Returning After A Few Years

or
two. No one who had once fallen into the hands of the Thought Police ever
escaped in the end. They were corpses waiting to be sent back to the grave.
There was no one at any of the tables nearest to them. It was not wise
even to be seen in the neighbourhood of such people. They were sitting in
silence before glasses of the gin flavoured with cloves which was the
speciality of the cafe. Of the three, it was Rutherford whose appearance
had most impressed Winston. Rutherford had once been a famous caricaturist,
whose brutal cartoons had helped to inflame popular opinion before and
during the Revolution. Even now, at long intervals, his cartoons were
appearing in the Times. They were simply an imitation of his earlier
manner, and curiously lifeless and unconvincing. Always they were a
rehashing of the ancient themes -- slum tenements, starving children,
street battles, capitalists in top hats -- even on the barricades the
capitalists still seemed to cling to their top h