1984

He opened the diary. It was important to write something down. The woman on the telescreen had started a new song. Her voice seemed to stick into his brain like jagged splinters of glass. He tried to think of O’Brien, for whom, or to whom, the diary was written, but instead he began thinking of the things that would happen to him after the Thought Police took him away. It would not matter if they killed you at once. To be killed was what you expected. But before death (nobody spoke of such things, yet everybody knew of them) there was the routine of confession that had to be gone through: the grovelling on the floor and screaming for mercy, the crack of broken bones, the smashed teeth, and bloody clots of hair.

Why did you have to endure it, since the end was always the same? Why was it not possible to cut a few days or weeks out of your life? Nobody ever escaped detection, and nobody ever failed to confess. When once you had succumbed to thoughtcrime it was certain that by a given date you would be dead. Why then did that horror, which altered nothing, have to lie embedded in future time?

He tried with a little more success than before to summon up the image of O’Brien. ‘We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness,’ O’Brien had said to him. He knew what it meant, or thought he knew. The place where there is no darkness was the imagined future, which one would never see, but which, by foreknowledge, one could mystically share in. But with the voice from the telescreen nagging at his ears he could not follow the train of thought further. He put a cigarette in his mouth. Half the tobacco promptly fell out on to his tongue, a bitter dust which was difficult to spit out again. The face of Big Brother swam into his mind, displacing that of O’Brien. Just as he had done a few days earlier, he slid a coin out of his pocket and looked at it. The face gazed up at him, heavy, calm, protecting: but what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache?

Like a leaden knell the words came back at him:

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

 Nineteen eighty-four

 George Orwell

Penguin Readers, 1949

traducido ao galego por Fernando Moreiras

e publicado como 1984 pola editorial Kalandraka, 2011

Abriu o diario. Era importante escribir algo. A muller da telepantalla comezara con outra canción, e a súa voz parecía cravárselle no cerebro como rachas de vidro afiadas. Procurou pensar en O´Brien, por quen ou para quen escribía o diario, mais no canto diso acabou pensando no que lle pasaría cando o levase a Policía do Pensar. Que te matasen de inmediato era o de menos, pois era de esperar que te matasen; mais antes da morte ( e ninguén falaba disto, aínda que todo o mundo o sabía) cumplía pasar pola rutina da confesión: as súplicas de clemencia arrastrándose polo chan, o son dos ósos ao partir, os dentes rotos, os cabelos pegañentos de sangue… Por que non prescindir duns poucos días ou semanas de vida? Ninguén pasaba inadvertido, e ninguén evitaba a confesión.

Cando sucumbías ao pesacrime, tiñas a certeza de que morrerías nun momento dado. Por que reservar aquel horror para o futuro se nada ía cambiar? Tentou evocar, con máis éxito ca antes, a imaxe de O´Brien. "Encontrarémonos no lugar onde non hai escuridade", dixéralle O´Brien. Sabía, ou cría saber, a que se refería: o lugar onde non hai escuridade era o futuro imaginado, o que nunca vería pero no cal podía participar misticamente sabendo como sería. Con todo, a voz da telepantalla amolábao tanto que non foi quen de proseguir o razoamento. Levou un pito aos beizos, e ao instante caeulle na lingua a metade do tabaco, un amargo po que logo custaba cuspir. Veulle á mente o rostro do Irmán Grande, que desprazou o de O´Brien . Igual que fixera uns días antes, sacou unha moeda do peto e observouna. O rostro devolveulle unha mirada intensa, calma, protectora; mais que clase de sorriso se ocultaba tras aquel mostacho negro? As palabras resoaron coma un lúgubre dobrar de campás:

A GUERRA É PAZ

A IGNORANCIA É FORZA

A LIBERDADE É ESCRAVITUDE