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     Origin:  ""--http://artefact.cns.ru/library/
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     Anthony Burgess was born in Manchester in 1917 and is a graduate of the
University there. After six years in the Army he worked as an instructor for
the  Central  Advisory  Council  for  Forces  Education,  as a  lecturer  in
Phonetics  and as  a grammar school master.  From 1954  till 1960 he  was an
education officer in the Colonial Service, stationed in Malaya and Brunei.
     He became a full-time writer in 1960, though  his first novel had  been
published four  years earlier. A late starter in the art of fiction,  he had
spent  his  creative energy previously on  music,  and  he has composed many
full-scale works for orchestra and other media.
     Anthony Burgess maintains his old interest in music and in linguistics,
and these have conditioned the style  and content of  the novels he  writes.
Though he and his wife no longer live abroad, foreign travel remains a great
source  of inspiration. He has, to  date,  published many novels,  a book on
linguistics, and various critical works.
     His other  books in Penguin are `Inside Mr Enderby,' `Tremor of Intent'
and `Nothing Like the Sun,' a story of Shakespeare's love-life.




     Fifteen-year-old Alex and his three friends  start an evening's  mayhem
by  hitting an old man, tearing  up his books and stripping him of money and
clothes.
     Or rather Alex  and his three droogs  tolchock  an old veck, razrez his
books, pull off his outer platties and take a malenky bit of cutter.
     For Alex's confessions are written in `nadsat'--the teenage argot of  a
not-too-distant future.
     Because of his delinquent excesses, Alex is jailed and  made subject to
`Ludovico's Technique,' a chilling experiment in Reclamation Treatment...
     Horror  farce? Social  prophecy?  Penetrating  study  of  human  choice
between  good and evil? A  Clockwork Orange is all three, dazzling  proof of
Anthony Burgess's vast talents.






     "What's it going to be then, eh?"
     There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie,
and Dim. Dim being  really dim, and we sat in the Korova  Milkbar  making up
our rassoodocks  what  to do with the  evening, a  flip  dark  chill  winter
bastard though dry. The Korova Milkbar was a milk-plus mesto, and you may, O
my brothers, have  forgotten what these mestos were like, things changing so
skorry these days and  everybody very quick to forget, newspapers  not being
read much neither. Well, what  they sold there was milk plus something else.
They had  no licence for selling liquor,  but there was no law  yet  against
prodding some  of  the new  veshches  which they  used to put  into  the old
moloko, so you could  peet it with vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom or one
or two other  veshches which would give you a nice  quiet horrorshow fifteen
minutes  admiring Bog  And  All His Holy Angels and Saints in your left shoe
with lights bursting  all over your mozg. Or you could peet milk with knives
in it, as we used to  say, and this would  sharpen you up and make you ready
for a bit of  dirty twenty-to-one, and that  was what we were  peeting  this
evening I'm starting off the story with.
     Our pockets were full of deng, so there was no real need from the point
of  view of crasting any more pretty polly to  tolchock some old veck  in an
alley and viddy him swim in  his  blood  while  we  counted the  takings and
divided  by four,  nor to  do  the  ultra-violent on some  shivering  starry
grey-haired ptitsa in a shop and  go smecking off with the till's guts. But,
as they say, money isn't everything.
     The four  of us were dressed in the height of  fashion,  which in those
days was a pair of black very tight  tights with the old jelly mould,  as we
called  it, fitting  on the  crotch  underneath  the tights,  this  being to
protect  and  also a  sort of a  design  you could viddy clear enough  in  a
certain light, so that I had one in the shape of a spider, Pete had a rooker
(a hand, that is), Georgie had a very fancy one of  a  flower, and poor  old
Dim  had  a very hound-and-horny one of a clown's litso (face, that is). Dim
not ever having much of an idea of  things and being, beyond all shadow of a
doubting thomas, the dimmest of we four. Then we wore waisty jackets without
lapels  but with these  very big built-up shoulders (`pletchoes'  we  called
them) which were  a kind of a mockery of having  real shoulders  like  that.
Then,  my  brothers,  we had  these  off-white  cravats  which  looked  like
whipped-up kartoffel or spud with a sort of a design made on it with a fork.
We wore our hair not too long and we had flip horrorshow boots for kicking.
     "What's it going to be then, eh?"
     There were three devotchkas sitting  at the  counter  all together, but
there were  four of us malchicks and it was usually like one for all and all
for  one.  These sharps  were  dressed  in  the heighth of fashion too, with
purple and  green and orange wigs on their gullivers, each one  not  costing
less than three or  four weeks of  those sharps' wages, I should reckon, and
make-up to match (rainbows round the glazzies, that is, and  the rot painted
very  wide).  Then they had  long black  very straight  dresses, and  on the
groody part of them  they had little  badges of  like silver  with different
malchicks' names on them--Joe and Mike and suchlike.  These were supposed to
be the names of the different malchicks they'd spatted with before they were
fourteen. They kept  looking our way and I nearly felt like saying the three
of  us (out of the corner of my rot, that is) should go off for a bit of pol
and  leave  poor old  Dim  behind,  because  it would  be just  a  matter of
kupetting  Dim  a  demi-litre  of  white but this  time  with  a  dollop  of
synthemesc in it, but that wouldn't really have been playing like  the game.
Dim was very very ugly and like  his  name,  but he  was a horrorshow filthy
fighter and very handy with the boot.
     "What's it going to be then, eh?"
     The chelloveck sitting  next to me, there  being this long  big  plushy
seat that ran round three walls, was well away with  his glazzies glazed and
sort of burbling slovos like  "Aristotle wishy  washy works  outing cyclamen
get forficulate  smartish." He was  in the  land  all  right,  well away, in
orbit,  and I knew what it was like, having tried it like everybody else had
done,  but  at this time  I'd got to thinking it  was  a  cowardly sort of a
veshch, O my brothers. You'd lay  there after you'd drunk the old moloko and
then you got  the messel that  everything  all  round you was sort of in the
past. You could  viddy it  all  right, all of it,  very  clear--tables,  the
stereo, the lights, the  sharps  and  the malchicks--but  it was  like  some
veshch that  used to be there but was  not  there not no more.  And you were
sort of hypnotized by your boot or shoe or a finger-nail as it might be, and
at the same time you were sort of picked up by the old scruff and shook like
you might be a cat. You got shook and shook till there was nothing left. You
lost your name and your body and your self and you just didn't care, and you
waited until your boot or finger-nail got yellow, then yellower and yellower
all the time. Then the lights started cracking like atomics and the boot  or
finger-nail or, as it might be, a bit  of dirt on your trouser-bottom turned
into a  big big  big mesto, bigger  than the whole world, and you were  just
going to get introduced to old  Bog or God when  it  was all over.  You came
back to here and now whimpering sort of, with your rot all squaring up for a
boohoohoo. Now that's very nice but very  cowardly. You were not put on this
earth just  to  get in touch with God. That sort of thing could sap  all the
strength and the goodness out of a chelloveck.
     "What's it going to be then, eh?"
     The stereo  was on and you  got the  idea that the singer's  goloss was
moving from  one  part of the bar to  another, flying up to the  ceiling and
then swooping  down again and whizzing from wall to wall. It was Berti Laski
rasping a real starry oldie called `You Blister My Paint.'  One of the three
ptitsas at the counter, the one with the green wig, kept  pushing  her belly
out and pulling it in  in time to what they called the music.  I could  feel
the knives in the  old  moloko starting to  prick, and now I was ready for a
bit  of twenty-to-one. So  I yelped:  "Out out out out!" like  a doggie, and
then  I cracked  this  veck who was  sitting  next to me  and well  away and
burbling a horrorshow crack  on the ooko  or earhole,  but he didn't feel it
and  went on with  his "Telephonic  hardware and when the  farfarculule gets
rubadubdub." He'd feel it all right when he came to, out of the land.
     "Where out?" said Georgie.
     "Oh, just to keep  walking," I  said,  "and  viddy what turns up,  O my
little brothers."
     So we scatted out into the big winter nochy and walked down  Marghanita
Boulevard and then  turned into Boothby Avenue, and there  we found what  we
were pretty well looking for,  a malenky jest to start off the evening with.
There was  a doddery starry schoolmaster type  veck, glasses on  and his rot
open to the cold nochy air. He had books under his arm and a crappy umbrella
and  was  coming round the corner from the  Public  Biblio,  which  not many
lewdies used these  days. You never really saw many of the  older  bourgeois
type out after nightfall those days, what with the shortage of police and we
fine young malchickiwicks  about, and this prof type chelloveck was the only
one walking  in the  whole  of  the  street.  So we goolied up  to him, very
polite, and I said: "Pardon me, brother."
     He  looked a  malenky bit  poogly  when he viddied the  four of us like
that, coming up so quiet and polite and smiling, but he said: "Yes? What  is
it?" in  a very loud teacher-type goloss,  as if he was trying to show us he
wasn't poogly. I said:
     "I see  you have  books  under your arm, brother. It  is indeed  a rare
pleasure these days to come across somebody that still reads, brother."
     "Oh," he said, all  shaky. "Is it? Oh, I see." And he kept looking from
one to the other of we  four, finding  himself now  like in  the middle of a
very smiling and polite square.
     "Yes," I said. "It  would interest  me greatly, brother,  if you  would
kindly allow me to see  what books those are that you have under your arm. I
like nothing better in this world than a good clean book, brother."
     "Clean," he said. "Clean, eh?" And then Pete skvatted these three books
from him and handed them round real skorry.
     Being three, we all had one each to viddy at except for Dim. The  one I
had was  called `Elementary Crystallography,'  so I opened  it  up and said:
"Excellent, really first-class," keeping turning the pages. Then I said in a
very shocked type goloss: "But what is this here? What is this filthy slovo?
I blush to look at this word. You disappoint me, brother, you do really."
     "But," he tried, "but, but."
     "Now," said Georgie, "here is what I should call real dirt. There's one
slovo beginning with an f  and another  with a c." He had a book called `The
Miracle of the Snowflake.'
     "Oh," said poor old Dim, smotting  over Pete's shoulder and  going  too
far, like he always did, "it says here  what he done to  her,  and there's a
picture  and  all. Why,"  he  said,  "you're nothing but a filthy-minded old
skitebird."
     "An old man of your  age, brother," I said, and I started to rip up the
book I'd  got, and the  others did  the same with the ones they had. Dim and
Pete doing a tug-of-war with `The Rhombohedral System.' The starry prof type
began to creech: "But those  are not  mine,  those  are the property  of the
municipality,  this  is  sheer wantonness and  vandal  work,"  or some  such
slovos. And he tried to  sort of wrest the books back off  of us,  which was
like pathetic. "You deserve  to be taught  a lesson, brother," I said, "that
you do." This crystal book  I had was very tough-bound and hard to razrez to
bits, being real starry and made in days when things were made to last like,
but  I managed  to rip the  pages up  and chuck  them  in  handfuls  of like
snowflakes,  though  big,  all over  this  creeching old veck, and  then the
others did the same  with theirs, old Dim  just dancing about like the clown
he  was. "There you are,"  said Pete. "There's the mackerel of the cornflake
for you, you dirty reader of filth and nastiness."
     "You naughty  old veck, you," I said, and then  we began to filly about
with him. Pete held his rookers and Georgie sort of hooked his rot wide open
for him and Dim yanked  out his  false  zoobies, upper  and lower. He  threw
these down  on  the pavement and then I  treated them to the old boot-crush,
though  they  were hard bastards  like, being  made  of some new  horrorshow
plastic stuff. The old veck began to make sort of chumbling shooms--"wuf waf
wof"--so Georgie let go of holding his  goobers  apart and just let him have
one  in the toothless rot  with his ringy fist, and  that made the old  veck
start moaning  a lot then, then  out  comes  the  blood, my  brothers,  real
beautiful. So all we did then was  to pull his outer platties off, stripping
him down to his vest and long  underpants (very starry; Dim smecked his head
off near), and then Pete kicks him lovely in his pot,  and we let him go. He
went  sort  of staggering off, it not  having  been  too  hard of a tolchock
really, going "Oh oh oh," not knowing where or  what was what really, and we
had a snigger at him and then riffled through his pockets, Dim dancing round
with his crappy umbrella meanwhile, but there wasn't much in them.
     There were a few starry letters, some of them dating right back to 1960
with "My dearest dearest" in them and all that chepooka, and a keyring and a
starry leaky pen.  Old Dim gave  up his  umbrella dance and of course had to
start reading one of the letters out loud, like  to show the empty street he
could read. "My darling one," he recited, in this  very high type goloss, "I
shall be thinking of you  while you  are away and hope you will  remember to
wrap up  warm  when you go  out at night." Then he  let  out a  very shoomny
smeck--"Ho ho  ho"--pretending to  start  wiping  his  yahma  with it.  "All
right,"  I said. "Let it go, O  my brothers." In the trousers of this starry
veck there was only  a malenky bit of cutter (money, that is)--not more than
three gollies--so we  gave  all his messy little coin the scatter treatment,
it being  hen-korm to the amount of pretty polly we had on  us already. Then
we  smashed  the  umbrella and  razrezzed  his platties and gave them to the
blowing  winds, my brothers, and then we'd finished  with the starry teacher
type veck. We hadn't done much, I know, but that was only like  the start of
the evening and I make no appy polly loggies to thee  or thine for that. The
knives in the milk plus were stabbing away nice and horrorshow now.
     The next  thing was  to do the  sammy act, which  was one way to unload
some of  our  cutter  so  we'd  have  more of an  incentive  like  for  some
shop-crasting, as well as it being a  way of buying an alibi  in advance, so
we went into the Duke of New York on Amis Avenue and sure enough in the snug
there  were three or four old baboochkas peeting their black  and suds on SA
(State Aid).  Now we  were the very good malchicks, smiling good evensong to
one and all, though these  wrinkled old lighters started  to get all  shook,
their  veiny  old  rookers all trembling round their glasses, and making the
suds spill on the table. "Leave us be, lads," said one of them, her face all
mappy with being a  thousand years old, "we're only poor old  women." But we
just made with the zoobies, flash flash flash, sat down, rang the bell,  and
waited  for  the boy  to  come.  When he  came, all nervous  and rubbing his
rookers  on his grazzy apron,  we ordered us  four veterans--a veteran being
rum and cherry brandy mixed, which was popular just then, some liking a dash
of lime in it, that being the Canadian variation. Then I said to the boy:
     "Give these  poor  old baboochkas  over  there  a nourishing something.
Large Scotchmen  all  round  and something to  take  away." And  I poured my
pocket  of  deng  all over the table, and the other three did likewise, O my
brothers. So double firegolds were bought in for the scared starry lighters,
and they knew not what to do or say. One of them got out "Thanks, lads," but
you could see they  thought there  was something dirty like  coming. Anyway,
they were each given a bottle of Yank General, cognac that is, to take away,
and I gave  money for them to be delivered  each  a  dozen of black and suds
that following morning,  they to leave their stinking old cheenas' addresses
at the counter. Then with the cutter that was  left over we did purchase, my
brothers, all the meat pies, pretzels, cheese-snacks, crisps and chocbars in
that mesto, and those too were for the old sharps.  Then we said: "Back in a
minoota," and the old ptitsas were  still saying:  "Thanks, lads,"  and "God
bless you, boys," and  we were  going out without one cent of cutter  in our
carmans.
     "Makes you feel real dobby, that does," said Pete. You could viddy that
poor old  Dim the dim didn't quite  pony all  that, but  he said nothing for
fear of being called gloopy and a domeless wonderboy.  Well, we went off now
round  the  corner to Attlee Avenue, and  there was  this sweets and cancers
shop still open. We'd left them alone near three  months  now and  the whole
district had been very quiet  on the whole,  so the armed millicents or rozz
patrols weren't round there much, being more north of the river  these days.
We put our  maskies on--new  jobs  these  were, real horrorshow, wonderfully
done really; they were like faces of historical personalities (they gave you
the names when you  bought)  and I had Disraeli,  Pete  had  Elvis  Presley,
Georgie had  Henry VIII and  poor  old Dim  had  a poet veck  called  Peebee
Shelley;  they  were a real like disguise, hair and all, and they were  some
very special plastic veshch so you could roll  it up when you'd done with it
and hide it in your boot--then three of us went in.
     Pete keeping chasso without, not that there was anything to worry about
out there. As soon as we launched on the shop we went for Slouse who ran it,
a big portwine jelly  of a veck who viddied at once what was coming and made
straight for the  inside where the telephone was and perhaps his  well-oiled
pooshka,  complete with six dirty rounds.  Dim was round that counter skorry
as a bird, sending packets of snoutie flying and cracking over a big cut-out
showing a sharp  with  all  her zoobies going flash at the customers and her
groodies  near hanging  out to advertise some new brand of cancers. What you
could viddy then  was a sort of a big ball rolling into the  inside  of  the
shop behind the curtain,  this being old  Dim and Slouse sort of locked in a
death  struggle. Then  you  could slooshy panting  and  snoring  and kicking
behind the curtain and veshches  falling  over  and swearing and then  glass
going  smash smash smash. Mother Slouse, the wife,  was sort of froze behind
the counter.  We could tell she would creech  murder given  one chance, so I
was round that counter  very skorry and had a hold of  her, and a horrorshow
big  lump she was  too, all  nuking  of scent  and with flipflop big bobbing
groodies  on her. I'd got my  rooker round  her rot  to stop her belting out
death and destruction to the four winds of heaven, but this lady doggie gave
me a large foul  big bite on it and it  was me that did  the  creeching, and
then she opened up beautiful with a flip yell for the millicents. Well, then
she had to be tolchocked proper with one of the weights for the  scales, and
then a fair tap with a crowbar they had for opening cases, and  that brought
the red out like an old friend. So we had her down on the floor and a rip of
her platties for fun  and a gentle bit of the boot to stop her moaning. And,
viddying  her lying there with her groodies on show, I  wondered should I or
not, but that was for later on in the evening. Then we cleaned the till, and
there was flip  horrorshow takings that nochy, and we had a few packs of the
very best top cancers apiece, then off we went, my brothers.
     "A real big heavy great bastard he was," Dim kept saying. I didn't like
the  look of Dim:  he looked dirty and  untidy,  like a veck who'd been in a
fight, which he had been, of course, but you should never look as though you
have been. His  cravat was like someone had trampled  on it,  his maskie had
been pulled off and he  had  floor-dirt on his litso, so we got  him  in  an
alleyway and tidied him up a malenky bit, soaking  our tashtooks in spit  to
cheest the dirt off. The things we did for old Dim. We were back in the Duke
of New York very skorry and I reckoned by my watch we  hadn't been more than
ten  minutes away. The starry old baboochkas  were still there on  the black
and suds and Scotchmen we'd bought them, and we said: "Hallo there, girlies,
what's it going to be?" They started on the old "Very kind,  lads, God bless
you, boys," and so we rang  the collocol and brought a different  waiter  in
this time and we ordered beers with rum in, being sore athirst, my brothers,
and whatever the old ptitsas wanted. Then I said to the  old baboochkas: "We
haven't been out of here, have we? Been here all the time, haven't we?" They
all caught on real skorry and said:
     "That's right, lads. Not been out of our  sight, you haven't. God bless
you, boys," drinking.
     Not that it mattered  much, really. About half  an hour went  by before
there was  any sign of  life among  the millicents, and then it was only two
very  young  rozzes  that  came  in,  very  pink under  their  big  copper's
shlemmies. One said:
     "You lot  know  anything about  the  happenings at Slouse's  shop  this
night?"
     "Us?" I said, innocent. "Why, what happened?"
     "Stealing  and roughing.  Two hospitalizations. Where've you  lot  been
this evening?"
     "I don't go for that nasty tone," I said. "I don't care  much for these
nasty insinuations. A very suspicious nature all this  betokeneth, my little
brothers."
     "They've been in  here  all night, lads,"  the  old  sharps  started to
creech out. "God  bless  them,  there's  no  better lot  of boys  living for
kindness  and generosity.  Been here  all the time they have. Not  seen them
move we haven't."
     "We're only asking," said the other young millicent. "We've got our job
to do like anyone else." But they gave us the nasty warning look before they
went  out. As  they  were  going out  we  handed them  a  bit of  lip-music:
brrrrzzzzrrrr.  But, myself,  I couldn't help  a  bit of  disappointment  at
things  as they were those days. Nothing to fight against really. Everything
as easy as kiss-my-sharries. Still, the night was still very young.




     When  we  got outside  of the  Duke  of New York we viddied by the main
bar's long lighted window, a burbling old pyahnitsa or drunkie, howling away
at the  filthy songs  of his  fathers  and going blerp  blerp in between  as
though it might be a filthy old orchestra  in his  stinking rotten guts. One
veshch I could never stand was that. I could never stand to see a moodge all
filthy  and rolling  and burping and drunk, whatever his  age might be,  but
more  especially when he was  real starry like this  one was. He was sort of
flattened  to the wall and his platties were  a  disgrace,  all  creased and
untidy and covered in cal and mud and filth and stuff. So we got hold of him
and cracked him with a few good  horrorshow  tolchoks, but he still  went on
singing. The song went:

     And I will go back to my darling, my darling,
     When you, my darling, are gone.

     But  when Dim fisted  him a  few times on  his filthy drunkard's rot he
shut up  singing and  started to  creech:  "Go  on, do me  in,  you  bastard
cowards, I  don't want  to live anyway,  not in  a stinking world  like this
one."  I told  Dim to  lay off  a bit then,  because it used to  interest me
sometimes to slooshy what some of these starry decreps had to say about life
and the world. I said: "Oh. And what's stinking about it?"
     He cried out:  "It's a stinking world because  it lets the young get on
to  the old like you done, and  there's  no law  nor order no more."  He was
creeching out  loud and waving  his  rookers and making real horrorshow with
the slovos,  only  the  odd blurp  blurp  coming  from  his  keeshkas,  like
something was orbiting within, or like some very rude interrupting sort of a
moodge  making a shoom, so  that this  old veck kept sort  of threatening it
with his fists,  shouting: "It's  no world for  any old  man any longer, and
that  means that I'm  not one bit  scared of you, my boyos, because I'm  too
drunk  to feel the pain if you hit me, and if you kill me I'll be glad to be
dead."
     We smecked and then grinned  but said  nothing, and then he said: "What
sort  of a world is it  at all?  Men on the moon and men spinning  round the
earth like it might be midges round a  lamp, and there's not  more attention
paid to earthly law nor order no more. So your  worst you may do, you filthy
cowardly  hooligans."  Then he gave us some lip-music--"Prrrrzzzzrrrr"--like
we'd done to those young millicents, and then he started singing again:

     Oh dear dear land, I fought for thee
     And brought thee peace and victory--

     So we cracked  into him  lovely,  grinning all over our litsos, but  he
still went on singing. Then we tripped  him so he laid down  flat and  heavy
and a bucketload of beer-vomit came whooshing out. That was disgusting so we
gave him the boot, one  go each, and then it  was blood, not song nor vomit,
that came out of his filthy old rot. Then we went on our way.
     It was round by the Municipal Power Plant  that we came across Billyboy
and his five droogs. Now  in  those days, my  brothers, the  teaming  up was
mostly  by  fours or fives, these being like auto-teams, four being a  comfy
number for an auto, and six being the outside limit for gang-size. Sometimes
gangs would gang up so as to make like malenky armies for big night-war, but
mostly it was best  to  roam  in  these  like  small numbers.  Billyboy  was
something that made me want  to sick just to  viddy  his fat grinning litso,
and he always had  this von  of very  stale oil  that's been used for frying
over and over, even when he was dressed in his best platties, like now. They
viddied us just as we viddied them, and  there was  like a very quit kind of
watching  each other  now.  This would be real, this  would be proper,  this
would  be  the  nozh, the  oozy,  the britva,  not just fisties  and  boots.
Billyboy and his droogs stopped what they were doing, which was just getting
ready  to perform something on  a weepy young devotchka  they had there, not
more than ten, she creeching away but  with her platties still  on. Billyboy
holding her by one rooker and his number-one, Leo, holding the other. They'd
probably just been doing the dirty slovo part of the act before getting down
to a malenky bit of ultra-violence. When they viddied us  a-coming they  let
go of this boo-hooing little ptitsa, there being plenty  more where she came
from, and she ran with her thin white legs flashing through  the dark, still
going "Oh oh oh." I said, smiling very wide and droogie: "Well, if it  isn't
fat stinking billygoat Billyboy in poison. How art  thou, thou globby bottle
of cheap stinking chip-oil? Come and get one in the yarbles, if you have any
yarbles, you eunuch jelly, thou." And then we started.
     There were four  of us to six of them, like I have  already  indicated,
but poor old  Dim, for  all his  dimness, was  worth three of the others  in
sheer madness and dirty fighting. Dim had a real horrorshow length  of  oozy
or  chain round his waist, twice wound round, and he unwound  this and began
to swing  it  beautiful in the eyes or glazzies.  Pete and Georgie  had good
sharp nozhes, but I for my  own part had a fine starry horrorshow cut-throat
britva which, at that time, I could  flash and shine  artistic. So there  we
were dratsing away in the dark, the old  Luna with men on it just coming up,
the  stars  stabbing  away as it  might  be  knives anxious to  join in  the
dratsing. With my britva I  managed to slit right down the  front  of one of
Billyboy's droog's platties, very  very neat and not even touching the plott
under the  cloth. Then in  the dratsing  this droog  of Billyboy's  suddenly
found himself all opened up like a peapod, with his belly bare  and his poor
old yarbles showing, and then he got very razdraz, waving and  screaming and
losing  his  guard   and  letting   in  old  Dim  with  his  chain   snaking
whisssssshhhhhhhhh, so that old  Dim chained him right in the  glazzies, and
this droog of  Billyboy's  went tottering off and  howling his heart out. We
were doing very  horrorshow, and  soon  we  had  Billyboy's  number-one down
underfoot, blinded with old Dim's chain and crawling and howling about  like
an animal, but with one  fair  boot on the  gulliver he  was out and out and
out.
     Of the four of us Dim, as usual, came out  the worst in point of looks,
that is to say his litso was all bloodied and his platties a dirty mess, but
the others of us were still cool and whole. It was stinking fatty Billyboy I
wanted  now, and there I was dancing about with my britva like I  might be a
barber on board a ship on a very rough sea,  trying  to get in at him with a
few  fair  slashes on his unclean oily  litso. Billyboy had  a nozh,  a long
flick-type, but he was a malenky bit too slow and heavy in his movements  to
vred anyone really bad. And, my brothers, it was real satisfaction to  me to
waltz--left  two three, right  two  three--and  carve  left cheeky and right
cheeky, so that like two curtains of  blood  seemed to pour  out at the same
time,  one  on  either  side of  his fat  filthy oily snout  in  the  winter
starlight.  Down this blood poured in like red curtains, but you could viddy
Billyboy felt  not  a thing,  and he  went  lumbering on like a filthy fatty
bear, poking at me with his nozh.
     Then we slooshied the  sirens and  knew the millicents were coming with
pooshkas  pushing out  of  the police-auto-windows  at the ready. That weepy
little devotchka had told them, no doubt, there being a box for calling  the
rozzes not too far behind  the Muni Power Plant. "Get you soon, fear not," I
called, "stinking billygoat.  I'll have your  yarbles off  lovely." Then off
they ran, slow and panting, except  for  Number One  Leo out  snoring on the
ground,  away north towards the river, and we went the other way. Just round
the next turning was an alley,  dark and empty and open at both ends, and we
rested there, panting fast then  slower, then breathing  like normal. It was
like resting between the feet of two terrific  and  very enormous mountains,
these being the  flatblocks, and  in the windows of all  the flats you could
viddy like blue dancing light. This would be the telly. Tonight was what thy
called a  worldcast, meaning that  the  same programme was  being viddied by
everybody  in  the world that wanted to,  that being  mostly the middle-aged
middle-class lewdies. There would be some big famous stupid comic chelloveck
or  black  singer,  and  it  was  all  being bounced off  the  special telly
satellites in  outer space, my  brothers.  We  waited panting, and  we could
slooshy the  sirening millicents  going  east, so we knew we were all  right
now. But poor old Dim kept looking up at  the stars and planets and the Luna
with his rot  wide  open  like a kid  who'd never  viddied  any  such things
before, and he said:
     "What's on them, I wonder. What would be up there on things like that?"
     I nudged him  hard,  saying: "Come,  gloopy  bastard as thou art. Think
thou not on  them. There'll  be life like down  here  most likely, with some
getting knifed and  others doing the knifing. And now, with  the nochy still
molodoy,  let us be on our way, O my brothers." The others smecked  at this,
but poor old Dim looked at me  serious, then up  again  at the stars and the
Luna. So we went on our way down the alley, with the worldcast blueing on on
either side. What we needed now was an auto, so we turned left coming out of
the  alley, knowing  right away  we were in Priestly Place  as  soon  as  we
viddied the big bronze statue of some starry poet with an apey upper lip and
a pipe  stuck in a  droopy old rot. Going  north we came to  the  filthy old
Filmdrome, peeling  and dropping  to  bits through nobody  going there  much
except malchicks like me and my droogs, and then only for a yell or a razrez
or a bit of in-out-in-out in the dark. We could viddy from the poster on the
Filmdrome's face, a  couple of fly-dirtied spots trained  on it, that  there
was the usual cowboy riot, with the archangels on the side of the US marshal
six-shooting  at the  rustlers out of hell's fighting legions,  the kind  of
hound-and-horny veshch  put out by Statefilm in those days. The autos parked
by the sinny  weren't  all that horrorshow, crappy starry  veshches  most of
them, but there was a newish Durango 95 that I thought might do. Georgie had
one of these polyclefs, as they called them, on his keyring, so we were soon
aboard--Dim and Pete at the back,  puffing away lordly at their cancers--and
I  turned  on the  ignition  and started her up and she  grumbled away  real
horrorshow,  a   nice  warm  vibraty  feeling  grumbling  all  through  your
guttiwuts. Then I made with the noga,  and we backed out lovely,  and nobody
viddied us take off.
     We  fillied round what  was called  the backtown for a bit, scaring old
vecks and cheenas that were crossing the roads and zigzagging after cats and
that. Then we took the road west. There wasn't much traffic about, so I kept
pushing the old noga through the floorboards near, and the Durango 95 ate up
the road  like spaghetti. Soon it was  winter  trees and dark, my  brothers,
with a country  dark,  and  at one  place I ran  over something big  with  a
snarling toothy  rot in the head-lamps, then it screamed and squelched under
and old Dim at the back near laughed his gulliver off--"Ho ho ho"--at that.
     Then we  saw one young  malchick  with his sharp, lubbilubbing  under a
tree, so we stopped and cheered at them, then we bashed into them both  with
a couple of half-hearted tolchocks, making them cry, and on we went. What we
were after now was the old surprise visit. That was a real kick and good for
smecks  and lashings of the  ultra-violent. We came  at last  to  a  sort of
village, and just outside this village was a small sort of a cottage on  its
own with a bit of garden. The Luna was well up now, and  we could viddy this
cottage  fine and  clear as I eased up and put the brake on, the other three
giggling  like  bezoomny, and we could viddy the name on the  gate  of  this
cottage veshch  was HOME, a gloomy sort of  a  name. I got out of the  auto,
ordering my droogs to shush their giggles and act like serious, and I opened
this malenky gate and walked up to the front door. I knocked nice and gentle
and nobody  came, so  I  knocked a  bit more  and this time  I could slooshy
somebody coming, then a bolt drawn, then the door inched open an inch or so,
then  I could viddy  this one glazz looking out at me and the door was on  a
chain. "Yes? Who  is it?" It was a sharp's  goloss, a  youngish devotchka by
her sound, so I said in  a very refined manner of speech, a real gentleman's
goloss:
     "Pardon,  madam, most sorry to disturb you, but my  friend and  me were
out for  a walk, and  my  friend  has taken bad all of  a sudden with a very
troublesome  turn, and he  is out  there on the road dead out and  groaning.
Would you have the goodness to let me use your telephone to telephone for an
ambulance?"
     "We haven't a telephone,"  said  this  devotchka. "I'm  sorry,  but  we
haven't. You'll have to go somewhere else." From inside this malenky cottage
I  could slooshy the clack clack  clacky clack  clack clackity clackclack of
some  veck  typing  away,  and then the typing  stopped  and  there was this
chelloveck's goloss calling: "What is it, dear?"
     "Well," I said, "could you of  your goodness please let him  have a cup
of water? It's like a faint,  you see. It seems as though he's passed out in
a sort of a fainting fit."
     The  devotchka sort of hesitated and then  said: "Wait."  Then she went
off,  and  my  three  droogs had  got out  of the  auto  quiet  and crept up
horrorshow stealthy, putting their maskies on now,  then I put mine on, then
it was only a matter of  me putting in the old rooker and undoing the chain,
me having softened  up  this devotchka with my gent's  goloss,  so  that she
hadn't shut the  door like she  should have  done, us being strangers of the
night. The  four of us  then went roaring in, old Dim  playing the  shoot as
usual with his jumping  up and down and singing out dirty slovos, and it was
a nice malenky  cottage, I'll say that. We  all  went smecking into the room
with a light on, and there was  this  devotchka sort  of  cowering, a  young
pretty bit  of sharp with real horrorshow groodies on her,  and with her was
this chelloveck who was  her  moodge, youngish too with horn-rimmed otchkies
on him, and on a table was a typewriter and all papers scattered everywhere,
but there was one little pile of  paper  like  that must have been what he'd
already typed, so here was another  intelligent type bookman type like  that
we'd fillied with some hours back,  but this one was a writer not a  reader.
Anyway, he said:
     "What  is  this?  Who  are you?  How  dare you enter my  house  without
permission." And all the time his goloss was trembling  and his rookers too.
So I said:
     "Never fear.  If fear thou hast in thy heart, O brother, pray banish it
forthwith."  Then Georgie and  Pete went out to find the kitchen, while  old
Dim waited  for orders, standing next to me with his rot wide open. "What is
this, then?" I  said,  picking up the  pile like  of  typing from off of the
table, and the horn-rimmed moodge said, dithering:
     "That's just what I want to  know. What  is this? What do you want? Get
out at once  before  I throw you out." So  poor old  Dim, masked like Peebee
Shelley, had a good loud smeck at that, roaring like some animal.
     "It's a book," I said. "It's a book  what you  are writing." I made the
old goloss very coarse. "I have always had the strongest admiration for them
as can write  books." Then I  looked  at  its top  sheet,  and there was the
name--A C L  O C  K W O R K O R A  N G E--and I said:  "That's a fair gloopy
title. Who ever heard of  a clockwork orange?" Then I read a malenky bit out
loud in  a sort of very high type preaching goloss: "--The attempt to impose
upon man, a creature of growth and  capable of sweetness, to ooze juicily at
the  last round the bearded lips of God,  to attempt to impose,  I say, laws
and conditions appropriate to a mechanical creation, against this I raise my
sword-pen--" Dim made the old lip-music at that and I had  to  smeck myself.
Then  I started to tear up  the sheets  and scatter the bits over the floor,
and  this writer  moodge went  sort of bezoomny and  made  for  me with  his
zoobies clenched and showing yellow and his  nails  ready for me like claws.
So that was old Dim's cue and he went grinning and going er er and a a a for
this  veck's dithering rot,  crack  crack,  first left fistie then right, so
that our dear old droog the red--red vino on tap and the same in all places,
like it's put out by  the same big firm--started  to  pour and spot the nice
clean carpet and  the bits  of this book that I  was still ripping away  at,
razrez  razrez.  All this time this devotchka, his loving and faithful wife,
just stood like froze by the fireplace,  and  then  she started letting  out
little malenky  creeches, like  in time to the like music of old Dim's fisty
work. Then Georgie and  Pete came  in from the  kitchen, both munching away,
though with their maskies on, you could do that with them on and no trouble.
Georgie with like a cold leg of something in one rooker  and half  a loaf of
kleb with a  big dollop of maslo on it in the other, and Pete  with a bottle
of beer frothing its gulliver off  and  a  horrorshow rookerful of like plum
cake. They went haw haw  haw, viddying old Dim dancing round and fisting the
writer veck  so that the writer  veck started to platch like his life's work
was ruined, going  boo hoo hoo with a very square bloody rot, but it was haw
haw haw in a muffled eater's way  and you could  see bits of what they  were
eating. I didn't like that, it being dirty and slobbery, so I said:
     "Drop that mounch. I gave no permission. Grab hold of this veck here so
he can viddy all and not get away." So they put down their fatty pishcha  on
the  table among all the flying  paper  and  they clopped over to the writer
veck whose horn-rimmed otchkies were cracked but  still hanging on, with old
Dim still  dancing round and making  ornaments shake on  the  mantelpiece (I
swept  them all off then and  they  couldn't shake no more, little brothers)
while he fillied  with the author of `A Clockwork Orange,'  making his litso
all purple and dripping away like some  very special sort of a juicy  fruit.
"All right, Dim," I said. "Now for the other veshch, Bog help us all." So he
did the strong-man on  the devotchka, who was still creech creech  creeching
away in  very horrorshow four-in-a-bar,  locking her rookers from the  back,
while I ripped away at this and that and the other, the others going haw haw
haw still, and real good horrorshow groodies  they  were that then exhibited
their pink glazzies, O my brothers, while I untrussed and got  ready for the
plunge. Plunging, I  could slooshy  cries  of agony and this writer bleeding
veck that Georgie and Pete held on to nearly got loose howling bezoomny with
the filthiest of slovos that I already knew and others he was making up.
     Then after me it was right old Dim should  have  his turn, which he did
in a beasty snorty howly sort of a way with his Peebee Shelley maskie taking
no  notice, while I held on to her. Then there  was a changeover, Dim and me
grabbing the  slobbering  writer veck  who was  past struggling really, only
just coming out  with  slack  sort of slovos like he was  in the  land in  a
milk-plus bar, and Pete  and Georgie had  theirs. Then there was  like quiet
and  we  were   full   of  like  hate,  so  smashed  what  was  left  to  be
smashed--typewriter,  lamp,  chairs--and  Dim,  it  was typical  of old Dim,
watered the fire out and was going to dung on the carpet, there being plenty
of paper,  but I said no. "Out out  out  out," I howled. The writer veck and
his  zheena  were not  really  there, bloody and torn and making noises. But
they'd live.
     So we got  into  the waiting auto and I left it to  Georgie to take the
wheel,  me  feeling  that  malenky bit  shagged, and we  went back  to town,
running over odd squealing things on the way.




