A sudden hot sweat had broken out all over Winston’s body. His face remained completely inscrutable. Never show dismay！ Never show resentment！ A single flicker of the eyes could give you away. He stood watching while the instructress raised her arms above her head and — one could not say gracefully， but with remarkable neatness and efficiency — bent over and tucked the first joint of her fingers under her toes.
“There， comrades！ That’s how I want to see you doing it. Watch me again. I’m thirty-nine and I’ve had four children. Now look.” She bent over again. “You see my knees aren’t bent. You can all do it if you want to，” she added as she straightened herself up. “Anyone under forty-five is perfectly capable of touching his toes. We don’t all have the privilege of fighting in the front line， but at least we can all keep fit. Remember our boys on the Malabar front！ And the sailors in the Floating Fortresses！ Just think what they have to put up with. Now try again. That’s better， comrade， that’s much better，” she added encouragingly as Winston， with a violent lunge， succeeded in touching his toes with knees unbent， for the first time in several years.
英文四
With the deep， unconscious sigh which not even the nearness of the telescreen could prevent him from uttering when his day’s work started， Winston pulled the speakwrite towards him， blew the dust from its mouthpiece， and put on his spectacles. Then he unrolled and clipped together four small cylinders of paper which had already flopped out of the pneumatic tube on the right-hand side of his desk.
In the walls of the cubicle there were three orifices. To the right of the speakwrite， a small pneumatic tube for written messages， to the left， a larger one for newspapers； and in the side wall， within easy reach of Winston’s arm， a large oblong slit protected by a wire grating. This last was for the disposal of waste paper. Similar slits existed in thousands or tens of thousands throughout the building， not only in every room but at short intervals in every corridor. For some reason they were nicknamed memory holes. When one knew that any document was due for destruction， or even when one saw a scrap of waste paper lying about， it was an automatic action to lift the flap of the nearest memory hole and drop it in， whereupon it would be whirled away on a current of warm air to the enormous furnaces which were hidden somewhere in the recesses of the building.
Winston examined the four slips of paper which he had unrolled. Each contained a message of only one or two lines， in the abbreviated jargon — not actually Newspeak， but consisting largely of Newspeak words — which was used in the Ministry for internal purposes. They ran：
With a faint feeling of satisfaction Winston laid the fourth message aside. It was an intricate and responsible job and had better be dealt with last. The other three were routine matters， though the second one would probably mean some tedious wading through lists of figures.
Winston dialled “back numbers” on the telescreen and called for the appropriate issues of ， which slid out of the pneumatic tube after only a few minutes’ delay.
The messages he had received referred to articles or news items which for one reason or another it was thought necessary to alter， or， as the official phrase had it， to rectify. For example， it appeared from of the seventeenth of March that Big Brother， in his speech of the previous day， had predicted that the South Indian front would remain quiet but that a Eurasian offensive would shortly be launched in North Africa. As it happened， the Eurasian Higher Command had launched its offensive in South India and left North Africa alone. It was therefore necessary to rewrite a paragraph of Big Brother’s speech， in such a way as to make him predict the thing that had actually happened. Or again， of the nineteenth of December had published the official forecasts of the output of various classes of consumption goods in the fourth quarter of 1983， which was also the sixth quarter of the Ninth Three-Year Plan. Today"s issue contained a statement of the actual output， from which it appeared that the forecasts were in every instance grossly wrong. Winston"s job was to rectify the original figures by making them agree with the later ones. As for the third message， it referred to a very simple error which could be set right in a couple of minutes.
As short a time ago as February， the Ministry of Plenty had issued a promise （a “categorical pledge” were the official words） that there would be no reduction of the chocolate ration during 1984. Actually， as Winston was aware， the chocolate ration was to be reduced from thirty grammes to twenty at the end of the present week. All that was needed was to substitute for the original promise a warning that it would probably be necessary to reduce the ration at some time in April.
As soon as Winston had dealt with each of the messages， he clipped his speakwritten corrections to the appropriate copy of and pushed them into the pneumatic tube. Then， with a movement which was as nearly as possible unconscious， he crumpled up the original message and any notes that he himself had made， and dropped them into the memory hole to be devoured by the flames.
