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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
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