there it was cruising about in my krovvy, so that I would be
sick  always  for  ever  and  ever amen  whenever  I  viddied  any  of  this
ultra-violence. So now I squared my rot and  went boo hoo hoo, and the tears
like blotted  out what  I  was forced to viddy in  like  all  blessed  runny
silvery  dewdrops. But  these white-coat bratchnies  were  skorry with their
tashtooks  to  wipe the  tears  away,  saying:  "There  there,  wazzums  all
weepy-weepy den." And there it was again all clear before my glazzies, these
Germans prodding like  beseeching  and weeping  Jews--vecks and  cheenas and
malchicks  and  devotchkas--into mestos where  they would all  snuff  it  of
poison gas.  Boo hoo hoo I had to go  again, and along they came to wipe the
tears  off,  very skorry,  so I should not miss  one solitary veshch of what
they were showing. It  was  a terrible and horrible day,  O  my brothers and
only friends.
     I  was lying on the  bed  all alone  that nochy after  my dinner of fat
thick  mutton stew and fruit-pie  and ice-cream, and  I  thought  to myself:
"Hell hell  hell, there might be a chance for me if I get out now." I had no
weapon, though. I was allowed no britva  here, and I had been  shaved  every
other day by a fat bald-headed veck who came to my bed before breakfast, two
white-coated  bratchnies  standing  by  to  viddy  I  was a good non-violent
malchick. The nails on my rookers had been scissored and filed real short so
I could not  scratch. But I was still skorry on  the attack, though they had
weakened me down, brothers, to a like  shadow of what I  had been in the old
free days. So now I got off the bed and went to the locked door and began to
fist  it real horrorshow and  hard, creeching  at the same time:  "Oh,  help
help. I'm  sick, I'm dying. Doctor doctor  doctor, quick. Please.  Oh,  I'll
die, I shall. Help." My gorlo was real dry and sore before anyone came. Then
I heard nogas coming down the corridor and a like grumbling goloss, and then
I recognized the goloss of the white-coated  veck who brought me pishcha and
like escorted me to my daily doom.
     He like grumbled:
     "What is it? What goes on? What's your little nasty game in there?"
     "Oh, I'm dying," I like moaned.  "Oh, I have a ghastly pain in my side.
Appendicitis, it is. Ooooooh."
     "Appendy shitehouse," grumbled this veck, and then to my joy, brothers,
I could slooshy the like clank of keys. "If you're  trying it little friend,
my friends  and me  will beat and kick  you all  through the night." Then he
opened up and brought in like  the sweet  air of the promise  of my freedom.
Now I was like behind the door when he pushed it open, and I could viddy him
in  the corridor light looking round for me puzzled.  Then  I raised my  two
fisties to tolchock him on the neck  nasty, and then, I swear, as  I viddied
him in advance lying moaning or out out out and felt the like joy rise in my
guts, it was then that this sickness rose in me as it  might be a wave and I
felt a horrible fear as if I was really going  to die.  I like tottered over
to the bed going urgh urgh urgh, and the veck, who was not in his white coat
but an over-gown, viddied clear enough what I had in mind for he said:
     "Well,  everything's a lesson, isn't it? Learning all  the time, as you
could say. Come  on, little friend, get up from that bed and hit me. I  want
you to, yes, really. A real good crack across the jaw. Oh, I'm dying for it,
really I am." But all I could do,  brothers, was to just lay  there  sobbing
boo hoo hoo. "Scum," like sneered  this veck now. "Filth."  And he pulled me
up by like the scruff of my pyjama-top, me being very weak and limp,  and he
raised and swung his right rooker so that I got a fair old tolchock clean on
the  litso.  "That,"  he said, "is  for getting me  out of my bed, you young
dirt." And he wiped his rookers against each other swish swish and went out.
Crunch crunch went the key in the lock.
     And  what,  brothers, I had to  escape  into  sleep  from then  was the
horrible and wrong feeling that it was better to get  the  hit than give it.
If that veck had stayed I might even have like presented the other cheek.


        7

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


        PART THREE

        1

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


        2

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


        3

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


        4

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


        5

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


        6

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


        Glossary of Nadsat Language

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



     *appy polly loggy--apology
     baboochka--old woman
     *baddiwad--bad
     banda--band
     bezoomny--mad
     biblio--library
     bitva--battle
     Bog--God
     bolnoy--sick
     bolshy--big, great
     brat, bratty--brother
     bratchny--bastard
     britva--razor
     brooko--belly
     brosay--to throw
     bugatty--rich
     cal--feces
     *cancer--cigarette
     cantora--office
     carman--pocket
     chai--tea
     *charles, charlie--chaplain
     chasha--cup
     chasso--guard
     cheena--woman
     cheest--to wash
     chelloveck--person, man, fellow
     chepooka--nonsense
     choodesny--wonderful
     *chumble--to mumble
     clop--to knock
     cluve--beak
     collocoll--bell
     *crack--to break up or `bust'
     *crark--to yowl?
     crast--to steal or rob; robbery
     creech--to shout or scream
     *cutter--money
     dama--lady
     ded--old man
     deng--money
     devotchka--girl
     dobby--good
     *dook--trace, ghost
     domy--house
     dorogoy--dear, valuable
     dratsing--fighting
     *drencrom--drug
     droog--friend
     *dung--to defecate
     dva--two
     eegra--game
     eemya--name
     *eggiweg--egg
     *filly--to play or fool with
     *firegold--drink
     *fist--to punch
     *flip--wild?
     forella - `trout'
     gazetta--newspaper
     glazz--eye
     gloopy--stupid
     *golly--unit of money
     goloss--voice
     goober--lip
     gooly--to walk
     gorlo--throat
     govoreet--to speak or talk
     grahzny--dirty
     grazzy--soiled
     gromky--loud
     groody--breast
     gruppa--group
     *guff--guffaw
     gulliver--head
     *guttiwuts--guts
     *hen-korm--chickenfeed
     *horn--to cry out
     horrorshow--good, well
     *in-out in-out--copulation
     interessovat--to interest
     itty--to go
     *jammiwam--jam
     jeezny--life
     kartoffel--potato
     keeshkas--guts
     kleb--bread
     klootch--key
     knopka--button
     kopat--to `dig'
     koshka--cat
     kot--tomcat
     krovvy--blood
     kupet--to buy
     lapa--paw
     lewdies--people
     *lighter--crone?
     litso--face
     lomtick, piece, bit
     loveted--caught
     lubbilubbing--making love
     *luscious glory--hair
     malchick--boy
     malenky--little, tiny
     maslo--butter
     merzky--filthy
     messel--thought, fancy
     mesto--place
     millicent--policeman
     minoota--minute
     molodoy--young
     moloko--milk
     moodge--man
     morder--snout
     *mounch--snack
     mozg--brain
     nachinat--to begin
     nadmenny--arrogant
     nadsat--teenage
     nagoy--naked
     *nazz--fool
     neezhnies--underpants
     nochy--night
     noga--foot, leg
     nozh--knife
     nuking--smelling
     oddy knocky--lonesome
     odin--one
     okno--window
     oobivat--to kill
     ookadeet--to leave
     ooko--ear
     oomny--brainy
     oozhassny--terrible
     oozy--chain
     osoosh--to wipe
     otchkies--eyeglasses
     *pan-handle--erection
     *pee and em--parents