Feeling Very Strange - Site de Thomas - Free

the little Magic shop | 19
stroking his waxed mustache. He signed over the deed to the car, which
was a fine one, but Mr. O’Beronne showed little enthusiasm. The old
Irishman had shrunken with the years, and his tiny hands trembled as
he conveyed his goods.
Within the following period, a great war of global empires took place,
but America was mostly spared the devastation. The 1920s arrived,
and James came laden with a valise crammed with rapidly appreciating
stocks and bonds. “You always seem to do rather well for yourself,” Mr.
O’Beronne observed in a quavering voice.
“Moderation’s the key,” said James. “That, and a sunny disposition.”
He looked about the shop with a critical eye. The quality of the junk had
declined. Old engine parts lay in reeking grease next to heaps of moldering
popular magazines and spools of blackened telephone wire. The
exotic hides, packets of spice and amber, ivory tusks hand-carved by
cannibals, and so forth, had now entirely disappeared. “I hope you don’t
mind these new bottles,” croaked Mr. O’Beronne, handing him one.
The bottle had curved sides and a machine-fitted cap of cork and tin.
“Any trouble with supply?” said James delicately.
“You let me worry about that!” said Mr. O’Beronne, lifting his lip
with a faint snarl of defiance.
James’s next visit came after yet another war, this one of untold
and almost unimaginable savagery. Mr. O’Beronne’s shop was now
crammed with military surplus goods. Bare electric bulbs hung over a
realm of rotting khaki and rubber.
James now looked almost thirty. He was a little short by modern
American standards, but this was scarcely noticeable. He wore highwaisted
pants and a white linen suit with jutting shoulders.
“I don’t suppose,” muttered Mr. O’Beronne through his false teeth,
“that it ever occurs to you to share this? What about wives, sweethearts,
children?”
James shrugged. “What about them?”
“You’re content to see them grow old and die?”
“I never see them grow all that old,” James observed. “After all, every
twenty years I have to return here and lose everything I own. It’s simpler
just to begin all over again.”
“No human feelings,” Mr. O’Beronne muttered bitterly.