1984 - Planet eBook

and on the other hand to have almost no customers. Heled a ghostlike existence between the tiny, dark shop, andan even tinier back kitchen where he prepared his mealsand which contained, among other things, an unbelievablyancient gramophone with an enormous horn. He seemedglad of the opportunity to talk. Wandering about amonghis worthless stock, with his long nose and thick spectaclesand his bowed shoulders in the velvet jacket, he had alwaysvaguely the air of being a collector rather than a tradesman.With a sort of faded enthusiasm he would finger this scrapof rubbish or that—a china bottle-stopper, the painted lid ofa broken snuffbox, a pinchbeck locket containing a strandof some long-dead baby’s hair—never asking that Winstonshould buy it, merely that he should admire it. To talk tohim was like listening to the tinkling of a worn-out musicalbox.He had dragged out from the corners of his memorysome more fragments of forgotten rhymes. There was oneabout four and twenty blackbirds, and another about a cowwith a crumpled horn, and another about the death of poorCock Robin. ‘It just occurred to me you might be interested,’he would say with a deprecating little laugh whenever heproduced a new fragment. But he could never recall morethan a few lines of any one rhyme.Both of them knew—in a way, it was never out of theirminds that what was now happening could not last long.There were times when the fact of impending death seemedas palpable as the bed they lay on, and they would cling togetherwith a sort of despairing sensuality, like a damnedsoul grasping at his last morsel of pleasure when the clock