Re: In the middle of the 3rd season

[Elko Tchernev]

possibility of getting married. It was too
remote to be worth thinking about. No imaginable committee would ever
sanction such a marriage even if Katharine, Winston's wife, could somehow
have been got rid of. It was hopeless even as a daydream.
'What was she like, your wife?' said Julia.
'She was -- do you know the Newspeak word goodthinkful? Meaning
naturally orthodox, incapable of thinking a bad thought?'
'No, I didn't know the word, but I know the kind of person, right
enough.'
He began telling her the story of his married life, but curiously
enough she appeared to know the essential parts of it already. She
described to him, almost as though she had seen or felt it, the stiffening
of Katharine's body as soon as he touched her, the way in which she still
seemed to be pushing him from her with all her strength, even when her arms
were clasped tightly round him. With Julia he felt no difficulty in talking
about such things: Katharine, in any case, had long ceased to be a painful
memory and became merely a distasteful one.
'I could have stood it if it hadn't been for one thing,' he said. He
told her about the frigid little ceremony that Katharine had forced him to
go through on the same night every week. 'She hated it, but nothing would
make her stop doing it. She used to call it -- but you'll never guess.'
'Our duty to the Party,' said Julia promptly.
'How did you know that?'
'I've been at school too, dear. Sex talks once a month for the over-
sixteens. And in the Youth Movement. They rub it into you for years. I dare
say it works in a lot of cases. But of course you can never tell; people
are such hypocrites.'
She began to enlarge upon the subject. With Julia, everything came
back to her own sexuality. As soon as this was touched upon in any way she
was capable of great acuteness