     We yeckated back townwards, my brothers, but just outside, not far from
what  they called the  Industrial Canal, we viddied the fuel needle had like
collapsed,  like our own ha  ha ha needles had,  and  the auto  was coughing
kashl  kashl  kashl.  Not to worry overmuch, though,  because a rail station
kept flashing blue--on off on off--just near. The point was whether to leave
the  auto to be sobiratted  by the rozzes or,  us feeling like in a hate and
murder mood,  to give  it a fair tolchock into the  starry watersfor  a nice
heavy loud plesk before the death of the evening. This latter we decided on,
so we got out and, the brakes off, all four tolchocked it to the edge of the
filthy water that was like treacle mixed with  human hole products, then one
good horrorshow  tolchock  and in she went. We  had to dash back for fear of
the  filth splashing  on our platties,  but  splussshhhh and glolp she went,
down and lovely. "Farewell, old droog," called Georgie, and Dim obliged with
a clowny great guff--"Huh huh huh huh."
     Then  we made for the  station  to ride the one stop  to Center, as the
middle of the town was  called. We paid our fares nice and polite and waited
gentlemanly  and  quiet  on the platform,  old Dim  fillying  with the  slot
machines, his carmans being full of small malenky coin, and ready if need be
to distribute  chocbars to the poor and starving, though there was none such
about,  and  then the old espresso rapido came lumbering  in and we  climbed
aboard, the train looking to be near empty. To pass the three-minute ride we
fillied  about  with what  they  called  the  upholstery,  doing  some  nice
horrorshow tearing-out of the seats' guts and old Dim chaining the okno till
the  glass  cracked and  sparkled in the winter air, but we were all feeling
that bit  shagged and fagged and fashed,  it having been an  evening of some
small energy expenditure,  my brothers, only Dim, like  the clowny animal he
was, full of the joys-of, but looking  all dirtied over and too much  von of
sweat on him, which was one thing I had against old Dim.
     We got out at Center  and walked slow back  to the  Korova Milkbar, all
going yawwwww  a malenky bit and exhibiting to  moon  and star and lamplight
our  back fillings,  because we  were still only  growing malchicks  and had
school in  the daytime, and when we got into the Korova we found  it  fuller
than  when  we'd left earlier  on. But the chelloveck that had been burbling
away, in the land, on white and synthemesc or whatever,  was still on at it,
going:  "Urchins   of  deadcast  in  the  way-ho-hay  glill   platonic  time
weatherborn." It  was probable that this was  his third  or fourth  lot that
evening, for he had that pale  inhuman look, like he'd become a `thing,' and
like  his litso was really a piece of chalk carved. Really,  if he wanted to
spend  so  long in  the land, he  should have gone into one  of the  private
cubies at the back and not stayed in the big mesto, because here some of the
malchickies  would filly about  with him a malenky  bit, though not too much
because there were  powerful  bruiseboys hidden  away in the old  Korova who
could stop any riot. Anyway, Dim squeezed in next to this veck and, with his
big clown's yawp that showed his hanging grape,  he stabbed this veck's foot
with  his own large filthy sabog. But the veck,  my brothers, heard  nought,
being now all above the body.
     It  was nadsats  milking and coking and  fillying around  (nadsats were
what we used to  call the  teens), but there were a few  of the  more starry
ones,  vecks and  cheenas  alike  (but not  of  the bourgeois,  never  them)
laughing  and  govoreeting  at  the  bar.  You  could tell  them from  their
barberings and loose platties (big stringy sweaters mostly) that they'd been
on rehearsals at the TV studios around the corner. The devotchkas among them
had these very lively litsos and wide big rots, very  red, showing a lot  of
teeth, and smecking away and not caring about the wicked world one whit. And
then the disc on the  stereo twanged off and out (it was  Johnny  Zhivago, a
Russky koshka, singing `Only Every  Other Day'), and  in  the like interval,
the short silence before the next one came on, one of these devotchkas--very
fair  and  with  a  big  smiling  red  rot  and  in her  late  thirties  I'd
say--suddenly came with  a  burst of singing, only  a bar  and a half and as
though  she  was  like  giving an  example  of  something  they'd  all  been
govoreeting about, and it  was like for a moment,  O my brothers, some great
bird had flown  into the milkbar, and I felt all the little malenky hairs on
my  plott  standing endwise and the  shivers crawling up  like slow  malenky
lizards and  then down again. Because I knew  what she sang. It was  from an
opera  by Friedrich  Gitterfenster called `Das Bettzeug,' and it was the bit
where she's snuffing it with her throat cut, and the slovos are `Better like
this maybe.' Anyway, I shivered.
     But old Dim,  as  soon as  he'd slooshied this dollop  of  song  like a
lomtick  of  redhot  meat  plonked  on  your  plate,  let  off  one  of  his
vulgarities, which  in  this case  was  a  lip-trump  followed by a dog-howl
followed  by two fingers pronging  twice  at the  air  followed by  a clowny
guffaw.  I  felt myself  all of a fever  and like  drowning in redhot blood,
slooshying  and  viddying  Dim's vulgarity,  and  I said:  "Bastard.  Filthy
drooling mannerless bastard." Then I leaned across Georgie,  who was between
me  and horrible  Dim, and  fisted Dim  skorry on the rot.  Dim looked  very
surprised, his  rot open,  wiping the krovvy off of his goober with his rook
and in turn looking surprised at the red flowing krovvy and at me. "What for
did you do that for?" he said in his ignorant way. Not many viddied what I'd
done, and those  that viddied  cared not. The stereo  was  on again  and was
playing a very sick electronic guitar veshch. I said:
     "For being a bastard with no manners and not the dook of an idea how to
comport yourself publicwise, O my brother."
     Dim put on a hound-and-horny look  of evil, saying:  "I don't like  you
should do what you done then. And I'm  not your brother no more and wouldn't
want  to  be." He'd taken  a big snotty  tashtook from  his  pocket  and was
mopping the red  flow  puzzled, keeping on looking at it  frowning as  if he
thought that blood was  for other vecks and not for him. It  was like he was
singing  blood to make up for his  vulgarity when that devotchka was singing
music. But that devotchka was smecking away ha ha ha now  with her droogs at
the bar, her red rot  working  and her zoobies  ashine,  not  having noticed
Dim's filthy vulgarity. It was me really Dim had done wrong to. I said:
     "If you don't like this and you wouldn't want  that, then you know what
to do, little brother." Georgie said, in a sharp way that made me look:
     "All right. Let's not be starting."
     "That's clean up to Dim," I said. "Dim can't go on all his jeezny being
as a little child." And I looked sharp at Georgie.
     Dim said, and the red krovvy was easing its flow now:
     "What  natural right does he have to  think he can give the orders  and
tolchock me whenever he likes? Yarbles is what  I say to him, and I'd  chain
his glazzies out as soon as look."
     "Watch that," I said, as quiet as I  could with the stereo bouncing all
over the walls and  ceiling and the in-the-land veck beyond Dim getting loud
now with his "Spark  nearer, ultoptimate," I said: "Do watch that, O Dim, if
to continue to be on live thou dost wish."
     "Yarbles,"  said Dim, sneering, "great bolshy yarblockos  to you.  What
you done then you had no right. I'll meet  you  with chain or nozh or britva
any time, not having you aiming tolchocks at  me  reasonless,  it stands  to
reason I won't have it."
     "A nozh scrap any time you say," I snarled back. Pete said:
     "Oh  now, don't,  both  of you malchicks. Droogs, aren't  we? It  isn't
right droogs  should  behave thiswise.  See,  there  are  some  loose-lipped
malchicks over there smecking  at us, leering like. We mustn't let ourselves
down."
     "Dim," I said, "has got to learn his place. Right?"
     "Wait,"  said Georgie. "What is all this about place? This is the first
I ever hear about lewdies learning their place."
     Pete  said: "If the truth is known, Alex, you  shouldn't have given old
Dim that uncalled-for tolchock. I'll say it once and no more. I  say it with
all respect, but if it had been me you'd given it to you'd have to answer. I
say no more." And he drowned his litso in his milk-glass.
     I could feel  myself  getting all razdraz  inside, but I tried to cover
it,  saying calm:  "There has to  be a leader.  Discipline there has to  be.
Right?" None of them skazatted a  word or nodded  even. I  got more  razdraz
inside,  calmer  out. "I," I said, "have been in charge long now. We are all
droogs,  but  somebody has  to be in  charge. Right? Right?"  They  all like
nodded, wary like. Dim was osooshing the last of the krovvy off. It  was Dim
who said now:
     "Right, right. Doobidoob. A bit tired, maybe, everybody is. Best not to
say  more." I was surprised and just that  malenky bit poogly  to sloosh Dim
govoreeting that wise. Dim said:
     "Bedways is rightways now, so best we go  homeways. Right?"  I was very
surprised. The other two nodded, going right right right. I said:
     "You understand about that  tolchock on the rot, Dim. It was the music,
see. I  get all bezoomny  when any veck interferes with a ptitsa singing, as
it might be. Like that then."
     "Best we  go off homeways and get a bit of spatchka," said Dim. "A long
night  for growing malchicks. Right?"  Right  right nodded the other  two. I
said:
     "I think  it  best  we  go home  now. Dim has  made  a real  horrorshow
suggestion. If we don't meet day-wise,  O my brothers,  well then--same time
same place tomorrow?"
     "Oh yes," said Georgie. "I think that can be arranged."
     "I might," said Dim, "be just that malenky bit late. But same place and
near same  time tomorrow surely." He was still wiping at his goober,  though
no  krovvy  flowed any  longer now. "And," he said, "it is to be hoped there
won't be no more of them  singing ptitsas in here." Then he gave his old Dim
guff,  a clowny  big hohohohoho. It seemed like he was  too dim to take much
offence.
     So off we went our several  ways, me belching arrrrgh on the cold  coke
I'd peeted. I  had  my  cut-throat britva  handy  in case  any of Billyboy's
droogs should  be around near the flat-block waiting, or for that matter any
of the other bandas or gruppas or shaikas that from time to time were at war
with one. Where I lived was with my dadda  and mum in the flats of Municipal
Flatblock 18A, between Kingsley Avenue and Wilsonsway. I got to the big main
door with  no trouble, though I  did pass one  young malchick sprawling  and
creeching and moaning in the  gutter,  all cut about lovely, and  saw in the
lamplight also streaks of blood here and there like signatures, my brothers,
of  the night's  fillying.  And too I saw just  by 18A a pair of devotchka's
neezhnies  doubtless  rudely wrenched off in the heat of the  moment,  O  my
brothers. And so in.  In the  hallway was the good old municipal painting on
the walls--vecks and  ptitsas very  well developed, stern in  the dignity of
labour, at workbench and  machine with  not one stitch of platties on  their
well-developed plotts. But of course some of  the  malchicks living  in  18A
had, as was to be expected, embellished and decorated the said  big painting
with handy pencil  and  ballpoint, adding  hair  and stiff  rods  and  dirty
ballooning  slovos out of  the dignified rots of these nagoy (bare, that is)
cheenas  and  vecks. I went to the lift, but there was no  need to press the
electric  knopka to  see  if it  was  working or  not,  because it  had been
tolchocked  real horrorshow this  night,  the metal doors all buckled,  some
feat of rare strength indeed,  so I  had to walk the ten floors up. I cursed
and panted climbing, being tired in plott if not  so much in brain. I wanted
music very  bad this evening, that singing  devotchka  in the Korova  having
perhaps started  me off.  I  wanted like a big feast of it before getting my
passport stamped,  my  brothers, at  sleep's  frontier and the  stripy shest
lifted to let me through.
     I opened the  door of  10-8  with my own little klootch, and inside our
malenky quarters all was quiet, the pee and em  both being in sleepland, and
mum had laid out on the table on malenky bit of supper--a couple of lomticks
of tinned sponge-meat with a  shive or so of kleb and butter, a glass of the
old  cold moloko. Hohoho,  the old moloko,  with no knives or  synthemesc or
drencrom in it. How wicked, my brothers, innocent  milk must always seem  to
me now. Still I drank and ate growling, being more  hungry than I thought at
first, and  I got fruit-pie from the larder and tore  chunks off it to stuff
into my greedy rot.  Then I tooth-cleaned and clicked,  cleaning out the old
rot with my yahzick or  tongue, then I went  into my own little room or den,
easing off my platties as I did  so. Here was my bed and my stereo, pride of
my  jeezny, and my discs in  their cupboard, and banners  and  flags  on the
wall, these being like remembrances of my corrective school life since I was
eleven, O my brothers,  each one shining and  blazoned with name  or number:
SOUTH 4; METRO CORSKOL BLUE DIVISION; THE BOYS OF ALPHA.
     The little speakers of my  stereo  were all arranged round the room, on
ceiling, walls, floor, so, lying  on my bed slooshying the music, I was like
netted  and meshed  in the  orchestra. Now  what I fancied first tonight was
this  new  violin  concerto  by the  American  Geoffrey  Plautus, played  by
Odysseus Choerilos with the Macon (Georgia) Philharmonic, so I  slid it from
where it was neatly filed and switched on and waited.
     Then, brothers, it came. Oh, bliss, bliss and heaven.  I lay all  nagoy
to  the ceiling, my gulliver  on my rookers on the pillow, glazzies  closed,
rot  open in  bliss,  slooshying the sluice  of lovely  sounds.  Oh, it  was
gorgeousness and gorgeosity made flesh. The trombones crunched redgold under
my  bed, and behind my  gulliver the  trumpets three-wise  silverflamed, and
there  by the door the timps rolling through my guts  and out again crunched
like candy  thunder. Oh, it was  wonder of wonders. And then, a bird of like
rarest  spun  heavenmetal, or  like  silvery  wine  flowing  in a spaceship,
gravity all nonsense now, came  the violin solo above all the other strings,
and  those  strings were like a cage of silk around my  bed. Then  flute and
oboe bored,  like worms of  like platinum, into  the thick thick toffee gold
and silver. I was in such bliss, my brothers.
     Pee and em in their  bedroom next door had learnt now  not to  knock on
the wall with complaints of what they called noise. I  had  taught them. Now
they  would take  sleep-pills. Perhaps,  knowing the  joy I  had in my night
music, they had already taken  them. As I slooshied, my glazzies  tight shut
to shut in the bliss  that was better than any synthemesc Bog or God, I knew
such lovely pictures. There were vecks and ptitsas,  both  young and starry,
lying on the ground screaming for mercy, and I was smecking all  over my rot
and  grinding my boot in their litsos. And there were devotchkas ripped  and
creeching against walls  and I  plunging like a shlaga into them, and indeed
when the music,  which was one  movement  only, rose  to the top of its  big
highest  tower,  then,  lying there on  my bed with glazzies tight shut  and
rookers  behind my gulliver,  I broke  and spattered and cried aaaaaaah with
the bliss of it. And so the lovely music glided to its glowing close.
     After that  I had  lovely Mozart,  the  Jupiter,  and  there  were  new
pictures of  different litsos to  be ground and splashed, and it  was  after
this that I thought I would have just one last disc only before crossing the
border, and I wanted something starry and strong and very firm, so it was J.
S. Bach I had, the  Brandenburg Concerto just for  middle and lower strings.
And, slooshying with different bliss than before, I viddied  again this name
on the paper  I'd razrezzed that  night, a long time ago it seemed, in  that
cottage called HOME. The name was about a clockwork orange. Listening to the
J. S.  Bach, I began to  pony better  what that  meant  now,  and I thought,
slooshying away to the brown gorgeousness of the starry German  master, that
I would like to have tolchecked them  both harder and ripped them to ribbons
on their own floor.




     The next morning I woke up at oh eight oh oh hours, my brothers, and as
I still felt shagged and  fagged and fashed and bashed and  my glazzies were
stuck together  real horrorshow with sleepglue, I thought  I would not go to
school. I thought how I would have a malenky bit longer in  the bed, an hour
or two say, and then get dressed nice and easy, perhaps even having a splosh
about  in the bath, make toast for myself and slooshy the radio or  read the
gazetta, all on my oddy knocky. And then in the afterlunch  I might perhaps,
if I  still felt like it, itty  off  to the old skolliwoll and  see what was
vareeting  in  the  great seat of gloopy useless learning, O my brothers.  I
heard my papapa grumbling and trampling and then ittying off to the dyeworks
where he rabbited, and then my  mum called in in a very respectful goloss as
she did now I was growing up big and strong:
     "It's gone eight, son. You don't want to be late again."
     So I  called back: "A bit of pain in my gulliver. Leave us be and  I'll
try to  sleep it off and  then  I'll be right as dodgers for this  after." I
slooshied her give a sort of a sigh and she said:
     "I'll put your breakfast in the  oven then,  son.  I've got to  be  off
myself now." Which was true, there being this  law for everybody not a child
nor with  child nor ill to  go out rabbiting. My  mum worked at one  of  the
Statemarts, as they called them, filling up the shelves with tinned soup and
beans and all that  cal.  So I slooshied her clank a plate  in  the gas-oven
like  and then she  was  putting her shoes on and then getting her coat from
behind the door and then sighing  again, then she said: "I'm off  now, son."
But  I  let  on to  be  back in  sleepland  and then  I did  doze  off  real
horrorshow, and I had a queer  and very real like sneety,  dreaming for some
reason of my droog Georgie. In this sneety he'd got like very much older and
very  sharp and  hard and was govoreeting about discipline and obedience and
how all the malchicks under his  control had to jump hard at it and throw up
the old salute like being  in the army,  and there  was me in line like  the
rest  saying yes sir and  no sir, and  the I viddied  clear that Georgie had
these stars on his pletchoes and he  was like a general. And then he brought
in old Dim with a whip, and Dim was a lot more starry and grey and had a few
zoobies missing as you could see when he let  out  a smeck, viddying me, and
then my droog Georgie said, pointing like at me: "That man has filth and cal
all over his platties," and it was true. Then I creeched:
     "Don't hit,  please  don't,  brothers," and started to run.  And I  was
running  in like circles and  Dim was  after me, smecking his  gulliver off,
cracking with the old whip, and each time I  got a real  horrorshow tolchock
with this  whip there was like a  very  loud electric bell ringringring, and
this bell was like a sort of a pain too.
     Then  I  woke up real skorry, my heart going bap bap bap, and of course
there was really a bell going brrrrr,  and it was our front-door bell. I let
on that nobody was  at home, but this brrrrr  still ittied on,  and  then  I
heard  a goloss shouting through the door:  "Come on then,  get out of it, I
know you're  in bed." I recognized the goloss right away. It  was the goloss
of  P.  R.  Deltoid (a  real  gloopy  nazz,  that one) what they  called  my
Post-Corrective  Adviser, an overworked veck with hundreds on  his books.  I
shouted right right  right, in a goloss of  like pain, and  I got out of bed
and attired myself, O my brothers,  in a very lovely over-gown of like silk,
with designs  of like  great  cities all  over this over-gown. Then I put my
nogas into very comfy wooly toofles, combed my luscious glory, and was ready
for P. R. Deltoid. When I opened up  he came shambling in looking shagged, a
battered old shlapa on his gulliver, his raincoat filthy. "Ah, Alex boy," he
said  to me. "I met  your  mother, yes.  She  said something  about  a  pain
somewhere. Hence not at schol, yes."
     "A rather  intolerable pain in  the  head, brother,  sir," I said in my
gentleman's goloss. "I think it should clear by this afternoon."
     "Or certainly by this  evening, yes," said P. R. Deltoid. "The  evening
is the great time, isn't it, Alex boy?  Sit," he said, "sit, sit," as though
this was his domy and me his guest. And he sat in  this starry rocking-chair
of my dad's and began rocking, as if that was all he had come for. I said:
     "A cup of the old chai, sir? Tea, I mean."
     "No  time,"  he  said.  And  he  rocked, giving me  the old glint under
frowning brows,  as if with all  the time in the world. "No time,  yes,"  he
said, gloopy. So I put the kettle on. Then I said:
     "To what do I owe the extreme pleasure? Is anything wrong, sir?"
     "Wrong?"  he said, very skorry and  sly,  sort of hunched looking at me
but still  rocking away. Then he  caught sight  of an advert in the gazetta,
which was on  the table--a  lovely smecking young  ptitsa with her  groodies
hanging out to advertise, my brothers, the Glories of the Jugoslav Beaches.
     Then, after sort of eating her up in two swallows, he said:
     "Why should you think in terms of there  being anything wrong? Have you
been doing something you shouldn't, yes?"
     "Just a manner of speech," I said, "sir."
     "Well,"  said P.  R. Deltoid, "it's just a manner  of speech from me to
you  that  you watch out,  little Alex, because  next time, as you very well
know, it's not going to be  the  corrective school any more. Next time  it's
going to  be  the  barry  place  and  all  my  work ruined.  If you  have no
consideration  for your  horrible self you  at least might have some for me,
who have  sweated over you. A big black mark, I  tell you in confidence, for
every one we don't reclaim, a  confession of failure for every  one  of  you
that ends up in the stripy hole."
     "I've been  doing  nothing I  shouldn't, sir," I said. "The  millicents
have nothing on me, brother, sir I mean."
     "Cut out this clever  talk  about millicents," said P. R.  Deltoid very
weary,  but still rocking. "Just because the police have  not  picked you up
lately doesn't, as  you  very  well  know,  mean you've not  been up to some
nastiness. There was a bit of a fight last night, wasn't  there? There was a
bit of  shuffling with nozhes and bike-chains and the like. One of a certain
fat boy's friends was  ambulanced  off late  from near  the Power Plant  and
hospitalized, cut about very unpleasantly, yes. Your name was mentioned. The
word has got through to me by the  usual  channels. Certain friends of yours
were  named  also.  There  seems  to have  been  a  fair amount  of assorted
nastiness last night. Oh, nobody can prove anything about anybody, as usual.
But I'm warning you, little Alex,  being a good friend to you as always, the
one  man  in  this  sick  and sore  community  who  wants  to save you  from
yourself."
     "I appreciate all that, sir," I said, "very sincerely."
     "Yes, you do, don't you?" he sort  of  sneered. "Just watch  it, that's
all, yes. We know more than you think, little Alex."
     Then he  said, in a goloss of  great suffering, but still rocking away:
"What gets into you all? We study the problem and we've been studying it for
damn well  near  a century, yes,  but  we  get no further with our  studies.
You've got a good home here,  good loving parents, you've got not too bad of
a brain. Is it some devil that crawls inside you?"
     "Nobody's  got  anything on me, sir," I  said.  "I've been out  of  the
rookers of the millicents for a long time now."
     "That's just what worries me," sighed P. R. Deltoid. "A bit too long of
a time to be healthy.  You're  about due now by my reckoning. That's why I'm
warning you,  little Alex, to keep your handsome young proboscis out  of the
dirt, yes. Do I make myself clear?"
     "As an unmuddied lake,  sir," I said. "Clear as an azure sky of deepest
summer. You can rely on me, sir." And I gave him a nice zooby smile.
     But when he'd ookadeeted and I was making this very strong pot of chai,
I  grinned to  myself over  this veshch that  P.  R.  Deltoid and his droogs
worried  about. All right, I do bad, what with crasting  and  tolchocks  and
carves  with the  britva and the old in-out-in-out, and  if I  get  loveted,
well, too bad for me, O my little brothers, and you can't run a country with
every  chelloveck comporting  himself in my manner of the night. So if I get
loveted and  it's three months in this  mesto and another six in  that,  and
the, as  P. R.  Deltoid so kindly  warns, next time, in  spite  of the great
tenderness of my summers, brothers,  it's  the  great  unearthly zoo itself,
well, I  say: "Fair, but a pity, my lords, because I just cannot  bear to be
shut  in. My endeavour shall be, in  such future as stretches  out its snowy
and lilywhite arms to me before the nozh overtakes or the blood spatters its
final chorus in twisted metal  and smashed glass on the highroad, to not get
loveted again." Which is fair speeching. But, brothers, this biting of their
toe-nails  over  what is the cause of badness is what  turns me into a  fine
laughing malchick.  They don't go into the cause  of  goodness, so  why  the
other shop? If lewdies are good  that's because they like it, and I wouldn't
ever interfere  with their  pleasures, and so of the other  shop.  And I was
patronizing the other  shop. More, badness is of the self, the one,  the you
or me on our oddy knockies, and  that self is made by old Bog or  God and is
his  great pride and radosty. But the not-self cannot have the bad,  meaning
they of the  government and the judges and the schools cannot  allow the bad
because  they  cannot allow the  self.  And is  not  our  modern history, my
brothers, the story of  brave malenky  selves fighting these big machines? I
am serious with  you, brothers, over this. But what I do I do because I like
to do.
     So now, this smiling winter morning, I drink this very strong chai with
moloko and spoon after spoon after spoon of sugar, me having a sladky tooth,
and I dragged out of  the oven the breakfast my poor old  mum had cooked for
me. It was an egg fried, that and no more, but  I made toast and ate egg and
toast and jam, smacking away at it while I read the gazetta. The gazetta was
the  usual  about   ultra-violence  and  bank   robberies  and  strikes  and
footballers  making everybody paralytic with  fright by  threatening  to not
play next Saturday if they did not get higher wages, naughty  malchickiwicks
as they were. Also there were more  space-trips and bigger stereo TV screens
and offers  of free packets  of  soapflakes in exchange  for  the  labels on
soup-tins, amazing offer for  one week only, which  made me smeck. And there
was a bolshy big article on Modern Youth (meaning me, so I gave the old bow,
grinning like bezoomny) by some very clever bald chelloveck.
     I read this with care,  my brothers, slurping away at the old chai, cup
after  tass  after chasha,  crunching my  lomticks  of black toast dipped in
jammiwam  and eggiweg. This learned veck said  the usual veshches, about  no
parental  discipline, as  he called  it, and the shortage of real horrorshow
teachers  who would lambast  bloody beggary out of  their innocent poops and
make them go boohoohoo for mercy. All this was gloopy and made me smeck, but
it was like nice to go on knowing one was making the news all the time, O my
brothers. Every  day  there was something about Modern  Youth, but  the best
veshch they ever  had in  the old gazetta was by some starry  pop in a doggy
collar who said that in his considered opinion and  he was govoreeting as  a
man  of  Bog IT WAS THE DEVIL THAT WAS ABROAD and was like ferreting his way
into like  young innocent flesh, and it was the adult world that could  take
the responsibility for this with their wars and bombs  and nonsense. So that
was all right. So  he  knew what he  talked of,  being a Godman. So we young
innocent malchicks could take no blame. Right right right.
     When I'd gone erk erk a couple of razzes on my full innocent stomach, I
started  to get  out  day platties  from my wardrobe, turning the  radio on.
There was music playing, a very nice malenky string quartet, my brothers, by
Claudius Birdman, one that  I  knew well.  I  had to have  a  smeck, though,
thinking of what  I'd viddied once  in one of these like articles  on Modern
Youth, about how Modern Youth would  be better  off if A Lively Appreciation
Of The Arts could be like encouraged. Great Music, it said, and Great Poetry
would like quieten Modern Youth  down and make Modern Youth  more Civilized.
Civilized my syphilised yarbles. Music always sort of sharpened me  up, O my
brothers, and made me  feel like old Bog himself, ready to make with the old
donner and blitzen and have vecks and  ptitsas creeching  away in  my  ha ha
power. And when I'd cheested up my litso and rookers a bit and done dressing
(my day  platties  were  like student-wear:  the old  blue  pantalonies with
sweater with A for  Alex) I thought here at last was time to itty off to the
disc-bootick (and cutter too, my pockets being full of pretty polly) to  see
about this long-promised and  long-ordered stereo Beethoven Number Nine (the
Choral Symphony, that is), recorded on Masterstroke by the Esh Sham Sinfonia
under L. Muhaiwir. So out I went, brothers.
     The day was very different from the night. The night belonged to me and
my droogs and  all  the rest of the nadsats, and the starry bourgeois lurked
indoors drinking  in the gloopy worldcasts, but  the day was for  the starry
ones, and there always seemed to  be more rozzes or millicents about  during
the day, too. I got the autobus from the corner and rode to Center, and then
I walked  back to Taylor Place, and there  was the  disc-bootick  I favoured
with my inestimable  custom,  O  my  brothers.  It  had  the gloopy name  of
MELODIA, but it was a real  horrorshow mesto  and  skorry,  most  times,  at
getting the new recordings.  I walked in and  the only  other customers were
two young ptitsas sucking away at ice-sticks (and this, mark, was dead  cold
winter  and  sort of  shuffling through the new pop-discs--Johnny  Burnaway,
Stash Kroh, The Mixers, Lay Quit Awhile  With Ed And Id Molotov, and all the
rest of that cal). These two  ptitsas couldn't  have been more than ten, and
they too, like me, it seemed, evidently, had decided to take the morning off
from  the old  skolliwoll.  They  saw themselves,  you  could  see, as  real
grown-up devotchkas already, what  with the old hip-swing when they saw your
Faithful Narrator, brothers, and  padded groodies  and  red all  ploshed  on
their goobers. I went up to  the counter, making with the polite zooby smile
at old  Andy  behind  it  (always  polite  himself, always  helpful, a  real
horrorshow type of a veck, though bald and very very thin). He said:
     "Aha. I know what  you want, I think. Good  news,  good  news.  It  has
arrived." And with like big conductor's rookers beating  time he went to get
it. The two young ptitsas started giggling, as they will at that age, and  I
gave them  a  like cold glazzy. Andy was back real  skorry, waving the great
shiny  white  sleeve of the Ninth, which had on  it, brothers, the  frowning
beetled  like  thunderbolted litso of Ludwig van himself. "Here," said Andy.
"Shall we give it the trial spin?" But I wanted it back home on my stereo to
slooshy on my oddy knocky, greedy as hell. I fumbled out the deng to pay and
one of the little ptitsas said:
     "Who you getten, bratty? What biggy, what only?" These young devotchkas
had their own like way of govoreeting.
     "The Heaven Seventeen?  Luke  Sterne? Goggly  Gogol?" And both giggled,
rocking and hippy. Then an  idea hit  me and made me near fall over with the
anguish and ecstasy of  it, O  my brothers, so I could not breathe for  near
ten seconds. I recovered and made with my new-clean zoobies and said:
     "What you  got back home,  little sisters,  to  play your fuzzy warbles
on?" Because I could viddy the discs  they were buying were these teeny  pop
veshches. "I bet  you got little  save tiny portable like picnic  spinners."
And they sort of pushed their lower lips  out  at that. "Come with uncle," I
said, "and hear all proper. Hear angel trumpets and devil trombones. You are
invited." And I like bowed. They giggled again and one said:
     "Oh,  but we're so  hungry. Oh, but we could so  eat." The other  said:
"Yah, she can say that, can't she just." So I said:
     "Eat with uncle. Name your place."
     Then  they  viddied  themselves  as  real  sophistoes, which  was  like
pathetic,  and started  talking in big-lady golosses about the Ritz and  the
Bristol and the Hilton and Il Ristorante Granturco. But I  stopped that with
"Follow uncle," and I led  them to  the Pasta Parlour just round the  corner
and let them fill  their innocent young litsos on spaghetti and sausages and
cream-puffs  and banana-splits and hot choc-sauce, till I  near  sicked with
the sight of it, I, brothers, lunching but frugally off a cold ham-slice and
a growling dollop of chilli. These two young ptitsas were much alike, though
not sisters. They had the same ideas or lack of, and the same colour hair--a
like dyed strawy. Well, they would grow up real today. Today I would  make a
day  of  it.  No  school  this afterlunch,  but  education  certain, Alex as
teacher.  Their names,  they said, were Marty and Sonietta,  bezoomny enough
and in the heighth of their childish fashion, so I said:
     "Righty right, Marty  and Sonietta.  Time for the big spin. Come." When
we  were  outside  on the  cold  street they  thought they would  not  go by
autobus,  oh no, but by taxi, so I gave them the humour, though with a  real
horrorshow in-grin,  and I  called  a taxi  from the  rank near  Center. The
driver, a starry whiskery veck in very stained platties, said:
     "No  tearing up, now.  No nonsense with them seats. Just re-upholstered
they are." I quieted his gloopy fears and off we spun to Municipal Flatblock
18A, these two bold little ptitsas giggling and whispering. So,  to cut  all
short, we  arrived,  O my brothers, and I led the way  up to  10-8, and they
panted and smecked  away the way up, and  then they were thirsty, they said,
so I unlocked  the treasure-chest  in my room and gave these  ten-year-young
devotchkas a real  horrorshow  Scotchman apiece,  though  well  filled  with
sneezy pins-and-needles soda. They sat on my bed (yet unmade) and leg-swung,
smecking and  peeting  their  highballs,  while  I spun their like  pathetic
malenky  discs through my  stereo. Like  peeting some  sweet  scented  kid's
drink, that was, in like very beautiful and lovely and costly gold  goblets.
But they went oh oh oh and said, "Swoony" and "Hilly" and other weird slovos
that were the heighth of fashion in that youth group. While I  spun this cal
for them I encouraged them to drink  and have another, and they were nothing
loath, O my brothers. So by the time their pathetic pop-discs had been twice
spun  each (there were two: `Honey Nose,' sung by Ike Yard, and `Night After
Day After Night,' moaned by two horrible yarbleless like eunuchs whose names
I forget) they were getting near the pitch of like young ptitsa's hysterics,
what with jumping all over my bed and me in the room with them.
     What was  actually done  that afternoon there is  no need to  describe,
brothers,  as  you may  easily  guess all.  Those  two  were  unplattied and
smecking fit  to crack in no  time at all, and they thought it the bolshiest
fun to viddy old Uncle  Alex  standing  there  all  nagoy  and  pan-handled,
squirting the hypodermic  like some bare doctor,  then giving myself the old
jab of growling jungle-cat secretion in the rooker. Then I pulled the lovely
Ninth out of its sleeve, so that Ludwig van was now nagoy too, and I set the
needle hissing on to  the last movement, which  was all bliss. There  it was
then,  the bass strings like govoreeting away from under my  bed at the rest
of the orchestra, and  then the male human goloss coming in and telling them
all  to be  joyful,  and then the lovely blissful tune all about Joy being a
glorious spark like of heaven, and then I felt the old tigers leap in me and
then I leapt on  these two young ptitsas. This time they thought nothing fun
and stopped creeching with high mirth, and had to submit to  the strange and
weird desires of Alexander the Large which, what with the Ninth and the hypo
jab, were choodessny  and zammechat and  very  demanding, O my brothers. But
they were both very very drunken and could hardly feel very much.
     When the last movement had gone round for the second time  with all the
banging and creeching  about Joy Joy Joy  Joy,  then these two young ptitsas
were not acting the big lady sophisto  no more. They were like waking up  to
what was being done to their malenky persons  and saying that they wanted to
go home and like I was a wild beast. They  looked like they had been in some
big bitva, as indeed they had, and were all bruised and pouty. Well, if they
would  not  go to school they must stil  have their education. And education
they had had.  They  were  creeching  and  going ow ow ow as they  put their
platties on, and they were like punchipunching  me with their teeny fists as
I  lay  there  dirty and  nagoy and fair shagged and fagged on the bed. This
young Sonietta was creeching: "Beast and hateful  animal. Filthy horror." So
I let them get their  things  together and get out, which  they did, talking
about how the rozzes should be got on to me and all that cal. Then they were
going down the stairs and I dropped off to sleep, still with the old Joy Joy
Joy Joy crashing and howling away.




