Stanley Kubrick's A clockwork orange: based on the novel by Anthony Burgess (2 page)

A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (UK Version)

Part 1

1

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

There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is

Pete, Georgie, and Dim.  Dim being really dim, and we sat in

the Korova Milkbar making up our rassoodocks what to do

with the evening, a flip dark chill winter bastard though dry.

The Ko Part 1 rova Milkbar was a milk-plus mesto, and you may, O

my brothers, have forgotten what these mestos were like,

things changing so skorry these days and everybody very

quick to forget, newspapers not being read much neither.

Well, what they sold there was milk plus something else.  They

had no license for selling liquor, but there was no law yet

against prodding some of the new veshches which they used

to put into the old moloko, so you could peet it with vel-

locet or synthemesc or drencrom or one or two other vesh-

ches which would give you a nice quiet horrorshow fifteen

minutes admiring Bog And All His Holy Angels and Saints in

your left shoe with lights bursting all over your mozg.  Or you

could peet milk with knives in it, as we used to say, and this

would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of dirty

twenty-to-one, and that was what we were peeting this even-

ing I'm starting off the story with.

Our pockets were full of deng, so there was no real need

from the point of view of crasting any more pretty polly to

tolchock some old veck in an alley and viddy him swim in his

blood while we counted the takings and divided by four, nor

to do the ultra-violent on some shivering starry grey-haired

ptitsa in a shop and go smecking off with the till's guts.  But, as

they say, money isn't everything.

The four of us were dressed in the height of fashion,

which in those days was a pair of black very tight tights with

the old jelly mould, as we called it, fitting on the crotch

underneath the tights, this being to protect and also a sort of

a design you could viddy clear enough in a certain light, so

that I had one in the shape of a spider, Pete had a rooker (a

hand, that is), Georgie had a very fancy one of a flower, and

poor old Dim had a very hound-and-horny one of a clown's

litso (face, that is).  Dim not ever having much of an idea of

things and being, beyond all shadow of a doubting thomas,

the dimmest of we four.  Then we wore waisty jackets without

lapels but with these very big built-up shoulders ('pletchoes'

we called them) which were a kind of a mockery of having real

shoulders like that.  Then, my brothers, we had these off-white

cravats which looked like whipped-up kartoffel or spud with a

sort of a design made on it with a fork.  We wore our hair not

too long and we had flip horrorshow boots for kicking.

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

There were three devotchkas sitting at the counter all

together, but there were four of us malchicks and it was

usually like one for all and all for one.  These sharps were

dressed in the heighth of fashion too, with purple and green

and orange wigs on their gullivers, each one not costing less

than three or four weeks of those sharps' wages, I should

reckon, and make-up to match (rainbows round the glazzies,

that is, and the rot painted very wide).  Then they had long

black very straight dresses, and on the groody part of them

they had little badges of like silver with different malchicks'

names on them - Joe and Mike and suchlike.  These were sup-

posed to be the names of the different malchicks they'd

spatted with before they were fourteen.  They kept looking

our way and I nearly felt like saying the three of us (out of the

corner of my rot, that is) should go off for a bit of pol and

leave poor old Dim behind, because it would be just a matter

of kupetting Dim a demi-litre of white but this time with a

dollop of synthemesc in it, but that wouldn't really have been

playing like the game.  Dim was very very ugly and like his

name, but he was a horrorshow filthy fighter and very handy

with the boot.

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

The chelloveck sitting next to me, there being this long big

plushy seat that ran round three walls, was well away with his

glazzies glazed and sort of burbling slovos like "Aristotle

wishy washy works outing cyclamen get forficulate smartish".

He was in the land all right, well away, in orbit, and I knew

what it was like, having tried it like everybody else had done,

but at this time I'd got to thinking it was a cowardly sort of a

veshch, O my brothers.  You'd lay there after you'd drunk the

old moloko and then you got the messel that everything all

round you was sort of in the past.  You could viddy it all right,

all of it, very clear - tables, the stereo, the lights, the sharps

and the malchicks - but it was like some veshch that used to

be there but was not there not no more.  And you were sort of

hypnotized by your boot or shoe or a finger-nail as it might

be, and at the same time you were sort of picked up by the old

scruff and shook like you might be a cat.  You got shook and

shook till there was nothing left.  You lost your name and

your body and your self and you just didn't care, and you

waited until your boot or finger-nail got yellow, then

yellower and yellower all the time.  Then the lights started

cracking like atomics and the boot or finger-nail or, as it

might be, a bit of dirt on your trouser-bottom turned into a

big big big mesto, bigger than the whole world, and you were

just going to get introduced to old Bog or God when it was

all over.  You came back to here and now whimpering sort of,

with your rot all squaring up for a boohoohoo.  Now that's

very nice but very cowardly.  You were not put on this earth

just to get in touch with God.  That sort of thing could sap all

the strength and the goodness out of a chelloveck.

