Stanley Kubrick's A clockwork orange: based on the novel by Anthony Burgess (8 page)

Then he said, in a goloss of great suffering, but still rocking

away: "What gets into you all?  We study the problem and

we've been studying it for damn well near a century, yes, but

we get no further with our studies.  You've got a good home

here, good loving parents, you've got not too bad of a brain.

Is it some devil that crawls inside you?"

"Nobody's got anything on me, sir," I said.  "I've been out of

the rookers of the millicents for a long time now."

"That's just what worries me," sighed P. R. Deltoid.  "A bit

too long of a time to be healthy.  You're about due now by my

reckoning.  That's why I'm warning you, little Alex, to keep

your handsome young proboscis out of the dirt, yes.  Do I

make myself clear?"

"As an unmuddied lake, sir," I said.  "Clear as an azure sky of

deepest summer.  You can rely on me, sir."  And I gave him a

nice zooby smile.

But when he'd ookadeeted and I was making this very

strong pot of chai, I grinned to myself over this veshch that

P. R. Deltoid and his droogs worried about.  All right, I do

bad, what with crasting and tolchocks and carves with the

britva and the old in-out-in-out, and if I get loveted, well, too

bad for me, O my little brothers, and you can't run a country

with every chelloveck comporting himself in my manner of

the night.  So if I get loveted and it's three months in this

mesto and another six in that, and the, as P. R. Deltoid so

kindly warns, next time, in spite of the great tenderness of my

summers, brothers, it's the great unearthly zoo itself, well, I

say: "Fair, but a pity, my lords, because I just cannot bear to

be shut in.  My endeavour shall be, in such future as stretches

out its snowy and lilywhite arms to me before the nozh

overtakes or the blood spatters its final chorus in twisted

metal and smashed glass on the highroad, to not get loveted

again."  Which is fair speeching.  But, brothers, this biting of

their toe-nails over what is the cause of badness is what turns

me into a fine laughing malchick.  They don't go into the cause

of goodness, so why the other shop?  If lewdies are good

that's because they like it, and I wouldn't ever interfere with

their pleasures, and so of the other shop.  And I was patron-

izing the other shop.  More, badness is of the self, the one, the

you or me on our oddy knockies, and that self is made by old

Bog or God and is his great pride and radosty.  But the not-self

cannot have the bad, meaning they of the government and the

judges and the schools cannot allow the bad because they

cannot allow the self.  And is not our modern history, my

brothers, the story of brave malenky selves fighting these big

machines?  I am serious with you, brothers, over this.  But

what I do I do because I like to do.

So now, this smiling winter morning, I drink this very

strong chai with moloko and spoon after spoon after spoon

of sugar, me having a sladky tooth, and I dragged out of the

oven the breakfast my poor old mum had cooked for me.  It

was an egg fried, that and no more, but I made toast and ate

egg and toast and jam, smacking away at it while I read the

gazetta.  The gazetta was the usual about ultra-violence and

bank robberies and strikes and footballers making everybody

paralytic with fright by threatening to not play next Saturday

if they did not get higher wages, naughty malchickiwicks as

they were.  Also there were more space-trips and bigger stereo

TV screens and offers of free packets of soapflakes in ex-

change for the labels on soup-tins, amazing offer for one

week only, which made me smeck.  And there was a bolshy big

article on Modern Youth (meaning me, so I gave the old bow,

grinning like bezoomny) by some very clever bald chelloveck.

I read this with care, my brothers, slurping away at the old

chai, cup after tass after chasha, crunching my lomticks of

black toast dipped in jammiwam and eggiweg.  This learned

veck said the usual veshches, about no parental discipline, as

he called it, and the shortage of real horrorshow teachers

who would lambast bloody beggary out of their innocent

poops and make them go boohoohoo for mercy.  All this was

gloopy and made me smeck, but it was like nice to go on

knowing one was making the news all the time, O my

brothers.  Every day there was something about Modern

Youth, but the best veshch they ever had in the old gazetta

was by some starry pop in a doggy collar who said that in his

considered opinion and he was govoreeting as a man of Bog

IT WAS THE DEVIL THAT WAS ABROAD and was

like ferreting his way into like young innocent flesh, and it was

the adult world that could take the responsibility for this with

their wars and bombs and nonsense.  So that was all right.  So

he knew what he talked of, being a Godman.  So we young

innocent malchicks could take no blame.  Right right right.

