Orwell, George — Nineteen eighty-four [549]

But she did not need to tell him why she had wrapped it up. The smell was already filling the room, a rich hot smell which seemed like an emanation from his early childhood, but which one did occasionally meet with even now, blowing down a passage-way before a door slammed, or diffusing itself mysteriously in a crowded street, sniffed for an instant and then lost again. — Orwell, George, Nineteen eighty-four, 549

Note

Real coffee as memory-current: the smell is a thread connecting a personal childhood to a public, almost-abandoned past, apprehended only in passing gusts before being lost. Proustian detection under a surveillance state.