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

The stereo was on and you got the idea that the singer's

goloss was moving from one part of the bar to another,

flying up to the ceiling and then swooping down again and

whizzing from wall to wall.  It was Berti Laski rasping a real

starry oldie called 'You Blister My Paint'.  One of the three

ptitsas at the counter, the one with the green wig, kept push-

ing her belly out and pulling it in in time to what they called

the music.  I could feel the knives in the old moloko starting

to prick, and now I was ready for a bit of twenty-to-one.  So I

yelped: "Out out out out!" like a doggie, and then I cracked

this veck who was sitting next to me and well away and

burbling a horrorshow crack on the ooko or earhole, but he

didn't feel it and went on with his "Telephonic hardware and

when the farfarculule gets rubadubdub".  He'd feel it all right

when he came to, out of the land.

"Where out?" said Georgie.

"Oh, just to keep walking," I said, "and viddy what turns up,

O my little brothers."

So we scatted out into the big winter nochy and walked

down Marghanita Boulevard and then turned into Boothby

Avenue, and there we found what we were pretty well looking

for, a malenky jest to start off the evening with.  There was a

doddery starry schoolmaster type veck, glasses on and his rot

open to the cold nochy air.  He had books under his arm and a

crappy umbrella and was coming round the corner from the

Public Biblio, which not many lewdies used these days.  You

never really saw many of the older bourgeois type out after

nightfall those days, what with the shortage of police and we

fine young malchickiwicks about, and this prof type chello-

veck was the only one walking in the whole of the street.  So

we goolied up to him, very polite, and I said: "Pardon me,

brother."

He looked a malenky bit poogly when he viddied the four

of us like that, coming up so quiet and polite and smiling, but

he said: "Yes?  What is it?" in a very loud teacher-type goloss,

as if he was trying to show us he wasn't poogly.  I said:

"I see you have books under your arm, brother.  It is indeed

a rare pleasure these days to come across somebody that still

reads, brother."

"Oh," he said, all shaky.  "Is it?  Oh, I see."  And he kept look-

ing from one to the other of we four, finding himself now like

in the middle of a very smiling and polite square.

"Yes," I said.  "It would interest me greatly, brother, if you

would kindly allow me to see what books those are that you

have under your arm.  I like nothing better in this world than a

good clean book, brother."

"Clean," he said.  "Clean, eh?"  And then Pete skvatted these

three books from him and handed them round real skorry.

Being three, we all had one each to viddy at except for Dim.

The one I had was called 'Elementary Crystallography', so I

opened it up and said: "Excellent, really first-class," keeping

turning the pages.  Then I said in a very shocked type goloss:

"But what is this here?  What is this filthy slovo?  I blush to

look at this word.  You disappoint me, brother, you do

really."

"But," he tried, "but, but."

"Now," said Georgie, "here is what I should call real dirt.

There's one slovo beginning with an f and another with a c."

He had a book called 'The Miracle of the Snowflake.'

"Oh," said poor old Dim, smotting over Pete's shoulder and

going too far, like he always did, "it says here what he done to

her, and there's a picture and all.  Why," he said, "you're

nothing but a filthy-minded old skitebird."

"An old man of your age, brother," I said, and I started to

rip up the book I'd got, and the others did the same with the

ones they had.  Dim and Pete doing a tug-of-war with 'The

Rhombohedral System'.  The starry prof type began to creech:

"But those are not mine, those are the property of the mu-

nicipality, this is sheer wantonness and vandal work," or some

such slovos.  And he tried to sort of wrest the books back off

of us, which was like pathetic.  "You deserve to be taught a

lesson, brother," I said, "that you do."  This crystal book I had

was very tough-bound and hard to razrez to bits, being real

starry and made in days when things were made to last like,

but I managed to rip the pages up and chuck them in handfuls

of like snowflakes, though big, all over this creeching old

veck, and then the others did the same with theirs, old Dim

just dancing about like the clown he was.  "There you are," said

Pete.  "There's the mackerel of the cornflake for you, you dirty

reader of filth and nastiness."

"You naughty old veck, you," I said, and then we began to

filly about with him.  Pete held his rookers and Georgie sort

of hooked his rot wide open for him and Dim yanked out his

false zoobies, upper and lower.  He threw these down on the