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(单词翻译:双击或拖选)
Winston was writing in his diary:
It was three years ago. It was on a dark evening, in a narrow side-street near one of the big railway stations. She was standing1 near a doorway2 in the wall, under a street lamp that hardly gave any light. She had a young face, painted very thick. It was really the paint that appealed to me, the whiteness of it, like a mask, and the bright red lips. Party women never paint their faces. There was nobody else in the street, and no telescreens. She said two dollars. I——
For the moment it was too difficult to go on. He shut his eyes and pressed his fingers against them, trying to squeeze out the vision that kept recurring3. He had an almost overwhelming temptation to shout a string of filthy4 words at the top of his voice. Or to bang his head against the wall, to kick over the table, and hurl5 the inkpot through the window — to do any violent or noisy or painful thing that might black out the memory that was tormenting6 him.
Your worst enemy, he reflected, was your own nervous system. At any moment the tension inside you was liable to translate itself into some visible symptom. He thought of a man whom he had passed in the street a few weeks back; a quite ordinary-looking man, a Party member, aged7 thirty-five to forty, tallish and thin, carrying a brief-case. They were a few metres apart when the left side of the man’s face was suddenly contorted by a sort of spasm8. It happened again just as they were passing one another: it was only a twitch9, a quiver, rapid as the clicking of a camera shutter10, but obviously habitual11. He remembered thinking at the time: That poor devil is done for. And what was frightening was that the action was quite possibly unconscious. The most deadly danger of all was talking in your sleep. There was no way of guarding against that, so far as he could see.
He drew his breath and went on writing:
I went with her through the doorway and across a backyard into a basement kitchen. There was a bed against the wall, and a lamp on the table, turned down very low. She ——
His teeth were set on edge. He would have liked to spit. Simultaneously12 with the woman in the basement kitchen he thought of Katharine, his wife. Winston was married — had been married, at any rate: probably he still was married, so far as he knew his wife was not dead. He seemed to breathe again the warm stuffy13 odour of the basement kitchen, an odour compounded of bugs14 and dirty clothes and villainous cheap scent15, but nevertheless alluring16, because no woman of the Party ever used scent, or could be imagined as doing so. Only the proles used scent. In his mind the smell of it was inextricably mixed up with fornication.
When he had gone with that woman it had been his first lapse17 in two years or thereabouts. Consorting18 with prostitutes was forbidden, of course, but it was one of those rules that you could occasionally nerve yourself to break. It was dangerous, but it was not a life-and-death matter. To be caught with a prostitute might mean five years in a forced-labour camp: not more, if you had committed no other offence. And it was easy enough, provided that you could avoid being caught in the act. The poorer quarters swarmed19 with women who were ready to sell themselves. Some could even be purchased for a bottle of gin, which the proles were not supposed to drink. Tacitly the Party was even inclined to encourage prostitution, as an outlet20 for instincts which could not be altogether suppressed. Mere21 debauchery did not matter very much, so long as it was furtive22 and joyless and only involved the women of a submerged and despised class. The unforgivable crime was promiscuity23 between Party members. But — though this was one of the crimes that the accused in the great purges24 invariably confessed to — it was difficult to imagine any such thing actually happening.
The aim of the Party was not merely to prevent men and women from forming loyalties25 which it might not be able to control. Its real, undeclared purpose was to remove all pleasure from the sexual act. Not love so much as eroticism was the enemy, inside marriage as well as outside it. All marriages between Party members had to be approved by a committee appointed for the purpose, and — though the principle was never clearly stated — permission was always refused if the couple concerned gave the impression of being physically26 attracted to one another. The only recognized purpose of marriage was to beget27 children for the service of the Party. Sexual intercourse28 was to be looked on as a slightly disgusting minor29 operation, like having an enema. This again was never put into plain words, but in an indirect way it was rubbed into every Party member from childhood onwards. There were even organizations such as the Junior Anti-Sex League, which advocated complete celibacy30 for both sexes. All children were to be begotten31 by artificial insemination (ARTSEM, it was called in Newspeak) and brought up in public institutions. This, Winston was aware, was not meant altogether seriously, but somehow it fitted in with the general ideology32 of the Party. The Party was trying to kill the sex instinct, or, if it could not be killed, then to distort it and dirty it. He did not know why this was so, but it seemed natural that it should be so. And as far as the women were concerned, the Party’s efforts were largely successful.
