But the releasing bullet somehow stayed in the pistol. Instead, Winston heard a fair voice from behind.
"Stand up and follow me without drawing too much attention to you."
He must have been in a dream, he thought. All the love that had surrounded him was gone now, he had woken up and had nothing left except the instruction he had to follow. He waited two or three seconds, then slowly stood up and turned around. There, among the other people, there was a peculiar man, easy to catch with the eye and with a yet familiar asian figure. He was walking out of the Chestnut Tree. Winston put his chair back and hurried to follow him. But the chinese man had already left the café, and as Winston was out on the street, the man seemed already gone. In panic, Winston looked left and right and forward and caught him at last, when the man was halfway around the next corner. He had to hurry again and cursed his well-fed body, as he ran through the roads. The man seemed always to be just walking fast without haze, but he could have easily run away without leaving Winston a chance to follow. It seemed that he tried to turn around another corner just the moment that Winston came around the last. In Winston´s mind there was another thougt that told him that he had just imagined the voice. But somehow he was determined to find out. Winston suddenly noticed that he was in one of the districts of london where the proles lived. And there were enormous factories not far away.
Winston was gasping for breath as he turned around a storage. But then he saw with ease that the man had stopped in front of one of the bigger 19th-century-houses, which always looked like falling into pieces the next moment. Winston walked over the street towards him. The man really seemed to be waiting for him, and now Winston could take a close look into that round, yellow asian face, and of course he knew at once why the man had seemed so familiar to him. He recognized him now; it was Martin, the servant of O´Brien.
"I suppose you know who I am," said Martin.
"Yes," answered Winston, suppressing a gasp.
"I´m sorry that you had to hurry that much, you seem slightly exhausted. But as you can tell, every organized counterrevolutionary activity could be discovered by the Thought Police at the slightest mistake."
"Well, it´s alright. So, you really are one of..." he started and noted the next moment that he was speaking with a childish curiosity. Martin made a swift movemend with his left hand. "The answers follow inside. You only have to follow me." With that, he went over to the big old house.
Winston just stood there, undetermined. He didn´t really feel the wish to go inside and find out about that. He wanted to get back to the chestnut tree and embrace Big Brother, because nothing existed besides Big Brother, and he loved Big Brother because Big Brother was everything and Big Brother cared for him and Big Brother was everywhere, in the streets, in the Buildings, in the whole city and in every part of the country. And he felt completely absorbed into the presence of Big Brother.
But he knew that he was a thought criminal, and therefore he didn´t deserve to be loved by Big Brother.
Then, again, the thought police would soon release him from his pain and shoot him.
Then, without warning, there was a picture in his mind. A picture of him begging for life and betraying something that appeared to be what he most loved in the world. And suddenly he realized that there where rats everywhere. And also suddenly he realized that he wasn´t afraid of how he would be going to die, but that he simply wanted to live.
His legs sprung to life as his mind was trembling and roaring at that thought, and he ran to to the door as fast as he could.
At the door, he already had forgotten what had made him run. Why should he feel insecure or uneasy? Big Brother loved him! And he loved Big Brother.
But then he realized that he had been aware of that already, and even if he thougt that he felt like that, Big Brother wouldn´t be able to protect him from the absolute evil of thoughtcrime. And that made him afraid again, afraid of himself and everything. Caught in that nightmare, he hastily opened the door.
Inside, he was standing in a long white hallway, so long that he wondered how it fitted into the building. At the ceiling, there was a sign showing the words "Do you really live?".
Winston looked around and saw that there was, easy to see because of the white floor and the white walls and the white ceiling, a small black arrow painted on the ground, one pace away from where he was standing, pointing to the left side.
Winston looked left. The white wall bore a mirror. In it, Winston saw a thick, beetlelike man. That was him? No, he looked healthy and beautiful! He didn´t like doublethink and he wanted victory gin.
"Good day, Mr. Smith."
Winston suddenly noticed that he had been quavering some kind of nonsense silently. He hurried to turn around to where the voice had been coming from. Behind him, a man had been standing. He was not tall and had a normal figure, dark curly hair and an odd face that seemed mischievous and intellectual at the same time. "I am glad to meet you after all."
Winston could suddenly see him clearly and found out that he hadn´t been able to focus his eyes and now had managed it for the first time. "So you are the one I talked to that morning I got arrested afterwards?"
"Yes, and I was who sent the package to you. My name does not exist, of course, but my brothers call me Mr. Wallace. Andrew Wallace. Nice to meet you, Mr. Smith."
Winston shook his hand gladly. As far as he could remember, he had never been called "Mister". In his youth, it had either been Winston or brat or scum, and from the day on that he had found work in minitrue, he had always been Comrade 6079 Smith W.
"Nice to meet you. You are a real member of the brotherhood?"
"Yes, I am, and Martin is one, too. He also belongs to the thought police and had the order to kill you. But we had better use for you alive." He smiled slightly. Winston noted that he already liked him.
"But I think I should introduce you into our system and that building," he continued. "Everywhere outside there are signs saying "Danger, do not entry", and in the Ministry of Plenty, these houses here don´t exist. I´m even not sure whether they kow about this place on earth or not. It is one of the brotherhood´s headquaters. There are some of them, over twenty at least alone in Airstrip One, but we here only know where some of them are. Here we work; which means sabotage of governmental institutions, of the telescreen net, searching for ambushs for those who are on the list of the Thought Police and building up an oposition, not alone in the outer Party but also among the Proles. I am the Executive Director for unperson cases."
They had gone to the end of the hallway and stepped down the stairs. On a sign, Winston read "Underground level 1".
Wallace opened a door and led him in. Inside there were a few persons writing at machines that Winston knew, because twenty years earlier he had worked with them, too. They were called typewriters. Typewrites, of course, in Newspeak. The writers, young men and women, but also some of the elder ones, greetet them with silent "Hello"s and kept on writing.
"This, for example," said Wallace, "is where news from outside, may it be the times or may it be one of our spies in the Thought Police, are processed and forwarded. Whenever something important happens out there, we know it first and how to deal with that. Good work, keep on!"
Winston looked in amazement at the determination to work against the tyranny. The brotherhood existed, and it was alive. On every single face, Winston saw that its owner would keep on with his work for the brotherhood for the rest of their lives.
"Another one who doesn´t exist?" asked an elder man from his chair. "Yep" said Wallace.
"Hope you´re alright," said the man. "They nearly got me before I came here. I hope they aren´t angry any more." He stood up and shook Winston´s hand. "I´m Archie. If you choose to join the brotherhood, I´d take a job like this one. Bloody typing."
"Not so fast, please," said Wallace, grinning. They went out. "You see," said Wallace, "The people here are like you. They come here in the midday hours and work for the brotherhood instead of having lunch. They are unpersons hiding from the Thought Police. They are disabled or something like that. And they all know it is right what they are doing. This building has six undergrund levels, every single one, from the News Department here to the Telescreen Hackers down there, filled up. But there is still so much work to do."
Without warning, Winston became aware of all the things that had happened in the past and sighed. "But I have betrayed everything. And my mind holey and full of doublethink. I must admit it. I simply can´t do anything."
What he said was true. He didn´t exist, and he was nothing, no matter what they told them, and his only destination was the party and Big Brother and to wait for the shot that ended the life of a dead.
Wallace suddenly flourished a razor blade only centimeters away from his nose across his face, and Winston stumbled back in shock. "You are alive, Winston!" said Wallace. "Do you still want to die? Or do you want to live further?"
Winston knew the answer.