Suzanna Hamilton plays Julia in the film version of Michael Radford's '1984', released in 1984.Virgin - Umbrella-Rosenblum Film ( Collection ChristopheL via AFP / Contact)
The first thing he saw was Sad Old Man Smith. He was setting up rows of chairs and, absorbed in his work, was surprisingly friendly. Smith, a wiry man of about forty, with very light skin and gray eyes, looked like the guy on the HONOR OUR INTELLECTUAL PAWNS poster, although, of course, without the telescope. He seemed to be dreaming of something cold but pleasant. Maybe he was thinking about music. He moved with evident pleasure, despite his slight limp; It was obvious that he liked to have physical chores.
But then he noticed Julia and pursed his lips in disgust. It was amazing how his face changed: from hawk to reptile. “There's nothing wrong with you that can't be fixed with a good fuck!”, she told herself, and she almost made him laugh, because it was true, of course. Smith's real problem was not that his parents had been
non-persons
[as Orwell called
"vaporized" or executed people in
1984
, whose existence is erased], nor that he could not stand the Party's doctrine, or even its unpleasant cough. . Sad Old Man was suffering from a serious case of Sexual Souring. And, as usual, it was the woman's fault, who else?
Without much thought, when Smith sat down, Julia went to sit right behind him. She told herself that she did it because it was the place closest to the windows, but when he stiffened, uncomfortable by her presence, she felt a perverse satisfaction. Next to her, Julia had a shelf with a single book: an old
Newspeak
dictionary [the language that Orwell invented in
1984
], now slightly dusty. She imagined running her finger through the dust and writing something on the back of his neck with that crap (a Julia jot perhaps), although she would never do that, of course.
The only problem was that, from there, I could smell it. The logical thing would have been for him to smell like mold, but he smelled like good male sweat. Then he noticed his hair, strong and abundant, it must have been pleasant to the touch. How unfair that the Party kept the handsome ones! (…) So, of course, Margaret went to sit next to Smith and then O'Brien came and sat on Margaret's other side. She and Smith ignored each other. Everyone in Archives was like that. It was a treacherous job, spending the day reading
oldthink
[the way of writing prior to the arrival of Big Brother], and the Archives workers kept their distance. (…)
Julia turned her head, the safest option when someone did something peculiar, and looked out the windows. At that moment she flew past a piece of newspaper, spinning frantically through the air and then suddenly spreading out and plummeting toward the rooftops in the background. From that height you couldn't distinguish the prole neighborhoods from the Party ones; That was always weird. It was also a little difficult to see the holes where the bombs had fallen; There were them everywhere on the street and London sometimes seemed more like a crater than a city. The private use of fuel was prohibited during daylight hours and the few columns of smoke could be seen where the PA1 dining rooms were. Power outages were also in effect, and the grimy, dark windows of the office buildings featured the gloomy glow of the sea.
The immense telescreen of the nearby Transportation building, whose film produced the optical illusion that the daylight did not stop flickering and varying subtly, blocked a small part of the view. The images were repeated in a simple loop. First, a group of rosy-cheeked children were seen playing innocently in a playground. On the horizon, a mass of perverts, Eurasians and capitalists were growing, attacking the children with brutality. Then a cutout of Big Brother would suddenly appear, blurring the villains, and a slogan could be seen in the sky: THANK YOU, BIG BROTHER, FOR KEEPING OUR CHILDREN SAFE! After that the same children came out, already wearing the uniform of the children's organization, the Spies: gray shorts, blue shirt and red scarf. The happy Spies marched with a flag of the
socing
[the ruling party of 1984
]
and the slogan of the sky became JOIN THE SPIES! Then everything disappeared and the first image appeared again.
The helicopters flew over that scene non-stop. The big ones were seen first, whose passage was audible even through the thick windows. Those were carried by a pilot and two gunners, and sometimes a gunner was seen sitting as if nothing had happened in the doorway, with a black rifle resting on his knee. As soon as you thought about the helicopters you began to detect the flocks of
microcopters
below; So the big ones seemed like the parents of the little ones. The buses did not have a pilot; They were remote controlled. They were only for surveillance and, in the External Party districts, you would often look up from what you were doing and find a microphone suspended by the window like a curious little bird. (…)
As she looked out the window, the room had filled and Smith's man smell had faded into a general stale atmosphere of dirty clothes, bad breath, and cheap soap. Some already had indignant faces, prepared for Hate. It was always strange to see them looking furious and tense, with distorted faces, at a blank telescreen. Julia began to experience the usual anxiety that this would not go well, that those present would rebel and give up in shame, or simply burst out laughing. Whenever she imagined that, she saw herself getting up and scolding the offenders very dignified, but, deep down, she would be the first to laugh.
And then it began. You felt it almost before you heard it: a thunder-like vibration that led to a shrill, too-loud voice. It seemed to shake even the metal chairs themselves and make the lights bubble with a migraine. Everyone screamed furiously when the hateful and already familiar face of Emmanuel Goldstein filled the telescreen. It was a thin, intellectual face with a kindness that soon revealed itself to be intriguing and false. (…) Emmanuel Goldstein had once been a hero of the Revolution who had fought on the side of Big Brother. He had then turned against the Party and since then devoted his considerable cunning and energy to the destruction of Oceania and its inhabitants. No one was safe from his evil. (…)
Hate was in full swing; The entire room roared in excitement. Margaret was beautifully red, her mouth wide open in a gesture of sensual anger, and O'Brien had stood up, very virile, as if he were facing a detested enemy. Even Smith bawled with astonishing virulence and kicked the footrest of his chair spasmodically. Julia tuned out for a dangerous moment, coldly wondering if Smith was faking it. Then she was seized with panic: she had forgotten to keep shouting. She suddenly felt like yawning.
On impulse, she grabbed the old
Newspeak
dictionary from the shelf next to her . She took a deep breath and bellowed: “You scoundrel! Scoundrel! Scoundrel!" and she threw that heavy volume over their heads, which flew and turned on itself until it crashed against the screen with a great crash. Everyone was startled and, for a moment, Julia regretted what she had done. Her outburst could be interpreted as an attack on the screen. The telescreens were very resistant and a book couldn't do anything to them, but did O'Brien know that? Would you consider that sabotage? However, O'Brien continued to scream, oblivious to what had happened, and others began to pelt the screen with whatever they had at hand. One threw a pack of tobacco at him; another, a shoe. Julia was sweating with fear, but her move had turned out well. That traitorous yawn had disappeared.
Sandra Newman
(Boston, 1965) is a writer. This excerpt is a preview from
Julia. A new version of 1984, by George Orwell
, from Destino publishing house, which is published this April 3.
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