Page 222 - 1984

preserved. When you receive orders, they will come from
me. If we find it necessary to communicate with you, it will
be through Martin. When you are finally caught, you will
confess. That is unavoidable. But you will have very little
to confess, other than your own actions. You will not be
able to betray more than a handful of unimportant people.
Probably you will not even betray me. By that time I may be
dead, or I shall have become a different person, with a dif-
ferent face.’
He continued to move to and fro over the soft carpet. In
spite of the bulkiness of his body there was a remarkable
grace in his movements. It came out even in the gesture
with which he thrust a hand into his pocket, or manipu-
lated a cigarette. More even than of strength, he gave an
impression of confidence and of an understanding tinged
by irony. However much in earnest he might be, he had
nothing of the single-mindedness that belongs to a fanatic.
When he spoke of murder, suicide, venereal disease, am-
putated limbs, and altered faces, it was with a faint air of
persiflage. ‘This is unavoidable,’ his voice seemed to say;
‘this is what we have got to do, unflinchingly. But this is
not what we shall be doing when life is worth living again.’
A wave of admiration, almost of worship, flowed out from
Winston towards O’Brien. For the moment he had forgot-
ten the shadowy figure of Goldstein. When you looked at
O’Brien’s powerful shoulders and his blunt-featured face, so
ugly and yet so civilized, it was impossible to believe that
he could be defeated. There was no stratagem that he was
not equal to, no danger that he could not foresee. Even Julia

1