been wrenched out of them. He could not
remember whether at any time since his arrest he had taken off all his
clothes at one time. Beneath the overalls his body was looped with filthy
yellowish rags, just recognizable as the remnants of underclothes. As he
slid them to the ground he saw that there was a three-sided mirror at the
far end of the room. He approached it, then stopped short. An involuntary
cry had broken out of him.
'Go on,' said O'Brien. 'Stand between the wings of the mirror. You
shall see the side view as well.'
He had stopped because he was frightened. A bowed, grey-coloured,
skeleton-like thing was coming towards him. Its actual appearance was
frightening, and not merely the fact that he knew it to be himself. He
moved closer to the glass. The creature's face seemed to be protruded,
because of its bent carriage. A forlorn, jailbird's face with a nobby
forehead running back into a bald scalp, a crooked nose, and battered-
looking cheekbones above which his eyes were fierce and watchful. The
cheeks were seamed, the mouth had a drawn-in look. Certainly it was his own
face, but it seemed to him that it had changed more than he had changed
inside. The emotions it registered would be different from the ones he
felt. He had gone partially bald. For the first moment he had thought that
he had gone grey as well, but it was only the scalp that was grey. Except
for his hands and a circle of his face, his body was grey all over with
ancient, ingrained dirt. Here and there under the dirt there were the red
scars of wounds, and near the ankle the varicose ulcer was an inflamed mass
with flakes of skin peeling off it. But the truly frightening thing was the
emaciation of his body. The barrel of the ribs was as narrow as that of a
skelet