Stanley Kubrick's A clockwork orange: based on the novel by Anthony Burgess (11 page)

making with a frog's rot.  So I said to Pete and old Dim: "You

two droogies get either side of the door.  Right?"  They

nodded in the dark right right right.  "So,"  I said to Georgie,

and I made bold straight for the front door.  There was a

bellpush and I pushed, and brrrrrrr brrrrr sounded down the

hall inside.  Alike sense of slooshying followed, as though the

ptitsa and her koshkas all had their ears back at the brrrrrr

brrrrrr, wondering.  So I pushed the old zvonock a malenky bit

more urgent.  I then bent down to the letter-slit and called

through in a refined like goloss: "Help, madam, please.  My

friend has just had a funny turn on the street.  Let me phone a

doctor, please."  Then I could viddy a light being put on in the

hall, and then I could hear the old baboochka's nogas

going flip flap in flip-flap slippers to nearer the front door,

and I got the idea, I don't know why, that she had a big fat

pussycat under each arm.  Then she called out in a very sur-

prising deep like goloss:

"Go away.  Go away or I shoot."  Georgie heard that and

wanted to giggle.  I said, with like suffering and urgency in my

gentleman's goloss:

"Oh, please help, madam.  My friend's very ill."

"Go away," she called.  "I know your dirty tricks, making me

open the door and then buy things I don't want.  Go away.  I

tell you."  That was real lovely innocence, that was.  "Go away,"

she said again, "or I'll set my cats on to you."  A malenky bit

bezoomny she was, you could tell that, through spending her

jeezny all on her oddy knocky.  Then I looked up and I viddied

that there was a sash-window above the front door and that

it would be a lot more skorry to just do the old pletcho climb

and get in that way.  Else there'd be this argument all the long

nochy.  So I said:

"Very well, madam.  If you won't help I must take my

suffering friend elsewhere."  And I winked my droogies all away

quiet, only me crying out: "All right, old friend, you will surely

meet some good samaritan some place other.  This old lady

perhaps cannot be blamed for being suspicious with so many

scoundrels and rogues of the night about.  No, indeed not."

Then we waited again in the dark and I whispered: "Right.

Return to the door.  Me stand on Dim's pletchoes.  Open that

window and me enter, droogies.  Then to shut up that old

ptitsa and open up for all.  No trouble."  For I was like showing

who was leader and the chelloveck with the ideas.  "See," I said.

"Real horrorshow bit of stonework over that door, a nice

hold for my nogas."  They viddied all that, admiring perhaps I

thought, and said and nodded Right right right in the dark.

So back tiptoe to the door.  Dim was our heavy strong

malchick and Pete and Georgie like heaved me up on to Dim's

bolshy manly pletchoes.  All this time, O thanks to worldcasts

on the gloopy TV and, more, lewdies' night-fear through lack

of night-police, dead lay the street.  Up there on Dim's plet-

choes I viddied that this stonework above the door would

take my boots lovely.  I kneed up, brothers, and there I was.

The window, as I had expected, was closed, but I outed with

my britva and cracked the glass of the window smart with the

bony handle thereof.  All the time below my droogies were

hard breathing.  So I put in my rooker through the crack and

made the lower half of the window sail up open silver-

smooth and lovely.  And I was, like getting into the bath, in.

And there were my sheep down below, their rots open as they

looked up, O brothers.

I was in bumpy darkness, with beds and cupboards and

bolshy heavy stoolies and piles of boxes and books about.

But I strode manful towards the door of the room I was in,

seeing a like crack of light under it.  The door went

squeeeeeeeeeeak and then I was on a dusty corridor with

other doors.  All this waste, brothers, meaning all these

rooms and but one starry sharp and her pussies, but perhaps

the kots and koshkas had like separate bedrooms, living on

cream and fish-heads like royal queens and princes.  I could

hear the like muffled goloss of this old ptitsa down below

saying: "Yes yes yes, that's it," but she would be govoreeting to

these mewing sidlers going maaaaaaa for more moloko.

Then I saw the stairs going down to the hall and I thought to

myself that I would show these fickle and worthless droogs of

mine that I was worth the whole three of them and more.  I

would do all on my oddy knocky.  I would perform the old

ultra-violence on the starry ptitsa and on her pusspots if need

be, then I would take fair rookerfuls of what looked like real

polezny stuff and go waltzing to the front door and open up

showering gold and silver on my waiting droogs.  They must

learn all about leadership.

