Stanley Kubrick's A clockwork orange: based on the novel by Anthony Burgess (16 page)

sign?"

"Most certainly I will sign," I said, "sir.  And very many

thanks."  So I was given an ink-pencil and I signed my name nice

and flowy.  The Governor said:

"Right.  That's the lot, I think."  The Chief Chasso said:

"The Prison Chaplain would like a word with him, sir."  So I

was marched out and off down the corridor towards the

Wing Chapel, tolchocked on the back and the gulliver all the

way by one of the chassos, but in a very like yawny and bored

manner.  And I was marched across the Wing Chapel to the

little cantora of the charles and then made to go in.  The

charles was sitting at his desk, smelling loud and clear of a fine

manny von of expensive cancers and Scotch.  He said:

"Ah, little 6655321, be seated."  And to the chassos: "Wait

outside, eh?"  Which they did.  Then he spoke in a very like

earnest way to me, saying: "One thing I want you to under-

stand, boy, is that this is nothing to do with me.  Were it

expedient, I would protest about it, but it is not expedient.

There is the question of my own career, there is the question

of the weakness of my own voice when set against the shout

of certain more powerful elements in the polity.  Do I make

myself clear?"  He didn't, brothers, but I nodded that he did.

"Very hard ethical questions are involved," he went on.  "You

are to be made into a good boy, 6655321.  Never again will

you have the desire to commit acts of violence or to offend

in any way whatsoever against the State's Peace.  I hope you

take all that in.  I hope you are absolutely clear in your own

mind about that."  I said:

"Oh, it will be nice to be good, sir."  But I had a real hor-

rorshow smeck at that inside, brothers.  He said:

"It may not be nice to be good, little 6655321.  It may be

horrible to be good.  And when I say that to you I realize how

self-contradictory that sounds.  I know I shall have many

sleepless nights about this.  What does God want?  Does God

want woodness or the choice of goodness?  Is a man who

chooses the bad perhaps in some ways better than a man who

has the good imposed upon him?  Deep and hard questions,

little 6655321.  But all I want to say to you now is this:  if at

any time in the future you look back to these times and re-

member me, the lowest and humblest of all God's servitors,

do not, I pray, think evil of me in your heart, thinking me in

any way involved in what is now about to happen to you.  And

now, talking of praying, I realize sadly that there will be little

point in praying for you.  You are passing now to a region

where you will be beyond the reach of the power of prayer.  A

terrible terrible thing to consider.  And yet, in a sense, in

choosing to be deprive of the ability to make an ethical

choice, you have in a sense really chosen the good.  So I shall

like to think.  So, God help us all, 6655321, I shall like to

think."  And then he began to cry.  But I didn't really take much

notice of that, brothers only having a bit of a quiet smeck

inside, because you could viddy that he had been peeting away

at the old whisky, and now he took a bottle from a cupboard

in his desk and started to pour himself a real horrorshow

bolshy slog into a very greasy and grahzny glass.  He downed

it and the said: "All may be well, who knows?  God works in a

mysterious way."  Then he began to sing away at a hymn in a

real loud rich goloss.  Then the door opened and the chassos

came in to tolchock me back to my vonny cell, but the old

charles still went on singing this hymn.

Well, the next morning I had to say good-bye to the old

Staja, and I felt a malenky bit sad as you always will when you

have to leave a place you've like got used to.  But I didn't go

very far, O my brothers.  I was punched and kicked along to

the new white building just beyond the yard where we used to

do our bit of exercise.  This was a very new building and it had

a new cold like sizy smell which gave you a bit of the shivers.  I

stood there in the horrible bolshy bare hall and I got new

vons, sniffing away there with my like very sensitive morder or

sniffer.  These were like hospital vons, and the chelloveck the

chassos handed me over to had a white coat on, as he might

be a hospital man.  He signed for me, and one of the brutal

chassos who had brought nme said: "You watch this one, sir.  A

right brutal bastard he has been and will be again, in spite of

all his sucking up to the Prison Chaplain and reading the

Bible."  But this new chelloveck had real horrorshow blue glaz-

zies which like smiled when he govoreeted.  He said:

"Oh, we don't anticipate any trouble.  We're going to be

friends, aren't we?"  And he smiled with his glazzies and his fine

big rot which was full of shining white zoobies and I sort of

took to this veck right away.  Anyway, he passed me on to a

like lesser veck in a white coat, and this one was very nice

too, and I was led off to a very nice white clean bedroom with

curtains and a bedside lamp, and just the one bed in it, all for

Your Humble Narrator.  So I had a real horrorshow inner

smeck at that, thinking I was really a very lucky young mal-

chickiwick.  I was told to take off my horrible prison platties

and I was given a really beautiful set of pyjamas, O my

brothers, in plain green, the heighth of bedwear fashion.  And I

was given a nice warm dressing-gown too and lovely toofles

to put my bare nogas in, and I thought: "Well, Alex boy, little

6655321 as was, you have copped it lucky and no mistake.

