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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
(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