capitalists in top hats -- even on the barricades the
capitalists still seemed to cling to their top hats an endless, hopeless
effort to get back into the past. He was a monstrous man, with a mane of
greasy grey hair, his face pouched and seamed, with thick negroid lips. At
one time he must have been immensely strong; now his great body was
sagging, sloping, bulging, falling away in every direction. He seemed to be
breaking up before one's eyes, like a mountain crumbling.
It was the lonely hour of fifteen. Winston could not now remember how
he had come to be in the cafe at such a time. The place was almost empty. A
tinny music was trickling from the telescreens. The three men sat in their
corner almost motionless, never speaking. Uncommanded, the waiter brought
fresh glasses of gin. There was a chessboard on the table beside them, with
the pieces set out but no game started. And then, for perhaps half a minute
in all, something happened to the telescreens. The tune that they were
playing changed, and the tone of the music changed too. There came into it
-- but it was something hard to describe. It was a peculiar, cracked,
braying, jeering note: in his mind Winston called it a yellow note. And
then a voice from the telescreen was singing:

Under the spreading chestnut tree
I sold you and you sold me:
There lie they, and here lie we
Under the spreading chestnut tree.

The three men never stirred. But