a sort of restless zeal, an up-to-dateness of
information, which the ordinary Party member did not approach. Yet a faint
air of disreputability always clung to him. He said things that would have
been better unsaid, he had read too many books, he frequented the Chestnut
Tree Cafe, haunt of painters and musicians. There was no law, not even an
unwritten law, against frequenting the Chestnut Tree Cafe, yet the place
was somehow ill-omened. The old, discredited leaders of the Party had been
used to gather there before they were finally purged. Goldstein himself, it
was said, had sometimes been seen there, years and decades ago. Syme's fate
was not difficult to foresee. And yet it was a fact that if Syme grasped,
even for three seconds, the nature of his, Winston's, secret opinions, he
would betray him instantly to the Thought police. So would anybody else,
for that matter: but Syme more than most. Zeal was not enough. Orthodoxy
was unconsciousness.
Syme looked up. 'Here comes Parsons,' he said.
Something in the tone of his voice seemed to add, 'that bloody fool'.
Parsons, Winston's fellow-tenant at Victory Mansions, was in fact threading
his way across the room -- a tubby, middle-sized man with fair hair and a
froglike face. At thirty-five he was already putting on rolls of fat at
neck and waistline, but his movements were