when she handed
him the note. Obviously she had been frightened out of her wits, as well
she might be. Nor did the idea of refusing her advances even cross his
mind. Only five nights ago he had contemplated smashing her skull in with a
cobblestone, but that was of no importance. He thought of her naked,
youthful body, as he had seen it in his dream. He had imagined her a fool
like all the rest of them, her head stuffed with lies and hatred, her belly
full of ice. A kind of fever seized him at the thought that he might lose
her, the white youthful body might slip away from him! What he feared more
than anything else was that she would simply change her mind if he did not
get in touch with her quickly. But the physical difficulty of meeting was
enormous. It was like trying to make a move at chess when you were already
mated. Whichever way you turned, the telescreen faced you. Actually, all
the possible ways of communicating with her had occurred to him within five
minutes of reading the note; but now, with time to think, he went over them
one by one, as though laying out a row of instruments on a table.
Obviously the kind of encounter that had happened this morning could
not be repeated. If she had worked in the Records Department it might have
been comparatively simple, but he had only a very dim idea whereabouts in
the building the Fiction Departrnent lay, and he had no pretext for going
there. If he had known where she lived, and at what time she left work, he
could have contrived to meet her somewhere on her way home; but to try to
follow her home was not safe, because it would mean loitering about outside
the Ministry, which was bound to be noticed. As for sending a letter
through the mails, it was out of the question. By a routine