Stanley Kubrick's A clockwork orange: based on the novel by Anthony Burgess (13 page)

back of his rooker.  And I wiped and wiped and wiped my spat-

on litso with my bloody tashtook, saying "Thank you, sir,

thank you very much, sir, that was very kind of you, sir, thank

you."  And then P. R. Deltoid walked out without another

slovo.

The millicents now got down to making this long state-

ment for me to sign, and I thought to myself, Hell and blast

you all, if all you bastards are on the side of the Good then

I'm glad I belong to the other shop.  "All right," I said to them,

"you grahzny bratchnies as you are, you vonny sods.  Take it,

take the lot.  I'm not going to crawl around on my brooko

any more, you merzky gets.  Where do you want it taking

from, you cally vonning animals?  From my last corrective?

Horrorshow, horrorshow, here it is, then."  So I gave it to

them, and I had this shorthand milicent, a very quiet and

scared type chelloveck, no real rozz at all, covering page after

page after page after.  I gave them the ultra-violence, the crast-

ing, the dratsing, the old in-out-in-out, the lot, right up to

this night's veshch with the bugatty starry ptitsa with the

mewing kots and koshkas.  And I made sure my so-called

droogs were in it, right up to the shiyah.  When I'd got

through the lot the shorthand millicent looked a bit faint,

poor old veck.  The top rozz said to him, in a kind type goloss:

"Right, son, you go off and get a nice cup of chai for your-

self and then type all that filth and rottenness out with a

clothes-peg on your nose, three copies.  Then they can be

brought to our handsome young friend here for signature.

And you," he said to me, "can now be shown to your bridal

suite with running water and all conveniences.  All right," in

this weary goloss to two of the real tough rozzes, "take him

away."

So I was kicked and punched and bullied off to the cells and

put in with about ten or twelve other plennies, a lot of them

drunk.  There were real oozhassny animal type vecks among

them, one with his nose all ate away and his rot open like a

big black hole, one that was lying on the floor snoring away

and all like slime dribbling all the time out of his rot, and one

that had like done all cal in his pantalonies.  Then there were

two like queer ones who both took a fancy to me, and one of

them made a jump onto my back, and I had a real nasty bit of

dratsing with him and the von on him, like of meth and cheap

scent, made me want to sick again, only my belly was empty

now, O my brothers.  Then the other queer one started putting

his rookers on to me, and then there was a snarling bit of

dratsing between these two, both of them wanting to get at

my plott.  The shoom became very loud, so that a couple of

millicents came along and cracked into these two with like

truncheons, so that both sat quiet then, looking like into

space, and there was the old krovvy going drip drip drip down

the litso of one of them.  There were bunks in this cell, but all

filled.  I climbed up to the top one of one tier of bunks, there

being four in a tier, and there was a starry drunken veck snor-

ing away, most probably heaved up there to the top by the

millicents.  Anyway, I heaved him down again, him not being

all that heavy, and he collapsed on top of a fat drunk chello-

veck on the floor, and both woke and started creeching and

punching pathetic at each other.  So I lay down on this vonny

bed, my brothers, and went to very tired and exhausted and

hurt sleep.  But it was not really like sleep, it was like passing

out to another better world.  And in this other better world, O

my brothers, I was in like a big field with all flowers and trees,

and there was a like goat with a man's litso playing away on a

like flute.  And there rose like the sun Ludwig van himself

with thundery litso and cravat and wild windy voloss, and

then I heard the Ninth, last movement, with the slovos all a

bit mixed-up like they knew themselves they had to be mixed-

up, this being a dream:

    Boy, thou uproarious shark of heaven,

    Slaughter of Elysium,

    Hearts on fire, aroused, enraptured,

    We will tolchock you on the rot and kick

    your grahzny vonny bum.

But the tune was right, as I knew when I was being woke up

two or ten minutes or twenty hours or days or years later, my

watch having been taken away.  There was a millicent like miles

and miles down below and he was prodding at me with a long

stick with a spike on the end, saying:

"Wake up, son.  Wake up, my beauty.  Wake to real trouble."

I said:

"Why?  Who?  Where?  What is it?"  And the tune of the Joy

ode in the Ninth was singing away real lovely and horrorshow

within,  The millicent said:

"Come down and find out.  There's some real lovely news

for you, my son."  So I scrambled down, very stiff and sore and

not like real awake, and this rozz, who had a strong von of

cheese and onions on him, pushed me out of the filthy snor-

ing cell, and then along corridors, and all the time the old

tune Joy Thou Glorious Spark Of Heaven was sparking away

within.  Then we came to a very neat like cantora with type-

writers and flowers on the desks, and at the like chief desk the

top millicent was sitting, looking very serious and fixing a like

very cold glazzy on my sleepy litso.  I said:

"Well well well.  What makes, bratty.  What gives, this fine

bright middle of the nochy?"  He said:

"I'll give you just ten seconds to wipe that stupid grin off of

your face.  Then I want you to listen."

