now let's
see which of us can touch our toes!' she said enthusiastically. 'Right over
from the hips, please, comrades. One-two! One-two!...'
Winston loathed this exercise, which sent shooting pains all the way
from his heels to his buttocks and often ended by bringing on another
coughing fit. The half-pleasant quality went out of his meditations. The
past, he reflected, had not merely been altered, it had been actually
destroyed. For how could you establish even the most obvious fact when
there existed no record outside your own memory? He tried to remember in
what year he had first heard mention of Big Brother. He thought it must
have been at some time in the sixties, but it was impossible to be certain.
In the Party histories, of course, Big Brother figured as the leader and
guardian of the Revolution since its very earliest days. His exploits had
been gradually pushed backwards in time until already they extended into
the fabulous world of the forties and the thirties, when the capitalists in
their strange cylindrical hats still rode through the streets of London in
great gleaming motor-cars or horse carriages with glass sides. There was no
knowing how much of this legend was true and how much invented. Winston
could not even remember at what date the Party itself had come into
existence. He did not believe he had ever heard the word Ingsoc before
1960, but it was possible that in its Oldspeak form -- 'English Socialism',
that is to say -- it had been current earlier. Everything melted into mist.
Sometimes, indeed, you could put your finger on a definite lie. It was not
true, for example, as was claimed in the Party history books, that the
Party had invented aeroplanes. He remembered aeroplanes since his earliest
childhood. But you could prove nothing. There was never any evidence. Just
once in his whole life he had h