did not make much impression on her. At first, indeed, she
failed to grasp the point of the story.
'Were they friends of yours?' she said.
'No, I never knew them. They were Inner Party members. Besides, they
were far older men than I was. They belonged to the old days, before the
Revolution. I barely knew them by sight.'
'Then what was there to worry about? People are being killed off all
the time, aren't they?'
He tried to make her understand. 'This was an exceptional case. It
wasn't just a question of somebody being killed. Do you realize that the
past, starting from yesterday, has been actually abolished? If it survives
anywhere, it's in a few solid objects with no words attached to them, like
that lump of glass there. Already we know almost literally nothing about
the Revolution and the years before the Revolution. Every record has been
destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has
been repainted, every statue and street and building has been renamed,
every date has been altered. And that process is continuing day by day and
minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless
present in which the Party is always right. I know, of course, that the
past is falsified, but it would n