Stanley Kubrick's A clockwork orange: based on the novel by Anthony Burgess (7 page)

got fruit-pie from the larder and tore chunks off it to stuff

into my greedy rot.  Then I tooth-cleaned and clicked, cleaning

out the old rot with my yahzick or tongue, then I went into

my own little room or den, easing off my platties as I did so.

Here was my bed and my stereo, pride of my jeezny, and my

discs in their cupboard, and banners and flags on the wall,

these being like remembrances of my corrective school life

since I was eleven, O my brothers, each one shining and blaz-

oned with name or number: SOUTH 4; METRO COR-

SKOL BLUE DIVISION; THE BOYS OF ALPHA.

The little speakers of my stereo were  all arranged round the

room, on ceiling, walls, floor, so, lying on my bed slooshying

the music, I was like netted and meshed in the orchestra.  Now

what I fancied first tonight was this new violin concerto by

the American Geoffrey Plautus, played by Odysseus Choerilos

with the Macon (Georgia) Philharmonic, so I slid it from

where it was neatly filed and switched on and waited.

Then, brothers, it came.  Oh, bliss, bliss and heaven.  I lay all

nagoy to the ceiling, my gulliver on my rookers on the pillow,

glazzies closed, rot open in bliss, slooshying the sluice of

lovely sounds.  Oh, it was gorgeousness and gorgeosity made

flesh.  The trombones crunched redgold under my bed, and

behind my gulliver the trumpets three-wise silverflamed, and

there by the door the timps rolling through my guts and out

again crunched like candy thunder.  Oh, it was wonder of

wonders.  And then, a bird of like rarest spun heavenmetal, or

like silvery wine flowing in a spaceship, gravity all nonsense

now, came the violin solo above all the other strings, and

those strings were like a cage of silk around my bed.  Then flute

and oboe bored, like worms of like platinum, into the thick

thick toffee gold and silver.  I was in such bliss, my brothers.

Pee and em in their bedroom next door had learnt now not to

knock on the wall with complaints of what they called noise.

I had taught them.  Now they would take sleep-pills.  Perhaps,

knowing the joy I had in my night music, they had already

taken them.  As I slooshied, my glazzies tight shut to shut in

the bliss that was better than any synthemesc Bog or God, I

knew such lovely pictures.  There were vecks and ptitsas, both

young and starry, lying on the ground screaming for mercy,

and I was smecking all over my rot and grinding my boot in

their litsos.  And there were devotchkas ripped and creeching

against walls and I plunging like a shlaga into them, and

indeed when the music, which was one movement only, rose

to the top of its big highest tower, then, lying there on my

bed with glazzies tight shut and rookers behind my gulliver, I

broke and spattered and cried aaaaaaah with the bliss of it.

And so the lovely music glided to its glowing close.

After that I had lovely Mozart, the Jupiter, and there were

new pictures of different litsos to be ground and splashed, and

it was after this that I thought I would have just one last disc

only before crossing the border, and I wanted something

starry and strong and very firm, so it was J. S. Bach I had, the

Brandenburg Concerto just for middle and lower strings.  And,

slooshying with different bliss than before, I viddied again this

name on the paper I'd razrezzed that night, a long time ago it

seemed, in that cottage called HOME.  The name was about a

clockwork orange.  Listening to the J. S. Bach, I began to pony

better what that meant now, and I thought, slooshying away

to the brown gorgeousness of the starry German master, that

I would like to have tolchecked them both harder and ripped

them to ribbons on their own floor.

4

The next morning I woke up at oh eight oh oh hours, my

brothers, and as I still felt shagged and fagged and fashed and

bashed and my glazzies were stuck together real horrorshow

with sleepglue, I thought I would not go to school.  I thought

how I would have a malenky bit longer in the bed, an hour or

two say, and then get dressed nice and easy, perhaps even

having a splosh about in the bath, make toast for myself and

slooshy the radio or read the gazetta, all on my oddy knocky.

And then in the afterlunch I might perhaps, if I still felt like it,

itty off to the old skolliwoll and see what was vareeting in

the great seat of gloopy useless learning, O my brothers.  I

heard my papapa grumbling and trampling and then ittying off

to the dyeworks where he rabbited, and then my mum called

in in a very respectful goloss as she did now I was growing up

big and strong:

"It's gone eight, son.  You don't want to be late again."

So I called back: "A bit of pain in my gulliver.  Leave us be

and I'll try to sleep it off and then I'll be right as dodgers for

this after."  I slooshied her give a sort of a sigh and she said:

"I'll put your breakfast in the oven then, son.  I've got to be

off myself now."  Which was true, there being this law for

everybody not a child nor with child nor ill to go out rab-

biting.  My mum worked at one of the Statemarts, as they

called them, filling up the shelves with tinned soup and beans

and all that cal.  So I slooshied her clank a plate in the gas-

oven like and then she was putting her shoes on and then

getting her coat from behind the door and then sighing again,

then she said: "I'm off now, son."  But I let on to be back in

sleepland and then I did doze off real horrorshow, and I had a

queer and very real like sneety, dreaming for some reason of

my droog Georgie.  In this sneety he'd got like very much

older and very sharp and hard and was govoreeting about

discipline and obedience and how all the malchicks under his

control had to jump hard at it and throw up the old salute

like being in the army, and there was me in line like the rest

saying yes sir and no sir, and the I viddied clear that Georgie

had these stars on his pletchoes and he was like a general.  And

then he brought in old Dim with a whip, and Dim was a lot

more starry and grey and had a few zoobies missing as you

could see when he let out a smeck, viddying me, and then my

droog Georgie said, pointing like at me: "That man has filth

and cal all over his platties," and it was true.  Then I creeched:

"Don't hit, please don't, brothers," and started to run.  And I

was running in like circles and Dim was after me, smecking his

gulliver off, cracking with the old whip, and each time I got a

real horrorshow tolchock with this whip there was like a very

loud electric bell ringringring, and this bell was like a sort

of a pain too.

Then I woke up real skorry, my heart going bap bap bap,

and of course there was really a bell going brrrrr, and it was

our front-door bell.  I let on that nobody was at home, but

this brrrrr still ittied on, and then I heard a goloss shouting

through the door: "Come on then, get out of it, I know

you're in bed."  I recognized the goloss right away.  It was the

goloss of P. R. Deltoid (a real gloopy nazz, that one) what

they called my Post-Corrective Adviser, an overworked veck

with hundreds on his books.  I shouted right right right, in a

goloss of like pain, and I got out of bed and attired myself, O

my brothers, in a very lovely over-gown of like silk, with

designs of like great cities all over this over-gown.  Then I put

my nogas into very comfy wooly toofles, combed my

luscious glory, and was ready for P. R. Deltoid.  When I

opened up he came shambling in looking shagged, a battered

old shlapa on his gulliver, his raincoat filthy.  "Ah, Alex boy,"

he said to me.  "I met your mother, yes.  She said something

about a pain somewhere.  Hence not at schol, yes."

"A rather intolerable pain in the head, brother, sir," I said in

my gentleman's goloss.  "I think it should clear by this after-

noon."

"Or certainly by this evening, yes," said P. R. Deltoid.  "The

evening is the great time, isn't it, Alex boy?  Sit," he said, "sit,

sit," as though this was his domy and me his guest.  And he sat

in this starry rocking-chair of my dad's and began rocking, as

if that was all he had come for.  I said:

"A cup of the old chai, sir?  Tea, I mean."

"No time," he said.  And he rocked, giving me the old glint

under frowning brows, as if with all the time in the world.  "No

time, yes," he said, gloopy.  So I put the kettle on.  Then I

said:

"To what do I owe the extreme pleasure?  Is anything

wrong, sir?"

"Wrong?" he said, very skorry and sly, sort of hunched

looking at me but still rocking away.  Then he caught sight of

an advert in the gazetta, which was on the table - a lovely

smecking young ptitsa with her groodies hanging out to ad-

vertise, my brothers, the Glories of the Jugoslav Beaches.

Then, after sort of eating her up in two swallows, he said:

"Why should you think in terms of there being anything

wrong?  Have you been doing something you shouldn't,

yes?"

"Just a manner of speech," I said, "sir."

"Well," said P. R. Deltoid, "it's just a manner of speech from

me to you that you watch out, little Alex, because next time,

as you very well know, it's not going to be the corrective

school any more.  Next time it's going to be the barry place

and all my work ruined.  If you have no consideration for your

horrible self you at least might have some for me, who have

sweated over you.  A big black mark, I tell you in confidence,

for every one we don't reclaim, a confession of failure for

every one of you that ends up in the stripy hole."

"I've been doing nothing I shouldn't, sir," I said.  "The mil-

licents have nothing on me, brother, sir I mean."

"Cut out this clever talk about millicents," said P. R. Deltoid

very weary, but still rocking.  "Just because the police have not

picked you up lately doesn't, as you very well know, mean

you've not been up to some nastiness.  There was a bit of a

fight last night, wasn't there?  There was a bit of shuffling with

nozhes and bike-chains and the like.  One of a certain fat boy's

friends was ambulanced off late from near the Power Plant

and hospitalized, cut about very unpleasantly, yes.  Your name

was mentioned.  The word has got through to me by the usual

channels.  Certain friends of yours were named also.  There

seems to have been a fair amount of assorted nastiness last

night.  Oh, nobody can prove anything about anybody, as

usual.  But I'm warning you, little Alex, being a good friend to

you as always, the one man in this sick and sore community

who wants to save you from yourself."

"I appreciate all that, sir," I said, "very sincerely."

"Yes, you do, don't you?" he sort of sneered.  "Just watch it,

that's all, yes.  We know more than you think, little Alex."