     What happened, though, was that I woke up late (near seven-thirty by my
watch)  and, as it  turned out, that was not  so clever.  You can viddy that
everything in  this wicked world counts.  You can pony that one thing always
leads to another. Right  right  right. My stereo was no longer on about  Joy
and I Embrace Ye O Ye Millions, so some veck had  dealt it the off, and that
would  be  either  pee or  em, both  of them now  being  quite clear  to the
slooshying in the living-room and, from the clink clink of plates  and slurp
slurp  of  peeting  tea from  cups, at  their  tired  meal after  the  day's
rabbiting in factory the one, store the  other.  The poor  old. The pitiable
starry. I  put on  my over-gown and looked out, in guise of loving only son,
to say:
     "Hi  hi hi, there. A lot  better  after the day's  rest.  Ready now for
evening  work  to earn  that  little bit." For that's  what they  said  they
believed I did these days. "Yum, yum,  mum. Any of that for me?" It was like
some frozen pie  that she'd unfroze and then warmed up and  it looked not so
very appetitish, but  I  had to say  what  I  said. Dad looked  at me with a
not-so-pleased suspicious like look but said nothing, knowing he  dared not,
and mum gave me a tired like little smeck, to thee  fruit of my womb my only
son sort of. I danced to the bathroom and had a real skorry cheest all over,
feeling dirty and gluey, then  back to my  den  for the  evening's platties.
Then, shining,  combed, brushed and gorgeous, I  sat  to my  lomtick of pie.
Papapa said:
     "Not that I want to pry, son, but where exactly is it you go to work of
evenings?"
     "Oh," I chewed,  "it's mostly odd things, helping like. Here and there,
as it might be." I gave him a straight dirty  glazzy, as to say  to mind his
own and I'd mind mine. "I never ask for money,  do I? Not money  for clothes
or for pleasures? All right, then, why ask?"
     My dad  was  like humble mumble chumble.  "Sorry, son," he said. "But I
get worried  sometimes. Sometimes I have dreams. You can laugh  if you like,
but there's a lot in dreams. Last  night I had this dream with you in it and
I didn't like it one bit."
     "Oh?" He had gotten me interessovatted now, dreaming of me like that. I
had like a feeling I had had a  dream, too, but I could  not remember proper
what. "Yes?" I said, stopping chewing my gluey pie.
     "It was vivid," said my dad. "I saw you lying on the street and you had
been beaten by  other  boys.  These  boys were like the boys you used to  go
around with before you were sent to that last Corrective School."
     "Oh?" I had an in-grin at that,  papapa believing I had really reformed
or  believing he believed.  And  then I remembered my own dream, which was a
dream of that morning, of  Georgie  giving his general's orders and old  Dim
smecking around toothless as he wielded the whip. But dreams go by opposites
I was once told. "Never worry about thine only son and heir, O my father," I
said. "Fear not. He canst taketh care of himself, verily."
     "And," said my dad,  "you were  like  helpless  in  your blood and  you
couldn't  fight  back." That was real  opposites,  so  I  had another  quiet
malenky  grin  within and then  I took  all the  deng  out of my carmans and
tinkled it on the saucy table-cloth. I said:
     "Here,  dad, it's not much. It's what I earned  last night. But perhaps
for the odd peet of Scotchman in the snug somewhere for you and mum."
     "Thanks,  son," he  said. "But we don't go out  much now. We daren't go
out much, the streets being what they are. Young hooligans and so on. Still,
thanks. I'll  bring her home a bottle of something tomorrow." And he scooped
this ill-gotten pretty into his trouser carmans, mum being at  the cheesting
of the dishes in the kitchen. And I went out with loving smiles all round.
     When I got to the bottom of  the stairs of the flatblock I was somewhat
surprised. I was more than that. I  opened my rot like wide in the old stony
gapes. They had come to meet me. They were waiting by  the all scrawled-over
municipal  wall-painting  of  the nagoy dignity of labour,  bare  vecks  and
cheenas  stern at  the  wheels of industry,  like I said, with all this dirt
pencilled from their rots by naughty malchicks. Dim had a big thick stick of
black greasepaint and was  tracing filthy slovos real big over our municipal
painting and doing the  old  Dim guff--wuh huh huh--while  he did it. But he
turned  round  when Georgie and  Pete gave me the well hello,  showing their
shining droogy  zoobies, and  he horned out: "He are here,  he have arrived,
hooray," and did a clumsy turnitoe bit of dancing.
     "We got worried,"  said Georgie.  "There we  were awaiting and  peeting
away at the  old knify moloko, and you might have been like offended by some
veshch or other, so round we come to your abode. That's right, Pete, right?"
     "Oh, yes, right," said Pete.
     "Appy polly loggies," I said careful. "I had something of a pain in the
gulliver so had to sleep. I was not wakened when I gave orders for wakening.
Still, here we all  are, ready for what the old nochy offers, yes?" I seemed
to have picked up that  yes? from P. R. Deltoid, my Post-Corrective Adviser.
Very strange.
     "Sorry about the pain," said Georgie, like very concerned.
     "Using the gulliver too much like, maybe.  Giving orders and discipline
and such, perhaps. Sure the pain  is gone? Sure you'll not  be happier going
back to the bed?" And they all had a bit of a malenky grin.
     "Wait," I  said.  "Let's  get  things  nice  and  sparkling clear. This
sarcasm, if I may call it  such,  does not become  you, O my little friends.
Perhaps you have been having  a bit  of  a  quiet govoreet behind  my  back,
making your own little jokes and such-like. As I am your droog  and  leader,
surely I am entitled to know what goes on, eh? Now then, Dim, what does that
great big horsy gape of  a grin portend?" For Dim had his rot open in a sort
of bezoomny soundless smeck. Georgie got in very skorry with:
     "All  right, no more  picking on  Dim, brother. That's part  of the new
way."
     "New way?" I said. "What's this about a new way? There's been some very
large talk behind my sleeping back and no error. Let me slooshy more." And I
sort of  folded  my  rookers and leaned comfortable to  listen  against  the
broken banister-rail, me being still higher than them, droogs as they called
themselves, on the third stair.
     "No offence, Alex,"  said  Pete,  "but we  wanted to  have  things more
democratic like. Not  like you like  saying what  to do and what not all the
time. But no offence."
     George said: "Offence is neither here nor elsewhere. It's the matter of
who has  ideas.  What ideas has he had?"  And he kept his very bold glazzies
turned  full on me. "It's all the small  stuff,  malenky  veshches like last
night. We're growing up, brothers."
     "More," I said, not moving. "Let me slooshy more."
     "Well,"  said  Georgie, "if you  must have  it,  have  it then. We itty
round,  shop-crasting and  the like, coming out with a pitiful rookerful  of
cutter each. And  there's  Will the English  in the  Muscleman coffee  mesto
saying he can  fence anything that any malchick cares to try  to crast.  The
shiny stuff, the ice,"  he said, still with these  like cold glazzies on me.
"The big big big money is available is what Will the English says."
     "So," I said, very comfortable out but real razdraz within.
     "Since  when have you been  consorting  and comporting  with  Will  the
English?"
     "Now  and  again,"  said Georgie, "I get around all on my oddy  knocky.
Like last Sabbath for instance. I can live my own jeezny, droogy, right?"
     I didn't care for any of this, my brothers. "And  what  will you do," I
said, "with  the big big  big deng or money as you so highfaluting call  it?
Have you not  every veshch you need? If you need an  auto you pluck  it from
the  trees. If  you  need  pretty polly  you take  it. Yes?  Why this sudden
shilarny for being the big bloated capitalist?"
     "Ah,"  said Georgie,  "you  think and govoreet  sometimes like a little
child."  Dim  went huh huh huh at that.  "Tonight," said Georgie, "we pull a
mansize crast."
     So my  dream had told truth, then.  Georgie the general saying what  we
should do and what not do, Dim with the whip as  mindless  grinning bulldog.
But  I  played  with care, with great care, the greatest,  saying,  smiling:
"Good. Real horrorshow. Initiative comes to them  as wait. I have taught you
much, little droogie. Now tell me what you have in mind, Georgie-boy."
     "Oh,"  said  Georgie,  cunning   and  crafty  in  his  grin,  "the  old
moloko-plus first, would you not say? Something to sharpen  us  up, boy, but
you especially, we having the start on you."
     "You have govoreeted my thoughts for  me," I smiled away. "I  was about
to suggest the dear old Korova. Good good good. Lead, little Georgie." And I
made with a like deep bow, smiling like bezoomny but thinking all the  time.
But when  we got into the street  I viddied that thinking is for the  gloopy
ones and that the  oomny  ones use  like inspiration and what Bog sends. For
now it was lovely  music  that came to my aid.  There was an auto ittying by
and it had its radio on, and I could just slooshy a bar or so of Ludwig  van
(it was the  Violin Concerto, last  movement), and  I  viddied right at once
what to do. I said, in like a  thick deep goloss: "Right, Georgie, now," and
I whisked out  my cut-throat britva. Georgie said: "Uh?"  but  he was skorry
enough with his nozh, the blade coming sloosh out of the handle, and we were
on to  each other. Old Dim said: "Oh no,  not right  that isn't, and made to
uncoil the chain round his tally, but Pete said, putting his rooker firm  on
old Dim: "Leave them. It's right like that." So then Georgie and Your Humble
did  the old quiet cat-stalk,  looking for  openings,  knowing each  other's
style  a bit too horrorshow really. Georgie now and  then going  lurch lurch
with his shining nozh but not  no wise connecting. And  all the time lewdies
passed by  and  viddied all this  but minded their own,  it  being perhaps a
common street-sight. But then I counted odin dva tree and went ak ak ak with
the britva, though not at litso  or  glazzies  but at Georgie's nozh-holding
rooker and, my little brothers, he dropped. He did. He dropped his nozh with
a tinkle tankle on the hard winter sidewalk.  I had just  ticklewickled  his
fingers with my  britva,  and there he was looking at the malenky dribble of
krovvy that was redding out in  the  lamplight. "Now," I said, and it was me
that was starting, because Pete had given old Dim  the soviet  not to uncoil
the oozy from  round his tally and  Dim had taken it, "now, Dim,  let's thou
and  me have  all this now, shall us?"  Dim went,  "Aaaaaaarhgh,"  like some
bolshy  bezoomny  animal,  and snaked  out  the  chain from  his waist  real
horrorshow and skorry, so you had to admire. Now the right style for me here
was to keep low like in frog-dancing to protect litso and glazzies, and this
I did, brothers, so that poor old Dim was a malenky bit surprised, him being
accustomed to the straight face-on lash lash  lash.  Now I  will say that he
whished me horrible on the back so that it  stung  like  bezoomny,  but that
pain told me  to dig in skorry once and for all and be done with old Dim. So
I swished  with the britva at his left noga in its very  tight tight  and  I
slashed two inches  of cloth and drew a malenky drop of  krovvy to  make Dim
real bezoomny.  Then while he went  hauwwww  hauwww hauwww  like a  doggie I
tried the  same style as for Georgie,  banking all on  one move--up,  cross,
cut--and  I  felt the  britva go just  deep enough in the meat of old  Dim's
wrist and he dropped  his  snaking oozy yelping like a little child. Then he
tried to drink in all  the  blood from his wrist and howl  at the same time,
and there was too much krovvy to drink and he went bubble bubble bubble, the
red like fountaining out lovely, but not for very long. I said:
     "Right, my droogies, now we should know. Yes, Pete?"
     "I never  said  anything," said  Pete.  "I never  govoreeted one slovo.
Look, old Dim's bleeding to death."
     "Never," I said.  "One can die but once.  Dim  died before he was born.
That  red red krovvy will  soon stop."  Because I had  not cut into the like
main cables. And I myself took a clean tashtook from my carman to wrap round
poor old dying Dim's rooker, howling  and moaning as  he was, and the krovvy
stopped like I said it would, O my brothers. So they knew now who was master
and leader, sheep, thought I.
     It did  not take long to quieten these two wounded soldiers down in the
snug  of the Duke of New York, what  with large brandies  (bought with their
own cutter, me having given all to my  dad, and a wipe with tashtooks dipped
in the water-jug. The old ptitsas we'd been so horrorshow to last night were
there  again,  going, "Thanks,  lads"  and "God bless you,  boys"  like they
couldn't stop, though we had not repeated the old  sammy act  with them. But
Pete said: "What's it to be, girls?" and bought black and suds for them, him
seeming to  have a fair amount of pretty polly in his carmans,  so they were
on louder than ever with their "God bless and keep you all,  lads" and "We'd
never  split on you, boys"  and  "The best lads  breathing, that's  what you
are." At last I said to Georgie:
     "Now  we're  back to  where  we  were, yes?  Just like before  and  all
forgotten, right?"
     "Right right right," said Georgie. But old Dim still looked a bit dazed
and he even said:  "I could have got  that  big bastard,  see, with my oozy,
only some veck got in the way," as though he'd been dratsing not with me but
with some other malchick. I said:
     "Well, Georgieboy, what did you have in mind?"
     "Oh," said Georgie, "not tonight. Not this nochy, please."
     "You're  a  big strong chelloveck," I said,  "like  us  all. We're  not
little  children, are  we, Georgieboy? What,  then, didst  thou in  thy mind
have?"
     "I could have chained his glazzies real  horrorshow," said Dim, and the
old baboochkas were stil on with their "Thanks, lads."
     "It was this house, see,"  said Georgie. "The  one with the  two  lamps
outside. The one with the gloopy name like."
     "What gloopy name?"
     "The Mansion or the Manse  or some such piece of gloop. Where this very
starry ptitsa lives  with  her  cats  and  all  these  very  starry valuable
veshches."
     "Such as?"
     "Gold  and silver and  like  jewels.  It was Will the  English who like
said."
     "I  viddy,"   I  said.  "I   viddy  horrorshow."   I   knew   where  he
meant--Oldtown, just beyond Victoria  Flatblock.  Well, the  real horrorshow
leader knows always when  like to give and show generous to his like unders.
"Very good, Georgie," I  said.  "A good thought, and one to be followed. Let
us at once itty."
     And as we were going out  the old baboochkas said:  "We'll say nothing,
lads.  Been here all the time you have, boys."  So I said: "Good  old girls.
Back to buy more in ten  minutes." And so  I led my  three droogs out  to my
doom.




     Just past the  Duke  of New  York going east was offices and then there
was  the  starry  beat-up  biblio and  then was  the bolshy flatblock called
Victoria Flatblock after  some victory  or other, and  then  you came to the
like starry type houses of the town in what was called Oldtown. You got some
of the real horrorshow ancient domies here, my brothers, with starry lewdies
living in them,  thin old barking like colonels with sticks and  old ptitsas
who were widows and deaf starry damas with  cats who,  my brothers, had felt
not  the touch of any  chelloveck in the  whole of their pure like jeeznies.
And here, true, there  were starry veshches  that would fetch their share of
cutter on the tourist market--like  pictures  and jewels  and  other  starry
pre-plastic cal  of that type. So we came nice and quiet to this domy called
the Manse, and there were globe lights outside on iron stalks, like guarding
the front door on each side, and there was a light like dim on in one of the
rooms on the  ground  level, and we  went to a nice  patch of street dark to
watch through the  window what  was ittying on. This window had iron bars in
front of it, like the house was a prison, but we could viddy nice and  clear
what was ittying on.
     What  was  ittying on was  that  this  starry ptitsa,  very grey in the
voloss and with a very liny like  litso,  was pouring the old moloko  from a
milk-bottle into saucers and then setting these saucers  down on the  floor,
so you  could  tell  there  were plenty  of mewing kots and koshkas writhing
about  down  there.  And  we  could viddy one  or two,  great fat scoteenas,
jumping  up on to the table with their rots  open going mare mare mare.  And
you could viddy this old baboochka talking back to them, govoreeting in like
scoldy  language  to her pussies. In the room you could  viddy  a lot of old
pictures on the walls and starry very elaborate clocks, also some like vases
and ornaments  that looked  starry  and  dorogoy.  Georgie whispered:  "Real
horrorshow  deng to be gotten for them, brothers. Will  the English  is real
anxious." Pete said: "How in?"
     Now it was up to me, and skorry, before Georgie started telling us how.
"First veshch," I whispered,  "is to try  the regular way, the front. I will
go  very polite and say that one of my droogs  has had a like funny fainting
turn on the street. Georgie can be ready to show, when she opens,  thatwise.
Then to ask for water or to phone the doc. Then in easy." Georgie said:
     "She may not open." I said:
     "We'll try it, yes?" And he sort of shrugged his pletchoes, making with
a  frog's rot. So  I said to Pete and old Dim: "You two droogies  get either
side of the door. Right?" They nodded in the dark right right right. "So," I
said to Georgie, and I made bold straight for the front  door.  There  was a
bellpush and I pushed, and  brrrrrrr brrrrr sounded down  the  hall  inside.
Alike sense of slooshying followed, as though the ptitsa and her koshkas all
had their  ears back at the brrrrrr brrrrrr,  wondering. So I pushed the old
zvonock  a malenky bit  more urgent. I then bent down to the letter-slit and
called through in a refined like goloss: "Help, madam, please. My friend has
just had a funny turn on the street. Let me  phone a doctor, please." Then I
could viddy a light being put on in the hall, and then I could hear the  old
baboochka's nogas going flip flap in flip-flap slippers  to nearer the front
door,  and I got the idea, I don't know why, that she had a big fat pussycat
under each arm. Then she called out in a very surprising deep like goloss:
     "Go away. Go away or I shoot." Georgie heard that and wanted to giggle.
I said, with like suffering and urgency in my gentleman's goloss:
     "Oh, please help, madam. My friend's very ill."
     "Go away," she  called. "I know your dirty  tricks, making  me open the
door and then buy things I don't want.  Go  away. I tell you." That was real
lovely innocence, that was. "Go away," she said again,  "or I'll set my cats
on to you." A malenky bit bezoomny  she  was, you could  tell  that, through
spending her jeezny all on her oddy knocky.  Then I looked  up and I viddied
that there was a sash-window above the front door and that it would be a lot
more skorry  to  just do  the old  pletcho climb  and  get in that way. Else
there'd be this argument all the long nochy. So I said:
     "Very well, madam.  If you won't help I must  take  my suffering friend
elsewhere." And I winked  my  droogies  all away quiet, only  me crying out:
"All right, old friend, you will surely meet some good samaritan some  place
other. This  old lady perhaps cannot be blamed for being suspicious  with so
many scoundrels and rogues of the night about. No, indeed not."
     Then we waited again in the dark and I whispered: "Right. Return to the
door. Me  stand on Dim's pletchoes. Open that window and me enter, droogies.
Then to shut up that old ptitsa and open  up for all. No trouble." For I was
like  showing who  was  leader and the  chelloveck with  the ideas. "See," I
said.  "Real horrorshow bit  of stonework over that door, a nice hold for my
nogas." They  viddied  all  that,  admiring perhaps  I thought, and said and
nodded Right right right in the dark.
     So back  tiptoe to the door. Dim was our heavy strong malchick and Pete
and  Georgie like heaved me up on to Dim's  bolshy manly pletchoes. All this
time, O thanks to worldcasts on the gloopy TV and, more, lewdies' night-fear
through  lack of  night-police, dead  lay  the  street.  Up  there  on Dim's
pletchoes I  viddied that this stonework above the door  would take my boots
lovely. I kneed up, brothers, and there I was.
     The window, as  I had expected, was closed, but I outed with my  britva
and cracked the glass of the window smart with the bony handle thereof.  All
the  time below my droogies  were hard  breathing.  So  I  put in my  rooker
through the  crack  and  made  the lower  half  of  the  window sail up open
silver-smooth  and lovely. And I  was, like getting  into the  bath, in. And
there were  my  sheep down  below,  their  rots open as they  looked  up,  O
brothers.
     I  was  in  bumpy  darkness, with  beds and cupboards and bolshy  heavy
stoolies and piles of boxes and books about. But I strode manful towards the
door  of the room I was in,  seeing a like crack of light under it. The door
went squeeeeeeeeeeak and  then I  was on a dusty corridor with other  doors.
All  this waste, brothers, meaning  all these rooms and but one starry sharp
and  her  pussies,  but perhaps  the  kots  and koshkas  had  like  separate
bedrooms, living  on cream and fish-heads  like  royal queens and princes. I
could  hear  the  like muffled goloss of this old  ptitsa down below saying:
"Yes  yes  yes, that's  it,"  but she  would be govoreeting to  these mewing
sidlers going maaaaaaa for more moloko.
     Then I saw the  stairs going down to the hall and  I thought to  myself
that I would show these fickle and worthless droogs of mine that I was worth
the whole three of  them and more. I would do all on my oddy knocky. I would
perform the old ultra-violence on  the starry ptitsa  and on her pusspots if
need be, then I would take fair rookerfuls of what looked like real  polezny
stuff  and go  waltzing to  the front  door and open  up  showering gold and
silver on my waiting droogs. They must learn all about leadership.
     So down  I ittied, slow and gentle,  admiring in  the stairwell grahzny
pictures of old time--devotchkas  with long hair and high collars, the  like
country with trees and horses,  the holy bearded veck all nagoy hanging on a
cross. There was  a real musty von of pussies and pussy-fish and starry dust
in this domy, different from the flatblocks. And then I was downstairs and I
could viddy the light in this front room where she had been doling moloko to
the kots and koshkas. More, I could viddy these  great overstuffed scoteenas
going in  and out with their tails waving and like rubbing themselves on the
door-bottom.  On a  like  big wooden chest in the dark hall I could viddy  a
nice malenky statue that shone  in  the light of the room, so I crasted this
for my  own self, it being like a young thin  devotchka standing on one noga
with her rookers out, and I could see this was made of silver. So I had this
when I ittied into the lit-up room, saying: "Hi hi hi. At  last we meet. Our
brief  govoreet through the letter-hole was not, shall we say, satisfactory,
yes? Let us  admit not, oh verily not, you stinking starry old sharp." And I
like blinked in the light at this room and the old ptitsa in it. It was full
of kots and koshkas  all  crawling to and fro over the  carpet, with bits of
fur floating  in  the lower air, and these fat scoteenas  were all different
shapes and colours, black, white, tabby, ginger, tortoise-shell,  and of all
ages,  too,  so that there were kittens fillying about with each  other  and
there were pussies full-grown and there were real dribbling starry ones very
bad-tempered. Their  mistress,  this old ptitsa, looked at me fierce  like a
man and said:
     "How did you get in? Keep your distance, you villainous  young toad, or
I shall be forced to strike you."
     I  had a  real  horrorshow smeck at that, viddying  that she had in her
veiny rooker a crappy wood walking-stick which she raised at me threatening.
So, making  with my shiny zoobies, I ittied a bit nearer  to her, taking  my
time, and on the way I saw  on a  like sideboard a lovely little veshch, the
loveliest malenky veshch any malchick fond of music like  myself could  ever
hope  to viddy with  his own two glazzies, for it  was like the gulliver and
pletchoes of Ludwig van himself, what they call a bust, a like stone  veshch
with stone long  hair and  blind glazzies and the  big flowing cravat. I was
off  for that right away,  saying: "Well, how  lovely  and  all for me." But
ittying  towards  it with  my glazzies like full on it and my  greedy rooker
held  out, I did not see the milk  saucers on the floor  and into one I went
and sort  of lost balance. "Whoops," I said,  trying to steady, but this old
ptitsa had come up behind me very sly and with  great skorriness for her age
and  then she went  crack crack on my gulliver with her bit of a stick. So I
found myself on my  rookers and knees trying to get up and saying: "Naughty,
naughty naughty." And  then  she was going crack crack crack again,  saying:
"Wretched  little  slummy  bedbug,  breaking into real  people's houses."  I
didn't like  this  crack crack eegra,  so I  grasped hold of one  end of her
stick as it came down again and then she lost  her balance and was trying to
steady herself  against the table,  but then the table-cloth came off with a
milk-jug  and a milk-bottle going all  drunk then scattering white splosh in
all directions, then she was down on the floor, grunting, going: "Blast you,
boy, you shall suffer." Now all the cats were getting spoogy and running and
jumping in  a like cat-panic, and some were  blaming each other, hitting out
cat-tolchocks with the old lapa and ptaaaaa and grrrrr and kraaaaark.  I got
up  on to my nogas, and there was  this nasty vindictive starry forella with
her wattles ashake  and grunting as she  like tried to lever herself up from
the floor, so I  gave her a malenky fair kick  in the litso, and  she didn't
like that, crying: "Waaaaah,"  and you could viddy  her veiny  mottled litso
going purplewurple where I'd landed the old noga.
     As I stepped back from  the kick I must  have  like trod on the tail of
one  of  these dratsing  creeching  pusspots, because  I slooshied a  gromky
yauuuuuuuuw  and found that like fur  and teeth and claws  had like fastened
themselves around my leg,  and there I was cursing  away and trying to shake
it off holding this silver malenky statue in one rooker and trying  to climb
over this old ptitsa  on the floor to  reach lovely Ludwig  van in  frowning
like  stone. And then I was into another saucer brimful of creamy moloko and
near went flying again,  the whole veshch really  a very humorous one if you
could  imagine it sloochatting  to some  other veck and  not to  Your Humble
Narrator.  And  then the starry  ptitsa  on the  floor reached  over all the
dratsing yowling pusscats  and grabbed at my  noga, still going "Waaaaah" at
me, and, my balance  being a  bit gone, I went really crash this time, on to
sploshing moloko and skriking koshkas, and the  old forella started  to fist
me on the litso, both of us being on the floor, creeching: "Thrash him, beat
him, pull out his finger-nails, the poisonous young  beetle," addressing her
pusscats only, and then,  as if like obeying the starry old ptitsa, a couple
of koshkas got on to me and started scratching like  bezoomny. So then I got
real  bezoomny  myself, brothers, and  hit  out at  them, but this baboochka
said: "Toad, don't touch my kitties," and like scratched my litso. So then I
screeched:  "You filthy old soomka," and upped with the little  malenky like
silver  statue and cracked her a fine fair tolchock on the gulliver and that
shut her up real horrorshow and lovely.
     Now  as I got up from the floor among all the crarking kots and koshkas
what should I slooshy  but  the  shoom  of the old police-auto siren  in the
distance, and it dawned on me skorry that the old forella  of  the  pusscats
had  been  on  the  phone  to  the  millicents  when  I  thought she'd  been
govoreeting to the mewlers and mowlers, her having got her suspicions skorry
on the  boil when I'd rung  the  old zvonock pretending for  help.  So  now,
slooshying this fearful shoom of the  rozz-van,  I belted for the front door
and  had a rabbiting  time  undoing all the locks and  chains and  bolts and
other protective  veshches. Then I got it  open, and  who  should be  on the
doorstep but  old  Dim, me  just being  able to  viddy the other  two of  my
so-called droogs belting off.  "Away," I creeched  to  Dim. "The rozzes  are
coming." Dim said: "You  stay to meet them huh huh huh,"  and then I viddied
that he had his oozy out, and then he upped with it  and  it snaked  whishhh
and he chained me gentle and artistic  like on the glazlids, me just closing
them up in time. Then I was howling around trying to viddy with this howling
great pain, and Dim said:  "I don't  like you should  do what you  done, old
droogy. Not right it wasn't to  get on to me like the  way  you done, brat."
And then I could slooshy his bolshy  lumpy boots beating off,  him going huh
huh huh into the darkmans, and it was only about seven seconds after that  I
slooshied the millicent-van draw up with a filthy great dropping siren-howl,
like  some bezoomny animal snuffing it. I  was howling  too and  like yawing
about and I  banged my  gulliver smack on the hall-wall,  my glazzies  being
tight shut and  the juice  astream from them, very agonizing. So there I was
like groping  in  the  hallway as the millicents  arrived.  I couldn't viddy
them,  of course, but  I  could  slooshy and  damn near smell the von of the
bastards, and soon I could feel the bastards  as they got rough and  did the
old twist-arm act,  carrying  me  out.  I could also slooshy  one  millicent
goloss saying  from  like  the room  I'd come  out of  with all the kots and
koshkas in it:  "She's been nastily knocked but she's breathing,"  and there
was loud mewing all the time.
     "A real pleasure  this is," I heard another millicent  goloss  say as I
was tolchocked very rough  and skorry into the auto. "Little Alex all to our
own selves." I creeched out:
     "I'm blind, Bog bust and bleed you, you grahzny bastards."
     "Language,  language," like smecked  a  goloss,  and then  I got a like
backhand tolchock with some ringy rooker or other full on the rot. I said:
     "Bog murder you,  you  vonny stinking bratchnies. Where are the others?
Where  are my stinking traitorous droogs? One of  my cursed grahzny bratties
chained me on  the glazzies. Get them before they get away. It was all their
idea, brothers.  They like  forced me to  do  it. I'm innocent, Bog  butcher
you."
     By this time  they were all having like  a  good smeck at  me  with the
heighth of like callousness, and they'd  tolchocked  me into the back of the
auto, but I still kept  on about these so-called droogs of mine and  then  I
viddied it would be no  good, because they'd all be back now in the  snug of
the Duke of New York  forcing black  and suds  and double Scotchmen down the
unprotesting gorloes  of those  stinking  starry ptitsas  and  they  saying:
"Thanks, lads. God bless you, boys. Been here all  the  time you have, lads.
Not been out of our sight you haven't."
     All the time we  were sirening off  to  the rozz-shop,  me being wedged
between two millicents and being given the odd thump and malenky tolchock by
these  smecking bullies. Then I found I could open up my glazlids a  malenky
bit and viddy like through all tears a kind of steamy city going by, all the
lights like having run into one another. I could viddy now  through smarting
glazzies  these  two  smecking  millicents  at  the  back  with  me and  the
thin-necked driver and the fat-necked bastard next to him, this one having a
sarky like govoreet at me, saying: "Well, Alex boy, we all look forward to a
pleasant evening together, don't we not?" I said:
     "How do you know my name,  you stinking vonny bully? May Bog blast  you
to hell, grahzny bratchny as you are, you  sod." So they all  had a smeck at
that and  I had my ooko like twisted by one of these stinking  millicents at
the back with me. The fat-necked not-driver said:
     "Everybody knows little Alex and  his droogs. Quite  a famous young boy
our Alex has become."
     "It's  those  others," I creeched. "Georgie and Dim and Pete. No droogs
of mine, the bastards."
     "Well," said the fat-neck, "you've  got the evening  in front of you to
tell the whole story of the daring exploits of those young gentlemen and how
they led  poor little  innocent  Alex astray." Then there was the  shoom  of
another like police siren passing this auto but going the other way.
     "Is that for those bastards?" I said. "Are they being picked up  by you
bastards?"
     "That," said  fat-neck, "is an  ambulance. Doubtless for your old  lady
victim, you ghastly wretched scoundrel."
     "It  was all  their fault," I creeched,  blinking my smarting glazzies.
"The bastards  will be peeting  away in the Duke  of New York.  Pick them up
blast you, you vonny sods."  And then  there was more  smecking  and another
malenky  tolchock, O my  brothers,  on my poor smarting  rot.  And  then  we
arrived  at the stinking  rozz-shop and they helped me get out  of  the auto
with kicks and pulls and they  tolchocked me up the  steps and I knew I  was
going to get nothing like  fair  play from these stinky  grahzny bratchnies,
Bog blast them.




