1984 - Planet eBook

something that she knew must happen. She did everythingthat was needed—cooked, washed, mended, made the bed,swept the floor, dusted the mantelpiece—always very slowlyand with a curious lack of superfluous motion, like an artist’slay-figure moving of its own accord. Her large shapelybody seemed to relapse naturally into stillness. For hoursat a time she would sit almost immobile on the bed, nursinghis young sister, a tiny, ailing, very silent child of twoor three, with a face made simian by thinness. Very occasionallyshe would take Winston in her arms and press himagainst her for a long time without saying anything. He wasaware, in spite of his youthfulness and selfishness, that thiswas somehow connected with the never-mentioned thingthat was about to happen.He remembered the room where they lived, a dark, closesmellingroom that seemed half filled by a bed with a whitecounterpane. There was a gas ring in the fender, and a shelfwhere food was kept, and on the landing outside there wasa brown earthenware sink, common to several rooms. Heremembered his mother’s statuesque body bending over thegas ring to stir at something in a saucepan. Above all heremembered his continuous hunger, and the fierce sordidbattles at mealtimes. He would ask his mother naggingly,over and over again, why there was not more food, he wouldshout and storm at her (he even remembered the tones ofhis voice, which was beginning to break prematurely andsometimes boomed in a peculiar way), or he would attempta snivelling note of pathos in his efforts to get more than hisshare. His mother was quite ready to give him more than