Энтони Берджес. Механический апельсин (engl)

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     Origin: Библиотека "Артефакт"--http://artefact.cns.ru/library/ ? http://artefact.cns.ru/library/
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        Anthony Burgess. A Clockwork Orange



        INTRODUCTION

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


        COVER NOTES

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


        PART 1

        1

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


        2

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

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

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

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

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


        3

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


        4

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


        5

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


        6

     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