in Canada to a rendezvous somewhere in Siberia, and had conferred
with members of the Eurasian General Staff, to whom they had betrayed
important military secrets. The date had stuck in Winston's memory because
it chanced to be midsummer day; but the whole story must be on record in
countless other places as well. There was only one possible conclusion: the
confessions were lies.
Of course, this was not in itself a discovery. Even at that time
Winston had not imagined that the people who were wiped out in the purges
had actually committed the crimes that they were accused of. But this was
concrete evidence; it was a fragment of the abolished past, like a fossil
bone which turns up in the wrong stratum and destroys a geological theory.
It was enough to blow the Party to atoms, if in some way it could have been
published to the world and its significance made known.
He had gone straight on working. As soon as he saw what the photograph
was, and what it meant, he had covered it up with another sheet of paper.
Luckily, when he unrolled it, it had been upside-down from the point of
view of the telescreen.
He took his scribbling pad on his knee and pushed back his chair so as
to get as far away from the telescreen as possible. To keep your face
expressionless was not difficult, and even your breathing could be
controlled, with an effort: but you could not control the beating of your
heart, and the telescreen was quite delicate enough to pick it up. He let
what he judged to be ten minutes go by, tormented all the while by the fear
that some accident -- a sudden draught blowing across his desk, for
instance -- would betray him. Then, without uncovering it again, he dropped
the photograph into the memory hole, along with some other waste papers.
Within another minute, perhaps, it would have