You are really going to enjoy it here."

After I had been given a nice chasha of real horrorshow

coffee and some old gazettas and mags to look at while peet-

ing it, this first veck in white came in, the one who had like

signed for me, and he said: "Aha, there you are," a silly sort of

a veshch to say but it didn't sound silly, this veck being so like

nice.  "My name," he said, "is Dr. Branom.  I'm Dr. Brodsky's

assistant.  With your permission, I'll just give you the usual

brief overall examination."  And he took the old stetho out of

his right carman.  "We must make sure you're quite fit, mustn't

we?  Yes indeed, we must."  So while I lay there with my pyjama

top off and he did this, that and the other, I said:

"What exactly is it, sir, that you're going to do?"

"Oh," said Dr. Branom, his cold stetho going all down my

back, "it's quite simple, really.  We just show you some films."

"Films?" I said.  I could hardly believe my ookos, brothers,

as you may well understand.  "You mean," I said, "it will be just

like going to the pictures?"

"They'll be special films," said Dr. Branom.  "Very special

films.  You'll be having the first session this afternoon.  Yes," he

said, getting up from bending over me, "you seem to be quite a

fit young boy.  A bit under-nourished perhaps.  That will be the

fault of the prison food.  Put your pyjama top back on.  After

every meal," he said, sitting on the edge of the bed, "we shall be

giving you a shot in the arm.  That should help."  I felt really

grateful to this very nice Dr. Branom.  I said:

"Vitamins, sir, will it be?"

"Something like that," he said, smiling real horrorshow and

friendly, "just a jab in the arm after every meal."  Then he went

out.  I lay on the bed thinking this was like real heaven, and I

read some of the mags they'd given me - 'Worldsport', 'Sinny'

(this being a film mag) and 'Goal'.  Then I lay back on the bed

and shut my glazzies and thought how nice it was going to be

out there again, Alex with perhaps a nice easy job during the

day, me being now too old for the old skolliwoll, and then

perhaps getting a new like gang together for the nochy, and

the first rabbit would be to get old Dim and Pete, if they had

not been got already by the millicents.  This time I would be

very careful not to get loveted.  They were giving another like

chance, me having done murder and all, and it would not be

like fair to get loveted again, after going to all this trouble to

show me films that were going to make me a real good mal-

chick.  I had a real horrorshow smeck at everybody's like

innocence, and I was smecking my gulliver off when they

brought in my lunch on a tray.  The veck who brought it was

the one who'd led me to this malenky bedroom when I came

into the mesto, and he said:

"It's nice to know somebody's happy."  It was really a very

nice appetizing bit of pishcha they'd laid out on the tray - two

or three lomticks of like hot roastbeef with mashed kartoffel

and vedge, then there was also ice-cream and a nice hot

chasha of chai.  And there was even a cancer to smoke and a

matchbox with one match in.  So this looked like it was the

life, O my brothers.  Then, about half an hour after while I was

lying a bit sleepy on the bed, a woman nurse came in, a real

nice young devotchka with real horrorshow groodies (I had

not seen such for two years) and she had a tray and a hypo-

dermic.  I said:

"Ah, the old vitamins, eh?"  And I clickclicked at her but she

took no notice.  All she did was to slam the needle into my

left arm, and then swishhhh in went the vitamin stuff.  Then she

went out again, clack clack on her high-heeled nogas.  Then

the white-coated veck who was like a male nurse came in with

a wheelchair.  I was a malenky bit surprised to viddy that.  I

said:

"What giveth then, brother?  I can walk, surely, to wherever

we have to itty to."  But he said:

"Best I push you there."  And indeed, O my brothers, when I

got off the bed I found myself a malenky biy weak.  It was the

under-nourishment like Dr. Branom had said, all that horrible

prison pishcha.  But the vitamins in the after-meal injection

would put me right.  No doubt at all about that, I thought.

4

Where I was wheeled to, brothers, was like no sinny I had ever

viddied before.  True enough, one wall was all covered with

silver screen, and direct opposite was a wall with square holes

in for the projector to project through, and there were stereo

speakers stuck all over the mesto.  But against the right-hand

one of the other walls was a bank of all like little meters, and

in the middle of the floor facing the screen was like a dentist's

chair with all lengths of wire running from it, and I had to like

crawl from the wheelchair to this, being given some help by

another like male nurse veck in a white coat.  Then I noticed

that underneath the projection holes was like all frosted glass

and I thought I viddied shadows of like people moving behind

it and I thought I slooshied somebody cough kashl kashl

kashl.  But then all I could like notice was how weak I seemed

to be, and I put that down to changing over from prison

pishcha to this new rich pishcha and the vitamins injected into