if you will wake Ayaz's country in techniques, it will at first act the humanity

locket containing a strand of some long-dead baby's hair -- never asking
that Winston should buy it, merely that he should admire it. To talk to him
was like listening to the tinkling of a worn-out musical-box. He had
dragged out from the corners of his memory some more fragments of forgotten
rhymes. There was one about four and twenty blackbirds, and another about a
cow with a crumpled horn, and another about the death of poor *** Robin.
'It just occurred to me you might be interested,' he would say with a
deprecating little laugh whenever he produced a new fragment. But he could
never recall more than a few lines of any one rhyme.
Both of them knew -- in a way, it was never out of their minds that
what was now happening could not last long. There were times when the fact
of impending death seemed as palpable as the bed they lay on, and they
would cling together with a sort of despairing sensuality, like a damned
soul grasping at his last morsel of pleasure when the clock is within five
minutes of striking. But there were also times when they had the illusion
not only of safety but of permanence. So long as they were actually in this
room, they both felt, no harm could come to them. Getting there was
difficult


.