"Well, what?" I said, smecking.  "Are you not satisfied with

beating me near to death and having me spat upon and making

me confess to crimes for hours on end and then shoving me

among bezoomnies and vonny perverts in that grahzny cell?

Have you some new torture for me, you bratchny?"

"It'll be your own torture," he said, serious.  "I hope to God

it'll torture you to madness."

And then, before he told me, I knew what it was.  The old

ptitsa who had all the kots and koshkas had passed on to a

better world in one of the city hospitals.  I'd cracked her a bit

too hard, like.  Well, well, that was everything.  I thought of all

those kots and koshkas mewling for moloko and getting

none, not any more from their starry forella of a mistress.

That was everything.  I'd done the lot, now.  and me still only

fifteen.

Part Two

1

"What's it going to be then, eh?"

I take it up now, and this is the real weepy and like tragic

part of the story beginning, my brothers and only friends, in

Staja (State Jail, that is) Number 84F.  You will have little

desire to slooshy all the cally and horrible raskazz of the

shock that sent my dad beating his bruised and krovvy rockers

against unfair like Bog in his Heaven, and my mum squaring

her rot for owwwww owwwww owwwww in her mother's grief

at her only child and son of her bosom like letting every-

body down real horrorshow.  Then there was the starry very

grim magistrate in the lower court govoreeting some very

hard slovos against your Friend and Humble Narrator, after

all the cally and grahzny slander spat forth by P. R. Deltoid

and the rozzes, Bog blast them.  Then there was being rem-

anded in filthy custody among vonny perverts and pre-

stoopnicks.  Then there was the trial in the higher court with

judges and a jury, and some very very nasty slovos indeed

govoreeted in a very like solemn way, and then Guilty and my

mum boohoohooing when they said Fourteen Years, O my

brothers.  So here I was now, two years just to the day of

being kicked and clanged into Staja 84F, dressed in the heighth

of prison fashion, which was a one-piece suit of a very filthy

like cal colour, and the number sewn on the groody part just

above the old tick-tocker and on the back as well, so that

going and coming I was 6655321 and not your little droog

Alex not no longer.

"What's it going to be then, eh?"

It had not been like edifying, indeed it had not, being in this

grahzny hellhole and like human zoo for two years, being

kicked and tolchocked by brutal bully warders and meeting

vonny leering like criminals, some of them real perverts and

ready to dribble all over a luscious young malchick like your

story-teller.  And there was having to rabbit in the workshop

at making matchboxes and itty round and round and round

the yard for like exercise, and in the evenings sometimes some

starry prof type veck would give a talk on beetles or the Milky

Way or the Glorious Wonders of the Snowflake, and I had a

good smeck at this last one, because it reminded me of that

time of the tolchocking and Sheer Vandalism with that ded

coming from the public biblio on a winter's night when my

droogs were stil not traitors and I was like happy and free.  Of

those droogs I had slooshied but one thing, and that was one

day when my pee and em came to visit and I was told that

Georgie was dead.  Yes, dead, my brothers.  Dead as a bit of

dog-cal on the road.  Georgie had led the other two into a like

very rich chelloveck's house, and there they had kicked and

tolchocked the owner on the floor, and then Georgie had

started to razrez the cushions and curtains, and then old Dim

had cracked at some very precious ornaments, like statues

and so on, and this rich beat-up chelloveck had raged like real

bezoomny and gone for them all with a very heavy iron bar.

His being all razdraz had given him some gigantic strength,

and Dim and Pete had got out through the window, but Georgie

had tripped on the carpet and then brought this terrible

swinging iron bar crack and splodge on the gulliver, and that

was the end of traitorous Georgie.  The starry murderer had

got off with Self Defence, as was really right and proper.

Georgie being killed, though it was more than one year after me

being caught by the millicents, it all seemed right and proper

and like Fate.

"What's it going to be then, eh?"

I was in the Wing Chapel, it being Sunday morning, and the

prison charlie was govoreeting the Word of the Lord.  It was

my rabbit to play the starry stereo, putting on solemn music

before and after and in the middle too when hymns were sung.

I was at the back of the Wing Chapel (there were four along

here in Staja 84F) near where the warders or chassos were

standing with their rifles and their dirty bolshy blue brutal

jowls, and I could viddy all the plennies sitting down slooshy-

ing the Slovo of the Lord in their horrible cal-coloured

prison platties, and a sort of filthy von rose from them, not

like real unwashed, not grazzy, but like a special real stinking

von which you only got with the criminal types, my brothers,

a like dusty, greasy, hopeless sort of a von.  And I was thinking

that perhaps I had this von too, having become a real plenny

myself, though still very young.  So it was important to

me, O my brothers, to get out of this stinking grahzny zoo as

soon as I could.  And, as you will viddy if you keep reading on,

it was not long before I did.

