Winston
immediately paid over the four dollars and slid the coveted thing into his
pocket. What appealed to him about it was not so much its beauty as the air it
seemed to possess of belonging to an age quite different from the present one.
The soft, rainwatery glass was not like any glass that he had ever seen. The
thing was doubly attractive because of its apparent uselessness, though he
could guess that it must once have been intended as a paperweight. It was very
heavy in his pocket, but fortunately it did not make much of a bulge. It was a
queer thing, even a compromising thing, for a Party member to have in his
possession. Anything old, and for that matter anything beautiful, was always
vaguely suspect. The old man had grown noticeably more cheerful after receiving
the four dollars. Winston realized that he would have accepted three or even
two.
Winston pagó enseguida los cuatro dólares
y se deslizó el objeto codiciado en su bolsillo. Lo que le atrajo de él no fue
tanto su belleza como el aire que parecía poseer de ser parte de una época muy
diferente de la actual. El vidrio suave y llovido no era como cualquier vidrio
que hubiera visto nunca. La cosa era doblemente atractiva por su aparente
inutilidad, aunque podía adivinar que debía de haber servido alguna vez como pisapapeles. Pesaba mucho en el bolsillo, pero afortunadamente no abultaba
demasiado. Era una cosa rara, una cosa incluso comprometedora, para estar en la
posesión de un miembro del Partido. Todo lo antiguo, y por eso mismo cualquier cosa
hermosa, siempre era vagamente sospechosa. El viejo se había vuelto
notablemente más alegre después de recibir los cuatro dólares. Winston se dio
cuenta de que habría aceptado tres o incluso dos.
George
Orwell
Nineteen
Eighty-four
Penguin,
GB, 1954
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