When I'd gone erk erk a couple of razzes on my full inno-

cent stomach, I started to get out day platties from my ward-

robe, turning the radio on.  There was music playing, a very

nice malenky string quartet, my brothers, by Claudius Bird-

man, one that I knew well.  I had to have a smeck, though,

thinking of what I'd viddied once in one of these like articles

on Modern Youth, about how Modern Youth would be better

off if A Lively Appreciation Of The Arts could be like en-

couraged.  Great Music, it said, and Great Poetry would like

quieten Modern Youth down and make Modern Youth more

Civilized.  Civilized my syphilised yarbles.  Music always sort of

sharpened me up, O my brothers, and made me feel like

old Bog himself, ready to make with the old donner and blit-

zen and have vecks and ptitsas creeching away in my ha ha

power.  And when I'd cheested up my litso and rookers a bit

and done dressing (my day platties were like student-wear:  the

old blue pantalonies with sweater with A for Alex) I thought

here at last was time to itty off to the disc-bootick (and

cutter too, my pockets being full of pretty polly) to see about

this long-promised and long-ordered stereo Beethoven

Number Nine (the Choral Symphony, that is), recorded on

Masterstroke by the Esh Sham Sinfonia under L. Muhaiwir.  So

out I went, brothers.

The day was very different from the night.  The night be-

longed to me and my droogs and all the rest of the nadsats,

and the starry bourgeois lurked indoors drinking in the

gloopy worldcasts, but the day was for the starry ones, and

there always seemed to be more rozzes or millicents about

during the day, too.  I got the autobus from the corner and

rode to Center, and then I walked back to Taylor Place, and

there was the disc-bootick I favoured with my inestimable

custom, O my brothers.  It had the gloopy name of MEL-

ODIA, but it was a real horrorshow mesto and skorry, most

times, at getting the new recordings.  I walked in and the only

other customers were two young ptitsas sucking away at ice-

sticks (and this, mark, was dead cold winter and sort of

shuffling through the new pop-discs - Johnny Burnaway,

Stash Kroh, The Mixers, Lay Quit Awhile With Ed And Id

Molotov, and all the rest of that cal).  These two ptitsas

couldn't have been more than ten, and they too, like me, it

seemed, evidently, had decided to take the morning off from

the old skolliwoll.  They saw themselves, you could see, as real

grown-up devotchkas already, what with the old hip-swing

when they saw your Faithful Narrator, brothers, and padded

groodies and red all ploshed on their goobers.  I went up to

the counter, making with the polite zooby smile at old Andy

behind it (always polite himself, always helpful, a real hor-

rorshow type of a veck, though bald and very very thin).  He

said:

"Aha.  I know what you want, I think.  Good news, good

news.  It has arrived."  And with like big conductor's rookers

beating time he went to get it.  The two young ptitsas started

giggling, as they will at that age, and I gave them a like cold

glazzy.  Andy was back real skorry, waving the great shiny

white sleeve of the Ninth, which had on it, brothers, the

frowning beetled like thunderbolted litso of Ludwig van him-

self.  "Here," said Andy.  "Shall we give it the trial spin?"  But I

wanted it back home on my stereo to slooshy on my oddy

knocky, greedy as hell.  I fumbled out the deng to pay and one

of the little ptitsas said:

"Who you getten, bratty?  What biggy, what only?"  These

young devotchkas had their own like way of govoreeting.

"The Heaven Seventeen?  Luke Sterne?  Goggly Gogol?"  And

both giggled, rocking and hippy.  Then an idea hit me and

made me near fall over with the anguish and ecstasy of it, O

my brothers, so I could not breathe for near ten seconds.  I

recovered and made with my new-clean zoobies and said:

"What you got back home, little sisters, to play your fuzzy

warbles on?"  Because I could viddy the discs they were buying

were these teeny pop veshches.  "I bet you got little save tiny

portable like picnic spinners."  And they sort of pushed their

lower lips out at that.  "Come with uncle," I said, "and hear all

proper.  Hear angel trumpets and devil trombones.  You are

invited."  And I like bowed.  They giggled again and one said:

"Oh, but we're so hungry.  Oh, but we could so eat."  The

other said: "Yah, she can say that, can't she just."  So I said:

"Eat with uncle.  Name your place."

Then they viddied themselves as real sophistoes, which was

like pathetic, and started talking in big-lady golosses about

the Ritz and the Bristol and the Hilton and Il Ristorante Gran-

turco.  But I stopped that with "Follow uncle," and I led them

to the Pasta Parlour just round the corner and let them fill

their innocent young litsos on spaghetti and sausages and

cream-puffs and banana-splits and hot choc-sauce, till I near

sicked with the sight of it, I, brothers, lunching but frugally off

a cold ham-slice and a growling dollop of chilli.  These two

young ptitsas were much alike, though not sisters.  They had

the same ideas or lack of, and the same colour hair - a like

dyed strawy.  Well, they would grow up real today.  Today I

would make a day of it.  No school this afterlunch, but edu-

cation certain, Alex as teacher.  Their names, they said, were

Marty and Sonietta, bezoomny enough and in the heighth of

their childish fashion, so I said:

"Righty right, Marty and Sonietta.  Time for the big spin.

Come."  When we were outside on the cold street they

thought they would not go by autobus, oh no, but by taxi, so

I gave them the humour, though with a real horrorshow in-

grin, and I called a taxi from the rank near Center.  The driver,

a starry whiskery veck in very stained platties, said:

"No tearing up, now.  No nonsense with them seats.  Just re-