your breasts became nothing more than burnt crisps. I would then collect this burnt breast meat in a baggie and keep it close by as I proceeded to saw off one of your legs with a rusty hacksaw, and would likely once again become quite aroused by your screams of pain and cries for mercy. I would then remove the meat from the bone and mash it up into a sort of bloody puree, which I would store in a different baggie and keep nearby as well. I would then shave off all of the hair from your head and scalp you, making sure to keep you alive and breathing even after. I would then fill your scalp with the charred breast meat and the leg puree, and maybe top all of this off with a bit of lettuce, some diced tomato, maybe even a spoonful of sour cream, and I'd make you a delicious scalp taco. I would force feed this to you and offer you your own urine, assuming that you peed yourself from fright, as a refreshing beverage, perhaps with a few cubes of ice and a colorful bendy straw. I would be sure to keep you alive after this, and I would lock you in a room with a very tiny window as the one source of light. This room would be padded, of course (I wouldn't want you hurting yourself), and quarantined, and you would spend three days in this room. If you had vomited or defecated during that whole ordeal, I would stick those excretions into a blender and make a nice soup for you to enjoy, probably with a few nice croutons, during those three days. At the end of that, when you didn't know whether you were going to live or die, but you would likely have begun to pray for some kind of release, I would take you out of this room and reintroduce you to the light of day. I would hand you a pair of crutches and something with which you could protect your scalpless head, and even offer to call you a cab to drive you to the nearest hospital and/or police station. I would hand you the money and make sure that you got settled in all nice and comfortably before the driver started driving and I'd wave to you as you disappeared past the buildings. Little would you know, however, that this cab driver would actually be working for me. I would instruct him to take the longest possible routes and I would keep a tracking device on the car at all times so that I could know of its exact whereabouts. Meanwhile, about three or four minutes after your departure, I would leave in my own car, which would be a big, hefty van. I would intercept you on a side street on the way to your destination, so no one would see, and cause the cab to crash into the side of my van. The driver would pretend as though he'd been knocked out by the force of the crash, and my hired thugs would open up the side door of the cab, pull you out, drag you into the bag of my van, and enjoy some sloppy seconds while another one of my henchmen would drive around the city, possibly for several hours, as they raped your scalpless, one-legged form. I would make sure, through another henchman who would whisper terrible things into your ear, that you were crying hard enough, and that your vision was well-obscured by your own tears, and then I would push you over, cut open your torso with a rusty scalpel, and remove your intestines. I would then wrap them around your neck and strangle you with them. I would likely then remove your other organs and keep them well-preserved, only to pleasure myself with them at a later date. I would keep your eyes in a lovely little jar and pickle them, so that I could have a delicious snack sometime when I'm at work. If you really want to know, I imagined that you had something to do with the Thought Police."
The girl laughed delightedly, evidently taking this as a tribute to the excellence of her disguise.
"Not the Thought Police! You didn't honestly think that?"
"Well, perhaps not exactly that. But from your general appearance—merely because you're young and fresh and healthy, you understand—I thought you probably—"
"You thought I was a good Party member, pure in word and deed. Banners, processions, slogans, games, community hikes—all that stuff. And you thought that if I had a quarter of a chance I'd denounce you as a thought criminal and get you killed off?"
"Yes, something of that kind. A great many young girls are like that, you know."