So down I ittied, slow and gentle, admiring in the stairwell

grahzny pictures of old time - devotchkas with long hair and

high collars, the like country with trees and horses, the holy

bearded veck all nagoy hanging on a cross.  There was a real

musty von of pussies and pussy-fish and starry dust in this

domy, different from the flatblocks.  And then I was down-

stairs and I could viddy the light in this front room where she

had been doling moloko to the kots and koshkas.  More, I

could viddy these great overstuffed scoteenas going in and

out with their tails waving and like rubbing themselves on the

door-bottom.  On a like big wooden chest in the dark hall I

could viddy a nice malenky statue that shone in the light of

the room, so I crasted this for my own self, it being like a

young thin devotchka standing on one noga with her rookers

out, and I could see this was made of silver.  So I had this

when I ittied into the lit-up room, saying: "Hi hi hi.  At last we

meet.  Our brief govoreet through the letter-hole was not,

shall we say, satisfactory, yes?  Let us admit not, oh verily not,

you stinking starry old sharp."  And I like blinked in the light at

this room and the old ptitsa in it.  It was full of kots and

koshkas all crawling to and fro over the carpet, with bits of

fur floating in the lower air, and these fat scoteenas were all

different shapes and colours, black, white, tabby, ginger, tor-

toise-shell, and of all ages, too, so that there were kittens

fillying about with each other and there were pussies full-

grown and there were real dribbling starry ones very bad-

tempered.  Their mistress, this old ptitsa, looked at me fierce

like a man and said:

"How did you get in?  Keep your distance, you villainous

young toad, or I shall be forced to strike you."

I had a real horrorshow smeck at that, viddying that she

had in her veiny rooker a crappy wood walking-stick which

she raised at me threatening.  So, making with my shiny

zoobies, I ittied a bit nearer to her, taking my time, and on the

way I saw on a like sideboard a lovely little veshch, the love-

liest malenky veshch any malchick fond of music like myself

could ever hope to viddy with his own two glazzies, for it was

like the gulliver and pletchoes of Ludwig van himself, what

they call a bust, a like stone veshch with stone long hair and

blind glazzies and the big flowing cravat.  I was off for that

right away, saying: "Well, how lovely and all for me."  But

ittying towards it with my glazzies like full on it and my

greedy rooker held out, I did not see the milk saucers on the

floor and into one I went and sort of lost balance.  "Whoops,"

I said, trying to steady, but this old ptitsa had come up behind

me very sly and with great skorriness for her age and then she

went crack crack on my gulliver with her bit of a stick.  So I

found myself on my rookers and knees trying to get up and

saying: "Naughty, naughty naughty."  And then she was going

crack crack crack again, saying: "Wretched little slummy

bedbug, breaking into real people's houses."  I didn't like this

crack crack eegra, so I grasped hold of one end of her stick as

it came down again and then she lost her balance and was

trying to steady herself against the table, but then the table-

cloth came off with a milk-jug and a milk-bottle going all

drunk then scattering white splosh in all directions, then she

was down on the floor, grunting, going: "Blast you, boy, you

shall suffer."  Now all the cats were getting spoogy and running

and jumping in a like cat-panic, and some were blaming each

other, hitting out cat-tolchocks with the old lapa and ptaaaaa

and grrrrr and kraaaaark.  I got up on to my nogas, and there

was this nasty vindictive starry forella with her wattles ashake

and grunting as she like tried to lever herself up from the

floor, so I gave her a malenky fair kick in the litso, and she

didn't like that, crying: "Waaaaah," and you could viddy her

veiny mottled litso going purplewurple where I'd landed the

old noga.

As I stepped back from the kick I must have like trod on the

tail of one of these dratsing creeching pusspots, because I

slooshied a gromky yauuuuuuuuw and found that like fur and

teeth and claws had like fastened themselves around my leg,

and there I was cursing away and trying to shake it off holding

this silver malenky statue in one rooker and trying to climb

over this old ptitsa on the floor to reach lovely Ludwig van in

frowning like stone.  And then I was into another saucer brim-

ful of creamy moloko and near went flying again, the whole

veshch really a very humorous one if you could imagine it

sloochatting to some other veck and not to Your Humble

Narrator.  And then the starry ptitsa on the floor reached over

all the dratsing yowling pusscats and grabbed at my noga, still

going "Waaaaah" at me, and, my balance being a bit gone, I

went really crash this time, on to sploshing moloko and

skriking koshkas, and the old forella started to fist me on the

litso, both of us being on the floor, creeching: "Thrash him,

beat him, pull out his finger-nails, the poisonous young

beetle," addressing her pusscats only, and then, as if like obey-

ing the starry old ptitsa, a couple of koshkas got on to me

and started scratching like bezoomny.  So then I got real be-

zoomny myself, brothers, and hit out at them, but this bab-

oochka said: "Toad, don't touch my kitties," and like

scratched my litso.  So then I screeched: "You filthy old

soomka", and upped with the little malenky like silver statue

and cracked her a fine fair tolchock on the gulliver and that

shut her up real horrorshow and lovely.

Now as I got up from the floor among all the crarking kots

and koshkas what should I slooshy but the shoom of the old

police-auto siren in the distance, and it dawned on me skorry

that the old forella of the pusscats had been on the phone to

the millicents when I thought she'd been govoreeting to the

mewlers and mowlers, her having got her suspicions skorry