naruto <3

it was a bright cold day in april and the clocks were striking thirteen winston smith his chin nuzzled into his breast in an effort to escape the vile wind slipped quickly through the glass doors of victory mansions though not quickly enough to prevent a swirl of gritty dust from entering along with him the hallway smelt of boiled cabbage and old rag mats at one end of it a coloured poster too large for indoor display had been tacked to the wall it depicted simply an enormous face more than a metre wide the face of a man of about fortyfive with a heavy black moustache and ruggedly handsome features winston made for the stairs it was no use trying the lift even at the best of times it was seldom working and at present the electric current was cut off during daylight hours it was part of the economy drive in preparation for hate week the flat was seven flights up and winston who was thirtynine and had a varicose ulcer above his right ankle went slowly resting several times on the way on each landing opposite the liftshaft the poster with the enormous face gazed from the wall it was one of those pictures which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move big brother is watching you the caption beneath it ran inside the flat a fruity voice was reading out a list of figures which had something to do with the production of pigiron the voice came from an oblong metal plaque like a dulled mirror which formed part of the surface of the righthand wall winston turned a switch and the voice sank somewhat though the words were still distinguishable the instrument the telescreen it was called could be dimmed but there was no way of shutting it off completely he moved over to the window a smallish frail figure the meagreness of his body merely emphasized by the blue overalls which were the uniform of the party his hair was very fair his face naturally sanguine his skin roughened by coarse soap and blunt razor blades and the cold of the winter that had just ended outside even through the shut windowpane the world looked cold down in the street little eddies of wind were whirling dust and torn paper into spirals and though the sun was shining and the sky a harsh blue there seemed to be no colour in anything except the posters that were plastered everywhere the blackmoustachiod face gazed down from every commanding corner there was one on the housefront immediately opposite big brother is watching you the caption said while the dark eyes looked deep into winstons own down at streetlevel another poster torn at one corner flapped fitfully in the wind alternately covering and uncovering the single word ingsoc in the far distance a helicopter skimmed down between the roofs hovered for an instant like a bluebottle and darted away again with a curving flight it was the police patrol snooping into peoples windows the patrols did not matter however only the thought police mattered behind winstons back the voice from the telescreen was still babbling away about pigiron and the overfulfilment of the ninth threeyear plan the telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously any sound that winston made above the level of a very low whisper would be picked up by it moreover so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded he could be seen as well as heard there was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment how often or on what system the thought police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork it was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time but at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to you had to live did live from habit that became instinct in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard and except in darkness every movement scrutinized winston kept his back turned to the telescreen it was safer though as he well knew even a back can be revealing a kilometre away the ministry of truth his place of work towered vast and white above the grimy landscape this he thought with a sort of vague distaste this was london chief city of airstrip one itself the third most populous of the provinces of oceania he tried to squeeze out some childhood memory that should tell him whether london had always been quite like this were there always these vistas of rotting nineteenthcentury houses their sides shored up with baulks of timber their windows patched with cardboard and their roofs with corrugated iron their crazy garden walls sagging in all directions and the bombed sites where the plaster dust swirled in the air and the willowherb straggled over the heaps of rubble and the places where the bombs had cleared a larger patch and there had sprung up sordid colonies of wooden dwellings like chickenhouses but it was no use he could not remember nothing remained of his childhood except a series of brightlit tableaux occurring against no background and mostly unintelligible the ministry of truth minitrue in newspeak was startlingly different from any other object in sight it was an enormous pyramidal structure of glittering white concrete soaring up terrace after terrace metres into the air from where winston stood it was just possible to read picked out on its white face in elegant lettering the three slogans of the party war is peace freedom is slavery ignorance is strength