's
see which of us can touch our toes!' she said enthusiastically. 'Right over
from the hips, please, comrades. One-two! One-two!...'
Winston loathed this exercise, which sent shooting pains all the way
from his heels to his buttocks and often ended by bringing on another
coughing fit. The half-pleasant quality went out of his meditations. The
past, he reflected, had not merely been altered, it had been actually
destroyed. For how could you establish even the most obvious fact when
there existed no record outside your own memory? He tried to remember in
what year he had first heard mention of Big Brother. He thought it must
have been at some time in the sixties, but it was impossible to be certain.
In the Party histories, of course, Big Brother figured as the leader and
guardian of the Revolution since its very earliest days. His exploits had
been gradually pushed backwards in time until already they extended into
the fabulous world of the forties and the thirties, when the capitalists in
their strange cylindrical hats still rode through the streets of London in
great gleaming motor-cars or horse carriages with glass sides. There was no
knowing how much of this legend was true and how much invented. Winston
could not even remember at what date the Party itself had com