He thought again of Katharine. It must be nine, ten — nearly eleven years since they had parted. It was curious how seldom he thought of her. For days at a time he was capable of forgetting that he had ever been married. They had only been together for about fifteen months. The Party did not permit divorce, but it rather encouraged separation in cases where there were no children.
Katharine was a tall, fair-haired girl, very straight, with splendid movements. She had a bold, aquiline33 face, a face that one might have called noble until one discovered that there was as nearly as possible nothing behind it. Very early in her married life he had decided34 — though perhaps it was only that he knew her more intimately than he knew most people — that she had without exception the most stupid, vulgar, empty mind that he had ever encountered. She had not a thought in her head that was not a slogan, and there was no imbecility, absolutely none that she was not capable of swallowing if the Party handed it out to her. ‘The human sound-track’ he nicknamed her in his own mind. Yet he could have endured living with her if it had not been for just one thing — sex.
As soon as he touched her she seemed to wince35 and stiffen36. To embrace her was like embracing a jointed37 wooden image. And what was strange was that even when she was clasping him against her he had the feeling that she was simultaneously pushing him away with all her strength. The rigidity38 of her muscles managed to convey that impression. She would lie there with shut eyes, neither resisting nor co-operating but SUBMITTING. It was extraordinarily39 embarrassing, and, after a while, horrible. But even then he could have borne living with her if it had been agreed that they should remain celibate40. But curiously41 enough it was Katharine who refused this. They must, she said, produce a child if they could. So the performance continued to happen, once a week quite regularly, whenever it was not impossible. She even used to remind him of it in the morning, as something which had to be done that evening and which must not be forgotten. She had two names for it. One was ‘making a baby’, and the other was ‘our duty to the Party’ (yes, she had actually used that phrase). Quite soon he grew to have a feeling of positive dread42 when the appointed day came round. But luckily no child appeared, and in the end she agreed to give up trying, and soon afterwards they parted.
Winston sighed inaudibly. He picked up his pen again and wrote:
She threw herself down on the bed, and at once, without any kind of preliminary in the most coarse, horrible way you can imagine, pulled up her skirt. I——
He saw himself standing there in the dim lamplight, with the smell of bugs and cheap scent in his nostrils43, and in his heart a feeling of defeat and resentment44 which even at that moment was mixed up with the thought of Katharine’s white body, frozen for ever by the hypnotic power of the Party. Why did it always have to be like this? Why could he not have a woman of his own instead of these filthy scuffles at intervals45 of years? But a real love affair was an almost unthinkable event. The women of the Party were all alike. Chastity was as deep ingrained in them as Party loyalty46. By careful early conditioning, by games and cold water, by the rubbish that was dinned47 into them at school and in the Spies and the Youth League, by lectures, parades, songs, slogans, and martial48 music, the natural feeling had been driven out of them. His reason told him that there must be exceptions, but his heart did not believe it. They were all impregnable, as the Party intended that they should be. And what he wanted, more even than to be loved, was to break down that wall of virtue49, even if it were only once in his whole life. The sexual act, successfully performed, was rebellion. Desire was thoughtcrime. Even to have awakened50 Katharine, if he could have achieved it, would have been like a seduction, although she was his wife.
But the rest of the story had got to be written down. He wrote:
I turned up the lamp. When I saw her in the light ——
After the darkness the feeble light of the paraffin lamp had seemed very bright. For the first time he could see the woman properly. He had taken a step towards her and then halted, full of lust51 and terror. He was painfully conscious of the risk he had taken in coming here. It was perfectly52 possible that the patrols would catch him on the way out: for that matter they might be waiting outside the door at this moment. If he went away without even doing what he had come here to do ——!
It had got to be written down, it had got to be confessed. What he had suddenly seen in the lamplight was that the woman was OLD. The paint was plastered so thick on her face that it looked as though it might crack like a cardboard mask. There were streaks53 of white in her hair; but the truly dreadful detail was that her mouth had fallen a little open, revealing nothing except a cavernous blackness. She had no teeth at all.
He wrote hurriedly, in scrabbling handwriting:
When I saw her in the light she was quite an old woman, fifty years old at least. But I went ahead and did it just the same.
