Julia

by Sandra Newman

Julia looked away—always the safest option when anyone was doing something peculiar—and gazed out of the bank of windows.

He might kill you any time he liked, and enjoy it—but for now you were his friend, and wasn’t that a pleasant thing to be?

exile.” They talked as if talk were the real work of life, and the world’s problems would soon be resolved if it were only rightly done.

All knew the young pilots were soon to die, and so you couldn’t begrudge them.

Of course she had loved him desperately at that age. Of course he was soon to die.

Might the whole world be different from how it seemed?

All that time Vicky was at Julia’s elbow. In the bus she sat beside Julia, and neither of them spoke to the other, and the seeds of impossibility quickened and grew.

She was fucking though it killed her, so it was only natural to moan, “I love you,” in the ear of a man she would never see again. She loved him because she was forbidden to do it.

But she’d come this far, and no other man would be arriving to fuck her that afternoon. One made do with what one found.

Many a tryst had been spoiled by a band of convivial strangers with a bag of protein-paste sandwiches.

She felt as if she was carrying a fool on either shoulder.

It struck Julia that luxury was as much the absence of things as their abundance.

All the fathers are excellent here. Every one is an Inner Party member in first-class health, with all his teeth.”

She took a pill before he arrived, and then could endure his stunned, beseeching face and his terrified chatter about his children, and still take him to bed as if it were only sex, as if she weren’t killing him.

For the first time she knew with certainty that he had never loved her, and was soothed.

All this she’d known, but had refused to know. This was her only life.

Julia too was steeped in crime and walking into doom with both eyes open.

Julia had a terrible, marvelous sense of lost balance, a wild lurch of hope that altered everything. The sun shimmered. The millions of leaves excitedly trembled in the clear blue air. She looked at the water pouring past like reckless light, and, for one glorious moment, she believed.

“Oh, rubbish! Who’s they? I’m at Central Committee. You’re Thought Police. We’re they! That’s just why we’ve got to get out.

She had a feeling that she must hurry. If she didn’t make haste, there would be no way back.

The narrow stairs had a sharp smell of damp, which she now breathed with appreciation. This might be the last time she mounted these stairs. This was the last safe day in the world.

She was a prisoner in a body that could be hurt in countless ways.

She knew it because she’d been waiting to be brought here all her life, and it had lived in her body and taught her to know it.

You’ve got to keep your spirits up, working in this place. One doesn’t see the sun nine months of the year, and the stench gets into one’s hair and clothes, and it’s the very devil to wash out. And then, of course, one is an object of public loathing. No, it’s not a job for people with no sense of humor.”

She needed to live, to be safe at least for a moment. Most of all, she needed to be loved and forgiven. It was this, perhaps, that made her stupid.

“Oh, yes. You betrayed me. I remember. They told me about it so many times.” “I did. I should like to have saved you, but I had no choice.” “Yes,” he said simply. “That’s the horrid thing. One has no choice, and yet one must live through it exactly as if one had.”

He was a boy who had fallen in love with the truth, and even if he never quite grew into a man, he had a fine and austere spirit that was absolutely real. And he had almost loved her.

“So would the Free Men do a thing like that?” “Oh, don’t ask me. All men are rotten, if you want my opinion. The Free Men say they’re very wonderful, of course, and wouldn’t harm anyone—who didn’t deserve it. Well, I deserve it, by their lights, so I can’t say I’m very impressed.

All was false. It was known to be false, but everyone lied about the lies, until no one knew where the lies began and ended. That whole life had been a game of make-believe, everyone pretending together like little children.