1984 | Page 4

going up up up
right up into the air a helicopter with a camera in its nose must have followed
it up and there was a lot of applause from the party seats but a woman down in
the prole part of the house suddenly started kicking up a fuss and shouting they
didnt oughter of showed it not in front of kids they didnt it aint right not in front
of kids it aint until the police turned her turned her out i dont suppose anything
happened to her nobody cares what the proles say typical prole reaction they
never Winston stopped writing, partly because he was suering from cramp. He
did not know what had made him pour out this stream of rubbish. But the
curious thing was that while he was doing so a totally dierent memory had
clari ed itself in his mind, to the point where he almost felt equal to writing
it down. It was, he now realized, because of this other incident that he had
suddenly decided to come home and begin the diary today. It had happened that morning at the Ministry, if anything so nebulous could
be said to happen. It was nearly eleven hundred, and in the Records Department, where Win-
ston worked, they were dragging the chairs out of the cubicles and grouping
them in the centre of the hall opposite the big telescreen, in preparation for
the Two Minutes Hate. Winston was just taking his place in one of the middle
rows when two people whom he knew by sight, but had never spoken to, came
unexpectedly into the room. One of them was a girl whom he often passed
in the corridors. He did not know her name, but he knew that she worked in
the Fiction Department. Presumably | since he had sometimes seen her with
oily hands and carrying a spanner she had some mechanical job on one of the
novel-writing machines. She was a bold-looking girl, of about twenty-seven,
with thick hair, a freckled face, and swift, athletic movements. A narrow scarlet
sash, emblem of the Junior Anti-Sex League, was wound several times round
the waist of her overalls, just tightly enough to bring out the shapeliness of her
hips. Winston had disliked her from the very rst moment of seeing her. He
knew the reason. It was because of the atmosphere of hockey- elds and cold
baths and community hikes and general clean-mindedness which she managed
to carry about with her. He disliked nearly all women, and especially the young
and pretty ones. It was always the women, and above all the young ones, who
were the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the
amateur spies and nosers-out of unorthodoxy. But this particular girl gave him
the impression of being more dangerous than most. Once when they passed in
the corridor she gave him a quick sidelong glance which seemed to pierce right
into him and for a moment had lled him with black terror. The idea had even
crossed his mind that she might be an agent of the Thought Police. That, it
was true, was very unlikely. Still, he continued to feel a peculiar uneasiness,
which had fear mixed up in it as well as hostility, whenever she was anywhere
5

near him.
The other person was a man named O'Brien, a member of the Inner Party
and holder of some post so important and remote that Winston had only a
dim idea of its nature. A momentary hush passed over the group of people
round the chairs as they saw the black overalls of an Inner Party member ap-
proaching. O'Brien was a large, burly man with a thick neck and a coarse,
humorous, brutal face. In spite of his formidable appearance he had a certain
charm of manner. He had a trick of resettling his spectacles on his nose which
was curiously disarming | in some inde nable way, curiously civilized. It was a
gesture which, if anyone had still thought in such terms, might have recalled an
eighteenth-century nobleman oering his snubox. Winston had seen O'Brien
perhaps a dozen times in almost as many years. He felt deeply drawn to him,
and not solely because he was intrigued by the contrast between O'Brien's ur-
bane manner and his prize- ghter's physique. Much more it was because of
a secretly held belief | or perhaps not even a belief, merely a hope | that
O'Brien's political orthodoxy was not perfect. Something in his face suggested
it irresistibly. And again, perhaps it was not even unorthodoxy that was written
in his face, but simply intelligence. But at any rate he had the appearance of
being a person that you could talk to if somehow you could cheat the telescreen
and get him alone. Winston had never made the smallest eort to verify this
guess: indeed, there was no way of doing so. At this moment O'Brien glanced
at his wrist-watch, saw that it was nearly eleven hundred, and evidently decided
to stay in the Records Department until the Two Minutes Hate was over. He
took a chair in the same row as Winston,