A woman laid in her bed, which was hard as a wood plank (both her body and the mattress).  The French word for to lie down was depecher, or se depecher – to lie oneself down, to be accurate.  Words were always threatening to jump out of her mouth.  Her gut and her brain fought often on this point.  The Ministry of Peace had allowed for rudimentary overseas language education, but nothing beyond very simple things – food, bathroom, surrender – but she sooner found she was not allowed to practice it.  A Minitrue worker consulted her about a film set to run during the Two Minutes Hate.  The foreign speech running in the background – supposedly threatening, ominous, alien – was a reading of The Bible in German.  The director told her that it was Mein Kampf, and she nodded dumbly, not recognising the title.
She recalled the moments she had to lie, the moments she lied and did not need to lie.  The running film of her life clicked and whirred in the back of her head – when she disrobed, when she showered, when she destroyed a civilian neighbourhood.  When, when, when.  There was no need for the eyes in the walls; her head was already a prying spectator – HELEN, OF MINIPAX, UNDER INGSOC RULE, BROWN–HAIRED, BONY.  YOUNG, FERTILE.  She felt sick.  She shivered getting dressed.  She lived lonely, but not alone.  How could she say this?  Singularwise?  “None of the now–existing adverbs was retained, except for a few already ending in wise,” (302).  She lived singularwise, but unsingularwise.  She would have wept if nobody was watching. 
A different time, Helen was confronted with ten dirty prisoners, of different skin, of poor descent, of pitifulness and hate.
“(You have been captured.  Do not resist.)” Helen said. 
“(Suck my dick),” one said, with a thick accent.  Another, “(Get shot.)”.  Another, “(Burn in Hell.)”.  Her supervisor elbowed her in the shoulder.
“What’d they say?”
“‘Spare me,’ I think.  ‘Spare me. I’m sorry for my crimes, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’” she laughed.  Lo siento, je suis desole, mi dispiace, es tut mir leid.  (I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.)  These words were never uttered.  “What should I tell them?”
“They don’t look ungood.  Send them to Pornosec,” he said, barely biting back a remark about keeping one of them for his own.
“(We’re going to kill you),” Helen said, smiling.  They scowled.
There was a woman who lived beside her.  They had spoken, cursorily, and she learned her name was Mildred.
“Hello, comrade,” Helen had said.  “Do you have any cigarettes?”  She leaned on the wall, prepared for a conversation, raising her eyebrows when Mildred had really pulled one of those sordid sticks out of her pocket.  Helen watched Mildred walk away before saying, “I didn’t think…” 
“I had one.  You asked, comrade.”  
“Thank you.”
Mildred grunted in response.
She wished there was a word for what she felt, other than what she’d like to do, the opposite of “Goodsex – normal intercourse between man and wife, and without physical pleasure on the part of the woman; all else was sexcrime,” (306) other than “good, gooder, goodest,” (303) appearance wise, other than whatever stray words Minitruth was expunging from the language.  There really should have been a word for it, and perhaps more than one word would suffice, a sentence – something like, oh, she would like to have her anywhere.  She would like to isolate her from the sterility of her Fiction Department job, show her what it really meant to love someone – feel her weight, tug her ashy hair.  It was not just the plain mounting of man and woman, cold, spotlighted, spectated…  
(It’s not real, Mildred had communicated, somehow.  She interjected this in a faux–humorous story.  She was working on a film with two out–of–country actors.  They wouldn’t make much noise, only whimpering if anything, the lights glaring down at them.  She nudged another person on set.
“Hey, tell them to be louder.”
“I don’t know what they speak.”
Pause.
“Fine.  Beat them, then.”
The punchline was funnier in person, if you were there, if you were either party.  Mildred’s lips curved slightly downward recalling the story.  Helen really only recalled her lips.)  
She didn’t exactly know what she’d do to (with?) her, but she had an impression.  “It would have been quite impossible to render this into Newspeak while keeping to the sense of the original.” (312). “Thoughtcrime (was) literally impossible,” (53).  For this, she was glad (en peu) (un–plus?).
She was permitted to survey the site of proles’ streets before they were bombed, to see if it was populated enough to matter.  They always reeked of beer, of bodily fluids, of animals and life.  There were singing labourers, which Helen eyed with envy.  This was sign enough that it could be ruined.  Offhandedly, Helen had mentioned this to Mildred.  An exact time and date – and the street, too.
She had pulled Mildred to a stand in the alley.  They were stepping in grime, looking at filth, becoming distorted to their Outer Party lives.  Helen picked up a case.
“Hey, I knew these communists.  Sent them straight to you.”
“Oh, don’t show me.” Mildred said.  “I see this all the time.  I film it, I cut and glue them together.  I breathe it,” she said.  She looked at the vendor, whom she knew vaguely.  His face was sunken and rough.  The bottom of her pant legs were saturated in mud, and stuck to her skin.  She was dirty, and she would be punished, and she wanted to kill herself for it.  She looked over her shoulder to find Helen looking at her own body on a cover.
“Did you film this?” Helen asked.  (Did you cut me up and glue me together?  Did you breathe me?)  Mildred’s expression did not change.
“Yes,” she said.  The sky rumbled overhead.  Billows of dirt kicked up from the sidewalk.  Bright light shone through the wicked debris, the stench.  Helen seized her hand.  They looked up in unison.  The unmistakable, piercing whistle of an oncoming missile.  “You knew that would happen.”
“I forgive you,” she said.
“[They] would be vaporised,” (61).  Elles se depechent.  

Created 31 March 2025
Last updated 31 March 2025
Written 10 February 2025