     They dragged me into this  very bright-lit  whitewashed cantora, and it
had a strong von that was a  mixture of like sick and lavatories  and  beery
rots and  disinfectant, all  coming from the barry places near by. You could
hear some of the plennies in their cells cursing and singing and I fancied I
could slooshy one belting out:

     `And I will go back to my darling, my darling,
     When you, my darling, are gone.'

     But there were the  golosses of millicents  telling them to shut it and
you could  even  slooshy the  zvook of  like  somebody being tolchocked real
horrorshow  and going owwwwwwwww,  and it  was like the goloss of  a drunken
starry ptitsa, not a man.  With me in this cantora were four millicents, all
having a good loud peet of chai, a big pot of it being on the table and they
sucking and belching away over their dirty bolshy mugs. They didn't offer me
any. All that they  gave me, my brothers, was a crappy starry mirror to look
into, and  indeed I  was  not  your handsome young Narrator any longer but a
real  strack of a sight, my  rot swollen and my glazzies all red and my nose
bumped a bit also. They all had a real horrorshow smeck when they viddied my
like dismay, and one of them said: "Love's young nightmare like." And then a
top millicent came  in with like stars  on his pletchoes to show he was high
high high, and he viddied me and said: "Hm." So then they started. I said:
     "I won't say one single solitary slovo  unless I have my lawyer here. I
know the law, you bastards." Of course they all  had a good  gromky smeck at
that and then the stellar top millicent said:
     "Righty right,  boys, we'll start  off by showing him that  we know the
law, too,  but  that  knowing  the  law  isn't  everything." He  had a  like
gentleman's goloss and spoke in a  very weary sort of a way,  and he  nodded
with a like  droogy  smile at one very big fat bastard. This big fat bastard
took off his tunic and you could viddy he had a  real big starry pot on him,
then he came up to me not too skorry  and I could get  the von of  the milky
chai  he'd been peeting when he  opened his rot  in  a like very tired leery
grin at  me. He was not too well shaved for a rozz and  you could viddy like
patches of dried  sweat on his shirt  under the arms, and you could get this
von of like  earwax from him as he came close. Then he clenched his stinking
red rooker and let me have it right in  the belly, which was unfair, and all
the other millicents smecked their gullivers off at that, except the top one
and he kept on  with this weary like bored grin. I  had to lean against  the
white-washed  wall  so  that all the white got on to my platties,  trying to
drag the old breath back and in  great agony,  and then I wanted  to sick up
the gluey  pie I'd had before the start of the evening. But I couldn't stand
that sort of veshch, sicking all over the floor, so I  held  it back. Then I
saw that this fatty  bruiseboy was turning to his millicent droogs to have a
real horrorshow smeck  at what  he'd done, so  I raised  my right  noga  and
before they could creech at him to watch out I'd kicked him smart and lovely
on the shin. And he creeched murder, hopping around.
     But after that they all had a turn, bouncing me from  one to  the other
like some  very  weary bloody  ball, O  my brothers, and  fisting  me in the
yarbles and the rot  and the belly and dealing out kicks, and then at last I
had to sick up on  the floor and, like some real bezoomny veck, I evan said:
"Sorry, brothers,  that was not the right thing at all. Sorry  sorry sorry."
But they handed me starry bits of gazetta and made me wipe it, and then they
made  me  make with the  sawdust. And  then they said, almost like dear  old
droogs, that I was to sit down and we'd all have a quiet like  govoreet. And
then P. R.  Deltoid  came  in  to have a viddy, his office being in the same
building, looking very tired and grahzny, to  say: "So it's  happened,  Alex
boy, yes? Just as I thought it would. Dear dear dear, yes."
     Then he  turned to the millicents to say: "Evening, inspector. Evening,
sergeant. Evening, evening, all. Well,  this is the  end of the line for me,
yes. Dear dear, this boy does look messy, doesn't he? Just look at the state
of him."
     "Violence  makes violence,"  said the top millicent in a very holy type
goloss. "He resisted his lawful arresters."
     "End of the line, yes," said P. R. Deltoid again. He looked  at me with
very cold glazzies like I had become a thing and was no more a bleeding very
tired battered chelloveck. "I suppose I'll have to be in court tomorrow."
     "It  wasn't me, brother, sir," I  said, a  malenky bit weepy. "Speak up
for me, sir, for I'm  not so  bad. I  was led  on by the  treachery  of  the
others, sir."
     "Sings like  a linnet," said the top rozz, sneery. "Sings the roof  off
lovely, he does that."
     "I'll speak," said cold  P. R.  Deltoid. "I'll be there tomorrow, don't
worry."
     "If you'd  like to give him  a bash  in  the chops, sir," said the  top
millicent, "don't  mind us.  We'll  hold  him down. He must be another great
disappointment to you."
     P. R. Deltoid then  did something I never thought any man like him  who
was supposed to  turn us baddiwads into real horrorshow malchicks  would do,
especially with  all those rozzes around. He came a bit nearer  and he spat.
He spat. He spat full in my litso and then wiped his wet spitty rot with the
back of his rooker. And I wiped and wiped and wiped my spat-on litso with my
bloody tashtook, saying "Thank you, sir, thank you very much,  sir, that was
very kind of you, sir, thank you." And then P. R. Deltoid walked out without
another slovo.
     The  millicents  now got  down to  making this long statement for me to
sign, and I  thought to myself, Hell and blast you all,  if all you bastards
are on the side  of  the Good then I'm glad I belong to the other shop. "All
right," I said to them, "you grahzny bratchnies as you are, you vonny  sods.
Take it, take the  lot. I'm not going to crawl around on my brooko any more,
you  merzky  gets.  Where  do  you  want  it taking from, you  cally vonning
animals? From my last corrective? Horrorshow, horrorshow, here it is, then."
So  I gave it to them, and I had this  shorthand milicent, a very quiet  and
scared type chelloveck, no real rozz at all,  covering page after page after
page after. I gave them the ultra-violence, the crasting,  the dratsing, the
old in-out-in-out, the lot, right up to this night's veshch with the bugatty
starry ptitsa with the mewing kots and koshkas. And I made sure my so-called
droogs were in  it, right up to the shiyah. When I'd got through the lot the
shorthand millicent looked a bit faint, poor old veck. The top  rozz said to
him, in a kind type goloss:
     "Right, son, you  go off and get a nice  cup  of chai for yourself  and
then type all that filth and rottenness out with a clothes-peg on your nose,
three copies. Then they can be brought to our handsome young friend here for
signature. And you," he  said to me, "can  now be shown to your bridal suite
with running water and all conveniences. All right," in this weary goloss to
two of the real tough rozzes, "take him away."
     So I was  kicked and punched  and bullied off to the cells  and  put in
with about  ten  or  twelve other plennies, a lot  of them drunk. There were
real oozhassny animal type vecks among them,  one with his nose all ate away
and his rot  open like  a big black hole, one  that was  lying on the  floor
snoring away  and all like slime dribbling all the  time out of his rot, and
one that had like done all cal in his pantalonies. Then there were  two like
queer ones who both took a fancy to  me, and one of them made a jump onto my
back, and I had a  real nasty bit of dratsing with him and  the von on  him,
like of meth and cheap  scent, made me want to sick again, only my belly was
empty  now,  O  my brothers. Then  the  other queer  one started putting his
rookers  on  to me, and then there was  a  snarling bit of dratsing  between
these two,  both of them  wanting to get at my plott.  The shoom became very
loud,  so that  a couple of millicents came along and cracked into these two
with like truncheons, so that both sat quiet then,  looking like into space,
and there was the old krovvy going drip drip drip  down the litso of  one of
them. There were bunks in this cell, but all filled. I climbed up to the top
one of one tier of bunks, there being four in a tier, and there was a starry
drunken  veck snoring  away, most probably heaved up there to the top by the
millicents. Anyway, I heaved him down  again, him not  being all that heavy,
and  he collapsed  on  top of a fat drunk  chelloveck on the floor, and both
woke  and  started creeching and punching pathetic at each other.  So  I lay
down on this  vonny  bed,  my brothers, and went to very tired and exhausted
and hurt sleep. But it was not really like sleep, it was like passing out to
another better world. And  in this other better world, O my  brothers, I was
in like a big field with all flowers and  trees, and  there was a  like goat
with a man's litso playing away on a like flute. And there rose like the sun
Ludwig van himself with thundery litso and cravat and wild windy voloss, and
then I heard the Ninth, last  movement, with the slovos  all a  bit mixed-up
like they knew themselves they had to be mixed-up, this being a dream:

     Boy, thou uproarious shark of heaven,
     Slaughter of Elysium,
     Hearts on fire, aroused, enraptured,
     We will tolchock you on the rot and kick
     your grahzny vonny bum.

     But the  tune was right, as I knew when I was being woke  up two or ten
minutes or twenty hours  or days or years later, my watch  having been taken
away.  There was  a  millicent like miles and  miles down  below and he  was
prodding at me with a long stick with a spike on the end, saying:
     "Wake up, son. Wake up, my beauty. Wake to real trouble."
     I said:
     "Why? Who? Where? What is it?" And the tune of the Joy ode in the Ninth
was singing away real lovely and horrorshow within, The millicent said:
     "Come  down and  find out. There's some real  lovely  news  for you, my
son." So  I scrambled down, very stiff and sore and not like real awake, and
this rozz, who had a strong  von  of cheese and onions on him, pushed me out
of the filthy  snoring cell, and then along corridors, and all the  time the
old tune Joy Thou Glorious Spark Of Heaven was sparking away within. Then we
came to a  very neat like cantora with typewriters and flowers on the desks,
and at  the like chief  desk  the  top millicent was  sitting, looking  very
serious and fixing a like very cold glazzy on my sleepy litso. I said:
     "Well  well well.  What makes,  bratty.  What  gives, this  fine bright
middle of the nochy?" He said:
     "I'll give you just ten seconds  to wipe that stupid  grin off  of your
face. Then I want you to listen."
     "Well, what?" I  said, smecking. "Are you not satisfied with beating me
near to death  and having me spat upon  and making me confess to crimes  for
hours on end and then shoving me among bezoomnies and vonny perverts in that
grahzny cell? Have you some new torture for me, you bratchny?"
     "It'll  be your  own torture,"  he said,  serious. "I hope to God it'll
torture you to madness."
     And then, before he told me, I knew what it was. The old ptitsa who had
all the kots and koshkas had passed on to a better world in one of the  city
hospitals.  I'd cracked  her  a bit  too hard, like.  Well,  well,  that was
everything. I thought of all  those kots and koshkas mewling  for moloko and
getting none, not any more from their starry forella of a mistress. That was
everything. I'd done the lot, now and me still only fifteen.







     "What's it going to be then, eh?"
     I  take it  up now, and this is the real weepy and like tragic part  of
the story beginning, my  brothers  and only friends, in Staja  (State  Jail,
that  is) Number  84F.  You will have little desire to slooshy all the cally
and  horrible raskazz of  the shock that sent my dad beating his bruised and
krovvy rockers against unfair like Bog in his  Heaven, and  my mum  squaring
her rot for owwwww owwwww owwwww in her mother's grief at her only child and
son of her bosom like letting everybody down real horrorshow. Then there was
the  starry very grim  magistrate in the  lower  court govoreeting some very
hard slovos against your Friend and Humble Narrator, after all the cally and
grahzny slander spat forth by  P. R. Deltoid and the rozzes, Bog blast them.
Then there was  being remanded in  filthy custody among vonny  perverts  and
prestoopnicks. Then there  was the trial in the higher court with judges and
a jury, and some very very  nasty slovos indeed govoreeted  in  a  very like
solemn way, and then Guilty and my mum  boohoohooing when they said Fourteen
Years, O  my brothers. So here I was now, two years just to the day of being
kicked and clanged into Staja 84F, dressed in the heighth of prison fashion,
which was a one-piece suit of a very filthy like cal colour, and the  number
sewn on  the groody part  just above the old tick-tocker and  on the back as
well, so that going and coming I was 6655321 and not your little droog  Alex
not no longer.
     "What's it going to be then, eh?"
     It had not been like edifying, indeed it had not, being in this grahzny
hellhole  and like human  zoo for two years,  being kicked and tolchocked by
brutal bully warders and meeting vonny leering like criminals, some of  them
real perverts and ready to  dribble all over a luscious  young malchick like
your story-teller. And there was having to rabbit in  the workshop at making
matchboxes and itty  round  and round and round the yard for like  exercise,
and in  the evenings sometimes some starry prof type veck would give  a talk
on beetles or the Milky Way or the Glorious Wonders of the  Snowflake, and I
had a good smeck  at this last one, because it reminded me  of  that time of
the tolchocking and Sheer Vandalism  with  that  ded coming from the  public
biblio on  a winter's night when my droogs were stil not  traitors and I was
like happy and free. Of those droogs I had slooshied but one thing, and that
was one day when my pee and em came to visit and I was told that Georgie was
dead. Yes, dead,  my brothers. Dead as a bit of dog-cal on the road. Georgie
had led the other  two into a  like very rich chelloveck's  house, and there
they had kicked and tolchocked the owner  on the floor, and then Georgie had
started to razrez the cushions and curtains, and then old Dim had cracked at
some  very precious ornaments, like statues and so on, and this rich beat-up
chelloveck had raged like  real bezoomny and gone for them  all with  a very
heavy iron bar.  His being all razdraz had given him some gigantic strength,
and Dim and Pete had got out  through the window, but Georgie had tripped on
the carpet and  then  brought  this  terrible  swinging  iron  bar crack and
splodge  on  the gulliver, and that was the end  of traitorous  Georgie. The
starry murderer  had got off  with  Self  Defence, as  was really right  and
proper. Georgie  being  killed, though it was more than one  year  after  me
being  caught  by  the  millicents, it all  seemed right and proper and like
Fate.
     "What's it going to be then, eh?"
     I was in the Wing  Chapel, it  being  Sunday morning,  and  the  prison
charlie was govoreeting the Word of the  Lord. It was  my rabbit to play the
starry stereo, putting  on solemn music before and after and  in the  middle
too when  hymns  were sung. I was at the back of the Wing Chapel (there were
four  along  here  in Staja  84F)  near  where  the  warders or chassos were
standing with their rifles and  their  dirty bolshy blue brutal jowls, and I
could  viddy all the plennies sitting down slooshying the Slovo  of the Lord
in their horrible cal-coloured prison platties,  and  a  sort of  filthy von
rose from them, not like real unwashed, not grazzy, but like  a special real
stinking von which you only got with the criminal types, my brothers, a like
dusty, greasy, hopeless sort of a von. And I was thinking that perhaps I had
this von too, having become  a real  plenny myself, though still very young.
So  it was  important  to me,  O  my brothers, to  get out of  this stinking
grahzny zoo  as soon as I could. And, as  you will viddy if you keep reading
on, it was not long before I did.
     "What's it going to be then, eh?" said the prison charlie for the third
raz.  "Is it going to be in  and  out and in and out of  institutions,  like
this, though more in than out for most of you, or are you going to attend to
the  Divine  Word  and realize  the punishments that  await the  unrepentant
sinner in  the next  world, as well as in  this? A lot of blasted idiots you
are, most of you, selling your birthright for a saucer of cold porridge. The
thrill of theft, or violence,  the urge to live easy--is it worth it when we
have undeniable proof, yes yes, incontrovertible evidence that hell  exists?
I know, I know, my friends, I have  been informed in visions that there is a
place, darker than  any prison, hotter than any  flame of  human fire, where
souls of unrepentant criminal sinners like yourselves--and don't leer at me,
damn  you,  don't  laugh--like  yourselves,  I  say,  scream in endless  and
intolerable agony, their noses choked with the smell of filth,  their mouths
crammed  with burning ordure,  their skin peeling  and rotting,  a  fireball
spinning in their screaming guts. Yes, yes, yes, I know."
     At this point, brothers, a  plenny somewhere or other near the back row
let out a shoom of lip-music--`Prrrrrp'--and then the brutal chassos were on
the  job right away, rushing real skorry  to what they thought was the scene
of  the schoom, then hitting  out nasty and delivering  tolchocks, left  and
right. Then they picked out one poor trembling plenny, very thin and malenky
and starry too, and dragged him off, but all the time he kept creeching: "It
wasn't me, it was him, see," but that  made no difference. He was tolchocked
real nasty and  then dragged out  of  the Wing Chapel creeching his gulliver
off.
     "Now," said the  prison charlie, "listen to the Word of the Lord." Then
he picked up the big book and flipped over the pages, keeping on wetting his
fingers to  do this by licking  them splurge splurge. He was a bolshy  great
burly bastard  with  a very  red litso, but he  was  very fond of myself, me
being  young  and  also now  very interested in  the big  book.  It had been
arranged as  part  of my like further education to read in the book and even
have music on the chapel stereo while I was reading, O my brothers. And that
was real horrorshow.
     They would like lock me in and let me slooshy holy music by  J. S. Bach
and G.  F. Handel, and I  would read of  these starry  yahoodies tolchocking
each other and then peeting their Hebrew vino and getting on to the bed with
their  wives'  like  hand-maidens,  real  horrorshow.  That kept  me  going,
brothers. I didn't  so much kopat the later part of the book,  which is more
like all preachy govoreeting  than fighting and the old in-out.  But one day
the charles  said  to me,  squeezing  me  like tight with his  bolshy  beefy
rooker: "Ah, 6655321,  think on the  divine suffering. Meditate on that,  my
boy." And all the time he had this rich manny von of Scotch on him, and then
he went off to his little cantora to peet some more. So I read all about the
scourging  and the crowning with thorns and then  the cross  veshch  and all
that  cal,  and  I viddied better that there was something  in it. While the
stereo played bits  of lovely Bach I closed  my glazzies  and viddied myself
helping in and even taking charge  of  the tolchocking and the  nailing  in,
being dressed in a like toga that was the heighth of Roman fashion. So being
in  Staja 84F  was not all  that  wasted, and the Governor himself  was very
pleased to hear that I had taken to like Religion,  and that was where I had
my hopes.
     This  Sunday  morning  the  charlie  read   out  from  the  book  about
chellovecks who slooshied the slovo and didn't take a blind bit being like a
domy built upon sand, and  then the rain  came splash and the  old boomaboom
cracked the sky and that was the end of that domy. But I thought that only a
very dim veck  would have built his domy upon sand, and a right lot of  real
sneering  droogs and nasty  neighbours a veck like that would have, them not
telling him how  dim he  was doing that  sort  of building. Then the charles
creeched: "Right, you lot. We'll  end with Hymn Number 435 in the Prisoners'
Hymnal."  Then  there  was a  crash and plop and a  whish  whish  while  the
plennies picked  up  and dropped  and lickturned the pages  of  their grazzy
malenky hymnbooks,  and the bully  fierce  warders creeched:  "Stop  talking
there, bastards. I'm watching you, 920537." Of course I  had the disc  ready
on the stereo, and then  I let the simple music for organ only come  belting
out  with  a  growwwwowwwwowwww.  Then the  plennies started  to  sing  real
horrible:

     Weak tea are we, new brewed
     But stirring make all strong.
     We eat no angel's food,
     Our times of trial are long.

     They sort of howled  and wept these stupid slovos with the charlie like
whipping  them on  with  "Louder,  damn  you,  sing  up,"  and  the  warders
creeching: "Just  you wait, 7749222", and "One on the  turnip coming  up for
you,  filth."  Then  it  was all  over  and the  charlie said: "May the Holy
Trinity keep you always and make you good, amen," and the shamble out  began
to a  nice  choice bit of Symphony No. 2  by Adrian Schweigselber, chosen by
your  Humble Narrator, O my brothers. What a lot  they were, I thought, as I
stood there by the starry chapel stereo, viddying them all shuffle out going
marrrrre  and  baaaaaa  like animals  and up-your-piping with their  grahzny
fingers at  me, because it looked like I was very special favoured. When the
last  one had slouched  out, his rookers hanging  like an  ape and  the  one
warder left giving him a fair loud tolchock on the back of the gulliver, and
when I had turned off the stereo, the charlie came up to me, puffing away at
a cancer,  still in his starry bogman's platties, all lacy  and white like a
devotchka's. He said:
     "Thank you as always, little 6655321. And what news have you got for me
today?" The  idea was, I knew, that  this charlie  was after becoming a very
great  holy chelloveck in the world of Prison Religion, and he wanted a real
horrorshow  testimonial  from  the Governor, so  he would  go  and  govoreet
quietly to  the  Governor now  and then about  what dark  plots were brewing
among the plennies, and he would get a lot of this  cal from me. A lot of it
would be all like made up,  but some of it would be true, like for  instance
the time it had  come  through to  our  cell on  the waterpipes knock  knock
knockiknockiknock  knockiknock that  big Harriman was going to break. He was
going  to tolchock  the  warder at slop-time  and get out  in  the  warder's
platties. Then  there was going to be a big  throwing about of the  horrible
pishcha we got in the  dining-hall, and I knew about that and told. Then the
charlie passed  it on  and  was  complimented like  by the Governor  for his
Public Spirit and Keen Ear. So this time I said, and this was not true:
     "Well, sir,  it  has come through on the  pipes  that a  consignment of
cocaine has arrived by irregular means and  that a cell somewhere along Tier
5 is to be the centre  of distribution." I made all that up as I went along,
like I  made up so many of these  stories, but  the prison  charlie was very
grateful, saying: "Good,  good, good. I shall pass that on to Himself," this
being what he called the Governor. Then I said:
     "Sir, I  have done my best, have  I not?" I  always used my very polite
gentleman's  goloss  govoreeting with those  at the  top.  "I've tried, sir,
haven't I?"
     "I  think,"  said the charlie, "that  on the whole  you  have, 6655321.
You've  been very helpful and, I consider, shown a genuine desire to reform.
You will, if  you continue in  this manner,  earn  your  remission  with  no
trouble at all."
     "But sir," I said, "how about this new thing they're talking about? How
about this new like treatment that  gets you out of prison in no time at all
and makes sure that you never get back in again?"
     "Oh,"  he said, very like wary. "Where did  you  hear this?  Who's been
telling you these things?"
     "These  things get around, sir," I said. "Two warders talk, as it might
be, and somebody can't help hearing what  they say. And  then somebody picks
up a scrap  of  newspaper in the workshops  and the newspaper says all about
it. How  about you putting me in for  this thing, sir, if I may make so bold
as to make the suggestion?"
     You could viddy  him thinking  about that while he  puffed  away at his
cancer, wondering how much to say to me about what he knew about this veshch
I'd mentioned. Then he said:
     "I take it you're referring to Ludovico's Technique." He was still very
wary.
     "I don't know what it's called, sir,"  I  said. "All  I know is that it
gets you out quickly and makes sure that you don't get in again."
     "That  is so," he said, his  eyebrows like all beetling while he looked
down  at  me.  "That is  quite  so,  6655321.  Of  course, it's only  in the
experimental stage at the moment. It's very simple but very drastic."
     "But  it's being  used  here, isn't  it, sir?" I said. "Those  new like
white buildings by  the South  wall, sir. We've  watched those  being built,
sir, when we've been doing our exercise."
     "It's  not  been  used yet," he said,  "not  in  this  prison, 6655321.
Himself has grave doubts about it. I must confess I share  those doubts. The
question  is whether such  a  technique can really make a man good. Goodness
comes from within, 6655321. Goodness is something chosen. When  a man cannot
choose he ceases to be a man." He would have gone on with a lot more of this
cal, but we could slooshy the next lot of plennies marching clank clank down
the  iron stairs to come for their  bit of Religion. He said: "We'll  have a
little  chat  about  this  some  other  time.  Now  you'd  better  start the
voluntary."  So I  went over to  the starry stereo and put  on J. S.  Bach's
`Wachet Auf' Choral Prelude and in these grahzny vonny bastard criminals and
perverts  came  shambling  like  a  lot of broke-down apes,  the warders  or
chassos like barking at them  and lashing them. And soon the  prison charlie
was asking them: "What's it going to be then, eh?" And that's where you came
in.
     We had four of these lomticks of like Prison Religion that morning, but
the charles said no more  to me about this Ludovico's Technique, whatever it
was,  O  my brothers. When  I'd finished  my rabbit with the  stereo he just
govoreeted a few  slovos of  thanks and then I  was privodeeted back to  the
cell on Tier 6 which was my very vonny and crammed home. The chasso  was not
really  too bad of  a veck and he did not tolchock or kick  me in when  he'd
opened up, he  just  said:  "Here we are, sonny, back to the old waterhole."
And there I was with my new  type  droogs, all very  criminal  but,  Bog  be
praised, not given to perversions of the body. There was Zophar on his bunk,
a very thin and brown  veck  who went on  and on  and on in his like cancery
goloss, so  that  nobody bothered to slooshy. What he was saying now like to
nobody  was  "And at that time  you couldn't get hold of a poggy"  (whatever
that was, brothers), "not if you was to hand over ten million archibalds, so
what do I do, eh, I goes down to  Turkey's  and says I've got this sproog on
that morrow,  see,  and what can he do?" It was all this very old-time  real
criminal's slang he spoke. Also there was Wall, who had only one glazzy, and
he was tearing bits of his toe-nails off in honour of Sunday. Also there was
Big  Jew, a very  fat  sweaty  veck  lying  flat on his bunk  like dead.  In
addition there was Jojohn and The Doctor. Jojohn  was very mean and keen and
wiry  and had  specialized  in  like  Sexual  Assault, and  The  Doctor  had
pretended to be able to cure syph and gon and gleet but he had only injected
water, also he had killed off two devotchkas  instead, like he had promised,
of  getting  rid  of  their unwanted  loads for them.  They  were a terrible
grahzny  lot really, and I  didn't enjoy being with them, O my brothers, any
more than you do now, but it won't be for much longer.
     Now what  I want  you to know is that this cell was intended  for  only
three when it was built, but there were six of us there, all jammed together
sweaty and tight. And that was the state of all the cells in all the prisons
in those  days, brothers, and a dirty cally disgrace it was, there not being
decent  room  for a chelloveck to  stretch his  limbs. And you  will  hardly
believe  what  I say  now, which is that on  this Sunday they  brosatted  in
another  plenny. Yes, we had had our horrible pishcha of dumplings and vonny
stew  and  were smoking a quiet  cancer each on our bunks when this veck was
thrown into our midst.
     He  was  a chinny  starry  veck and  it  was him who  started creeching
complaints before we even had  a chance to  viddy the position. He  tried to
like  shake  the bars, creeching:  "I  demand my  sodding rights, this one's
full-up,  it's a bleeding  imposition, that's  what it  is." But one of  the
chassos came back to say that he had to make the best of it and share a bunk
with whoever would let him, otherwise  it would have to be the floor. "And,"
said  the warder,  "it's  going  to get worse,  not better.  A  right  dirty
criminal world you lot are trying to build."




     Well,  it was the letting-in of this new chelloveck that was really the
start  of  my getting out  of  the  old Staja,  for  he  was  such  a  nasty
quarrelsome type of plenny, with a very  dirty  mind and filthy  intentions,
that trouble nachinatted that very  same day. He was also very  boastful and
started to make with  a very sneery litso at us all and a loud proud goloss.
He made  out that he was the  only real horrorshow prestoopnick in the whole
zoo, going on that  he'd done this and done the other and killed ten  rozzes
with  one  crack  of  his  rooker and  all that  cal.  But  nobody  was very
impressed,  O  my brothers. So then he started on me, me being  the youngest
there, trying  to say that as the youngest I ought to be  the one to zasnoot
on the floor and not him. But all the others were  for me, creeching: "Leave
him alone, you grahzny bratchny," and then he began the old whine  about how
nobody loved him. So that same nochy I  woke up to find this horrible plenny
actually lying with me on my bunk, which was on the bottom of the three-tier
and  also  very narrow,  and he was govoreeting  dirty like love-slovos  and
stroke  stroke stroking away.  So then I got real  bezoomny  and lashed out,
though  I could not viddy all that horrorshow, there being only this malenky
little red light outside  on the landing.  But I  knew  it was this one, the
vonny bastard, and then when the trouble really got under way and the lights
were  turned on I could  viddy  his horrible litso with all krovvy  dripping
from his rot where I'd hit out with my clawing rooker.
     What sloochatted  then,  of course, was that  me cell-mates woke up and
started to join in, tolchocking a  bit wild in the near-dark,  and the shoom
seemed  to  wake up  the  whole tier, so  that  you  could slooshy a  lot of
creeching and banging about  with tin  mugs  on the  wall, as though all the
plennies  in all the  cells thought a big break was  about to commence, O my
brothers. So  then the lights  came on  and the chassos came along in  their
shirts and trousers and caps, waving big sticks. We could viddy each other's
flushed  litsos  and the shaking of fisty rookers, and there  was  a lot  of
creeching and cursing.
     Then I  put in my complaint and every  chasso said it was probably your
Humble Narrator, brothers, that  started it all anyway, me having no mark of
a scratch on me but this horrible plenny dipping red red krovvy from the rot
where I'd got him with my clawing rooker. That made me real bezoomny. I said
I would not sleep another nochy in that cell if  the Prison Authorities were
going to allow horrible vonny stinking perverted prestoopnicks to leap on my
plott when I was  in no  position to defend myself, being asleep. "Wait till
the morning," they said. "Is it a private room with bath and television that
your honour requires? Well, all that will be seen to in the morning. But for
the  present,  little  droog,  get  your  bleeding  gulliver  down  on  your
straw-filled  podooshka and let's have  no more  trouble from  anyone. Right
right  right?"  Then off they went with stern  warnings  for  all, then soon
after the lights went out, and  then I said I would sit up  all the  rest of
the  nochy,  saying first to this horrible prestoopnick: "Go  on, get  on my
bunk if you wish it. I fancy it no longer. You have made it filthy and cally
with  your horrible  vonny plott  lying on it already." But then  the others
joined in. Big Jew said, still sweating from the bit  of a bitva we'd had in
the dark:
     "Not having that we're  not,  brotherth. Don't give in to the thquirt."
So this new one said:
     "Crash  your  dermott, yid,"  meaning  to  shut  up,  but  it was  very
insulting. So then Big Jew got ready to launch a tolchock. The Doctor said:
     "Come on,  gentlemen, we  dont want any trouble,  do we?" in his  very
high-class goloss,  but this new prestoopnick was  really asking for it. You
could viddy that he thought he was a very big bolshy veck and it was beneath
his dignity to  be sharing a cell with six and having to sleep  on the floor
till I made this gesture at him. In  his sneery way he tried to take off The
Doctor, saying:
     "Owwww, yew wahnt noo moor trouble, is that it, Archiballs?" So Jojohn,
mean and keen and wiry, said:
     "If we can't have sleep let's have some education. Our new  friend here
had better  be taught a  lesson." Although  he  like  specialized  in Sexual
Assault he had a nice way of govoreeting, quiet and like precise. So the new
plenny sneered:
     "Kish and kosh  and  koosh, you little terror." So  then  it all really
started,  but in  a queer  like gentle way, with nobody  raising  his goloss
much. The new  plenny creeched a malenky  bit at first, but the Wall  fisted
his rot while  Big  Jew held him  up against the bars  so  that  he could be
viddied  in the malenky red light from the landing, and  he just went oh  oh
oh. He was not a very strong type of veck, being very feeble  in his  trying
to tolchock back, and I  suppose he made up for this by being shoomny in the
goloss and  very boastful. Anyway, seeing the old krovvy flow red in the red
light, I felt the old joy like rising up in my keeshkas and I said:
     "Leave  him to  me,  go on, let me have him now,  brothers." So Big Jew
said:
     "Yeth, yeth, boyth, that'th fair. Thlosh him then, Alekth." So they all
stood around while I cracked at this prestoopnick in the near dark. I fisted
him  all over,  dancing about with  my boots on though  unlaced,  and then I
tripped him and he  went  crash crash  on to the floor. I gave him  one real
horrorshow  kick on the gulliver and he went ohhhh, then he sort  of snorted
off to like sleep, and The Doctor said:
     "Very well, I think that wil be enough of a lesson," squinting to viddy
this downed and beaten-up veck  on the  floor. "Let him  dream perhaps about
being a  better boy in the future." So we  all climbed back into our  bunks,
being very tired now.
     What I  dreamt  of,  O  my  brothers, was  of  being  in some  very big
orchestra, hundreds  and  hundreds  strong,  and the conductor  was  a  like
mixture of  Ludwig van and G. F.  Handel, looking  very deaf and  blind  and
weary of the world. I was with the wind instruments, but what I was  playing
was  like a white pinky bassoon made  of flesh and growing out of my  plott,
right in the middle of my belly, and when  I blew into it I had  to smeck ha
ha ha very loud because it  like tickled, and then Ludwig van G. F. got very
razdraz and bezoomny. Then he came right up to my litso and creeched loud in
my ooko,  and then  I  woke up like sweating. Of course, what the loud shoom
really was was the prison buzzer  going brrrrr  brrrrr brrrrr. It was winter
morning and my glazzies were all cally with sleepglue,  and when I opened up
they were very sore in the electric light that had been switched on all over
the zoo. Then I looked down and viddied  this new prestoopnick  lying on the
floor, very bloody and bruisy and still out out out. Then I remembered about
last night and that made me smeck a bit.
     But when I got off the bunk and  moved him with my bare noga, there was
a feel of like stiff coldness, so I went over to The Doctor's bunk and shook
him, him always being very slow at waking up in the morning. But  he was off
his  bunk skorry  enough this  time, and so were the others, except for Wall
who  slept  like dead  meat.  "Very unfortunate," The  Doctor said. "A heart
attack, that's what it must have been."
     Then he said, looking round at  us all: "You really shouldn't have gone
for him like that. It was most ill-advised really."
     Jojohn said:
     "Come come, doc, you weren't all that backward yourself in giving him a
sly bit of fist." Then Big Jew turned on me, saying:
     "Alekth, you were too impetuouth. That  latht  kick wath  a  very  very
nathty one." I began to get razdraz about this and said:
     "Who started it, eh? I only got in at the  end, didn't I?" I pointed at
Jojohn  and said: "It  was your idea."  Wall snored a bit  loud, so  I said:
"Wake that vonny bratchny up. It was him that kept  on at his  rot while Big
Jew here had him up against the bars." The Doctor said:
     "Nobody will deny having a little hit at the man, to teach him a lesson
so to speak, but  it's apparent that you, my dear boy, with the forcefulness
and, shall I  say, heedlessness of youth, dealt him the coo  de gras. It's a
great pity."
     "Traitors," I said. "Traitors and  liars," because I could viddy it was
all  like before, two years before,  when my so-called droogs had left me to
the brutal  rookers of the  millicents. There was  no trust  anywhere in the
world, O my brothers,  the way I could  see it. And Jojohn went and  woke up
Wall, and Wall  was only too ready to swear that it was Your Humble Narrator
that had  done the real dirty tolchocking and brutality.  When  the  chassos
came along, and  then the Chief  Chasso, and then  the Governor himself, all
these cell-droogs of mine were  very shoomny with tales  of what I'd done to
oobivat this worthless pervert whose krovvy-covered plott  lay  sacklike  on
the floor.
     That  was a very queer day, O  my  brothers. The dead plott was carried
off,  and then  everybody in the  whole prison  had to stay locked up  until
further  orders, and there was  no pishcha  given out, not even a mug of hot
chai. We just  all sat  there, and the warders or  chassos sort of strode up
and down  the tier, now and  then creeching "Shut it"  or "Close that  hole"
whenever they slooshied even a whisper from any of the cells.
     Then  about  eleven  o'clock in  the morning there  was a sort of  like
stiffening  and excitement and like the von  of fear spreading from  outside
the cell, and then we could viddy the Governor and the Chief Chasso and some
very   bolshy   important-looking   chellovecks   walking  by  real  skorry,
govoreeting like bezoomny. They seemed to walk right to the end of the tier,
then they could  be slooshied walking back  again,  more slow this time, and
you could slooshy the Governor, a very sweaty fatty fair-haired veck, saying
slovos like "But, sir--" and "Well, what can be done, sir?" and so  on. Then
the whole lot stopped  at our cell and the Chief Chasso opened up. You could
viddy who was the real important  veck right  away,  very tall and with blue
glazzies  and with  real horrorshow  platties on him, the most  lovely suit,
brothers, I have ever viddied, absolutely in the heighth of fashion. He just
sort of looked  right through us  poor plennies, saying, in a very beautiful
real educated goloss:  "The Government  cannot be concerned any  longer with
outmoded penological theories. Cram criminals together and see what happens.
You get concentrated criminality, crime in the midst of  punishment. Soon we
may be needing all our prison  space for political offenders." I didn't pony
this at all, brothers, but after all he was not  govoreeting to  me. Then he
said:  "Common  criminals  like  this  unsavoury   crowd"--(that  meant  me,
brothers, as well as the others, who were real prestoopnicks and treacherous
with it)--"can  best be dealt  with  on a  purely curative  basis.  Kill the
criminal  reflex,  that's   all.  Full  implementation  in  a  year's  time.
Punishment  means  nothing  to  them,  you can see  that.  They  enjoy their
so-called punishment. They start murdering  each  other."  And he turned his
stern blue glazzies on me. So I said, bold:
     "With respect, sir, I object very strongly to what you said  then. I am
not a  common  criminal,  sir, and  I am  not unsavoury.  The others  may be
unsavoury but I am not." The Chief Chasso went all purple and creeched:
     "You shut your bleeding hole, you. Don't you know who this is?"
     "All  right,  all right,"  said this  big  veck. Then he turned  to the
Governor  and said: "You  can use him  as a trail-blazer. He's  young, bold,
vicious.  Brodsky will deal  with him tomorrow and you can  sit in and watch
Brodsky. It works  all  right,  don't worry  about that.  This vicious young
hoodlum will be transformed out of all recognition."
     And those hard slovos, brothers, were like the beginning of my freedom.




