destroyed. For only an instant it was before
his eyes, then it was out of sight again. But he had seen it,
unquestionably he had seen it! He made a desperate, agonizing effort to
wrench the top half of his body free. It was impossible to move so much as
a centimetre in any direction. For the moment he had even forgotten the
dial. All he wanted was to hold the photograph in his fingers again, or at
least to see it.
'It exists!' he cried.
'No,' said O'Brien.
He stepped across the room. There was a memory hole in the opposite
wall. O'Brien lifted the grating. Unseen, the frail slip of paper was
whirling away on the current of warm air; it was vanishing in a flash of
flame. O'Brien turned away from the wall.
'Ashes,' he said. 'Not even identifiable ashes. Dust. It does not
exist. It never existed.'
'But it did exist! It does exist! It exists in memory. I remember it.
You remember it.'
'I do not remember it,' said O'Brien.
Winston's heart sank. That was doublethink. He had a feeling of deadly
helplessness. If he could have been certain that O'Brien was lying, it
would not have seemed to matter. But it was perfectly possible that O'Brien
had really forgotten the photograph. And if so, then already he would have
forgotten his denial of remembering it, and forgotten the act of
forgetting. How could one be sure that it was simple trickery? Perhaps that
lunatic dislocation in the mind could really happen: that was the thought
that defeated him.
O'Brien was looking down at him speculatively. More than ever he had
the air of a teacher taking pains with a wayward but promising child.
'There is a Party slogan dealing with the control of the past,' he
said. 'Repeat it, if you please.

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