"What's it going to be then, eh?" said the prison charlie for

the third raz.  "Is it going to be in and out and in and out of

institutions, like this, though more in than out for most of

you, or are you going to attend to the Divine Word and

realize the punishments that await the unrepentant sinner in

the next world, as well as in this?  A lot of blasted idiots you

are, most of you, selling your birthright for a saucer of cold por-

ridge.  The thrill of theft, or violence, the urge to live easy - is

it worth it when we have undeniable proof, yes yes, incon-

trovertible evidence that hell exists?  I know, I know, my

friends, I have been informed in visions that there is a place,

darker than any prison, hotter than any flame of human fire,

where souls of unrepentant criminal sinners like yourselves -

and don't leer at me, damn you, don't laugh - like yourselves,

I say, scream in endless and intolerable agony, their noses

choked with the smell of filth, their mouths crammed with

burning ordure, their skin peeling and rotting, a fireball spin-

ning in their screaming guts.  Yes, yes, yes, I know"

At this point, brothers, a plenny somewhere or other near

the back row let out a shoom of lip-music - 'Prrrrrp' - and

then the brutal chassos were on the job right away, rushing

real skorry to what they thought was the scene of the

schoom, then hitting out nasty and delivering tolchocks, left

and right.  Then they picked out one poor trembling plenny,

very thin and malenky and starry too, and dragged him off,

but all the time he kept creeching: "It wasn't me, it was him,

see," but that made no difference.  He was tolchocked real

nasty and then dragged out of the Wing Chapel creeching his

gulliver off.

"Now," said the prison charlie, "listen to the Word of the

Lord."  Then he picked up the big book and flipped over the

pages, keeping on wetting his fingers to do this by licking

them splurge splurge.  He was a bolshy great burly bastard

with a very red litso, but he was very fond of myself, me being

young and also now very interested in the big book.  It had

been arranged as part of my like further education to read in

the book and even have music on the chapel stereo while I

was reading, O my brothers.  And that was real horrorshow.

They would like lock me in and let me slooshy holy music by

J. S. Bach and G. F. Handel, and I would read of these starry

yahoodies tolchocking each other and then peeting their

Hebrew vino and getting on to the bed with their wives' like

hand-maidens, real horrorshow.  That kept me going,

brothers.  I didn't so much kopat the later part of the book,

which is more like all preachy govoreeting than fighting and

the old in-out.  But one day the charles said to me, squeezing

me like tight with his bolshy beefy rooker:  "Ah, 6655321,

think on the divine suffering.  Meditate on that, my boy."  And

all the time he had this rich manny von of Scotch on him, and

then he went off to his little cantora to peet some more.  So I

read all about the scourging and the crowning with thorns

and then the cross veshch and all that cal, and I viddied better

that there was something in it.  While the stereo played bits of

lovely Bach I closed my glazzies and viddied myself helping in

and even taking charge of the tolchocking and the nailing in,

being dressed in a like toga that was the heighth of Roman

fashion.  So being in Staja 84F was not all that wasted, and the

Governor himself was very pleased to hear that I had taken to

like Religion, and that was where I had my hopes.

This Sunday morning the charlie read out from the book

about chellovecks who slooshied the slovo and didn't take a

blind bit being like a domy built upon sand, and then the rain

came splash and the old boomaboom cracked the sky and

that was the end of that domy.  But I thought that only a very

dim veck would have built his domy upon sand, and a right lot of

real sneering droogs and nasty neighbours a veck like that

would have, them not telling him how dim he was doing that

sort of building.  Then the charles creeched: "Right, you lot.

We'll end with Hymn Number 435 in the Prisoners' Hymnal."

Then there was a crash and plop and a whish whish while the

plennies picked up and dropped and lickturned the pages of

their grazzy malenky hymnbooks, and the bully fierce warders

creeched: "Stop talking there, bastards.  I'm watching you,

920537."  Of course I had the disc ready on the stereo, and

then I let the simple music for organ only come belting out

with a growwwwowwwwowwww.  Then the plennies started

to sing real horrible:

    Weak tea are we, new brewed

    But stirring make all strong.

    We eat no angel's food,

    Our times of trial are long.

They sort of howled and wept these stupid slovos with the

charlie like whipping them on with "Louder, damn you, sing

up," and the warders creeching: "Just you wait, 7749222", and

"One on the turnip coming up for you, filth."  Then it was all

over and the charlie said: "May the Holy Trinity keep you

always and make you good, amen," and the shamble out began

to a nice choice bit of Symphony No. 2 by Adrian Schweigsel-

ber, chosen by your Humble Narrator, O my brothers.  What a

lot they were, I thought, as I stood there by the starry chapel

stereo, viddying them all shuffle out going marrrrre and

baaaaaa like animals and up-your-piping with their grahzny

fingers at me, because it looked like I was very special

favoured.  When the last one had slouched out, his rookers

hanging like an ape and the one warder left giving him a fair

loud tolchock on the back of the gulliver, and when I had

turned off the stereo, the charlie came up to me, puffing away

at a cancer, still in his starry bogman's platties, all lacy and

white like a devotchka's.  He said:

"Thank you as always, little 6655321.  And what news have

you got for me today?"  The idea was, I knew, that this charlie

was after becoming a very great holy chelloveck in the world