     That very same evening I  was dragged down nice  and gentle  by  brutal
tolchocking chassos to viddy the Governor in his holy of holies holy office.
The Governor looked very weary at me and said: "I don't suppose you know who
that  was this morning, do  you, 6655321?" And without waiting for me to say
no he said: "That was no less a personage than the Minister of the Interior,
the new Minister of the Interior and what they call a very  new broom. Well,
these new ridiculous ideas have come at last and orders are orders, though I
may say to you  in confidence that I do not approve. I most emphatically  do
not approve. An eye for an eye, I say.  If someone hits you you hit back, do
you  not? Why  then should not the  State, very  severely  hit by you brutal
hooligans, not hit back also? But the new view is to say no. The new view is
that we turn the bad into the good. All of which seems to me grossly unjust.
Hm?"
     So I said, trying to be like respectful and accomodating:
     "Sir."  And  then the Chief Chasso, who was standing  all red and burly
behind the Governor's chair, creeched:
     "Shut your filthy hole, you scum."
     "All right, all  right," said the  like tired and  fagged-out Governor.
"You, 6655321, are to be reformed. Tomorrow you go to  this man Brodsky.  It
is believed that you will be able to leave State Custody in a little over  a
fortnight. In a little over  a fortnight you will be out  again in  the  big
free world, no longer a number. I suppose," and he snorted a bit here, "that
prospect pleases you?" I said nothing so the Chief Chasso creeched:
     "Answer,  you  filthy  young  swine,  when  the  Governor  asks  you  a
question." So I said:
     "Oh, yes, sir. Thank you very much, sir. I've done my best here, really
I have. I'm very grateful to all concerned."
     "Don't  be," like sighed the Governor.  "This is  not a reward. This is
far  from  being a reward. Now, there is a form here to  be signed. It  says
that you  are  wiling to  have the  residue  of  your sentence  commuted  to
submission  to what  is  called  here,  ridiculous  expression,  Reclamation
Treatment. Will you sign?"
     "Most certainly I will sign," I said, "sir. And very many thanks." So I
was given an ink-pencil  and  I signed my name  nice and flowy. The Governor
said:
     "Right. That's the lot, I think." The Chief Chasso said:
     "The Prison Chaplain would like a word with him, sir." So I was marched
out  and off  down  the corridor  towards the Wing Chapel, tolchocked on the
back and  the gulliver all the way by one of the chassos, but in a very like
yawny and bored manner.  And  I  was marched across the  Wing Chapel  to the
little  cantora of the  charles and  then  made to  go  in.  The charles was
sitting  at  his  desk,  smelling loud  and  clear of a  fine manny  von  of
expensive cancers and Scotch. He said:
     "Ah,  little  6655321, be seated." And to the chassos:  "Wait  outside,
eh?" Which they did. Then he spoke in a very like earnest way to me, saying:
"One thing I want you to understand, boy, is that this is nothing to do with
me. Were it expedient, I  would  protest about it, but  it is not expedient.
There  is  the  question of  my  own career, there is  the  question of  the
weakness of my own voice when set against the shout of certain more powerful
elements in the polity. Do I make myself  clear?" He didn't, brothers, but I
nodded that he did. "Very hard ethical questions are involved," he  went on.
"You are to be made into a good boy, 6655321.  Never again will you have the
desire to commit acts of violence or to offend in any way whatsoever against
the State's Peace. I  hope you take all  that in. I hope you  are absolutely
clear in your own mind about that." I said:
     "Oh, it will be nice to be good,  sir." But  I  had  a real  horrorshow
smeck at that inside, brothers. He said:
     "It may not be nice  to be good, little 6655321. It may be horrible  to
be good. And when I say  that to  you  I realize how self-contradictory that
sounds. I know I shall have many sleepless nights about this. What  does God
want? Does God want woodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses
the bad perhaps in some ways better than a man who has the good imposed upon
him? Deep  and hard questions,  little 6655321. But all I want to say to you
now is this: if at any time in the future you look  back to  these times and
remember me, the lowest and humblest of all God's servitors, do not, I pray,
think evil of me in your heart, thinking me in any way involved in  what  is
now about to happen to  you. And now,  talking  of praying,  I realize sadly
that there will be little point in praying for you. You are passing now to a
region where you will be beyond the reach of the power of prayer. A terrible
terrible thing to consider. And yet, in a sense,  in  choosing to be deprive
of the ability to make an  ethical choice, you have in a sense really chosen
the  good. So  I shall like to think. So, God help us all, 6655321,  I shall
like to think."  And  then he began to cry. But  I didn't really  take  much
notice of that, brothers only having a bit of a  quiet smeck inside, because
you could viddy that he had been peeting away at the old whisky, and  now he
took a bottle from a cupboard in his desk and started to pour himself a real
horrorshow bolshy slog into a very greasy and  grahzny glass. He  downed  it
and the said: "All may be well,  who knows? God  works in a mysterious way."
Then he  began to sing away at  a hymn in a real loud rich goloss. Then  the
door opened and the chassos  came in to  tolchock me back to my vonny  cell,
but the old charles still went on singing this hymn.
     Well, the next  morning I had  to say good-bye to the old  Staja, and I
felt a malenky bit sad  as you  always  will when you have to  leave a place
you've  like  got used  to.  But I didn't go  very far, O my brothers. I was
punched  and  kicked along to  the new white  building  just beyond the yard
where we used to do our bit of exercise. This was a very new building and it
had a new cold like sizy smell  which gave you a bit of the shivers. I stood
there in  the  horrible  bolshy bare hall and I got new vons, sniffing  away
there  with  my  like very  sensitive morder  or  sniffer. These  were  like
hospital vons, and the chelloveck the  chassos handed me over to had a white
coat  on, as he might be  a  hospital man.  He signed for me, and one of the
brutal chassos who had  brought me said: "You watch  this one, sir.  A right
brutal bastard he has been and will be again, in spite of all his sucking up
to  the Prison Chaplain and reading  the Bible." But this new chelloveck had
real horrorshow blue glazzies which like smiled when he govoreeted. He said:
     "Oh, we don't anticipate any trouble. We're going to be friends, aren't
we?" And he smiled with his glazzies and  his fine big rot which was full of
shining white zoobies and I sort of took to this veck right away. Anyway, he
passed  me on to a like lesser veck in a white coat,  and this  one was very
nice too, and I was led off to a very nice white clean bedroom with curtains
and  a bedside lamp,  and  just  the  one  bed in it, all  for  Your  Humble
Narrator. So I had a  real horrorshow inner smeck  at  that,  thinking I was
really a very lucky young  malchickiwick. I was told to take off my horrible
prison platties  and I  was  given a really beautiful  set of pyjamas,  O my
brothers, in plain green, the  heighth of bedwear fashion. And I was given a
nice warm dressing-gown too and lovely toofles to put my bare nogas  in, and
I thought: "Well, Alex boy, little 6655321 as was, you have copped  it lucky
and no mistake. You are really going to enjoy it here."
     After I had been given a nice chasha of real horrorshow coffee and some
old gazettas  and mags to look at while peeting it, this first veck in white
came in,  the one who had like signed  for me, and  he said: "Aha, there you
are," a silly  sort of a veshch to  say but it didn't sound silly, this veck
being so like nice. "My  name,"  he  said, "is Dr. Branom. I'm Dr. Brodsky's
assistant. With your  permission, I'll just give you the usual brief overall
examination." And he took the old stetho  out of his right carman.  "We must
make sure you're quite fit, mustn't we? Yes indeed, we must." So while I lay
there with my pyjama top off and he did this, that and the other, I said:
     "What exactly is it, sir, that you're going to do?"
     "Oh,"  said Dr. Branom, his cold  stetho  going all down my back, "it's
quite simple, really. We just show you some films."
     "Films?" I said. I could hardly believe my ookos,  brothers, as you may
well  understand.  "You  mean," I said, "it will be just like  going  to the
pictures?"
     "They'll be special  films,"  said  Dr.  Branom.  "Very  special films.
You'll be having the first session this afternoon. Yes," he said, getting up
from bending  over me,  "you  seem  to be quite  a  fit  young  boy.  A  bit
under-nourished perhaps. That will be the fault of the prison food. Put your
pyjama top  back on. After  every meal," he said, sitting on the edge of the
bed, "we shall be  giving you a shot in the arm. That  should help." I  felt
really grateful to this very nice Dr. Branom. I said:
     "Vitamins, sir, will it be?"
     "Something like that," he said, smiling  real horrorshow and  friendly,
"just a jab in the arm after every meal." Then he went out. I lay on the bed
thinking this was like real heaven, and I read some of the mags they'd given
me--`Worldsport,' `Sinny'  (this being a  film  mag) and `Goal.' Then  I lay
back on the bed and shut my glazzies and thought how nice it was going to be
out there again, Alex with perhaps a nice easy job during the day, me  being
now too old for the old skolliwoll, and then perhaps getting a new like gang
together for  the  nochy, and the first  rabbit would  be to get old Dim and
Pete, if they had not  been got already by the millicents. This time I would
be very careful not to get loveted. They were giving another like chance, me
having done murder  and  all,  and it would not be like  fair to get loveted
again, after going to all this trouble to show me films  that were going  to
make me  a real good malchick. I had a real horrorshow smeck at  everybody's
like innocence, and I  was  smecking my gulliver off when they brought in my
lunch on  a tray.  The veck who brought it was the one  who'd led me to this
malenky bedroom when I came into the mesto, and he said:
     "It's nice  to  know  somebody's  happy." It  was  really  a very  nice
appetizing bit of pishcha they'd laid out on the tray--two or three lomticks
of like hot roastbeef with  mashed kartoffel and vedge, then there was  also
ice-cream  and  a  nice  hot chasha of chai. And  there was even a cancer to
smoke and a matchbox with one match in. So this looked like it was the life,
O my brothers. Then, about half an hour after while I was lying a bit sleepy
on the bed, a woman nurse came in, a  real  nice  young  devotchka with real
horrorshow groodies (I had not seen such for two years) and she  had a  tray
and a hypodermic. I said:
     "Ah, the old vitamins,  eh?" And I clickclicked at her but  she took no
notice. All she  did  was  to slam the needle into my  left  arm,  and  then
swishhhh in went the vitamin stuff. Then she went out again,  clack clack on
her high-heeled nogas. Then  the white-coated veck who was like a male nurse
came in with  a  wheelchair. I was  a malenky bit surprised to viddy that. I
said:
     "What giveth then, brother?  I can walk, surely, to wherever we have to
itty to." But he said:
     "Best I push you there." And indeed, O my brothers, when  I got off the
bed I found myself a malenky bit weak. It was the under-nourishment like Dr.
Branom had said,  all that horrible prison pishcha. But  the vitamins in the
after-meal injection would put  me  right.  No doubt  at  all about that,  I
thought.




     Where I was wheeled to, brothers, was  like no sinny I had ever viddied
before. True enough, one wall was all covered with silver screen, and direct
opposite  was a  wall  with  square holes  in for  the  projector to project
through, and there  were  stereo speakers  stuck  all  over the  mesto.  But
against the right-hand one of the other walls was a  bank of all like little
meters,  and in  the  middle of  the  floor  facing the screen  was  like  a
dentist's chair with all  lengths of wire running from it, and I had to like
crawl  from  the wheelchair  to this, being given  some help by another like
male nurse  veck  in  a  white coat.  Then  I  noticed  that underneath  the
projection holes was like all frosted glass and I thought  I viddied shadows
of  like people  moving behind it and I  thought I  slooshied somebody cough
kashl kashl kashl. But then all I could like notice was how weak I seemed to
be, and I put that down to changing over  from  prison pishcha  to this  new
rich   pishcha  and  the  vitamins  injected  into  me.  "Right,"  said  the
wheelchair-wheeling  veck,  "now I'll leave you. The  show will  commence as
soon as Dr. Brodsky arrives. Hope you enjoy it." To be truthful, brothers, I
did not really  feel that I wanted  to viddy any film-show this afternoon. I
was  just not in the mood. I  would have  liked  much better to have  a nice
quiet spatchka on the bed, nice and quiet and all on  my oddy knocky. I felt
very limp.
     What happened  now was that one white-coated veck strapped  my gulliver
to  a like head-rest,  singing  to himself  all the time  some  vonny  cally
pop-song. "What's this for?" I said. And this veck replied, interrupting his
like song an instant, that it was to keep my gulliver still and make me look
at  the  screen.  "But," I said, "I want to  look  at the screen. I've  been
brought here  to viddy films and  viddy  films I shall." And then  the other
white-coat veck (there were three altogether,  one  of  them a devotchka who
was like  sitting at the bank of meters and twiddling with knobs) had a  bit
of a smeck at that.
     He said:
     "You never know. Oh, you never know. Trust us, friend. It's better this
way." And then I found they were strapping my rookers to the  chair-arms and
my nogas were like stuck  to a foot-rest. It seemed a bit bezoomny to me but
I  let them get on  with  what they wanted to get on with.  If I was to be a
free young malchick again in a fortnight's time  I would put up with much in
the meantime,  O my brothers. One  veshch I did  not  like, though, was when
they  put  like clips on the skin of  my forehead, so that my top glazz-lids
were pulled up and up and up and I could  not shut my glazzies no matter how
I tried. I tried to  smeck and said: "This must be a real horrorshow film if
you're so keen  on  my  viddying it." And one of the  white-coat vecks said,
smecking:
     "Horrorshow is right, friend. A real show of horrors." And  then I  had
like a cap stuck on  my gulliver and  I could viddy  all  wires running away
from it, and they  stuck a like suction pad on  my belly and one on  the old
tick-tocker,  and I  could just about viddy wires running  away  from those.
Then there was  the  shoom of a  door  opening and you could tell some  very
important chelloveck  was coming  in by the way the white-coated under-vecks
went all stiff. And then I viddied this Dr. Brodsky. He was a malenky  veck,
very  fat, with all curly  hair  curling all  over his gulliver,  and on his
spuddy nose he had very thick ochkies. I could just viddy that he had a real
horrorshow  suit on, absolutely the heighth  of fashion,  and he had  a like
very delicate and subtle von of operating-theatres coming from him. With him
was  Dr.  Branom,  all  smiling  like  as  though  to  give  me  confidence.
"Everything ready?" said Dr. Brodsky in a very breathy goloss. Then I  could
slooshy  voices saying  Right right  right from like a distance, then nearer
to, then  there was a  quiet like humming shoom as  though  things had  been
switched on. And then the lights went out and there was Your Humble Narrator
And Friend sitting alone in the dark, all on his frightened oddy knocky, not
able to move  nor shut  his glazzies nor anything. And then, O  my brothers,
the film-show started off with some very gromky atmosphere music coming from
the speakers,  very fierce and full  of  discord. And then on the screen the
picture came on, but there was  no title and no credits. What came on was  a
street, as it might have been any street in any town, and it was a real dark
nochy and the lamps were lit. It was a very good like professional  piece of
sinny, and there were  none  of these flickers and blobs you  get, say, when
you viddy one of these dirty films in somebody's house in a back street. All
the time the  music bumped out, very like sinister. And then you could viddy
an old man coming down the street, very starry, and then there leaped out on
this  starry veck two malchicks dressed in the heighth of fashion, as it was
at this  time (still thin trousers but  no like cravat any  more, more of  a
real tie), and then they started to  filly with  him. You  could slooshy the
screams and moans,  very realistic,  and you could even get the  like  heavy
breathing  and panting  of the two tolchocking malchicks.  They  made a real
pudding  out of  this starry veck,  going crack crack  crack at him with the
fisty rookers, tearing his platties off and then finishing up by booting his
nagoy plott (this lay all krovvy-red in the grahzny  mud of the  gutter) and
then running off very  skorry. Then there was the close-up gulliver of  this
beaten-up starry  veck, and the krovvy  flowed beautiful red. It's funny how
the colours of the like real world only seem really real when you viddy them
on the screen.
     Now all the time  I was watching this I was beginning to get very aware
of  a  like  not  feeling  all  that  well,  and  this  I  put  down to  the
under-nourishment and  my stomach not quite ready for  tthe rich pishcha and
vitamins I was getting here. But  I tried to forget  this,  concentrating on
the next  film which  came on  at once, brothers, without any  break at all.
This time the  film jumped  right away on a  young  devotchka who was  being
given the old in-out by  first  one malchick then another  then another then
another, she creeching away  very gromky  through the speakers and like very
pathetic and tragic music going  on  at  the  same time. This was real, very
real,  though if you thought about it  properly you couldn't imagine lewdies
actually agreeing to having all this done to them  in a film,  and  if these
films  were  made  by the  Good or the State you couldn't imagine them being
allowed to take these films without like interfering with what was going on.
So it must have been very clever what they call  cutting or editing or  some
such  veshch. For it was very real. And when it came to the sixth or seventh
malchick  leering  and smecking  and then going  into it and  the  devotchka
creeching on the sound-track like bezoomny, then I began to feel sick. I had
like pains all over and  felt  I could sick up and at the same time not sick
up, and I  began to feel like in distress, O  my brothers, being fixed rigid
too on this chair. When this bit of film was over I could slooshy the goloss
of  this Dr.  Brodsky  from over by the switchboard saying:  "Reaction about
twelve point five? Promising, promising."
     Then we shot straight into another lomtick  of film,  and  this time it
was of just a human litso, a very like pale human face held still and having
different nasty  veshches done to it. I was sweating a malenky bit  with the
pain  in my  guts and  a horrible thirst  and my gulliver going throb  throb
throb, and  it  seemed  to me that if I  could not viddy this  bit of film I
would perhaps  be not so sick. But I could not shut my glazzies, and even if
I tried to move my  glaz-balls  about I still  could not get like out of the
line of fire of this picture. So I had to go on viddying what was being done
and hearing the  most ghastly creechings  coming from this  litso. I knew it
could  not really be real, but  that made  no difference. I was heaving away
but could not sick, viddying  first a britva cut out an eye, then slice down
the  cheek, then go rip rip  rip all over, while  red krovvy shot on to  the
camera lens.  Then all  the teeth  were like  wrenched  out with  a  pair of
pliers, and the creeching and the blood were terrific. Then I slooshied this
very pleased goloss of Dr. Brodsky going: "Excellent, excellent, excellent."
     The next  lomtick  of film  was of an old woman who  kept  a shop being
kicked about  amid very  gromky  laughter by a lot  of  malchicks, and these
malchicks  broke up the shop and then set fire  to it. You could viddy  this
poor  starry  ptitsa  trying  to  crawl out  of the  flames,  screaming  and
creeching, but having had  her leg broke by these  malchicks kicking her she
could not move. So then all the flames went roaring round her, and you could
viddy  her  agonized  litso  like  appealing  through  the  flames  and  the
disappearing  in the flames, and then you could slooshy the most  gromky and
agonized and agonizing screams that ever came from a human  goloss. So  this
time I knew I had to sick up, so I creeched:
     "I want to be sick. Please let me  be sick. Please bring something  for
me to be sick into." But this Dr. Brodsky called back:
     "Imagination only. You've nothing to worry about. Next film coming up."
That was perhaps meant  to be a  joke, for  I heard a like smeck coming from
the  dark. And then I  was forced to viddy  a most nasty film about Japanese
torture. It  was  the  1939-45 War,  and there were soldiers being fixed  to
trees with nails and having fires  lit under them  and having  their yarbles
cut off, and you even viddied a gulliver being  sliced off a soldier  with a
sword, and then with his head rolling about and the rot and glazzies looking
alive still, the plott of this soldier actually ran  about, krovvying like a
fountain out of the neck,  and  then  it dropped, and all the time there was
very very loud  laughter from the Japanese. The pains I felt now in my belly
and the headache  and the thirst  were terrible, and  they all seemed to  be
coming out of the screen. So I creeched:
     "Stop  the film! Please, please stop it! I can't stand  any more."  And
then the goloss of this Dr. Brodsky said:
     "Stop it?  Stop it, did you say? Why, we've hardly started." And he and
the others smecked quite loud.




     I do not wish to describe, brothers, what other horrible veshches I was
like forced  to viddy that afternoon. The like minds of this Dr. Brodsky and
Dr. Branom and  the  others in  white  coats,  and  remember  there was this
devotchka twiddling with the knobs  and watching the meters, they must  have
been  more  cally and  filthy than any  prestoopnick  in  the Staja  itself.
Because I did not think it was possible for any veck to even think of making
films  of what I was forced to viddy, all tied to this chair and my glazzies
made to be wide open. All I  could  do was to creech very gromky for them to
turn it off, turn it off,  and that  like part drowned the noise of dratsing
and  fillying and  also the  music that went with it all. You can imagine it
was  like a terrible relief when I'd viddied the last bit of  film, and this
Dr. Brodsky  said,  in  a  very  yawny and bored like goloss: "I think  that
should be  enough for Day One, don't you, Branom?" And  there I was with the
lights  switched on, my gulliver  throbbing  like  a bolshy  big engine that
makes pain, and my rot all dry and cally inside, and  feeling  I could  like
sick up every bit of pishcha I had  ever eaten, O my brothers, since the day
I was like weaned. "All right," said this Dr. Brodsky, "he can be taken back
to his  bed." Then he like patted me on the pletcho and said: "Good, good. A
very  promising start," grinning all over  his  litso, then he  like waddled
out, Dr.  Branom  after him, but Dr. Branom gave me a  like very droogy  and
sympathetic type smile as though he  had nothing to  do with all this veshch
but was like forced into it as I was.
     Anyhow, they freed my plott from the  chair  and they  let go  the skin
above my glazzies so that I could open and shut them again, and I shut them,
O my brothers,  with the pain and throb in my gulliver, and  then I was like
carried to  the old  wheel-chair and taken back to  my malenky  bedroom, the
under-veck  who wheeled me  singing away at  some hound-and-horny popsong so
that I like snarled: "Shut it, thou," but  he  only smecked and said: "Never
mind,  friend,"  and then sang louder. So I was  put into the bed and  still
felt  bolnoy  but  could  not sleep, but soon I started to feel  that soon I
might  start to feel that I might  soon  start  feeling  just a  malenky bit
better, and then I  was brought some nice hot chai with plenty of moloko and
sakar and, peeting that, I knew that that like horrible nightmare was in the
past and  all over. And  then Dr. Branom  came in, all nice and  smiling. He
said:
     "Well, by  my  calculations you should be  starting to feel  all  right
again. Yes?"
     "Sir," I said, like wary. I did not quite kopat what he was  getting at
govoreeting about  calculations,  seeing  that getting  better from  feeling
bolnoy is like your own affair and  nothing to do with calculations. He  sat
down, all nice and droogy, on the bed's edge and said:
     "Dr. Brodsky is pleased  with  you.  You had  a very positive response.
Tomorrow, of course, there'll be two sessions, morning and afternoon, and  I
should imagine that you'll be  feeling a bit limp at the end of the day. But
we have to be hard on you, you have to be cured." I said:
     "You  mean I have  to sit through--? You mean I have  to look at--? Oh,
no," I said. "It was horrible."
     "Of course  it was horrible,"  smiled Dr. Branom.  "Violence is a  very
horrible thing. That's what you're learning now. Your body is learning it."
     "But," I said,  "I don't  understand.  I don't understand about feeling
sick like I  did. I never used to feel sick before. I used to feel like very
the  opposite.  I  mean,  doing  it or  watching  it  I  used  to  feel real
horrorshow. I just don't understand why or how or what--"
     "Life is a very wonderful thing,"  said Dr. Branom in  a like very holy
goloss. "The  processes of life, the  make-up of the human organism, who can
fully understand  these miracles? Dr. Brodsky  is, of course,  a  remarkable
man. What  is  happening  to  you  now  is what should happen to  any normal
healthy  human organism contemplating the actions of the forces of evil, the
workings of the principle of destruction. You are being  made  sane, you are
being made healthy."
     "That I will not have," I said, "nor can understand at all. What you've
been doing is to make me feel very ill."
     "Do you feel ill now?" he said, still with the old droogy smile on  his
litso. "Drinking  tea, resting, having a  quiet  chat with a  friend--surely
you're not feeling anything but well?"
     I  like  listened and felt for  pain  and  sickness in my  gulliver and
plott,  in a like cautious way, but it  was true, brothers, that I felt real
horrorshow and even wanting my dinner.  "I don't get it," I said.  "You must
be doing something to me to make me feel ill."  And I sort of  frowned about
that, thinking.
     "You felt ill this afternoon," he said, "because you're getting better.
When we're healthy we respond to the presence of  the hateful  with fear and
nausea.  You're becoming healthy, that's all. You'll be healthier still this
time tomorrow." Then he patted me on the noga  and went out, and I  tried to
puzzle the  whole veshch out  as best I could. What it seemed to me was that
the wire and other veshches that were fixed to my  plott perhaps were making
me feel ill, and that it was  all a  trick  really. I was still puzzling out
all this and wondering whether I  should refuse to  be strapped down to this
chair tomorrow and start a real bit of dratsing with them all, because I had
my rights, when another chelloveck came in  to see me. He was a like smiling
starry  veck who  said he  was what he called the Discharge Officer,  and he
carried a lot of bits of paper with him. He said:
     "Where will you go when you leave  here?" I hadn't really thought about
that sort of veshch at all, and it only now  really began to dawn on me that
I'd be a fine free malchick very soon, and then I viddied that would only be
if I played it everybody's way  and did not start any dratsing and creeching
and refusing and so on. I said:
     "Oh, I shall go home. Back to my pee and em."
     "Your--?" He didn't get nadsat-talk at all, so I said:
     "To my parents in the dear old flatblock."
     "I see,"  he said.  "And when did you  last  have  a  visit  from  your
parents?"
     "A month," I  said, "very near. They like suspended visiting-day  for a
bit  because of  one prestoopnick  getting some  blasting-powder smuggled in
across the  wires from  his ptitsa.  A real  cally  trick  to  play  on  the
innocent, like punishing  them as well. So it's near a  month since I had  a
visit."
     "I  see," said this  veck. "And have your parents been informed of your
transfer and impending release?" That had a real lovely zvook that did, that
slovo `release.' I said:
     "No." Then I said: "It will be  a nice surprise  for  them, that, won't
it? Me just walking in through the door and saying: `Here I am, back, a free
veck again.' Yes, real horrorshow."
     "Right," said the Discharge Officer  veck, "we'll leave it at that.  So
long as you have somewhere to live. Now, there's the question of your having
a job,  isn't there?" And he showed  me this long list of jobs I could have,
but I  thought, well, there would  be time enough for that.  A nice  malenky
holiday  first. I could do a crasting job soon as I got out and fill the old
carmans with  pretty polly, but I would  have to be very careful and I would
have to  do the job all on my oddy knocky.  I did not trust so-called droogs
any more. So I told this veck to leave it  a bit and we would govoreet about
it  again.  He said right right right,  then got  ready to leave.  He showed
himself to be a  very queer sort of  a veck, because what he did now was  to
like  giggle and then say: "Would you  like to punch me in the face before I
go?" I did not think I could possibly have slooshied that right, so I said:
     "Eh?"
     "Would you," he giggled, "like to punch  me in the face before I go?" I
frowned like at that, very puzzled, and said:
     "Why?"
     "Oh," he said,  "just to see how you're getting on." And he brought his
litso real near, a fat grin all over his rot. So I fisted  up and went smack
at this litso,  but he pulled himself away real skorry, grinning still,  and
my rooker  just punched  air. Very puzzling, this was, and I  frowned  as he
left, smecking his gulliver off. And then,  my  brothers,  I felt  real sick
again, just  like  in the afternoon, just for a couple of minootas. It  then
passed off skorry, and when they brought my dinner in  I found I  had a fair
appetite and was ready  to crunk away at the roast chicken. But it was funny
that starry chelloveck asking for a tolchock in the litso. And it  was funny
feeling sick like that.
     What  was  even  funnier  was  when I went  to  sleep that night, O  my
brothers, I had a nightmare,  and, as you might expect, it was  one of those
bits of film  I'd viddied in  the afternoon. A dream  or nightmare is really
only like a film inside your gulliver, except that it is as though you could
walk into  it and be part of it. And this is  what  happened to me. It was a
nightmare  of one of the bits  of  film they showed me  near the  end of the
afternoon like session, all of smecking malchicks doing the ultra-violent on
a young ptitsa  who was  creeching away in her red red  krovvy, her platties
all razrezzed real horrorshow. I  was in this fillying  about, smecking away
and  being like the ring-leader, dressed in the  heighth  of nadsat fashion.
And then  at the  heighth  of all this  dratsing and tolchocking I felt like
paralysed and wanting to  be very sick,  and  all the other malchicks  had a
real gromky smeck at me. Then I was dratsing my way back to being  awake all
through my own krovvy, pints and quarts and  gallons of it, and then I found
myself in my bed in this room. I wanted to be sick,  so I got out of the bed
all trembly  so  as to go off  down the  corridor to  the  old vaysay.  But,
behold, brothers, the door  was locked. And turning round I viddied for like
the  first raz that there were bars on the  window. And so, as I reached for
the like pot in the malenky  cupboard beside the  bed, I  viddied that there
would be no  escaping from any of all this. Worse, I did not dare to go back
into my own sleeping gulliver. I soon found I did not want  to be sick after
all, but then I  was poogly of getting back into  bed to  sleep.  But soon I
fell smack into sleep and did not dream any more.




