Winston sits in the Chestnut Tree Cafe looking at the telescreen, anxiously waiting. He expected a bulletin of news but it was merely a change of music.
He had the map of Africa behind his eyelids. The movement of the armies was a diagram: a black arrow tearing vertically southward, and a white arrow horizontally eastward, across the tail of the first.
As though for reassurance he looked at the portrait of Big Brother.
The thought stumbles thought his mind; Was it conceivable that the second arrow did not even exist?His interest flagged again. He drank another mouthful of gin, picked up the white knight and made a tentative move. Check. But it was evidently not the right move, because —
———-
The inability of Winston to think rationally, to be able to complete a memory without being jarred to the moment is lost. The torture has created silent internal blockers so that Winston is incapable of thinking about anything for more than a minute or two.