Read "The Noise of the World" by Adriana Spadoni online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
The next day Roger went to Tom O'Connell. Through a cloud of tobacco smoke, Roger saw him at the end of the dusty loft, sprawled on the edge of a table behind a low railing and listening to two short, heavy men talking at once. Some maps and statistical charts hung from the rough, wooden walls; a magazine-stand stood close to the door, piled with papers and pamphlets, red-bound, or with glaring red splotches in their cover designs. Close to the bench on which Roger waited some one was pounding a typewriter behind a partition. The east end of the loft was enclosed as a separate office and from this enclosure came the voices of men and women talking loudly. The whole room vibrated to the feel of a rushing force, of many violent plans being made and driven through to execution in an incredibly short time. No restraint here, no polish, no modulation. Right or wrong, these people believed in themselves. Society was a wall through which, by brute force, they would drive the spike of their ideal. Roger's excitement grew. He felt like the unfortunate son of the leading citizen in a small town, watching a magnificent back-alley fight by "de gang."
Suddenly the typewriter beside him stopped, and Katya Orloff peered over the top of the partition. If she was surprised she did not show it.