Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 1black-uniformed guard would suddenly appear from round
the corner, demand his papers, and order him to get out.
O’Brien’s servant, however, had admitted the two of them
without demur. He was a small, dark-haired man in a white
jacket, with a diamond-shaped, completely expressionless
face which might have been that of a Chinese. The passage
down which he led them was softly carpeted, with cream-
papered walls and white wainscoting, all exquisitely clean.
That too was intimidating. Winston could not remember
ever to have seen a passageway whose walls were not grimy
from the contact of human bodies.
O’Brien had a slip of paper between his fingers and
seemed to be studying it intently. His heavy face, bent down
so that one could see the line of the nose, looked both for-
midable and intelligent. For perhaps twenty seconds he sat
without stirring. Then he pulled the speakwrite towards
him and rapped out a message in the hybrid jargon of the
Ministries:
’Items one comma five comma seven approved fullwise
stop suggestion contained item six doubleplus ridiculous
verging crimethink cancel stop unproceed constructionwise
antegetting plusfull estimates machinery overheads stop end
message.’He rose deliberately from his chair and came towards
them across the soundless carpet. A little of the official at-
mosphere seemed to have fallen away from him with the
Newspeak words, but his expression was grimmer than