     "Stop it, stop it, stop it,"  I kept on creeching out. "Turn it off you
grahzny bastards,  for I can stand no more." It  was the next day, brothers,
and  I had truly done my best morning and afternoon to play it their way and
sit like a horrorshow smiling cooperative malchick in their chair of torture
while they flashed nasty bits of ultra-violence on the  screen, my  glazzies
clipped open to viddy all, my plott and rookers and nogas fixed to the chair
so I could not get away. What I was being made to viddy now was not really a
veshch I would have  thought to  be too bad before,  it being only three  or
four malchicks crasting  in a shop and filling their carmans with cutter, at
the same  time fillying about with the creeching starry  ptitsa  running the
shop, tolchocking her and letting the red red krovvy flow. But the throb and
like crash crash  crash in my gulliver and  the  wanting to be  sick and the
terrible dry rasping  thirstiness in my  rot, all were worse than yesterday.
"Oh.  I've had enough" I cried. "It's not fair, you vonny sods," and I tried
to struggle out  of the chair  but it  was not possible me being as  good as
stuck to it.
     "First-class,"  creeched  out this Dr.  Brodsky. "You're  doing  really
well. Just one more and then we're finished."
     What  it was now was the  starry 1939-45 War  again, and it  was a very
blobby  and liny  and  crackly  film you could  viddy had  been made  by the
Germans.  It  opened with  German  eagles and the  Nazi flag  with that like
crooked cross that all malchicks at school love to draw, and then there were
very haughty and nadmenny like German officers walking through  streets that
were all dust and bomb-holes  and broken buildings. Then you were allowed to
viddy lewdies being shot against walls, officers giving the orders, and also
horrible nagoy plotts left lying in gutters, all like cages of bare ribs and
white thin nogas. Then there were lewdies being dragged off creeching though
not  on the sound-track, my brothers, the  only sound being music, and being
tolchocked while they were dragged off. Then I noticed, in all my  pain  and
sickness,  what  music   it  was  that  like  crackled  and  boomed  on  the
sound-track, and it was Ludwig van, the last movement of the Fifth Symphony,
and I creeched like bezoomny at that. "Stop!" I creeched. "Stop, you grahzny
disgusting  sods. It's a  sin, that's what it is, a filthy unforgivable sin,
you bratchnies!"  They didn't  stop  right  away, because there  was  only a
minute or two more to go--lewdies being beaten  up and all krovvy, then more
firing  squads, then the old Nazi flag and THE END. But when the lights came
on this  Dr. Brodsky and also Dr.  Branom were standing in front of  me, and
Dr. Brodsky said:
     "What's all this about sin, eh?"
     "That," I said, very  sick. "Using Ludwig van like that. He did no harm
to anyone. Beethoven just wrote music." And then I was really  sick and they
had to bring a bowl that was in the shape of like a kidney.
     "Music," said  Dr. Brodsky, like musing. "So you're keen  on  music.  I
know nothing about it myself. It's a useful emotional heightener, that's all
I know. Well, well. What do you think about that, eh, Branom?"
     "It can't be helped,"  said  Dr. Branom. "Each man kills  the thing  he
loves, as the poet-prisoner  said. Here's the  punishment element,  perhaps.
The Governor ought to be pleased."
     "Give me a drink," I said, "for Bog's sake."
     "Loosen  him," ordered Dr. Brodsky.  "Fetch him  a  carafe  of ice-cold
water." So then these under-vecks got to work and soon I was peeting gallons
and  gallons  of water and it was like heaven,  O  my brothers.  Dr. Brodsky
said:
     "You seem a sufficiently  intelligent young  man.  You seem, too, to be
not  without  taste.  You've just  got this  violence  thing,  haven't  you?
Violence and theft, theft being an aspect of violence." I didn't govoreet  a
single slovo,  brothers, I was still feeling sick, though getting  a malenky
bit better  now.  But  it  had been  a terrible day.  "Now  then," said  Dr.
Brodsky,  "how do  you think this is done? Tell me, what do  you think we're
doing to you?"
     "You're making me feel ill. I'm ill when I look at those filthy pervert
films of yours. But it's not  really the films  that's  doing it. But I feel
that if you'll stop these films I'll stop feeling ill."
     "Right," said Dr. Brodsky.  "It's association,  the  oldest educational
method in the world. And what really causes you to feel ill?"
     "These grahzny sodding  veshches that  come  out of  my gulliver and my
plott," I said, "that's what it is."
     "Quaint," said Dr. Brodsky, like smiling, "the dialect of the tribe. Do
you know anything of its provenance, Branom?"
     "Odd  bits  of  old  rhyming slang," said  Dr. Branom, who did not look
quite so much like a friend any more. "A bit of gipsy talk, too. But most of
the roots are Slav. Propaganda. Subliminal penetration."
     "All right, all right, all right," said Dr. Brodsky, like impatient and
not  interested any more. "Well," he said to  me, "it isn't  the wires. It's
nothing to do with what's fastened to you. Those are just for measuring your
reactions. What is it, then?"
     I viddied then, of course,  what a  bezoomny  shoot I was not to notice
that it was the hypodermic shots in the rooker.
     "Oh," I creeched, "oh, I viddy all  now. A filthy cally vonny trick. An
act of treachery, sod you, and you won't do it again."
     "I'm glad you've raised your objections now," said Dr. Brodsky. "Now we
can be  perfectly clear about it.  We can get  this stuff of Ludovico's into
your  system  in  many  different  ways.  Orally,  for   instance.  But  the
subcutaneous method is the best. Don't  fight against it, please. There's no
point in your fighting. You can't get the better of us."
     "Grahzny bratchnies," I said, like snivelling.  Then  I  said: "I don't
mind about the ultra-violence and all that cal. I put up with that. But it's
not fair  on the music. It's not fair I should feel ill when  I'm slooshying
lovely Ludwig van and G. F. Handel and others. All that shows you're an evil
lot of bastards and I shall never forgive you, sods."
     They  both  looked  a  bit  like  thoughtful.  Then Dr.  Brodsky  said:
"Delimitation is  always  difficult.  The  world  is one, life  is one.  The
sweetest  and  most  heavenly  of  activities  partake  in some  measure  of
violence--the act of love, for instance; music, for instance.  You must take
your  chance, boy. The choice  has been  all yours." I didn't understand all
these slovos, but now I said:
     "You needn't take it any further,  sir."  I'd changed my tune a malenky
bit in  my  cunning way.  "You've  proved  to me that all  this dratsing and
ultra-violence and killing  is wrong wrong and terribly wrong. I've  learned
my  lesson, sirs. I see  now  what I've never seen before. I'm cured, praise
God." And I raised my glazzies in a like holy way  to  the ceiling. But both
these doctors shook their gullivers like sadly and Dr. Brodsky said:
     "You're  not cured yet. There's still  a lot to be done. Only when your
body  reacts promptly  and violently  to  violence, as to a  snake,  without
further help from us, without medication, only then--" I said:
     "But, sir, sirs, I see that it's wrong. It's wrong because it's against
like society, it's wrong because every veck on earth has  the right to  live
and be happy  without being beaten and tolchocked and knifed. I've learned a
lot, oh really I have."
     But Dr. Brodsky had a loud long  smeck at  that, showing all his  white
zoobies, and said:
     "The heresy of an age of reason," or  some such slovos.  "I see what is
right and approve, but I do what is wrong. No, no, my boy, you must leave it
all to us. But  be cheerful about it. It will soon be all over. In less than
a fortnight now you'll be a free man." Then he patted me on the pletcho.
     Less than a fortnight, O my brothers and  friends, it was like  an age.
It  was like from the beginning of the world to the end of it. To finish the
fourteen years without remission in the Staja would have been nothing to it.
Every  day it was the  same. When the  devotchka  with  the hypodermic  came
round, though,  four days  after this  govoreeting with Dr. Brodsky and  Dr.
Branom, I said:  "Oh, no you  won't," and tolchocked her on  the rooker, and
the syringe went tinkle clatter on to the floor. That was like to viddy what
they  would  do.  What  they  did  was  to  get four  or  five  real  bolshy
white-coated bastards of under-vecks to hold me down on the bed, tolchocking
me with grinny litsos close  to mine, and then  this nurse ptitsa said: "You
wicked  naughty little devil, you," while she jabbed my rooker with  another
syringe and squirted  this stuff in  real brutal and nasty.  And  then I was
wheeled off exhausted to this like hell sinny as before.
     Every day, my brothers, these films were like the same, all kicking and
tolchocking  and red  red  krovvy  dripping  off  of  litsos and plotts  and
spattering all over the camera  lenses. It was usually grinning and smecking
malchicks  in  the  heighth  of  nadsat  fashion,  or else  teeheeheeing Jap
torturers or brutal  Nazi kickers and shooters. And each day the  feeling of
wanting to die with the sickness and gulliver pains and aches in the zoobies
and horrible horrible thirst grew really worse. Until one morning I tried to
defeat the  bastards by crash crash crashing my gulliver against the wall so
that I should tolchock myself  unconscious, but all that happened was I felt
sick with viddying that this kind of  violence  was like the violence in the
films, so I was just exhausted and was given the  injection and was  wheeled
off like before.
     And then there came  a morning when I woke up  and had  my breakfast of
eggs  and toast and  jam and very hot  milky chai,  and then I thought:  "It
can't be much longer now. Now must be very near the end of the time.  I have
suffered  to  the heighths and cannot  suffer  any more." And  I  waited and
waited, brothers, for this nurse ptitsa to bring in the syringe, but she did
not come. And then the white-coated under-veck came and said:
     "Today, old friend, we are letting you walk."
     "Walk?" I said. "Where?"
     "To the usual  place," he said. "Yes, yes, look  not so astonished. You
are  to walk to the films,  me with you of  course. You  are no longer to be
carried in a wheelchair."
     "But," I said, "how about my horrible morning injection?"
     For I  was really surprised  at this,  brothers, they being  so keen on
pushing  this  Ludovico  veshch  into  me,  as they said. "Don't  I get that
horrible sicky stuff rammed into my poor suffering rooker any more?"
     "All over," like smecked this veck. "For ever and ever amen.  You're on
your own now,  boy.  Walking and all to the  chamber  of horrors. But you're
still  to be strapped down  and made to see. Come on then, my little tiger."
And  I had to put my over-gown and toofles on and  walk down the corridor to
the like sinny mesto.
     Now  this  time,  O my  brothers,  I was  not  only very sick but  very
puzzled. There it was again, all the old ultra-violence and vecks with their
gullivers  smashed and torn krovvy-dripping ptitsas creeching for mercy, the
like  private and individual  fillying and nastiness.  Then there  were  the
prison-camps  and the Jews and the grey  like  foreign streets full of tanks
and  uniforms and vecks  going down in withering  rifle-fire, this being the
public side of it.  And this time I could blame nothing for  me feeling sick
and thirsty and full of aches except what I was forced to viddy, my glazzies
still being clipped open and my nogas and plott fixed to the chair but  this
set  of wires  and other  veshches no  longer coming  out  of  my  plott and
gulliver. So what  could it be but the films I was  viddying that were doing
this to me? Except, of course, brothers, that this Ludovico stuff was like a
vaccination and there it was cruising about in my krovvy, so that I would be
sick  always  for  ever  and  ever amen  whenever  I  viddied  any  of  this
ultra-violence. So now I squared my rot and  went boo hoo hoo, and the tears
like blotted  out what  I  was forced to viddy in  like  all  blessed  runny
silvery  dewdrops. But  these white-coat bratchnies  were  skorry with their
tashtooks  to  wipe the  tears  away,  saying:  "There  there,  wazzums  all
weepy-weepy den." And there it was again all clear before my glazzies, these
Germans prodding like  beseeching  and weeping  Jews--vecks and  cheenas and
malchicks  and  devotchkas--into mestos where  they would all  snuff  it  of
poison gas.  Boo hoo hoo I had to go  again, and along they came to wipe the
tears  off,  very skorry,  so I should not miss  one solitary veshch of what
they were showing. It  was  a terrible and horrible day,  O  my brothers and
only friends.
     I  was lying on the  bed  all alone  that nochy after  my dinner of fat
thick  mutton stew and fruit-pie  and ice-cream, and  I  thought  to myself:
"Hell hell  hell, there might be a chance for me if I get out now." I had no
weapon, though. I was allowed no britva  here, and I had been  shaved  every
other day by a fat bald-headed veck who came to my bed before breakfast, two
white-coated  bratchnies  standing  by  to  viddy  I  was a good non-violent
malchick. The nails on my rookers had been scissored and filed real short so
I could not  scratch. But I was still skorry on  the attack, though they had
weakened me down, brothers, to a like  shadow of what I  had been in the old
free days. So now I got off the bed and went to the locked door and began to
fist  it real horrorshow and  hard, creeching  at the same time:  "Oh,  help
help. I'm  sick, I'm dying. Doctor doctor  doctor, quick. Please.  Oh,  I'll
die, I shall. Help." My gorlo was real dry and sore before anyone came. Then
I heard nogas coming down the corridor and a like grumbling goloss, and then
I recognized the goloss of the white-coated  veck who brought me pishcha and
like escorted me to my daily doom.
     He like grumbled:
     "What is it? What goes on? What's your little nasty game in there?"
     "Oh, I'm dying," I like moaned.  "Oh, I have a ghastly pain in my side.
Appendicitis, it is. Ooooooh."
     "Appendy shitehouse," grumbled this veck, and then to my joy, brothers,
I could slooshy the like clank of keys. "If you're  trying it little friend,
my friends  and me  will beat and kick  you all  through the night." Then he
opened up and brought in like  the sweet  air of the promise  of my freedom.
Now I was like behind the door when he pushed it open, and I could viddy him
in  the corridor light looking round for me puzzled.  Then  I raised my  two
fisties to tolchock him on the neck  nasty, and then, I swear, as  I viddied
him in advance lying moaning or out out out and felt the like joy rise in my
guts, it was then that this sickness rose in me as it  might be a wave and I
felt a horrible fear as if I was really going  to die.  I like tottered over
to the bed going urgh urgh urgh, and the veck, who was not in his white coat
but an over-gown, viddied clear enough what I had in mind for he said:
     "Well,  everything's a lesson, isn't it? Learning all  the time, as you
could say. Come  on, little friend, get up from that bed and hit me. I  want
you to, yes, really. A real good crack across the jaw. Oh, I'm dying for it,
really I am." But all I could do,  brothers, was to just lay  there  sobbing
boo hoo hoo. "Scum," like sneered  this veck now. "Filth."  And he pulled me
up by like the scruff of my pyjama-top, me being very weak and limp,  and he
raised and swung his right rooker so that I got a fair old tolchock clean on
the  litso.  "That,"  he said, "is  for getting me  out of my bed, you young
dirt." And he wiped his rookers against each other swish swish and went out.
Crunch crunch went the key in the lock.
     And  what,  brothers, I had to  escape  into  sleep  from then  was the
horrible and wrong feeling that it was better to get  the  hit than give it.
If that veck had stayed I might even have like presented the other cheek.




     I could  not believe, brothers, what  I was told. It seemed  that I had
been in  that  vonny mesto for near ever and would be there  for  near  ever
more. But it had always been a fortnight and now they said the fortnight was
near up. They said:
     "Tomorrow, little friend,  out  out out."  And they  made  with the old
thumb,  like pointing to freedom. And then  the  white-coated  veck who  had
tolchocked  me  and who  had still  brought me my trays  of pishcha and like
escorted me to my everyday  torture  said: "But you still have one real  big
day in front of  you. It's to be your passing-out day,"  and  he had a leery
smeck at that.
     I expected this morning that I would be ittying as usual to  the  sinny
mesto in my pyjamas and toofles and over-gown.  But  no. This morning I  was
given  my  shirt and underveshches and  my  platties  of  the  night  and my
horrorshow  kick-boots, all lovely and washed  or ironed and polished. And I
was even given my cut-throat britva that I  had used in those old happy days
for fillying and dratsing. So I gave with the puzzled frown at this as I got
dressed,  but  the  white-coated under-veck  just  like  grinned  and  would
govoreet nothing, O my brothers.
     I was led quite kindly  to the same  old mesto, but  there were changes
there. Curtains  had been drawn in front of the sinny screen and the frosted
glass under the projection holes was no longer there, it having perhaps been
pushed  up or folded to  the sides  like blinds or shutters. And where there
had been just  the noise of  coughing kashl  kashl kashl and like shadows of
the lewdies was now a real audience, and in  this audience there were litsos
I knew.  There was the Staja Governor  and  the holy  man,  the  charlie  or
charles as he was called, and  the Chief Chasso and this very important  and
well-dressed chelloveck who  was the  Minister of the Interior  or Inferior.
All the rest I did not know. Dr. Brodsky and Dr. Branom  were there,  though
not now white-coated, instead they were dressed as  doctors  would dress who
were big enough to want to dress in the heighth of fashion.  Dr. Branom just
stood, but Dr. Brodsky stood and govoreeted  in a like learned manner to all
the lewdies assembled. When he viddied me coming in he said:
     "Aha. At this  stage, gentlemen,  we introduce the subject  himself. He
is, as you will percieve, fit  and well  nourished. He comes straight from a
night's  sleep  and a good breakfast, undrugged,  unhypnotized. Tomorrow  we
send him with confidence  out  into the world again, as decent a lad as  you
would meet  on  a May morning, inclined to the kindly  word  and the helpful
act. What a change is  here,  gentlemen, from the wretched hoodlum the State
committed to unprofitable punishment some two years ago, unchanged after two
years. Unchanged,  do  I say?  Not quite. Prison taught him the false smile,
the rubbed hands  of hypocrisy, the  fawning greased  obsequious leer. Other
vices  it  taught  him,  as  well as  confirming  him in those he  had  long
practised before. But gentlemen, enough of words. Actions speak louder than.
Action now. Observe, all."
     I was a bit dazed by all this govoreeting and I  was trying to grasp in
my mind that like all this was about me. Then all the  lights  went out  and
then there came on two like spotlights shining from the  projection-squares,
and one of them was full on Your Humble and Suffering Narrator. And into the
other  spotlight there  walked  a  bolshy big chelloveck I had never viddied
before. He had a  lardy like litso and a  moustache and like  strips of hair
pasted over his  near-bald gulliver. He was about thirty  or forty or fifty,
some old age  like that, starry. He ittied up to me and the spotlight ittied
with him, and soon the two spotlights had made like one big pool. He said to
me, very sneery:  "Hello, heap of dirt.  Pooh, you don't  wash much, judging
from the horrible smell." Then,  as if he was like dancing, he stamped on my
nogas,  left, right, then he gave me  a  finger-nail flick on the  nose that
hurt like bezoomny and brought the old  tears to my glazzies then he twisted
at my left ooko  like  it  was a radio  dial. I could  slooshy titters and a
couple of real horrorshow hawhawhaws coming from like the audience. My  nose
and nogas and ear-hole stung and pained like bezoomny, so I said:
     "What do you do that to me for? I've never done wrong to you, brother."
     "Oh,"  this  veck said, "I  do  this"--flickedflicked nose  again--"and
that"--twisted  smarting ear-hole--"and the  other"--stamped nasty  on right
noga--"because I don't care for your horrible type.  And if you  want to  do
anything about it, start, start, please do." Now I knew that  I'd have to be
real  skorry and get my cut-throat britva out  before this  horrible killing
sickness whooshed up  and turned the like  joy of battle into  feeling I was
going  to snuff it. But, O brothers, as my rooker  reached for the britva in
my inside  carman I  got this  like  picture in  my  mind's glazzy  of  this
insulting chelloveck howling for mercy with the red red krovvy all streaming
out  of his  rot, and hot after  this  picture  the sickness and dryness and
pains were rushing to overtake, and  I viddied  that  I'd have to change the
way I felt about this  rotten veck  very very skorry indeed, so I felt in my
carmans for  cigarettes  or for pretty polly, and,  O my brothers, there was
not either of these veshches, I said, like all howly and blubbery:
     "I'd like to give you  a cigarette, brother, but  I don't seem to  have
any." This veck went:
     "Wah  wah.  Boohoohoo.  Cry, baby." Then  he flickflickflicked with his
bolshy horny nail at my nose again, and I could slooshy very loud  smecks of
like mirth coming from the dark audience.  I said, real desperate, trying to
be nice to this insulting and hurtful veck  to stop the pains  and  sickness
coming up:
     "Please let me do something for you, please." And I felt in my  carmans
but could find only my cut-throat britva, so I took  this out  and handed it
to him and  said: "Please take this,  please. A little present. Please  have
it." But  he  said: "Keep your stinking  bribes  to yourself. You can't  get
round me that way." And he banged at my rooker and my cut-throat britva fell
on the floor. So I said:
     "Please, I must do something. Shall I  clean your boots? Look, I'll get
down and lick them." And, my brothers, believe it or kiss my sharries, I got
down on my knees  and pushed my red yahzick out a mile and  half to lick his
grahzny vonny boots. But  all this veck  did was  to kick me not too hard on
the rot. So then it seemed to me that it would not bring on the sickness and
pain if  I just  gripped  his  ankles with  my rookers tight  round them and
brought this grashzny bratchny down to the floor. So I did this and he got a
real bolshy surprise, coming down  crack amid  loud laughter from the  vonny
audience.  But viddying  him on the  floor I could  feel  the whole horrible
feeling coming over me, so I gave him my rooker to lift him up skorry and up
he came.  Then just as he was going  to  give  me a real nasty  and  earnest
tolchock on the litso Dr. Brodsky said:
     "All  right,  that  will do very well." Then this horrible veck sort of
bowed and danced off like  an actor while the lights came up on  me blinking
and with my rot square for howling. Dr. Brodsky said to the  audience:  "Our
subject  is, you see,  impelled towards the  good by,  paradoxically,  being
impelled  towards  evil. The intention  to  act  violently is accompanied by
strong feelings of  physical distress. To  counter these the subject  has to
switch to a diametrically opposed attitude. Any questions?"
     "Choice,"  rumbled a  rich  deep goloss.  I viddied it belonged to  the
prison charlie. "He  has  no  real choice,  has he?  Self-interest, fear  of
physical  pain,  drove  him  to  that grotesque act  of  self-abasement. Its
insincerity was clearly to be  seen. He ceases to be  a wrongdoer. He ceases
also to be a creature capable of moral choice."
     "These are subtleties," like smiled Dr. Brodsky.  "We are not concerned
with motive, with the higher ethics. We are concerned only with cutting down
crime--"
     "And," chipped in  this bolshy  well-dressed Minister, "with  relieving
the ghastly congestion in our prisons."
     "Hear hear," said somebody.
     There was a lot of govoreeting and arguing then and I just stood there,
brothers,  like completely ignored by all these  ignorant  bratchnies,  so I
creeched out:
     "Me, me,  me. How about me?  Where  do I come into  all this? Am I just
some animal  or  dog?" And that  started  them off govoreeting real loud and
throwing slovos at me. So  I creeched louder, still creeching: "Am I just to
be like a clockwork  orange?" I  didn't know what made me use those  slovos,
brothers,  which  just came like without asking into  my  gulliver. And that
shut all those vecks up for some reason for a minoota or two.  Then one very
thin starry  professor type  chelloveck stood up, his  neck like all  cables
carrying like power from his gulliver to his plott, and he said:
     "You have no cause to grumble,  boy.  You made your choice and all this
is a consequence of your choice.  Whatever  now ensues  is what you yourself
have chosen." And the prison charlie creeched out:
     "Oh, if only I could believe that."  And  you could viddy  the Governor
give him a look like meaning that he would not climb so high  in like Prison
Religion as he thought he would. Then loud arguing started again, and then I
could slooshy the slovo Love being thrown around, the prison charles himself
creeching as loud as any about Perfect Love  Casteth Out  Fear and all  that
cal. And now Dr. Brodsky said, smiling all over his litso:
     "I am glad,  gentlemen, this question of  Love  has been raised. Now we
shall see in action a  manner of Love that  was thought to be dead with  the
Middle Ages."  And  then the lights went  down and  the spotlights  came  on
again,  one on your  poor and suffering  Friend and  Narrator, and  into the
other there like rolled or sidled the most lovely young devotchka  you could
ever hope in all your  jeezny, O my brothers, to  viddy. That is to say, she
had real horrorshow groodies all of which you could like  viddy, she  having
on platties which came down down down off her pletchoes. And  her nogas were
like  Bog in His  Heaven,  and  she  walked  like to make you groan in  your
keeshkas, and yet her litso was  a sweet smiling young like  innocent litso.
She came up towards me with the light like it was the like light of heavenly
grace and  all that cal  coming with  her, and the first thing  that flashed
into my gulliver was that I  would like to  have her right down there on the
floor with the  old  in-out real savage,  but  skorry  as  a shot  came  the
sickness, like a like detective  that  had been watching round  a corner and
now  followed to make his grahzny arrest. And now the  von of lovely perfume
that came off her made me want to think of starting to heave in my keeshkas,
so  I knew I  had to think of some new like way of thinking about her before
all  the  pain  and  thirstiness  and horrible sickness  come  over  me real
horrorshow and proper. So I creeched out:
     "O most beautiful and beauteous of devotchkas, I throw like my heart at
your feet for you to like trample all over. If I had  a rose I would give it
to you. If it was all rainy and cally now on  the  ground you could  have my
platties to walk  on so as  not to cover  your dainty nogas  with  filth and
cal." And as I was saying all this, O my brothers, I could feel the sickness
like slinking back. "Let me," I creeched out, "worship you  and be like your
helper and  protector  from  the wicked like world." Then  I thought of  the
right  slovo  and  felt better for  it,  saying: "Let  me  be like your true
knight," and down I went again on the old knees, bowing and like scraping.
     And then I  felt real shooty and dim, it having been like an act again,
for this devotchka smiled and bowed to the audience and like danced off, the
lights coming up to  a  bit of  applause. And the glazzies  of some of these
starry vecks in  the audience were like popping out at this  young devotchka
with dirty and like unholy desire, O my brothers.
     "He will be your true Christian," Dr. Brodsky was creeching out, "ready
to turn the other cheek, ready to be crucified rather than  crucify, sick to
the very  heart at  the  thought even of killing a fly." And that was right,
brothers, because when he said that I thought of killing a fly and felt just
that tiny  bit  sick, but I pushed the sickness and pain back by thinking of
the  fly  being fed with bits of sugar and looked after like a bleeding  pet
and all  that  cal.  "Reclamation," he creeched. "Joy before  the Angels  of
God."
     "The point is," this  Minister of  the Inferior was saying real gromky,
"that it works."
     "Oh," the prison charlie said, like sighing, "it  works  all right, God
help the lot of us."






     "What's it going to be then, eh?"
     That, my  brothers, was  me asking myself  the  next  morning, standing
outside this  white building that was like tacked on to the old Staja, in my
platties of the night of two  years back  in the grey light of dawn, with  a
malenky bit  of a  bag with my few  personal veshches in and a bit of cutter
kindly donated by the vonny Authorities to like start me off in my new life.
     The rest of the  day before  had been very tiring, what with interviews
to go on tape for the telenews and photographs being  took flash flash flash
and more like demonstrations of me folding up  in the face of ultra-violence
and all that embarrassing cal. And then I had  like fallen into  the bed and
then, as it looked to me, been waked up to be told to  get off out,  to itty
off home, they did not want to viddy Your Humble Narrator never not no more,
O  my brothers. So there I  was,  very very early in the  morning, with just
this  bit  of  pretty  polly  in  my left  carman,  jingle-jangling  it  and
wondering:
     "What's it going to be then, eh?"
     Some breakfast  some mesto, I thought, me  not having eaten at all that
morning, every veck  being  so anxious to  tolchock me off out to freedom. A
chasha of chai only I had peeted. This Staja was in a very  like gloomy part
of  the  town, but there were malenky workers' caffs all  around and I  soon
found one of these, my brothers. It was very cally and  vonny, with one bulb
in the ceiling with fly-dirt like obscuring its bit of light, and there were
early  rabbiters  slurping away  at chai and horrible-looking  sausages  and
slices  of kleb  which  they  like wolfed,  going  wolf wolf  wolf and  then
creeching for more. They were served by a very cally devotchka but with very
bolshy groodies  on her, and some  of  the eating vecks  tried to grab  her,
going haw haw haw while she  went he he he, and the sight of them near  made
me want to  sick, brothers. But I asked for some toast and jam and chai very
politely and with my gentleman's  goloss, then I sat in a dark corner to eat
and peet.
     While I  was doing this, a malenky little dwarf  of  a veck ittied  in,
selling the morning's gazettas, a twisted and grahzny prestoopnick type with
thick glasses  on with steel  rims,  his platties  like  the colour of  very
starry decaying currant pudding. I kupetted  a gazetta, my idea being to get
ready for  plunging  back into  normal  jeezny again  by  viddying what  was
ittying  on in the world. This gazetta I had seemed to be  like a Government
gazetta, for the only news that was on the front page was about the need for
every  veck to make sure he  put the Government back  in  again on  the next
General  Election, which seemed  to be about two or three weeks  off.  There
were very boastful slovos about  what the  Government had done, brothers, in
the last  year  or so,  what  with  increased exports and a  real horrorshow
foreign policy and improved  social services and  all that cal. But what the
Government was really most boastful about was the way in which they reckoned
the streets had been  made safer for  all peace-loving night-walking lewdies
in the last six months, what  with better  pay for the police and the police
getting  like tougher with young hooligans and perverts and burglars and all
that cal. Which interessovatted Your Humble Narrator  some deal.  And on the
second page of  the gazetta  there was  a blurry like photograph of somebody
who looked very familiar, and it turned out to be  none other than me me me.
I  looked  very  gloomy  and  like  scared,  but  that was really  with  the
flashbulbs going pop pop all the time. What it said undrneath my picture was
that  here  was  the  first  graduate  from  the  new  State  Institute  for
Reclamation  of Criminal  Types,  cured  of  his  criminal  instincts  in  a
fortnight  only, now a  good law-fearing  citizen and  all that cal.  Then I
viddied there  was a  very  boastful article about this Ludovico's Technique
and how clever the Government was and  all that cal. Then there was  another
picture  of some veck I thought I  knew, and  it was  this  Minister of  the
Inferior or Interior. It  seemed that he had been doing  a bit  of boasting,
looking forward to a nice  crime-free era  in  which there would  be no more
fear of cowardly attacks from young hooligans and perverts and burglars  and
all that  cal. So  I went arghhhhhh and threw this gazetta on the  floor, so
that it covered  up stains  of spilled chai  and horrible spat gobs from the
cally animals that used thus caff.
     "What's it going to be then, eh?"
     What it was going to be now, brothers, was homeways and a nice surprise
for dadada and mum, their only son and heir back in the family bosom. Then I
could  lay back on  the bed in my own  malenky  den and slooshy some  lovely
music, and  at  the  same time  I could think  over what  to  do now with my
jeezny. The  Discharge Officer had  given me  a  long list the day before of
jobs I could try for, and he had telephoned to different vecks about me, but
I had  no intention, my brothers,  of  going  off to  rabbit  right away.  A
malenky bit of a rest  first, yes, and a quiet think on the bed to the sound
of lovely music.
     And so the autobus to Center, and then the autobus to  Kingsley Avenue,
the flats of  Flatblock 18A  being  just  near.  You  will  believe  me,  my
brothers,  when I say  that my heart  was going clopclopclop  with the  like
excitement. All  was  very quiet, it still  being early  winter morning, and
when I ittied into  the vestibule of the flatblock there was no  veck about,
only  the nagoy vecks  and cheenas of the Dignity of Labour. What  surprised
me,  brothers, was the way  that  had been cleaned up, there being no longer
any dirty  ballooning  slovos from the  rots of the Dignified Labourers, not
any dirty  parts of the body  added to  their  naked  plotts by dirty-minded
pencilling  malchicks. And  what  also surprised me was that  the  lift  was
working. It came purring down when I pressed the electric knopka, and when I
got in I was surprised again to viddy all was clean inside the like cage.
     So  up I  went to  the tenth floor, and there I saw 10-8 as it had been
before,  and  my  rooker trembled and  shook as I took out  of my carman the
little klootch I had for opening up. But I very firmly fitted the klootch in
the lock  and turned, then opened  up then went in,  and  there I  met three
pairs of surprised  and almost frightened glazzies looking at me, and it was
pee and em having their breakfast, but it was also  another  veck that I had
never viddied  in my jeezny  before, a bolshy  thick veck  in his shirt  and
braces,  quite at home,  brothers,  slurping  away  at the  milky  chai  and
munchmunching at his  eggiweg and toast. And  it was  this stranger veck who
spoke first, saying:
     "Who  are you, friend? Where did  you get hold  of a key? Out, before I
push your face in. Get out there and knock. Explain your business, quick."
     My dad and mum sat like  petrified,  and I could viddy they had not yet
read the gazetta, then I remembered  that the  gazetta did  not arrive  till
papapa had gone off  to his work. But then mum said: "Oh, you've broken out.
You've  escaped. Whatever  shall we do? We shall have the police here, oh oh
oh.  Oh, you bad and wicked boy, disgracing us all like this."  And, believe
it or kiss my sharries, she  started to go boo hoo. So I  started to try and
explain, they could ring up the  Staja if they wanted, and all the time this
stranger veck sat there like  frowning and  looking  as if he  could push my
litso in with his hairy bolshy beefy fist. So I said:
     "How  about you answering a few, brother?  What are you  doing here and
for how long? I didn't like the tone of what you said  just  then. Watch it.
Come on, speak up." He was a working-man type veck, very ugly, about  thirty
or forty, and he sat now with his rot open at me, not govoreeting one single
slovo. Then my dad said:
     "This is all a  bit bewildering, son. You should  have let  us know you
were coming. We  thought  it  would be  at least another  five or  six years
before they  let you  out. Not," he said,  and he said  it very like gloomy,
"that we're not very pleased to see you again and a free man, too."
     "Who  is this?"  I  said. "Why can't  he speak up? What's  going  on in
here?"
     "This is Joe," said my mum. "He lives here now. The lodger, that's what
he is. Oh, dear dear dear," she went.
     "You," said  this Joe.  "I've  heard  all  about you, boy. I know  what
you've done, breaking  the hearts of your  poor grieving  parents. So you're
back, eh? Back to make life a misery for them once more, is that it? Over my
dead corpse you will, because they've let me be more like a son to them than
like a lodger." I could nearly have smecked loud at that  if the old razdraz
within me hadn't started to  wake up the feeling of wanting to sick, because
this veck looked about the same age as my pee and em, and there he  was like
trying to put a son's protecting rooker round my crying mum, O my brothers.
     "So," I said, and I near felt like collapsing in all tears  myself. "So
that's it, then. Well,  I  give  you five large minootas  to  clear all your
horrible cally veshches out of my room." And I made for this room, this veck
being a  malenky bit too slow to stop  me. When I opened  the door my  heart
cracked to the  carpet, because I viddied it was  no longer  like my room at
all, brothers. All  my flags had gone off the walls and this veck had put up
pictures of boxers, also  like a team  sitting smug with  folded rookers and
silver like shield in front. And then  I  viddied  what else was missing. My
stereo  and  my  disc-cupboard  were  no  longer there,  nor  was my  locked
treasure-chest  that  contained  bottles and  drugs  and two  shining  clean
syringes.
     "There's been some  filthy vonny work going on here," I creeched. "What
have you done with my own personal veshches, you horrible bastard?" This was
to this Joe, but it was my dad that answered, saying:
     "That was all took away, son, by the police. This new regulation,  see,
about compensation for the victims."
     I found it  very hard  not  to be very ill, but my gulliver  was aching
shocking and  my rot was so dry that I had  to take a skorry  swig  from the
milk-bottle on the table, so that this Joe said: "Filthy piggish manners." I
said:
     "But she died. That one died."
     "It  was the  cats, son," said my dad  like sorrowful,  "that were left
with  nobody to look after them till the will was read,  so they had to have
somebody in to feed them.  So the police sold your things, clothes and  all,
to help  with the looking after of them.  That's the law, son. But  you were
never much of a one for following the law."
     I had to sit down then, and this Joe  said: "Ask  permission before you
sit, you mannerless young swine," so I cracked back skorry with a "Shut your
dirty big fat hole, you," feeling sick.  Then I  tried to be all  reasonable
and smiling  for my health's  sake like, so I  said: "Well, that's  my room,
there's no denying that. This is my home also. What suggestions have you, my
pee and em, to make?" But they just looked very  glum, my mum shaking a bit,
her litso all lines and wet with like tears, and then my dad said:
     "All this  needs thinking about, son. We can't  very well just kick Joe
out, not just like that, can we? I  mean, Joe's here doing a job, a contract
it is, two years, and we made  like an arrangement, didn't we,  Joe?  I mean
son, thinking  you  were going to stay in  prison a long  time and that room
going begging." He was a  bit ashamed,  you could viddy that from his litso.
So I just smiled and like nodded, saying:
     "I viddy all. You got used to a bit of peace and  you got used to a bit
of extra  pretty polly. That's the  way it goes. And  your son has just been
nothing but a terrible nuisance." And then, my  brothers, believe me or kiss
my  sharries, I started to like cry,  feeling very like sorry for myself. So
my dad said:
     "Well, you  see, son, Joe's  paid next  month's rent  already.  I mean,
whatever  we do in the future we  can't say to Joe to get out, can we, Joe?"
This Joe said:
     "It's you  two  I've  got to think of,  who've been like  a  father and
mother  to  me. Would it be right or  fair  to go off and  leave  you to the
tender  mercies of this young monster who has been like  no real son at all?
He's weeping now, but that's  his craft and artfulness.  Let him go  off and
find a room somewhere. Let him learn the  error  of his ways  and that a bad
boy like he's been doesn't deserve such  a good mum  and  dad  as what  he's
had."
     "All  right," I said,  standing up in all like tears still. "I know how
things are now.  Nobody wants  or  loves me. I've suffered  and suffered and
suffered and everybody wants me to go on suffering. I know."
     "You've made others suffer," said this Joe. "It's only right you should
suffer proper.  I've  been told everything that you've done, sitting here at
night round the family  table, and pretty shocking it was to listen to. Made
me real sick a lot of it did."
     "I wish," I said, "I was  back in the prison. Dear old Staja as it was.
I'm ittying off now," I said. "You won't ever viddy me no more. I'll make my
own way, thank you very much. Let it  lie heavy on your consciences." My dad
said:
     "Don't take it like  that,  son," and my mum just went boo hoo hoo, her
litso all screwed up real ugly, and this Joe put his rooker round her again,
patting her and going there there there like bezoomny. And so I just sort of
staggered  to the door and went out, leaving them to their horrible guilt, O
my brothers.




