boiled-cabbage smell, common to the
whole building, but it was shot through by a sharper reek of sweat, which
-- one knew this at the first sniff, though it was hard to say how -- was
the sweat of some person not present at the moment. In another room someone
with a comb and a piece of toilet paper was trying to keep tune with the
military music which was still issuing from the telescreen.
'It's the children,' said Mrs. Parsons, casting a half-apprehensive
glance at the door. 'They haven't been out today. And of course--'
She had a habit of breaking off her sentences in the middle. The
kitchen sink was full nearly to the brim with filthy greenish water which
smelt worse than ever of cabbage. Winston knelt down and examined the
angle-joint of the pipe. He hated using his hands, and he hated bending
down, which was always liable to start him coughing. Mrs. Parsons looked on
helplessly.
'Of course if Tom was home he'd put it right in a moment,' she said.
'He loves anything like that. He's ever so good with his hands, Tom is.'
Parsons was Winston's fellow-employee at the Ministry of Truth. He was
a fattish but active man of paralysing stupidity, a mass of imbecile
enthusiasms -- one of those completely unquestioning, devoted drudges on
whom, more even than on the Thought Police, the stability of the Party
depended. At thirty-five he had just been unwillingly evicted from the
Youth League, and before graduating into the Youth League he had managed to
stay on in the Spies for a year beyond the statutory age. At the Ministry
he was employed in some subordinate post for which intelligence was not
required, but on the other hand he was a leading figure on the Sports
Committee and all the other committees engaged in organizing community