on a summer evening
when the slanting rays of the sun gilded the ground. The landscape that he
was looking at recurred so often in his dreams that he was never fully
certain whether or not he had seen it in the real world. In his waking
thoughts he called it the Golden Country. It was an old, rabbit-bitten
pasture, with a foot-track wandering across it and a molehill here and
there. In the ragged hedge on the opposite side of the field the boughs of
the elm trees were swaying very faintly in the breeze, their leaves just
stirring in dense masses like women's hair. Somewhere near at hand, though
out of sight, there was a clear, slow-moving stream where dace were
swimming in the pools under the willow trees.
The girl with dark hair was coming towards them across the field. With
what seemed a single movement she tore off her clothes and flung them
disdainfully aside. Her body was white and smooth, but it aroused no desire
in him, indeed he barely looked at it. What overwhelmed him in that instant
was admiration for the gesture with which she had thrown her clothes aside.
With its grace and carelessness it seemed to annihilate a whole culture, a
whole system of thought, as though Big Brother and the Party and the
Thought Police could all be swept into nothingness by a single splendid
movement of the arm. That too was a gesture belonging to the ancient time.
Winston woke up with the word 'Shakespeare' on his lips.
The telescreen was giving forth an ear-splitting whistle which
continued on the same note for thirty seconds. It was nought seven fifteen,
getting-up time for office workers. Winston wrenched his body out of bed --
naked, for a member of the Outer Party received only 3,000 clothing coupons
annually, and a suit of pyjamas was 600 -- and seized a dingy singlet and a
pair of shorts that