Actually he was not used towriting by hand
The thing that he was about to do was to open a diary.This was not illegal (nothing was illegal, since there were nolonger any laws), but if detected it was reasonably certainthat it would be punished by death, or at least by twenty-five years in a forced-labour camp. Winston fitted a nib intothe penholder and sucked it to get the grease off. The penwas an archaic instrument, seldom used even for signaturesand he had procured one, furtively and with some difficulty,simply because of a feeling that the beautiful creamy paperdeserved to be written on with a real nib instead of beingscratched with an ink-pencil. Actually he was not used towriting by hand. Apart from very short notes, it was usual to dictate everything into the speak-write which was ofcourse impossible for his present purpose. He dipped theen into the ink and then faltered for just a second. A tremor had gone through his bowels. To mark the paper was thedecisive act. In small clumsy letters he wrote:
April 4th, 1984.He sat back. A sense of complete helplessness had de-scended upon him. To begin with, he did not know with anycertainty that this was 1984. It must be round about thatdate, since he was fairly sure that his age was thirty-nine,and he believed that he had been born in 1944 or 1945: butit was never possible nowadays to pin down any date withina year or twoFor whom, it suddenly occurred to him to wonder, was hewriting this diary? For the future, for the unborn. His mindhovered for a moment round the doubtful date on the pageand then fetched up with a bump against the Newspeakword DOUBLETHINK. For the first time the magnitude ofwhat he had undertaken came home to him. How could youcommunicate with the future? It was of its nature impossi-ble. Either the future would resemble the present, in whichcase it would not listen to him: or it would be different fromit, and his predicament would be meaninglessFor some time he sat gazing stupidly at the paper. Thetelescreen had changed over to strident military music. Itwas curious that he seemed not merely to have lost the pow-er of expressing himself, but even to have forgotten what itwas that he had originally intended to say. For weeks pasthe had been making ready for this moment and it had neyer crossed his mind that anything would be needed exceptcourage. The actual writing would be easy. All he had todo was to transfer to paper the interminable restless mono-ogue that had been running inside his head, literally foryears. At this moment, however, even the monologue haddried up. Moreover his varicose ulcer had begun itchingunbearably. He dared not scratch it, because if he did so italways became inflamed. The seconds were ticking by. Hewas conscious of nothing except the blankness of the pagein front of him, the itching of the skin above his ankle, theblaring of the music, and a slight booziness caused by theginSuddenly he began writing in sheer panic, only imperfectly aware of what he was setting down. His small butchildish handwriting straggled up and down the page, shed-ding first its capital letters and finally even its full stops:
April 4th, 1984. Last night to the flicks. All war films. Onevery good one of a ship full of refugees being bombedsomewhere in the mediterranean, audience much amusedby shots of a great huge fat man trying to swim away witha helicopter after him, first you saw him wallowing alongin the water like a porpoise, then you saw him through thehelicopters gunsights, then he was full of holes and the searound him turned pink and he sank as suddenly as thoughthe holes had let in the water, audience shouting with laughterwhen he sank. then you saw a lifeboat full of children with ahelicopter hovering over it. there was a middle- aged womanmight have been a jewess sitting up in the bow with a littleboy about three years old in her arms. little boy screamingwith fright and hiding his head between her breasts as if hewas trying to burrow right into her and the woman puttingher arms round him and comforting him although she wasblue with fright herself, all the time covering him up as muchas possible as if she thought her arms could keep the bulletsoff him. then the helicopter planted a 20 kilo bomb in amongthem terrific flash and the boat went all to matchwood. thenthere was a wonderful shot of a child' s arm going唧p咿唧right up into the air a helicopter with a camera in its nosemust have followed it up and there was a lot of applause fromthe party seats but a woman down in the prole part of thehouse suddenly started kicking up a fuss and shouting theydidnt oughter of showed it not in front of kids they didnt itaint right not in front of kids it aint until the police turnedher turned her out i dont suppose anything happened to hernobody cares what the proles say typical prole reaction they
Winston stopped writing, partly because he was suffer-ing from cramp. He did not know what had made him pourout this stream of rubbish. But the curious thing was thatwhile he was doing so a totally different memory had clarified itself in his mind, to the point where he almost feltequal to writing it down. It was, he now realized, becauseof this other incident that he had suddenly decided to comehome and begin the diary today.It had happened that morning at the Ministry, if anything so nebulous could be said to happen
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