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1
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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recurring
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| adj.往复的，再次发生的 | |
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filthy
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| adj.卑劣的；恶劣的，肮脏的 | |
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5
hurl
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| vt.猛投，力掷，声叫骂 | |
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6
tormenting
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| 使痛苦的，使苦恼的 | |
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7
aged
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| adj.年老的，陈年的 | |
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8
spasm
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| n.痉挛，抽搐；一阵发作 | |
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9
twitch
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| v.急拉，抽动，痉挛，抽搐；n.扯，阵痛，痉挛 | |
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10
shutter
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| n.百叶窗；(照相机)快门；关闭装置 | |
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11
habitual
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| adj.习惯性的；通常的，惯常的 | |
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12
simultaneously
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| adv.同时发生地，同时进行地 | |
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13
stuffy
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| adj.不透气的，闷热的 | |
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14
bugs
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| adj.疯狂的，发疯的n.窃听器( bug的名词复数 )；病菌；虫子；[计算机]（制作软件程序所产生的意料不到的）错误 | |
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15
scent
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| n.气味，香味，香水，线索，嗅觉；v.嗅，发觉 | |
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16
alluring
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| adj.吸引人的，迷人的 | |
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17
lapse
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| n.过失，流逝，失效，抛弃信仰，间隔；vi.堕落，停止，失效，流逝；vt.使失效 | |
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18
consorting
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| v.结伴( consort的现在分词 )；交往；相称；调和 | |
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19
swarmed
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| 密集( swarm的过去式和过去分词 )； 云集； 成群地移动； 蜜蜂或其他飞行昆虫成群地飞来飞去 | |
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20
outlet
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| n.出口/路；销路；批发商店；通风口；发泄 | |
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21
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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22
furtive
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| adj.鬼鬼崇崇的，偷偷摸摸的 | |
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23
promiscuity
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| n.混杂，混乱；（男女的）乱交 | |
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24
purges
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| 清除异己( purge的名词复数 )； 整肃（行动）； 清洗； 泻药 | |
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25
loyalties
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| n.忠诚( loyalty的名词复数 )；忠心；忠于…感情；要忠于…的强烈感情 | |
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26
physically
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| adj.物质上，体格上，身体上，按自然规律 | |
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27
beget
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| v.引起；产生 | |
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28
intercourse
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| n.性交；交流，交往，交际 | |
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29
minor
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| adj.较小(少)的，较次要的；n.辅修学科；vi.辅修 | |
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30
celibacy
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| n.独身(主义) | |
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31
begotten
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| v.为…之生父( beget的过去分词 )；产生，引起 | |
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32
ideology
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| n.意识形态，(政治或社会的)思想意识 | |
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33
aquiline
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| adj.钩状的，鹰的 | |
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34
decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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35
wince
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| n.畏缩，退避，（因痛苦，苦恼等)面部肌肉抽动；v.畏缩，退缩，退避 | |
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36
stiffen
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| v.(使)硬，(使)变挺，(使)变僵硬 | |
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37
jointed
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| 有接缝的 | |
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38
rigidity
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| adj.钢性，坚硬 | |
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39
extraordinarily
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| adv.格外地；极端地 | |
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40
celibate
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| adj.独身的，独身主义的；n.独身者 | |
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41
curiously
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| adv.有求知欲地；好问地；奇特地 | |
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42
dread
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| vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧 | |
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43
nostrils
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| 鼻孔( nostril的名词复数 ) | |
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44
resentment
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| n.怨愤，忿恨 | |
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45
intervals
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| n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息 | |
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46
loyalty
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| n.忠诚，忠心 | |
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47
dinned
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| vt.喧闹（din的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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48
martial
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| adj.战争的，军事的，尚武的，威武的 | |
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49
virtue
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| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
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50
awakened
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| v.（使）醒( awaken的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）觉醒；弄醒；（使）意识到 | |
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51
lust
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| n.性(淫)欲；渴(欲)望；vi.对…有强烈的欲望 | |
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52
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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53
streaks
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| n.（与周围有所不同的）条纹( streak的名词复数 )；（通常指不好的）特征（倾向）；（不断经历成功或失败的）一段时期v.快速移动( streak的第三人称单数 )；使布满条纹 | |
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54
eyelids
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| n.眼睑( eyelid的名词复数 )；眼睛也不眨一下；不露声色；面不改色 | |
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