1984 - Planet eBook

And again, perhaps it was not even unorthodoxy that waswritten in his face, but simply intelligence. But at any ratehe had the appearance of being a person that you couldtalk to if somehow you could cheat the telescreen and gethim alone. Winston had never made the smallest effort toverify this guess: indeed, there was no way of doing so. Atthis moment O’Brien glanced at his wrist-watch, saw that itwas nearly eleven hundred, and evidently decided to stay inthe Records Department until the Two Minutes Hate wasover. He took a chair in the same row as Winston, a coupleof places away. A small, sandy-haired woman who workedin the next cubicle to Winston was between them. The girlwith dark hair was sitting immediately behind.The next moment a hideous, grinding speech, as of somemonstrous machine running without oil, burst from thebig telescreen at the end of the room. It was a noise that setone’s teeth on edge and bristled the hair at the back of one’sneck. The Hate had started.As usual, the face of Emmanuel Goldstein, the Enemy ofthe People, had flashed on to the screen. There were hisseshere and there among the audience. The little sandy-hairedwoman gave a squeak of mingled fear and disgust. Goldsteinwas the renegade and backslider who once, long ago(how long ago, nobody quite remembered), had been one ofthe leading figures of the Party, almost on a level with BigBrother himself, and then had engaged in counter-revolutionaryactivities, had been condemned to death, and hadmysteriously escaped and disappeared. The programmes ofthe Two Minutes Hate varied from day to day, but there was