     Ittying down  the street  in a like aimless sort of a way  brothers, in
these night platties which lewdies like stared at as I went by, cold too, it
being a bastard cold winter day, all I felt I wanted was to be away from all
this and  not  have to think any more about any sort of veshch at  all. So I
got the  autobus to Center, then walked back to  Taylor Place, and there was
the disc-bootick `MELODIA'--I had used to favour with my inestimable custom,
O  my brothers, and it looked  much the same sort of mesto as it always had,
and walking in I expected  to viddy old Andy there,  that bald and very very
thin helpful little veck from whom I had kupetted discs in the old days. But
there was  no Andy there now, brothers, only a scream and a creech of nadsat
(teenage,  that  is)  malchicks and  ptitsas  slooshying  some  new horrible
popsong and dancing to it as well, and the veck behind  the counter not much
more  than a nadsat  himself, clicking his  rooker-bones  and  smecking like
bezoomny. So I went up and waited till he like  deigned to notice me, then I
said:
     "I'd like to  hear a disc of the Mozart Number Forty." I don't know why
that should have come into my gulliver, but it did.
     The counter-veck said:
     "Forty what, friend?"
     I said: "Symphony. Symphony Number Forty in G Minor."
     "Ooooh," went one of the dancing nadsats, a malchick  with his hair all
over his glazzies, "seemfunnah. Don't it seem funny? He wants a seemfunnah."
     I  could  feel myself  growing all razdraz within, but I  had  to watch
that, so I like  smiled at the veck  who had taken over Andy/s place and  at
all  the dancing and creeching nadsats. This counter-veck said: "You go into
that listen-booth over there, friend, and I'll pipe something through."
     So I went over to the malenky box where you could slooshy the discs you
wanted to buy, and then this  veck put  a disc on  for me, but it wasn't the
Mozart Forty, it was the Mozart `Prague'--he seemingly having just picked up
any  Mozart  he could find on the shelf--and that should have started making
me real razdraz and  I had to watch that  for fear of the pain and sickness,
but what I'd forgotten was something I shouldn't have forgotten and now made
me want to snuff it. It was that these doctor bratchnies had so fixed things
that any music that was like for the emotions would  make me  sick just like
viddying or  wanting to do violence. It was because all those violence films
had music with  them. And  I remembered especially  that horrible  Nazi film
with the Beethoven Fifth, last movement. And now here was lovely Mozart made
horrible. I dashed out  of the shop with these nadsats smecking after me and
the  counter-veck  creeching: "Eh  eh eh!"  But I took no  notice  and  went
staggering almost  like  blind  across  the road and round the corner to the
Korova Milkbar. I knew what I wanted.
     The mesto  was near empty, it  being still morning.  It looked  strange
too, having  been painted with all  red  mooing cows, and behind the counter
was  no veck I  knew. But when I said: "Milk plus, large,"  the veck with  a
like lean  litso  very newly shaved knew what  I wanted. I  took  the  large
moloko  plus to one of the  little cubies  that were all around this  mesto,
there  being like curtains to shut them off from the main mesto, and there I
sat down  in the plushy chair  and sipped and sipped. When I'd  finished the
whole lot I began to feel that things were happening. I had my glazzies like
fixed on a malenky bit  of silver paper from a cancer packet that was on the
floor,  the  sweeping-up  of  this  mesto  not  being  all  that horrorshow,
brothers. This scrap of silver began to grow and grow and grow and it was so
like bright and fiery that I had to  squint my glazzies at it. It got so big
that it became not only this whole cubie I was lolling in but like the whole
Korova, the whole street, the whole city. Then it was the  whole world, then
it was  the whole  everything,  brothers, and it was like a sea washing over
every  veshch that  had ever been made or thought of  even.  I could sort of
slooshy  myself making special  sort of shooms and  govoreeting slovos  like
`Dear  dead idlewilds, rot not in variform  guises' and all that cal. Then I
could like  feel the vision beating up  in all this  silver,  and then there
were  colours like nobody  had ever viddied before, and  then I  could viddy
like a group of statues a long long long way off that was like  being pushed
nearer and nearer and nearer, all lit up by very bright light from below and
above alike, O my brothers. This group of  statues was of God or Bog and all
His Holy  Angels and  Saints, all very  bright like  bronze, with beards and
bolshy great wings that waved  about in a  kind of wind,  so that they could
not really be of  stone  or  bronze, really,  and the eyes or glazzies  like
moved and were alive. These bolshy big figures  came  nearer and  nearer and
nearer till they were like going  to crush me  down, and I could slooshy  my
goloss  going `Eeeeee.' And  I  felt I had got rid  of everything--platties,
body, brain, name, the lot--and  felt real horrorshow, like in  heaven. Then
there was the shoom of like crumbling and crumpling,  and Bog and the Angels
and Saints sort of shook their gullivers at  me, as though to  govoreet that
there  wasn't quite time now but I  must try again, and then everything like
leered and smecked and collapsed and the big warm light grew like cold,  and
then there I was as I was before, the empty  glass on the table  and wanting
to cry and feeling like death was the only answer to everything.
     And  that was it,  that was what I viddied quite clear was the thing to
do, but how to do it  I did not properly know, never having  thought of that
before,  O  my brothers.  In  my  little  bag of personal  veshches I had my
cut-throat britva, but I at once felt very sick as I thought of myself going
swishhhh at myself and all my own red red krovvy flowing. What I  wanted was
not  something violent  but something  that would  make  me like just go off
gentle to sleep and that be the end of Your Humble Narrator, no more trouble
to anybody any more.
     Perhaps, i thought, if I ittied off  to  the  Public Biblio around  the
corner I might find some book on the best way of snuffing it with no pain. I
thought of myself  dead and how sorry everybody  was going to be, pee and em
and  that cally vonny Joe who  was a like  usurper, and also Dr. Brodsky and
Dr. Branom and that Inferior Interior  Minister and every veck else. And the
boastful vonny Government  too. So out I scatted into the winter, and it was
afternoon now,  near two  o'clock, as I  could viddy  from the bolshy Center
timepiece, so that me  being in the land with  the old moloko plus must have
took like longer than I thought. I walked down Marghanita Boulevard and then
turned  into Boothby Avenue,  then round the corner again, and there was the
Public Biblio.
     It was a starry cally sort  of a mesto that I could not  remember going
into since I was  a very very malenky malchick, no more than about six years
old,  and  there were two parts of it--one part to borrow books and one part
to read in,  full  of  gazettas and mags and like the von of very starry old
men  with their  plotts  stinking of like  old  age and poverty. These  were
standing  at  the gazetta stands  all round the room, sniffling and belching
and  govoreeting to themselves and turning  over the  pages to read the news
very sadly, or else  they were sitting at the tables  looking at the mags or
pretending  to, some of  them  asleep  and  one or two of them snoring  real
gromky. I couldn't remember what it was I wanted at first, then I remembered
with  a bit of  a  shock that I had ittied here to  find out how to snuff it
without pain,  so I goolied over  to the shelf  full of  reference veshches.
There were a lot of books, but there was none  with  a title, brothers, that
would  really do. There  was a medical book that I took  down,  but  when  I
opened it it was full of  drawings and  photographs of horrible  wounds  and
diseases,  and that made me want to sick just a bit. So I put that  back and
took down the big book or Bible,  as it was called, thinking that might give
me like comfort as it had done in the old Staja days (not so old really, but
it seemed a  very very long time ago), and I  staggered over  to  a chair to
read in it. But all I  found was about smiting seventy times seven and a lot
of Jews cursing and tolchocking each other,  and that made  me want to sick,
too.  So then I near cried, so that a very starry ragged moodge  opposite me
said:
     "What is it, son? What's the trouble?"
     "I want to  snuff it," I  said. "I've had it, that's what it is. Life's
become too much for me."
     A starry reading veck next to me said: "Shhhh," without looking up from
some bezoomny  mag  he had  full of  drawings  of  like  bolshy  geometrical
veshches. That rang a bell somehow. This other moodge said:
     "You're too young for that, son. Why, you've got everything in front of
you."
     "Yes,"  I  said,  bitter.  "Like  a  pair  of  false   groodies."  This
mag-reading veck said:  "Shhhh"  again, looking up  this time, and something
clocked for both of us. I viddied who it was. He said, real gromky:
     "I never forget a shape, by God. I  never forget the shape of anything.
By God,  you  young swine,  I've got you now." Crystallography, that was it.
That was what he'd been taking away from  the Biblio that time.  False teeth
crunched up  real  horrorshow. Platties torn  off. His books razrezzed,  all
about Crystallography.  I thought I had  best get  out of  here real skorry,
brothers.  But  this  starry  old moodge was  on  his  feet, creeching  like
bezoomny to all the starry old coughers at the gazettas round  the walls and
to them dozing over mags at the tables.
     "We have him," he creeched. "The poisonous young  swine who ruined  the
books on Crystallography, rare books, books not to be  obtained  ever again,
anywhere." This had a  terrible mad shoom about it,  as though this old veck
was really  off his  gulliver. "A  prize  specimen  of  the  cowardly brutal
young," he creeched. "Here in our midst and at our mercy. He and his friends
beat me  and kicked  me  and thumped  me. They  stripped me and  tore out my
teeth. They laughed at my blood and my moans. They kicked me off home, dazed
and naked."
     All this wasn't quite true, as you know, brothers. He had some platties
on, he hadn't been completely nagoy.
     I creeched back: "That was over two years ago. I've been punished since
then. I've learned my lesson. See over there--my picture's in the papers."
     "Punishment, eh?" said one starry like ex-soldier type. "You lot should
be exterminated. Like so many noisome pests. Punishment indeed."
     "All right,  all  right," I said. "Everybody's entitled to his opinion.
Forgive me, all. I must go now." And I started to itty out of this mesto  of
bezoomny old  men.  Aspirin, that was it. You  could snuff  it on a  hundred
aspirin.  Aspirin  from  the  old  drugstore.  But  the crystallography veck
creeched:
     "Don't let him go. We'll teach  him all about punishment, the murderous
young pig. Get him." And, believe it, brothers,  or do the other veshch, two
or three starry  dodderers, about ninety years  old apiece, grabbed me  with
their  trembly old rookers, and I was like made sick by the  von of old  age
and disease which came from these near-dead moodges. The crystal veck was on
to  me now, starting to deal  me malenky weak  tolchocks on  my litso, and I
tried to get away and  itty out, but these starry rookers that  held me were
stronger than I had thought. Then other starry vecks came hobbling from  the
gazettas to have a go at  Your Humble Narrator. They were creeching veshches
like: "Kill him, stamp on him,  murder him, kick his teeth in," and all that
cal, and I could viddy what it was clear enough. It was old  age having a go
at  youth, that's what it was. But some of them were saying: "Poor old Jack,
near  killed  poor old Jack he did, this is the young  swine" and  so on, as
though it  had all happened yesterday. Which to them I suppose it had. There
was now like a sea  of vonny  runny dirty  old men trying to get at me  with
their  like feeble rookers and horny old claws, creeching  and panting on to
me, but our crystal droog was  there in  front,  dealing out  tolchock after
tolchock. And I daren't do a solitary single veshch, O my brothers, it being
better to be hit  at like  that than to want to sick and feel that  horrible
pain, but of course the fact that there  was violence going  on made me feel
that the sickness was peeping round the corner  to viddy whether to come out
into the open and roar away.
     Then an attendant  veck came  along, a youngish veck, and  he creeched:
"What goes on here? Stop it  at  once.  This is a reading  room." But nobody
took  any  notice. So  the attendant  veck  said:  "Right, I shall phone the
police." So I creeched, and I  never thought I  would ever do that in all my
jeezny:
     "Yes yes yes,  do that, protect me from these old  madmen."  I  noticed
that the  attendant veck was not too  anxious to join  in the  dratsing  and
rescue me from the  rage  and madness of these starry vecks' claws;  he just
scatted off to his like office or  wherever the telephone was. Now these old
men were  panting a lot  now, and I felt I could just flick at them and they
would all fall over,  but I just let myself  be held, very patient, by these
starry  rookers,  my  glazzies closed, and  feel the feeble tolchocks  on my
litso,  also  slooshy  the panting  breathy old golosses  creeching:  "Young
swine,  young murderer, hooligan, thug,  kill him." Then I  got  such a real
painful  tolchock on the nose that I said to myself to hell  to  hell, and I
opened my glazzies up and  started  to  struggle  to get free, which was not
hard, brothers, and I tore off creeching to the sort of hallway  outside the
reading-room.  But these starry avengers still came  after me, panting  like
dying,  with  their animal  claws all  trembling to  get at  your friend and
Humble Narrator. Then I was tripped up  and  was on the  floor and was being
kicked at, then I slooshied  golosses  of young vecks creeching: "All right,
all right, stop it now," and I knew the police had arrived.




     I was like  dazed, O my brothers, and could not viddy very clear, but I
was sure I had met these  millicents some mesto before. The one who had hold
of  me, going:  "There  there there," just by the  front door of the  Public
Biblio,  him I did not know  at  all, but it seemed to me he was  like  very
young  to be a rozz.  But  the other  two had backs  that I was sure  I  had
viddied before.  They  were  lashing into these  starry old vecks with great
bolshy glee  and joy, swishing  away with malenky whips, creeching:  "There,
you  naughty boys.  That  should teach you to stop  rioting and breaking the
State's Peace,  you wicked villains,  you." So they drove  these panting and
wheezing and near dying starry avengers  back  into the  reading-room,  then
they turned round, smecking with the fun they'd had, to  viddy me. The older
one of the two said:
     "Well well well well well well well. If it isn't little Alex. Very long
time no viddy, droog. How goes?" I was like dazed, the uniform and the shlem
or helmet making it hard to viddy who this was, though litso and goloss were
very  familiar.  Then  I  looked  at the other one, and about him, with  his
grinning bezoomny  litso,  there  was no doubt. Then, all  numb and  growing
number, I looked back  at the well well welling one. This one was then fatty
old  Billyboy,  my old enemy. The other was, of course, Dim, who had used to
be my droog and also the enemy of stinking fatty goaty Billyboy, but was now
a millicent with uniform and shlem and whip to keep order. I said:
     "Oh no."
     "Surprise, eh?" And old Dim came out with the old  guff I remembered so
horrorshow: "Huh huh huh."
     "It's impossible," I said. "It can't be so. I don't believe it."
     "Evidence  of  the old  glazzies,"  grinned  Billyboy. "Nothing up  our
sleeves. No magic, droog. A job for two who are now of job-age. The police."
     "You're too young," I said. "Much  too young. They don't make rozzes of
malchicks of your age."
     "Was young," went old millicent Dim. I could not get over it, brothers,
I really could not. "That's what we was, young droogie. And you it  was that
was always the youngest. And here now we are."
     "I still can't believe it," I said. Then Billyboy, rozz Billyboy that I
couldn't  get over, said to this young millicent that was like holding on to
me and that I did not know:
     "More  good would  be done, I  think, Rex, if we doled out a bit of the
old summary. Boys will be boys, as always was. No need to go through the old
station routine. This one here has been up to his old tricks, as we can well
remember  though  you, of course, can't. He has been  attacking the aged and
defenceless, and they have properly been retaliating. But we  must have  our
say in the State's name."
     "What is all this?" I  said, not able hardly to believe  my  ookos. "It
was them that went for  me, brothers. You're not on their side and can't be.
You can't be, Dim. It was a veck we fillied with once in the old days trying
to get his own malenky bit of revenge after all this long time."
     "Long time  is  right,"  said  Dim.  "I don't remember  them  days  too
horrorshow. Don't call me Dim no more, either. Officer call me."
     "Enough  is remembered, though,"  Billyboy  kept nodding. He was not so
fatty  as  he had been. "Naughty  little  malchicks  handy  with  cut-throat
britvas--these must be  kept under." And they took me in a  real strong grip
and like  walked me  out of the  Biblio.  There was  a  millicent patrol-car
waiting outside,  and this veck  they called Rex  was the driver.  They like
tolchocked me into the back of this auto, and I couldn't help feeling it was
all  really  like a joke, and that  Dim  anyway would pull his shlem off his
gulliver  and  go haw  haw haw. But  he  didn't. I said, trying to fight the
strack inside me:
     "And old Pete, what happened to  old Pete? It was sad about Georgie," I
said. "I slooshied all about that."
     "Pete, oh yes, Pete," said Dim. "I  seem to  remember like the name." I
could viddy we were driving out of town. I said:
     "Where are we supposed to be going?"
     Billyboy  turned round  from the  front  to  say:  "It's light still. A
little drive into the country, all winter-bare but lonely  and lovely. It is
not right,  not always, for lewdies in the  town  to viddy  too much  of our
summary  punishments. Streets must  be kept clean in more than one way." And
he turned to the front again.
     "Come," I said. "I just don't get  this at  all. The old days  are dead
and gone days. For what I did in  the past I have been punished. I have been
cured."
     "That was read out to  us," said  Dim. "The Super  read all that out to
us. He said it was a very good way."
     "Read to you," I said, a malenky bit  nasty. "You still too dim to read
for yourself, O brother?"
     "Ah, no," said Dim, very like gentle and like regretful. "Not to  speak
like that. Not no more, droogie." And he launched a bolshy tolchock right on
my cluve, so that all red red nose-krovvy started to drip drip drip.
     "There was never any trust," I said, bitter, wiping off the krovvy with
my rooker. "I was always on my oddy knocky."
     "This will  do," said Billyboy. We were now  in the country and it  was
all  bare  trees  and a few  odd distant like twitters, and in the  distance
there was some like farm machine making a whirring shoom. It was getting all
dusk now, this being the height of winter. There were no lewdies  about, nor
no animals. There was  just the four. "Get out, Alex boy," said Dim. "Just a
malenky bit of summary."
     All through what they did this driver veck just sat at the wheel of the
auto, smoking a cancer, reading a malenky bit of a book. He had the light on
in the  auto to viddy by. He took no notice of what Billyboy and Dim  did to
your Humble  Narrator. I will not go into what they did, but it was all like
panting and thudding  against this like background  of whirring farm engines
and the twittwittwittering  in the bare or nagoy branches. You could viddy a
bit of smoky breath in  the auto light, this driver turning the  pages  over
quite  calm.  And  they  were on to  me all the time,  O  my brothers.  Then
Billyboy or Dim, I couldn't say which  one, said: "About  enough, droogie. I
should think,  shouldn't you?" Then they gave me  one final tolchock on  the
litso each and I fell over and just laid there on the grass. It was cold but
I was not feeling  the  cold. Then they dusted their rookers and put back on
their  shlems and tunics which  they  had taken  off, and then they got back
into the auto.  "Be viddying you  some more sometime, Alex,"  said Billyboy,
and Dim just gave one of his old clowny guffs. The driver  finished the page
he was reading and put his book away, then he started the auto and they were
off townwards, my ex-droog  and  ex-enemy  waving.  But  I just laid  there,
fagged and shagged.
     After  a bit I was hurting  bad, and  then the rain started, all icy. I
could viddy no lewdies in sight, nor no lights of houses. Where was I to go,
who had no  home and not  much  cutter in my carmans? I cried for myself boo
hoo hoo. Then I got up and started walking.




     Home, home, home, it was home I was wanting, and it was HOME I came to,
brothers.  I walked through the  dark and followed not the town  way but the
way where the shoom  of  a like farm  machine  had  been  coming from.  This
brought me to a sort of village I felt I had viddied before, but was perhaps
because all villages look the same, in the dark especially. Here were houses
and there was a  like drinking mesto,  and right at  the end  of the village
there was a malenky cottage on its oddy knocky,  and I could viddy its  name
shining on the gate.
     HOME, it  said. I was all dripping wet with this icy  rain, so that  my
platties  were  no longer in the heighth of  fashion but  real miserable and
like pathetic,  and my luscious glory was a wet tangle cally mess all spread
over my gulliver, and I  was sure there were cuts and bruises  all  over  my
litso, and  a couple of my zoobies sort of joggled loose when I touched them
with  my  tongue  or yahzick.  And  I was  sore all  over my  plott and very
thirsty, so  that I  kept opening my  rot to the cold  rain,  and my stomach
growled  grrrrr all the time with not having  had any pishcha  since morning
and then not very much, O my brothers.
     HOME, it said, and perhaps here would be some  veck  to help.  I opened
the gate and  sort of slithered down the path, the rain like turning to ice,
and  then I  knocked  gentle  and  pathetic on the door. No veck  came, so I
knocked a malenky bit longer and louder, and then I heard the shoom of nogas
coming to the door. Then the door opened and a male  goloss said: "Yes, what
is it?"
     "Oh," I said, "please help. I've been  beaten up by the police and just
left to die on the  road. Oh, please give me a drink of something and  a sit
by the fire, please, sir."
     The door opened full then, and I could viddy like warm light and a fire
going crackle  crackle  within. "Come in," said this veck, "whoever you are.
God help you, you poor victim, come in and  let's have a look at you."  So I
like staggered in,  and it was no big  act  I  was  putting on,  brothers, I
really  felt done  and  finished.  This kind  veck  put his rookers round my
pletchoes and  pulled me into this room where  the fire was, and of course I
knew  right  away  now where  it was  and  why HOME  on the gate  looked  so
familiar.  I looked at this veck and he looked at me in a kind sort  of way,
and  I remembered him well now. Of course he would not remember  me, for  in
those carefree days I and my  so-called droogs  did  all our bolshy dratsing
and fillying and crasting in maskies which were  real horrorshow  disguises.
He was  a shortish  veck in middle age, thirty,  forty,  fifty,  and he  had
otchkies on. "Sit down by the fire," he  said, "and I'll get you some whisky
and warm  water. Dear dear dear, somebody has been  beating you up."  And he
gave a like tender look at my gulliver and litso.
     "The police," I said. "The horrible ghastly police."
     "Another victim,"  he said, like sighing. "A victim  of the modern age.
I'll go and  get you that whisky  and  then I must  clean up  your  wounds a
little." And off he went.  I had a look round this malenky comfortable room.
It was nearly all books now and a fire and a couple of chairs, and you could
viddy somehow  that  there wasn't  a woman living there. On  the table was a
typewriter and a lot of like tumbled papers, and I remembered that this veck
was a writer veck. `A Clockwork Orange,' that had been it. It was funny that
that stuck in my  mind.  I must not let  on, though, for I needed  help  and
kindness now. Those horrible grahzny bratchnies in that terrible white mesto
had done that to me, making me  need help and kindness now and forcing me to
want to give help and kindness myself, if anybody would take it.
     "Here  we are, then,"  said this  veck  returning. He gave  me this hot
stimulating  glassful  to  peet,  and it  made me feel  better, and  then he
cleaned up these cuts on my litso. Then he said:
     "You have a nice hot  bath, I'll draw it for you, and then you can tell
me  all  about it over a nice  hot  supper which I'll get ready while you're
having the bath." O  my  brothers, I could have  wept at his kindness, and I
think he must have viddied the old tears in my glazzies, for he said: "There
there there," patting me on the pletcho.
     Anyway, I went up and had this hot bath, and he  brought in pyjamas and
an over-gown for me to put on, all warmed by the fire, also a very worn pair
of  toofles. And now, brothers, though I  was aching and  full of pains  all
over, I felt I would soon feel a lot better. I ittied downstairs and viddied
that in the kitchen  he had set the table with knives  and  forks and a fine
big loaf  of kleb, also a bottle of  PRIMA SAUCE, and soon he  served  out a
nice  fry  of  eggiwegs and  lomticks of  ham  and bursting sausages and big
bolshy mugs of hot sweet milky chai. It was nice sitting there in the  warm,
eating, and I  found I was  very hungry, so that  after the fry I had to eat
lomtick after lomtick of kleb and butter spread with strawberry jam out of a
bolshy great pot. "A lot better," I said. "How can I ever repay?"
     "I think I know who you are," he said. "If you are who I think you are,
then you've come, my friend, to the right place. Wasn't that your picture in
the  papers  this  morning?  Are you the poor  victim  of  this horrible new
technique?  If so, then you  have been sent here by Providence. Tortured  in
prison, then thrown out to be tortured by the  police. My heart goes  out to
you,  poor poor boy."  Brothers, I could not get a slovo in, though I had my
rot wide open to answer his questions.
     "You are  not the first to come here in distress," he said. "The police
are fond of  bringing their victims to the outskirts of this village. But it
is providential that you, who are also another kind of victim,  should  come
here. Perhaps, then, you have heard of me?"
     I  had  to  be  very careful,  brothers. I said:  "I have heard  of  `A
Clockwork Orange.' I have not read it, but I have heard of it."
     "Ah," he said, and his litso shone like the sun  in its flaming morning
glory. "Now tell me about yourself."
     "Little enough to tell, sir," I said, all humble. "There was a  foolish
and  boyish  prank, my so-called friends persuading  or rather forcing me to
break into  the house of an old ptitsa--lady, I mean. There was no real harm
meant. Unfortunately the lady strained her good old heart in trying to throw
me out, though I was quite ready to go of my own accord, and  then she died.
I was accused of being the cause of her death. So I was sent to prison,sir."
     "Yes yes yes, go on."
     "Then  I was picked out by the  Minister of the Inferior or Interior to
have this Ludovico's veshch tried out on me."
     "Tell me all  about it," he said, leaning  forward eager, his  pullover
elbows  with all  strawberry jam  on them from the  plate I'd pushed to  one
side. So I told him all about it. I  told him the lot, all,  my brothers. He
was very eager to hear all, his glazzies like shining and his goobers apart,
while  the  grease on  the  plates grew  harder harder  harder.  When  I had
finished he got up from the table, nodding a lot and going hm hm hm, picking
up the plates and other veshches from the table and taking  them to the sink
for washing up. I said:
     "I will do that, sir, and gladly."
     "Rest, rest,  poor lad," he said, turning the  tap on so that all steam
came burping out. "You've  sinned, I  suppose, but  your punishment has been
out of all proportion. They have  turned you into  something  other  than  a
human being. You have no power of choice  any longer. You are  committed  to
socially acceptable acts, a  little machine capable only of good.  And I see
that clearly--that business about the marginal conditionings.  Music and the
sexual act, literature and art, all must be a source now not of pleasure but
of pain."
     "That's right, sir," I said, smoking one of this kind man's cork-tipped
cancers.
     "They  always  bite  off  too much,"  he  said,  drying  a  plate  like
absent-mindedly. "But  the  essential intention is the real  sin. A  man who
cannot choose ceases to be a man."
     "That's  what the charles  said, sir," I said. "The  prison chaplain, I
mean."
     "Did he,  did he? Of course he did. He'd  have to, wouldn't he, being a
Christian? Well, now then," he said, still  wiping  the same plate he'd been
wiping ten minutes ago, "we shall have  a few people in to see you tomorrow.
I think you can be used, poor boy.  I  think that you can help dislodge this
overbearing Government. To turn a decent young man into a piece of clockwork
should not, surely, be seen as any triumph for any government, save one that
boasts of its repressiveness." He was still wiping this same plate. I said:
     "Sir, you're still wiping that same plate, I agree with you, sir, about
boasting. This Government seems to be very boastful."
     "Oh," he  said, like  viddying this  plate  for the first time and then
putting it down. "I'm still not too handy," he said, "with domestic  chores.
My wife used to do them all and leave me to my writing."
     "Your wife, sir?" I said. "Has she gone and left you?"  I really wanted
to know about his wife, remembering very well.
     "Yes,  left  me," he said, in a like loud and bitter goloss. "She died,
you see. She was brutally raped and beaten. The shock was very great. It was
in this house,"  his  rookers were trembling, holding a wiping-up cloth, "in
that room next door. I have had  to  steel myself to  continue to live here,
but  she  would have  wished me  to  stay  where her  fragrant memory  still
lingers. Yes yes yes. Poor little girl." I viddied all clearly, my brothers,
what had happened that far-off nochy,  and viddying  myself on  that job,  I
began to feel I wanted to sick and the pain started  up in my gulliver. This
veck  viddied this, because my  litso felt it  was  all drained  of red  red
krovvy, very pale, and he would be able to viddy this. "You go to bed  now,"
he said kindly. "I've got the spare room ready. Poor poor boy, you must have
had  a terrible time. A victim of the modern age, just as she was. Poor poor
poor girl."




