Stanley Kubrick's A clockwork orange: based on the novel by Anthony Burgess (22 page)

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 beg-

ging."  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 some-

where.  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 sloo-

shy 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 hor-

rible.  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 every-

body 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 Boule-

vard 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 re-

member 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 pre-

tending 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