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


        7

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

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

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

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

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



        PART TWO

        1

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

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

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


        2

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


        3

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


        4

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


        5

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


        6

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