     I had a real horrorshow night's sleep, brothers, with no dreams at all,
and the  morning  was very clear and like  frosty, and there  was  the  very
pleasant  like von  of  breakfast  frying away down below. It  took me  some
little  time to remember where  I was, as it always does,  but  it soon came
back to me and then  I felt like warmed and  protected. But, as I laid there
in  the bed,  waiting to be called down to breakfast, it  struck  me that  I
ought  to  get to know the name  of this  kind protecting  and like motherly
veck,  so  I  had  a pad  round in  my nagoy nogas looking for  `A Clockwork
Orange,' which would  be bound to have his eemya  in,  he being  the author.
There was nothing in my bedroom except  a bed and a chair and  a light, so I
ittied  next door  to this veck's own room, and  there I viddied his wife on
the wall, a bolshy blown-up photo, so I felt a malenky bit sick remembering.
But there were two  or three shelves of books there too, and there was, as I
thought there must  be, a copy  of `A Clockwork Orange,' and on  the back of
the book, like on the spine, was the author's eemya--F. Alexander. Good Bog,
I  thought, he  is another  Alex. Then  I  leafed  through,  standing in his
pyjamas and bare nogas but not feeling  one  malenky bit  cold, the  cottage
being  warm all through, and I could  not viddy what the  book was about. It
seemed written in a very bezoomny like style, full of Ah and Oh and all that
cal,  but what seemed to come out of it was that  all  lewdies nowadays were
being turned into machines and that they were really--you and me and him and
kiss-my-sharries--more  like a natural  growth like  a  fruit. F.  Alexander
seemed to think that we all like grow  on what  he called the  world-tree in
the  world-orchard that like Bog or God planted, and we  were  there because
Bog or  God had need of us  to quench his thirsty love, or some such  cal. I
didn't  like the  shoom of  this at  all,  O my brothers,  and  wondered how
bezoomny this F. Alexander really was, perhaps driven bezoomny by his wife's
snuffing it. But then he called me  down in a  like sane veck's goloss, full
of joy and love and all that cal, so down Your Humble Narrator went.
     "You've slept long," he said, ladling out boiled eggs and pulling black
toast  from under the grill.  "It's nearly  ten already. I've been up hours,
working."
     "Writing another book, sir?" I said.
     "No no, not that now," he said, and we sat down nice and  droogy to the
old crack crack crack of eggs and crackle crunch crunch of this black toast,
very milky chai standing  by in bolshy great morning mugs. "No, I've been on
the phone to various people."
     "I  thought you  didn't have a phone," I said, spooning egg in  and not
watching out what I was saying.
     "Why?" he said, very alert like some skorry animal with an egg-spoon in
its rooker. "Why shouldn't you think I have a phone?"
     "Nothing," I said,  "nothing,  nothing." And I wondered,  brothers, how
much he remembered of the earlier part of  that distant nochy,  me coming to
the door with the old tale and saying to phone the doctor and  she saying no
phone. He took a very close smot at me but then went back to being like kind
and cheerful and spooning up the old eggiweg. Munching away, he said:
     "Yes, I've rung up various  people who will be interested in your case.
You can be a very potent weapon, you see, in ensuring that this present evil
and  wicked Government  is not returned  in the  forthcoming  election.  The
Government's  big boast, you see,  is the way it has dealt with  crime these
last months." He  looked at me very close again over his steaming egg, and I
wondered  again  if  he  was viddying what part  I had so  far played in his
jeezny.  But  he  said:  "Recruiting brutal  young  roughs for  the  police.
Proposing  debilitating and will-sapping  techniques  of conditioning."  All
these  long slovos,  brothers,  and a  like  mad  or bezoomny  look  in  his
glazzies. "We've seen it all before," he said, "in other countries. The thin
end  of the  wedge.  Before  we know  where  we are we  shall have  the full
apparatus of totalitarianism." "Dear dear dear," I thought, egging  away and
toast-crunching. I said:
     "Where do I come into all this, sir?"
     "You," he said, still with this bezoomny look, "are a living witness to
these  diabolical proposals. The  people, the common people must know,  must
see." He got up  from his  breakfast and  started  to walk up  and down  the
kitchen, from  the  sink to the like larder, saying very gromky: "Would they
like their sons to become what  you, poor victim, have become?  Will not the
Government itself  now decide what is and what is not crime and pump out the
life and guts and will of whoever sees fit to displeasure the Government? He
became quieter but did not go back to his egg. "I've written an article," he
said,  "this  morning, while you were sleeping. That will be out in a day or
so,  together with your  unhappy picture. You  shall sign  it,  poor  boy, a
record of what they have done to you." I said:
     "And what do you get out of all this, sir? I  mean, besides  the pretty
polly you'll get for the article, as you call it? I mean, why are you so hot
and strong against this Government, if I may make like so bold as to ask?"
     He gripped the edge of the table and said,  gritting his zoobies, which
were  very  cally and  all  stained with cancer-smoke: "Some of  us have  to
fight. There are great  traditions  of liberty to defend. I am  no  partisan
man. Where I see  the infamy I seek  to erase it.  Party names mean nothing.
The tradition of liberty means  all. The common  people will let  it  go, oh
yes.  They will sell liberty for a  quieter  life. That is why they must  be
prodded, prodded--" And here, brothers, he picked up a fork and stuck it two
or three razzes into the wall, so that it got all  bent. Then he threw it on
the floor.  Very kindly he said: "Eat  well,  poor  boy,  poor victim of the
modern  world," and I could viddy quite clear he was going off his gulliver.
"Eat, eat. Eat my egg as well." But I said:
     "And what  do I get out of  this? Do I get cured of the way I  am? Do I
find myself able to slooshy the old  Choral Symphony without being sick once
more? Can I live like a normal jeezny again? What, sir, happens to me?"
     He looked  at me, brothers, as if he hadn't thought of that before and,
anyway, it didn't matter  compared with Liberty and all that cal, and he had
a look  of surprise  at  me saying what I said,  as  though I was being like
selfish in wanting something for myself. Then he said: "Oh, as I say, you're
a living witness, poor boy. Eat up all your breakfast and  then come and see
what I've written, for it's going into `The Weekly Trumpet' under your name,
you unfortunate victim."
     Well, brothers, what  he  had  written  was a  very long and very weepy
piece of writing, and as I read it I  felt very sorry for the  poor malchick
who was  govoreeting about  his sufferings and how the Government had sapped
his will and how it was up  to all lewdies to not let such a rotten and evil
Government rule  them  again, and  then  of  course I realized that the poor
suffering malchick was none other than Y. H. N.
     "Very good,"  I said. "Real horrorshow. Written well thou hast, O sir."
And then he looked at me very narrow and said:
     "What?" It was like he had not slooshied me before.
     "Oh,  that," I said, "is what  we call  nadsat talk. All the  teens use
that, sir." So then he ittied off to the  kitchen to wash up the dishes, and
I  was left in these borrowed  night platties and  toofles,  waiting to have
done  to  me what was  going to  be  done  to me, because I had no plans for
myself, O my brothers.
     While the great  F.  Alexander was in the kitchen a dingalingaling came
at the  door. "Ah," he creeched,  coming out wiping his rookers, "it will be
these  people. I'll  go." So he went and  let  them in, a kind  of  rumbling
hahaha  of talk  and  hallo  and filthy weather  and how are  things in  the
hallway, then they ittied into  the room with  the fire and the book and the
article about how I  had suffered, viddying  me and going Aaaaah as they did
it. There were three  lewdies, and F. Alex gave me their eemyas. Z.Dolin was
a very wheezy smoky kind of  a veck, coughing kashl kashl kashl with the end
of a cancer in his rot, spilling ash all down his platties and then brushing
it away with like very impatient rookers. He was a malenky round  veck, fat,
with  big  thick-framed  otchkies  on.  Then there was  Something  Something
Rubinstein,  a very  tall and  polite chelloveck  with  a  real  gentleman's
goloss, very starry with a like eggy beard. And  lastly there was  D.  B. da
Silva who was like skorry in his movements and had this strong von of  scent
coming from him. They all had a real horrorshow look  at me and seemed  like
overjoyed with what they viddied. Z. Dolin said:
     "All right, all right, eh? What a superb device he can be, this boy. If
anything,  of  course,  he  could  for preference  look even iller  and more
zombyish than  he  does.  Anything for  the cause. No  doubt we can think of
something."
     I did  not like that crack  about  zombyish,  brothers, and  so I said:
"What goes on, bratties? What dost thou  in mind for thy little droog have?"
And the F. Alexander swooshed in with:
     "Strange,  strange, that  manner  of voice pricks me. We've  come  into
contact  before, I'm sure we  have." And he  brooded, like frowning. I would
have to watch this, O my brothers. D. B. da Silva said:
     "Public meetings, mainly. To exhibit you  at public meetings will  be a
tremendous help.  And,  of  course, the  newspaper angle is  all  tied up. A
ruined life is the approach. We  must inflame  all  hearts." He  showed  his
thirty-odd zoobies, very white against his dark-coloured litso, he looking a
malenky bit like some foreigner. I said:
     "Nobody will  tell me  what I  get out of all this. Tortured  in  jail,
thrown out of my home by my own parents and their filthy overbearing lodger,
beaten by old  men and near-killed by the millicents--what  is  to become of
me?" The Rubinstein veck came in with:
     "You will see, boy, that  the Party will  not be ungrateful. Oh, no. At
the  end of it all there  will  be some very acceptable  little surprise for
you. Just you wait and see."
     "There's only one veshch I require," I creeched out, "and that's to  be
normal and healthy as I was in the starry days, having my malenky bit of fun
with real droogs and not  those who just call themselves that and are really
more like traitors. Can  you do that, eh? Can any  veck restore me to what I
was? That's what I want and that's what I want to know."
     Kashl kashl  kashl, coughed this Z. Dolin.  "A martyr  to  the cause of
Liberty."  he  said.  "You  have your  part to  play and  don't  forget  it.
Meanwhile,  we  shall look after you." And he began to stroke my left rooker
as if I was like an idiot, grinning in a bezoomny way. I creeched:
     "Stop treating me like a thing that's like got to be just used. I'm not
an idiot  you can impose on, you  stupid bratchnies.  Ordinary prestoopnicks
are stupid, but I'm not ordinary and nor am I dim. Do you slooshy?"
     "Dim," said F. Alexander, like musing. "Dim. That was a name somewhere.
Dim."
     "Eh?"  I said. "What's  Dim got to do with  it? What do  you know about
Dim?" And  then  I said: "Oh,  Bog help us." I  didn't like the look  in  F.
Alexander's glazzies. I made for the door, wanting to go upstairs and get my
platties and then itty off.
     "I  could almost  believe,"  said  F. Alexander,  showing  his  stained
zoobies, his glazzies mad.  "But such things are impossible. For, by Christ,
if he were I'd tear him. I'd split him, by God, yes yes, so I would."
     "There,"  said  D. B. da Silva, stroking his chest like he was a doggie
to calm him  down. "It's all in the past. It was other people altogether. We
must  help  this poor  victim. That's what we  must do now,  remembering the
Future and our Cause."
     "I'll just get my platties," I said, at the stair-foot, "that is to say
clothes, and then  I'll be ittying off all  on my oddy knocky.  I  mean,  my
gratitude for all,  but I have my own jeezny to  live." Because, brothers, I
wanted to get out of here real skorry. But Z. Dolin said:
     "Ah,  no.  We  have  you,  friend, and  we keep  you. You come with us.
Everything will be all right, you'll see." And he came up to me like to grab
hold of my rooker again. Then, brothers, I thought of fight, but thinking of
fight  made me like  want to collapse and sick,  so I just stood. And then I
saw this like madness in F. Alexander's glazzies and said:
     "Whatever  you say. I am in your rookers. But  let's get it started and
all over, brothers." Because what  I wanted now was to get out of this mesto
called  HOME. I was beginning not to like  the  look of the  glazzies  of F.
Alexander one malenky bit.
     "Good," said this Rubinstein. "Get dressed and let's get started."
     "Dim dim dim," F. Alexander kept saying in a  like low mutter. "What or
who  was this  Dim?" I ittied upstairs real skorry and dressed  in near  two
seconds  flat. Then I was out with these three and  into an auto, Rubinstein
one side of me and Z. Dolin coughing kashl kashl kashl the other side. D. B.
da Silva doing the driving, into the town and to a flatblock not really  all
that distant from what had used to be my own flatblock or home. "Come,  boy,
out," said Z.  Dolin, coughing to make  the cancer-end in  his rot glow  red
like some malenky  furnace. "This is where  you shall be installed."  So  we
ittied in, and there was like another of these Dignity of Labour veshches on
the wall of the vestibule, and we upped in the lift, brothers, and then went
into a flat like all the  flats of all the flatblocks of the town. Very very
malenky, with two bedrooms and one live-eat-work-room, the table of this all
covered with books and papers and ink and bottles and all that cal. "Here is
your  new home,"  said D.  B.  da Silva. "Settle here, boy. Food is  in  the
food-cupboard. Pyjamas are in a drawer. Rest, rest, perturbed spirit."
     "Eh?" I said, not quite ponying that.
     "All right,"  said Rubinstein, with  his starry  goloss.  "We  are  now
leaving you. Work has to be done.  We'll be with  you later. Occupy yourself
as best you can."
     "One thing," coughed  Z. Dolin kashl kashl kashl. "You saw what stirred
in the tortured memory of our friend F. Alexander. Was it, by chance--? That
is to say, did you--? I think you know  what I mean.  We won't let it go any
further."
     "I've paid," I said. "Bog knows I've paid for what I did. I've paid not
only for like myself but for  those bratchnies too that called themselves my
droogs." I felt violent so then I felt a  bit sick. "I'll lay down a bit," I
said. "I've been through terrible terrible times."
     "You  have," said D. B. da Silva, showing all  his thirty zoobies. "You
do that."
     So they left me, brothers.  They ittied off about their business, which
I took to be about politics and all that  cal, and I was on  the bed, all on
my  oddy knocky with everything very  very quiet. I just laid  there with my
sabogs kicked off my  nogas and  my  tie loose,  like all bewildered and not
knowing what sort of a jeezny I was going to live now. And all sorts of like
pictures kept like passing through my gulliver, of the different chellovecks
I'd  met at  school and in  the Staja, and  the different veshches  that had
happened to me, and how there was not one veck you could  trust in the whole
bolshy world. And then I like dozed off, brothers.
     When I woke up I  could hear slooshy music coming out of the wall, real
gromky, and it  was that that had dragged me out of my bit of like sleep. It
was a symphony that I knew real horrorshow but had not slooshied for  many a
year, namely  the Symphony Number Three of the Danish veck Otto Skadelig,  a
very gromky and violent piece, especially in  the first movement, which  was
what was playing now. I slooshied for two seconds  in like interest and joy,
but then it all came over me, the start of the pain and the  sickness, and I
began to groan deep  down in my keeshkas. And then there I was,  me who  had
loved  music so much, crawling off the bed and going oh oh oh to  myself and
then bang bang  banging on the wall creching: "Stop, stop it, turn it  off!"
But  it went  on and it seemed to be like  louder. So I crashed at the  wall
till  my knuckles  were all red  red  krovvy and torn  skin,  creeching  and
creeching, but the music did not stop. Then I thought I had to get away from
it, so I lurched out of the malenky  bedroom and  ittied skorry to the front
door of the  flat, but this had been locked from the outside and I could not
get  out. And all  the time the music got more  and more gromky, like it was
all a  deliberate torture, O my brothers. So I stuck  my little fingers real
deep  in my ookos,  but the trombones and kettledrums blasted through gromky
enough. So I creeched  again for them to stop and  went hammer hammer hammer
on the wall, but it  made not one  malenky bit of difference. "Oh, what am I
to do?"  I boohooed to  myself.  "Oh, Bog in Heaven  help  me."  I was  like
wandering  all  over the flat  in pain and sickness, trying  to shut out the
music and like groaning deep out  of my guts, and then on top of the pile of
books and papers and all that cal that was  on the tablein the living room I
viddied what I had to do and what I had  wanted to do until those old men in
the Public Biblio  and then Dim and Billyboy disguised as rozzes stopped me,
and that was to do myself in, to snuff it, to blast off for ever out of this
wicked and cruel world. What I viddied was the slovo DEATH on the cover of a
like  pamphlet, even though it was only DEATH to THE GOVERNMENT. And like it
was Fate there was another malenky booklet which had an open  window  on the
cover, and it said:
     "Open the window to fresh air, fresh ideas, a new way  of  living." And
so I knew that  was like telling me to finish it all off by jumping out. One
moment of pain, perhaps, and then sleep for ever and ever and ever.
     The music  was still  pouring in  all  brass and drums and the  violins
miles  up through the wall. The window in the room where I had laid down was
open.  I ittied to it and  viddied a  fair drop  to the autos  and buses and
waiting chellovecks below. I creeched out to the world: "Good-bye, good-bye,
may Bog forgive you for a ruined life." Then I got on to the sill, the music
blasting away to my left,  and I shut my  glazzies and felt the cold wind on
my litso, then I jumped.




     I jumped, O my brothers, and I fell on the sidewalk hard, but I did not
snuff  it, oh no.  If I had snuffed  it I would not be here to  write what I
written have. It  seems that the jump was  not from  a big enough heighth to
kill.  But I cracked  my back and my  wrists and  nogas and felt very bolshy
pain before I passed  out, brothers, with astonished and surprised litsos of
chellovecks  in the  streets  looking at me from above.  And just  before  I
passed out I viddied clear that not one chelloveck in the whole horrid world
was for  me and  that that music through the wall had all been like arranged
by those who were supposed to  be my like  new  droogs and that it was  some
veshch like this that they wanted for  their horrible selfish  and  boastful
politics. All that  was  in like a  million millionth  part of  one  minoota
before  I threw over  the  world and the sky and the litsos of  the  staring
chellovecks that were above me.
     Where I was when I came  back to jeezny after a long black black gap of
it  might have been a million years was a hospital,  all white and with this
von of hospitals you get, all like sour and smug and clean. These antiseptic
veshches  you get  in hospitals  should have a  real horrorshow von  of like
frying onions or of flowers. I came very slow back to knowing who  I was and
I was all bound up in white and I could not feel anything in  my plott, pain
nor sensation nor any veshch at all. All round my gulliver was a bandage and
there were bits of stuff  like stuck to my litso, and my rookers were all in
bandages and  like bits  of stick were like fixed  to  my fingers like on it
might be flowers  to make them grow straight, and my poor old nogas were all
straightened  out too, and  it was all bandages and wire  cages and into  my
right rooker,  near  the pletcho, was  red red krovvy dripping  from  a  jar
upside down. But I could not feel anything, O my brothers. There was a nurse
sitting by my bed and she was reading some book that was  all very dim print
and you could viddy it was a story because of a lot  of inverted commas, and
she was like breathing  hard uh uh uh over it, so it must have been  a story
about  the old in-out in-out. She  was  a real  horrorshow  devotchka,  this
nurse, with a very red rot and like long lashes over her glazzies, and under
her  like  very  stiff uniform  you could  viddy  she  had  very  horrorshow
groodies. So I said to her: "What gives,  O my little  sister? Come thou and
have  a nice lay-down with your  malenky droog in  this bed." But the slovos
didn't  come out  horrorshow  at  all,  it being  as though  my rot was  all
stiffened up, and I could feel  with my yahzick that some of my zoobies were
no  longer there. But  this  nurse  like  jumped and dropped her book on the
floor and said:
     "Oh, you've recovered consciousness."
     That was like a big rotful for a malenky ptitsa like her,  and I  tried
to say so,  but the slovos came  out only  like er er er. She ittied off and
left me on my oddy knocky, and  I could  viddy now that I was  in a  malenky
room of my own, not in one of  these long wards like I had been in as a very
little malchick, full of coughing dying starry vecks  all around to make you
want to get well and fit again. It had  been like diphtheria I had had then,
O my brothers.
     It was like now as though I could not hold to being  conscious all that
long, because I was like asleep again almost right away, very skorry, but in
a  minoota or two I was  sure that  this nurse ptitsa had  come back and had
brought chellovecks in white coats  with her and they were viddying me  very
frowning and  going hm  hm hm at Your Humble Narrator. And  with them I  was
sure there  was the old charles from  the  Staja govoreeting: "Oh my son, my
son," breathing a like very stale  von of whisky  on to  me and then saying:
"But I would not stay, oh no. I could not in no wise subscribe to what those
bratchnies  are going to do to other poor prestoopnicks. O I got  out and am
preaching sermons now about it all, my little beloved son in J. C."
     I woke up again later on and who should I viddy there round the bed but
the  three from  whose  flat I  had  jumped out, namely  D. B. da  Silva and
Something Something Rubinstein and  Z. Dolin. "Friend,"  one of  these vecks
was saying, but I could not viddy, or slooshy horrorshow which one, "friend,
little  friend," this  goloss  was  saying,  "the people  are on  fire  with
indignation. You have killed  those  horrible boastful  villains' chances of
re-election. They will go  and will  go  for ever and ever.  You have served
Liberty well." I tried to say:
     "If I  had  died it  would  have been  even better  for  you  political
bratchnies, would it not, pretending and treacherous droogs as you are." But
all that came out was er er er. Then one of these three seemed to hold out a
lot of bits cut from gazettas and what I  could viddy was a horrible picture
of  me all  krovvy  on a stretcher  being carried off  and  I seemed to like
remember a kind of a  popping  of  lights which  must have been photographer
vecks.  Out of  one glazz I  could read  like headlines which  were  sort of
trembling in the rooker of the chelloveck that held them, like BOY VICTIM OF
CRIMINAL  REFORM SCHEME and  GOVERNMENT  AS  MURDERER  and there  was like a
picture  of a veck that looked familiar to me and  it said  OUT OUT OUT, and
that  would  be the Minister  of the Inferior or  Interior.  Then  the nurse
ptitsa said:
     "You  shouldn't be  exciting  him  like  that.  You  shouldn't be doing
anything that will make him upset. Now come on, let's have you out." I tried
to say:
     "Out out out," but it was er er er again. Anyway, these three political
vecks went. And I went, too, only back to  the land,  back  to all blackness
lit up by like  odd  dreams which I didn't know  whether they were dreams or
not,  O my brothers. Like for instance I had this idea of my  whole plott or
body being like emptied of  as it might  be dirty water and  then filled  up
again with clean. And then there were really lovely and horrorshow dreams of
being  in some veck's  auto that had been  crasted by  me and driving up and
down the world all on my oddy knocky running lewdies  down  and hearing them
creech they were  dying, and in me no pain  and no sickness. And  also there
were  dreams of doing the old  in-out in-out with  devotchkas,  forcing like
them  down  on  the  ground and making them have  it and everybody  standing
around claping their rookers  and cheering like bezoomny. And then I woke up
again  and it was my pee and em come to viddy their ill son, my em boohooing
real horrorshow. I could govoreet a lot better now and could say: "Well well
well well  well, what gives? What makes you think you  are like welcome?" My
papapa said, in a like ashamed way:
     "You were in the papers, son. It said they had done great wrong to you.
It said how the Government drove you to try and  do yourself in. And it  was
our fault too, in  a way,  son. Your  home's your home, when all's  said and
done,  son."  And  my  mum  kept  on going boohoohoo  and  looking  ugly  as
kiss-my-sharries. So I said:
     "And  how  beeth the new  son Joe? Well and healthy and  prosperous,  I
trust and pray?" My mum said:
     "Oh, Alex Alex. Owwwwwwww." My papapa said:
     "A  very awkward thing,  son. He  got into  a bit of  trouble  with the
police and was done by the police."
     "Really?" I said.  "Really? Such  a good  sort of  chelloveck and  all.
Amazed proper I am, honest."
     "Minding his own business he  was," said my pee.  "And  the police told
him to move  on. Waiting at a corner he was, son, to see a girl he was going
to meet.  And they  told  him  to  move on and  he  said he had rights  like
everybody else,  and then they  sort of fell on top of him and hit him about
cruel."
     "Terrible," I said. "Really terrible. And where is the poor boy now?"
     "Owwwww," boohooed my mum. "Gone back owwwwwwme."
     "Yes," said dad. "He's gone back  to his own  home  town to get better.
They've had to give his job here to somebody else."
     "So  now," I  said,  "You're willing for me to move back in  again  and
things be like they were before."
     "Yes, son," said my papapa. "Please, son."
     "I'll consider it," I said. "I'll think about it real careful."
     "Owwwww," went my mum.
     "Ah, shut it," I said, "or I'll give you something  proper to yowl  and
creech about. Kick your zoobies in I  will." And, O my brothers, saying that
made  me feel a  malenky bit better, as if all like fresh red red krovvy was
flowing all through my plott.  That was  something I had  to think about. It
was like as though to get better I had had to get worse.
     "That's no way to speak to your  mother,  son,"  said my papapa. "After
all, she brought you into the world."
     "Yes,"  I said. "And  a  right  grahzny  vonny  world too."  I shut  my
glazzies tight in like pain and said: "Go away now.  I'll think about coming
back. But things will have to be very different."
     "Yes, son," said my pee. "Anything you say."
     "You'll have to make up your mind," I said, "who's to be boss."
     "Owwwwww," my mum went on.
     "Very good, son," said my papapa. "Things will be as you like. Only get
well."
     When they had gone  I laid and thought a  bit about different veshches,
like all different pictures passing through my gulliver, and when the  nurse
ptitsa came back  in and  like straightened the sheets on the  bed I said to
her:
     "How long is it I've been in here?"
     "A week or so," she said.
     "And what have they been doing to me?"
     "Well," she said, "you were all broken up and bruised and had sustained
severe  concussion and had lost a lot of blood. They've had  to put all that
right, haven't they?"
     "But," I said, "has anyone been doing anything with my gulliver? What I
mean is, have they been playing around with inside like my brain?"
     "Whatever they've done," she said, "it'll all be for the best."
     But a couple of days later a  couple of like doctor vecks came in, both
youngish  vecks with these very sladky  smiles, and they had  like a picture
book with them. One of them said:
     "We want you  to have a look at these and to  tell  us  what you  think
about them. All right?"
     "What giveth, O little droogies?"  I said. "What new bezoomny idea dost
thou  in mind have?" So they  both had a like embarrassed smeck  at that and
then they sat down either side  of the bed and opened  up this book.  On the
first page there was like a photograph of a bird-nest full of eggs.
     "Yes?" one of these doctor vecks said.
     "A bird-nest," I said, "full of like eggs. Very very nice."
     "And what would you like to do about it?" the other one said.
     "Oh," I said, "smash them. Pick up the  lot and like throw them against
a  wall or a cliff or  something  and then viddy  them  all  smash  up  real
horrorshow."
     "Good good," they both said, and then the page  was turned. It was like
a  picture of  one of these bolshy great birds called peacocks with  all its
tail spread out in all colours  in a very boastful  way.  "Yes?" said one of
these vecks.
     "I would  like,"  I said, "to  pull out like all those feathers  in its
tail and slooshy it creech blue murder. For being so like boastful."
     "Good," they both said, "good good good." And  they went on turning the
pages. There were like pictures of real horrorshow devotchkas, and I  said I
would like  to give them the old in-out in-out  with lots of ultra-violence.
There were like pictures of chellovecks being given the boot straight in the
litso and all red red krovvy everywhere and I  said I would like to be in on
that. And there was a picture of the old nagoy droog of the prison charlie's
carrying his cross up a hill, and I said I would like to have the old hammer
and nails. Good good good, I said:
     "What is all this?"
     "Deep hypnopaedia," or  some  such  slovo, said one of these two vecks.
"You seem to be cured."
     "Cured?" I said. "Me tied down to this bed like this and you say cured?
Kiss my sharries is what I say."
     So I waited and, O  my  brothers, I  got a lot better, munching away at
eggiwegs  and lomticks of toast and peeting bolshy great mugs of milky chai,
and then one day they  said I was  going to  have  a  very very very special
visitor.
     "Who?" I said,  while they straightened  the bed and combed my luscious
glory for me, me having the bandage off  now from  my  gulliver and the hair
growing again.
     "You'll see, you'll  see,"  they  said. And I  viddied  all  right.  At
two-thirty of the afternoon there were like all photographers  and  men from
gazettas  with noteboks  and  pencils and all that cal.  And, brothers, they
near trumpeted a bolshy  fanfare for this great and important  veck who  was
coming to viddy Your Humble Narrator. And in  he came, and  of course it was
none other than the  Minister of the  Interior  or Inferior, dressed in  the
heighth  of  fashion and with  this  very upper-class  haw haw goloss. Flash
flash bang went the  cameras when he put out his rooker to me to shake it. I
said:
     "Well well well well well. What giveth then, old droogie?"
     Nobody seemed to quite pony  that, but  somebody  said in  a like harsh
goloss:
     "Be more respectful, boy, in addressing the Minister."
     "Yarbles,"  I  said,  like   snarling  like  a  doggie.  "Bolshy  great
yarblockos to thee and thine."
     "All right, all right," said the Interior Inferior one very skorry. "He
speaks to me as a friend, don't you, son?"
     "I am everyone's friend," I said. "Except to my enemies."
     "Well,"  said the  Int  Inf Min, sitting  down by my  bed.  "I and  the
Government  of which  I am a member  want you to regard  us as friends. Yes,
friends.  We have put you right, yes? You are getting the best of treatment.
We never wished you harm, but there are some who did and do. And I think you
know who those are."
     "Yes yes yes," he said. "There  are certain men who  wanted to use you,
yes, use you for political ends. They  would  have been glad,  yes, glad for
you  to be dead, for  they thought  they could  then  blame  it all  on  the
Government. I think you know who those men are."
     "There is a man," said the Intinfmin, "called F. Alexander, a writer of
subversive literature, who has been howling for your blood.  He has been mad
with desire to stick a knife in you.  But  you're safe from him now.  We put
him away."
     "He was  supposed to be like a droogie," I said.  "Like a mother to  me
was what he was."
     "He found out that you had done  wrong to him. At least," said  the Min
very very skorry, "he believed  you had done wrong. He  formed  this idea in
his  mind that you  had  been responsible for the death of someone near  and
dear to him."
     "What you mean," I said, "is that he was told."
     "He had this idea," said the Min. "He was a menace. We put him away for
his own protection. And also," he said, "for yours."
     "Kind," I said. "Most kind of thou."
     "When you leave here," said the  Min, "you  will  have  no  worries. We
shall see  to  everything.  A  good job on a  good salary. Because  you  are
helping us."
     "Am I?" I said.
     "We always help our friends,  don't we?" And then he took my rooker and
some veck creeched: "Smile!" and I smiled  like  bezoomny  without thinking,
and then flash flash crack flash bang there  were pictures being taken of me
and  the  Intinfmin  all  droogy  together.  "Good  boy,"  said  this  great
chelloveck.
     "Good good boy. And now, see, a present."
     What was brought in  now, brothers, was a big  shiny box, and I viddied
clear what sort of a veshch it was. It was a stereo. It was put down next to
the bed and opened up and some veck  plugged its lead into the  wall-socket.
"What  shall it be?"  asked a veck with otchkies on his nose, and he  had in
his  rookers  lovely  shiny  sleeves  full  of  music.  "Mozart?  Beethoven?
Schoenberg? Carl Orff?"
     "The Ninth," I said. "The glorious Ninth."
     And the Ninth it  was, O my brothers. Everybody began to leave nice and
quiet  while I laid  there with my  glazzies  closed,  slooshying the lovely
music.  The Min said: "Good  good boy," patting  me on the pletcho,  then he
ittied off. Only one veck was left, saying: "Sign here, please." I opened my
glazzies up to sign, not knowing what I was signing and  not, O my brothers,
caring either. Then I was left alone with the glorious Ninth of Ludwig van.
     Oh it was gorgeosity and yumyumyum. When it came to the Scherzo I could
viddy  myself  very  clear  running  and  running  on  like  very  light and
mysterious nogas, carving  the whole litso of  the  creeching  world with my
cut-throat  britva.  And there  was  the slow movement  and the  lovely last
singing movement still to come. I was cured all right.




     Words that do not appear  to be of Russian  origin are distinguished by
asterisks. (For help with  the Russian, I am indebted to the  kindness of my
colleague Nora Montesinos and a number of correspondents.)



     *appy polly loggy--apology
     baboochka--old woman
     *baddiwad--bad
     banda--band
     bezoomny--mad
     biblio--library
     bitva--battle
     Bog--God
     bolnoy--sick
     bolshy--big, great
     brat, bratty--brother
     bratchny--bastard
     britva--razor
     brooko--belly
     brosay--to throw
     bugatty--rich
     cal--feces
     *cancer--cigarette
     cantora--office
     carman--pocket
     chai--tea
     *charles, charlie--chaplain
     chasha--cup
     chasso--guard
     cheena--woman
     cheest--to wash
     chelloveck--person, man, fellow
     chepooka--nonsense
     choodesny--wonderful
     *chumble--to mumble
     clop--to knock
     cluve--beak
     collocoll--bell
     *crack--to break up or `bust'
     *crark--to yowl?
     crast--to steal or rob; robbery
     creech--to shout or scream
     *cutter--money
     dama--lady
     ded--old man
     deng--money
     devotchka--girl
     dobby--good
     *dook--trace, ghost
     domy--house
     dorogoy--dear, valuable
     dratsing--fighting
     *drencrom--drug
     droog--friend
     *dung--to defecate
     dva--two
     eegra--game
     eemya--name
     *eggiweg--egg
     *filly--to play or fool with
     *firegold--drink
     *fist--to punch
     *flip--wild?
     forella - `trout'
     gazetta--newspaper
     glazz--eye
     gloopy--stupid
     *golly--unit of money
     goloss--voice
     goober--lip
     gooly--to walk
     gorlo--throat
     govoreet--to speak or talk
     grahzny--dirty
     grazzy--soiled
     gromky--loud
     groody--breast
     gruppa--group
     *guff--guffaw
     gulliver--head
     *guttiwuts--guts
     *hen-korm--chickenfeed
     *horn--to cry out
     horrorshow--good, well
     *in-out in-out--copulation
     interessovat--to interest
     itty--to go
     *jammiwam--jam
     jeezny--life
     kartoffel--potato
     keeshkas--guts
     kleb--bread
     klootch--key
     knopka--button
     kopat--to `dig'
     koshka--cat
     kot--tomcat
     krovvy--blood
     kupet--to buy
     lapa--paw
     lewdies--people
     *lighter--crone?
     litso--face
     lomtick, piece, bit
     loveted--caught
     lubbilubbing--making love
     *luscious glory--hair
     malchick--boy
     malenky--little, tiny
     maslo--butter
     merzky--filthy
     messel--thought, fancy
     mesto--place
     millicent--policeman
     minoota--minute
     molodoy--young
     moloko--milk
     moodge--man
     morder--snout
     *mounch--snack
     mozg--brain
     nachinat--to begin
     nadmenny--arrogant
     nadsat--teenage
     nagoy--naked
     *nazz--fool
     neezhnies--underpants
     nochy--night
     noga--foot, leg
     nozh--knife
     nuking--smelling
     oddy knocky--lonesome
     odin--one
     okno--window
     oobivat--to kill
     ookadeet--to leave
     ooko--ear
     oomny--brainy
     oozhassny--terrible
     oozy--chain
     osoosh--to wipe
     otchkies--eyeglasses
     *pan-handle--erection
     *pee and em--parents
     peet--to drink
     pishcha--food
     platch--to cry
     platties--clothes
     pletcho--shoulder
     plenny--prisoner
     plesk--splash
     *plosh--to splash
     plott--body
     podooshka--pillow
     pol--sex
     polezny--useful
     *polyclef--skeleton key
     pony--to understand
     poogly--frightened
     pooshka - `cannon'
     prestoopnick--criminal
     privodeet--to lead somewhere
     smeck--laugh
     *pretty polly--money
     prod--to produce
     ptitsa - `chick'
     pyahnitsa--drunk
     rabbit--work, job
     radosty--joy
     raskazz--story
     rassoodock--mind
     raz--time
     razdraz--upset
     razrez--to rip, ripping
     rook, rooker--hand, arm
     rot--mouth
     rozz--policeman
     sabog--shoe
     sakar--sugar
     sammy--generous
     *sarky--sarcastic
     scoteena - `cow'
     shaika--gang
     *sharp--female
     sharries--buttocks
     shest--barrier
     *shilarny--concern
     *shive--slice
     shiyah--neck
     shlem--helmet
     *shlaga--club
     shlapa--hat
     shoom - noise
     shoot--fool
     *sinny--cinema
     skazat--to say
     *skolliwoll--school
     skorry--quick, quickly
     *skriking--scratching
     skvat--to grab
     sladky--sweet
     sloochat--to happen
     sloosh, slooshy--to hear, to listen
     slovo--word
     smot--to look
     sneety--dream
     *snoutie--tobacco?
     *snuff it--to die
     sobirat--to pick up
     *sod--to fornicate, fornicator
     soomka - `bag'
     soviet--advice, order
     spat--to sleep
     *splodge, splosh--splash
     *spoogy--terrified
     *Staja--State Jail
     starry--ancient
     strack--horror
     *synthemesc--drug
     tally--waist
     *tashtook--handkerchief
     *tass--cup
     tolchock--to hit or push; blow, beating
     toofles--slippers
     tree--three
     vareet--to `cook up'
     *vaysay--washroom
     veck--(see chelloveck)
     *vellocet--drug
     veshch--thing
     viddy--to see or look
     voloss--hair
     von--smell
     vred--to harm or damage
     yahma--hole
     *yahoodies--Jews
     yahzick--tongue
     *yarbles--testicles
     yeckate--to drive
     *warble--song
     zammechat--remarkable
     zasnoot--sleep
     zheena--wife
     zoobies--teeth
     zvonock--bellpull
     zvook--sound




      ""--http://artefact.cns.ru/library/




Last-modified: Tue, 24 Dec 2002 07:32:49 GMT
: