with like a cold leg of something in one rooker  and half  a loaf of
kleb with a  big dollop of maslo on it in the other, and Pete  with a bottle
of beer frothing its gulliver off  and  a  horrorshow rookerful of like plum
cake. They went haw haw  haw, viddying old Dim dancing round and fisting the
writer veck  so that the writer  veck started to platch like his life's work
was ruined, going  boo hoo hoo with a very square bloody rot, but it was haw
haw haw in a muffled eater's way  and you could  see bits of what they  were
eating. I didn't like that, it being dirty and slobbery, so I said:
     "Drop that mounch. I gave no permission. Grab hold of this veck here so
he can viddy all and not get away." So they put down their fatty pishcha  on
the  table among all the flying  paper  and  they clopped over to the writer
veck whose horn-rimmed otchkies were cracked but  still hanging on, with old
Dim still  dancing round and making  ornaments shake on  the  mantelpiece (I
swept  them all off then and  they  couldn't shake no more, little brothers)
while he fillied  with the author of `A Clockwork Orange,'  making his litso
all purple and dripping away like some  very special sort of a juicy  fruit.
"All right, Dim," I said. "Now for the other veshch, Bog help us all." So he
did the strong-man on  the devotchka, who was still creech creech  creeching
away in  very horrorshow four-in-a-bar,  locking her rookers from the  back,
while I ripped away at this and that and the other, the others going haw haw
haw still, and real good horrorshow groodies  they  were that then exhibited
their pink glazzies, O my brothers, while I untrussed and got  ready for the
plunge. Plunging, I  could slooshy  cries  of agony and this writer bleeding
veck that Georgie and Pete held on to nearly got loose howling bezoomny with
the filthiest of slovos that I already knew and others he was making up.
     Then after me it was right old Dim should  have  his turn, which he did
in a beasty snorty howly sort of a way with his Peebee Shelley maskie taking
no  notice, while I held on to her. Then there  was a changeover, Dim and me
grabbing the  slobbering  writer veck  who was  past struggling really, only
just coming out  with  slack  sort of slovos like he was  in the  land in  a
milk-plus bar, and Pete  and Georgie had  theirs. Then there was  like quiet
and  we  were   full   of  like  hate,  so  smashed  what  was  left  to  be
smashed--typewriter,  lamp,  chairs--and  Dim,  it  was typical  of old Dim,
watered the fire out and was going to dung on the carpet, there being plenty
of paper,  but I said no. "Out out  out  out," I howled. The writer veck and
his  zheena  were not  really  there, bloody and torn and making noises. But
they'd live.
     So we got  into  the waiting auto and I left it to  Georgie to take the
wheel,  me  feeling  that  malenky bit  shagged, and we  went back  to town,
running over odd squealing things on the way.


        3

     We yeckated back townwards, my brothers, but just outside, not far from
what  they called the  Industrial Canal, we viddied the fuel needle had like
collapsed,  like our own ha  ha ha needles had,  and  the auto  was coughing
kashl  kashl  kashl.  Not to worry overmuch, though,  because a rail station
kept flashing blue--on off on off--just near. The point was whether to leave
the  auto to be sobiratted  by the rozzes or,  us feeling like in a hate and
murder mood,  to give  it a fair tolchock into the  starry watersfor  a nice
heavy loud plesk before the death of the evening. This latter we decided on,
so we got out and, the brakes off, all four tolchocked it to the edge of the
filthy water that was like treacle mixed with  human hole products, then one
good horrorshow  tolchock  and in she went. We  had to dash back for fear of
the  filth splashing  on our platties,  but  splussshhhh and glolp she went,
down and lovely. "Farewell, old droog," called Georgie, and Dim obliged with
a clowny great guff--"Huh huh huh huh."
     Then  we made for the  station  to ride the one stop  to Center, as the
middle of the town was  called. We paid our fares nice and polite and waited
gentlemanly  and  quiet  on the platform,  old Dim  fillying  with the  slot
machines, his carmans being full of small malenky coin, and ready if need be
to distribute  chocbars to the poor and starving, though there was none such
about,  and  then the old espresso rapido came lumbering  in and we  climbed
aboard, the train looking to be near empty. To pass the three-minute ride we
fillied  about  with what  they  called  the  upholstery,  doing  some  nice
horrorshow tearing-out of the seats' guts and old Dim chaining the okno till
the  glass  cracked and  sparkled in the winter air, but we were all feeling
that bit  shagged and fagged and fashed,  it having been an  evening of some
small energy expenditure,  my brothers, only Dim, like  the clowny animal he
was, full of the joys-of, but looking  all dirtied over and too much  von of
sweat on him, which was one thing I had against old Dim.
     We got out at Center  and walked slow back  to the  Korova Milkbar, all
going yawwwww  a malenky bit and exhibiting to  moon  and star and lamplight
our  back fillings,  because we  were still only  growing malchicks  and had
school in  the daytime, and when we got into the Korova we found  it  fuller
than  when  we'd left earlier  on. But the chelloveck that had been burbling
away, in the land, on white and synthemesc or whatever,  was still on at it,
going:  "Urchins   of  deadcast  in  the  way-ho-hay  glill   platonic  time
weatherborn." It  was probable that this was  his third  or fourth  lot that
evening, for he had that pale  inhuman look, like he'd become a `thing,' and
like  his litso was really a piece of chalk carved. Really,  if he wanted to
spend  so  long in  the land, he  should have gone into one  of the  private
cubies at the back and not stayed in the big mesto, because here some of the
malchickies  would filly about  with him a malenky  bit, though not too much
because there were  powerful  bruiseboys hidden  away in the old  Korova who
could stop any riot. Anyway, Dim squeezed in next to this veck and, with his
big clown's yawp that showed his hanging grape,  he stabbed this veck's foot
with  his own large filthy sabog. But the veck,  my brothers, heard  nought,
being now all above the body.
     It  was nadsats  milking and coking and  fillying around  (nadsats were
what we used to  call the  teens), but there were a few  of the  more starry
ones,  vecks and  cheenas  alike  (but not  of  the bourgeois,  never  them)
laughing  and  govoreeting  at  the  bar.  You  could tell  them from  their
barberings and loose platties (big stringy sweaters mostly) that they'd been
on rehearsals at the TV studios around the corner. The devotchkas among them
had these very lively litsos and wide big rots, very  red, showing a lot  of
teeth, and smecking away and not caring about the wicked world one whit. And
then the disc on the  stereo twanged off and out (it was  Johnny  Zhivago, a
Russky koshka, singing `Only Every  Other Day'), and  in  the like interval,
the short silence before the next one came on, one of these devotchkas--very
fair  and  with  a  big  smiling  red  rot  and  in her  late  thirties  I'd
say--suddenly came with  a  burst of singing, only  a bar  and a half and as
though  she  was  like  giving an  example  of  something  they'd  all  been
govoreeting about, and it  was like for a moment,  O my brothers, some great
bird had flown  into the milkbar, and I felt all the little malenky hairs on
my  plott  standing endwise and the  shivers crawling up  like slow  malenky
lizards and  then down again. Because I knew  what she sang. It was  from an
opera  by Friedrich  Gitterfenster called `Das Bettzeug,' and it was the bit
where she's snuffing it with her throat cut, and the slovos are `Better like
this maybe.' Anyway, I shivered.
     But old Dim,  as  soon as  he'd slooshied this dollop  of  song  like a
lomtick  of  redhot  meat  plonked  on  your  plate,  let  off  one  of  his
vulgarities, which  in  this case  was  a  lip-trump  followed by a dog-howl
followed  by two fingers pronging  twice  at the  air  followed by  a clowny
guffaw.  I  felt myself  all of a fever  and like  drowning in redhot blood,
slooshying  and  viddying  Dim's vulgarity,  and  I said:  "Bastard.  Filthy
drooling mannerless bastard." Then I leaned across Georgie,  who was between
me  and horrible  Dim, and  fisted Dim  skorry on the rot.  Dim looked  very
surprised, his  rot open,  wiping the krovvy off of his goober with his rook
and in turn looking surprised at the red flowing krovvy and at me. "What for
did you do that for?" he said in his ignorant way. Not many viddied what I'd
done, and those  that viddied  cared not. The stereo  was  on again  and was
playing a very sick electronic guitar veshch. I said:
     "For being a bastard with no manners and not the dook of an idea how to
comport yourself publicwise, O my brother."
     Dim put on a hound-and-horny look  of evil, saying:  "I don't like  you
should do what you done then. And I'm  not your brother no more and wouldn't
want  to  be." He'd taken  a big snotty  tashtook from  his  pocket  and was
mopping the red  flow  puzzled, keeping on looking at it  frowning as  if he
thought that blood was  for other vecks and not for him. It  was like he was
singing  blood to make up for his  vulgarity when that devotchka was singing
music. But that devotchka was smecking away ha ha ha now  with her droogs at
the bar, her red rot  working  and her zoobies  ashine,  not  having noticed
Dim's filthy vulgarity. It was me really Dim had done wrong to. I said:
     "If you don't like this and you wouldn't want  that, then you know what
to do, little brother." Georgie said, in a sharp way that made me look:
     "All right. Let's not be starting."
     "That's clean up to Dim," I said. "Dim can't go on all his jeezny being
as a little child." And I looked sharp at Georgie.
     Dim said, and the red krovvy was easing its flow now:
     "What  natural right does he have to  think he can give the orders  and
tolchock me whenever he likes? Yarbles is what  I say to him, and I'd  chain
his glazzies out as soon as look."
     "Watch that," I said, as quiet as I  could with the stereo bouncing all
over the walls and  ceiling and the in-the-land veck beyond Dim getting loud
now with his "Spark  nearer, ultoptimate," I said: "Do watch that, O Dim, if
to continue to be on live thou dost wish."
     "Yarbles,"  said Dim, sneering, "great bolshy yarblockos  to you.  What
you done then you had no right. I'll meet  you  with chain or nozh or britva
any time, not having you aiming tolchocks at  me  reasonless,  it stands  to
reason I won't have it."
     "A nozh scrap any time you say," I snarled back. Pete said:
     "Oh  now, don't,  both  of you malchicks. Droogs, aren't  we? It  isn't
right droogs  should  behave thiswise.  See,  there  are  some  loose-lipped
malchicks over there smecking  at us, leering like. We mustn't let ourselves
down."
     "Dim," I said, "has got to learn his place. Right?"
     "Wait,"  said Georgie. "What is all this about place? This is the first
I ever hear about lewdies learning their place."
     Pete  said: "If the truth is known, Alex, you  shouldn't have given old
Dim that uncalled-for tolchock. I'll say it once and no more. I  say it with
all respect, but if it had been me you'd given it to you'd have to answer. I
say no more." And he drowned his litso in his milk-glass.
     I could feel  myself  getting all razdraz  inside, but I tried to cover
it,  saying calm:  "There has to  be a leader.  Discipline there has to  be.
Right?" None of them skazatted a  word or nodded  even. I  got more  razdraz
inside,  calmer  out. "I," I said, "have been in charge long now. We are all
droogs,  but  somebody has  to be in  charge. Right? Right?"  They  all like
nodded, wary like. Dim was osooshing the last of the krovvy off. It  was Dim
who said now:
     "Right, right. Doobidoob. A bit tired, maybe, everybody is. Best not to
say  more." I was surprised and just that  malenky bit poogly  to sloosh Dim
govoreeting that wise. Dim said:
     "Bedways is rightways now, so best we go  homeways. Right?"  I was very
surprised. The other two nodded, going right right right. I said:
     "You understand about that  tolchock on the rot, Dim. It was the music,
see. I  get all bezoomny  when any veck interferes with a ptitsa singing, as
it might be. Like that then."
     "Best we  go off homeways and get a bit of spatchka," said Dim. "A long
night  for growing malchicks. Right?"  Right  right nodded the other  two. I
said:
     "I think  it  best  we  go home  now. Dim has  made  a real  horrorshow
suggestion. If we don't meet day-wise,  O my brothers,  well then--same time
same place tomorrow?"
     "Oh yes," said Georgie. "I think that can be arranged."
     "I might," said Dim, "be just that malenky bit late. But same place and
near same  time tomorrow surely." He was still wiping at his goober,  though
no  krovvy  flowed any  longer now. "And," he said, "it is to be hoped there
won't be no more of them  singing ptitsas in here." Then he gave his old Dim
guff,  a clowny  big hohohohoho. It seemed like he was  too dim to take much
offence.
     So off we went our several  ways, me belching arrrrgh on the cold  coke
I'd peeted. I  had  my  cut-throat britva  handy  in case  any of Billyboy's
droogs should  be around near the flat-block waiting, or for that matter any
of the other bandas or gruppas or shaikas that from time to time were at war
with one. Where I lived was with my dadda  and mum in the flats of Municipal
Flatblock 18A, between Kingsley Avenue and Wilsonsway. I got to the big main
door with  no trouble, though I  did pass one  young malchick sprawling  and
creeching and moaning in the  gutter,  all cut about lovely, and  saw in the
lamplight also streaks of blood here and there like signatures, my brothers,
of  the night's  fillying.  And too I saw just  by 18A a pair of devotchka's
neezhnies  doubtless  rudely wrenched off in the heat of the  moment,  O  my
brothers. And so in.  In the  hallway was the good old municipal painting on
the walls--vecks and  ptitsas very  well developed, stern in  the dignity of
labour, at workbench and  machine with  not one stitch of platties on  their
well-developed plotts. But of course some of  the  malchicks living  in  18A
had, as was to be expected, embellished and decorated the said  big painting
with handy pencil  and  ballpoint, adding  hair  and stiff  rods  and  dirty
ballooning  slovos out of  the dignified rots of these nagoy (bare, that is)
cheenas  and  vecks. I went to the lift, but there was no  need to press the
electric  knopka to  see  if it  was  working or  not,  because it  had been
tolchocked  real horrorshow this  night,  the metal doors all buckled,  some
feat of rare strength indeed,  so I  had to walk the ten floors up. I cursed
and panted climbing, being tired in plott if not  so much in brain. I wanted
music very  bad this evening, that singing  devotchka  in the Korova  having
perhaps started  me off.  I  wanted like a big feast of it before getting my
passport stamped,  my  brothers, at  sleep's  frontier and the  stripy shest
lifted to let me through.
     I opened the  door of  10-8  with my own little klootch, and inside our
malenky quarters all was quiet, the pee and em  both being in sleepland, and
mum had laid out on the table on malenky bit of supper--a couple of lomticks
of tinned sponge-meat with a  shive or so of kleb and butter, a glass of the
old  cold moloko. Hohoho,  the old moloko,  with no knives or  synthemesc or
drencrom in it. How wicked, my brothers, innocent  milk must always seem  to
me now. Still I drank and ate growling, being more  hungry than I thought at
first, and  I 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  blazoned with name  or number:
SOUTH 4; METRO CORSKOL 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 rabbiting. 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 afternoon."
     "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 advertise, 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  millicents
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."
     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
patronizing 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 exchange  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 innocent stomach, I
started  to get  out  day platties  from my wardrobe, turning the  radio on.
There was music playing, a very nice malenky string quartet, my brothers, by
Claudius Birdman, 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 encouraged. 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 blitzen 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 belonged 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
MELODIA, 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
horrorshow 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 himself. "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 Granturco. 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  education  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-upholstered
they are." I quieted his gloopy fears and off we spun to Municipal Flatblock
18A, these two bold little ptitsas giggling and whispering. So,  to cut  all
short, we  arrived,  O my brothers, and I led the way  up to  10-8, and they
panted and smecked  away the way up, and  then they were thirsty, they said,
so I unlocked  the treasure-chest  in my room and gave these  ten-year-young
devotchkas a real  horrorshow  Scotchman apiece,  though  well  filled  with
sneezy pins-and-needles soda. They sat on my bed (yet unmade) and leg-swung,
smecking and  peeting  their  highballs,  while  I spun their like  pathetic
malenky  discs through my  stereo. Like  peeting some  sweet  scented  kid's
drink, that was, in like very beautiful and lovely and costly gold  goblets.
But they went oh oh oh and said, "Swoony" and "Hilly" and other weird slovos
that were the heighth of fashion in that youth group. While I  spun this cal
for them I encouraged them to drink  and have another, and they were nothing
loath, O my brothers. So by the time their pathetic pop-discs had been twice
spun  each (there were two: `Honey Nose,' sung by Ike Yard, and `Night After
Day After Night,' moaned by two horrible yarbleless like eunuchs whose names
I forget) they were getting near the pitch of like young ptitsa's hysterics,
what with jumping all over my bed and me in the room with them.
     What was  actually done  that afternoon there is  no need to  describe,
brothers,  as  you may  easily  guess all.  Those  two  were  unplattied and
smecking fit  to crack in no  time at all, and they thought it the bolshiest
fun to viddy old Uncle  Alex  standing  there  all  nagoy  and  pan-handled,
squirting the hypodermic  like some bare doctor,  then giving myself the old
jab of growling jungle-cat secretion in the rooker. Then I pulled the lovely
Ninth out of its sleeve, so that Ludwig van was now nagoy too, and I set the
needle hissing on to  the last movement, which  was all bliss. There  it was
then,  the bass strings like govoreeting away from under my  bed at the rest
of the orchestra, and  then the male human goloss coming in and telling them
all  to be  joyful,  and then the lovely blissful tune all about Joy being a
glorious spark like of heaven, and then I felt the old tigers leap in me and
then I leapt on  these two young ptitsas. This time they thought nothing fun
and stopped creeching with high mirth, and had to submit to  the strange and
weird desires of Alexander the Large which, what with the Ninth and the hypo
jab, were choodessny  and zammechat and  very  demanding, O my brothers. But
they were both very very drunken and could hardly feel very much.
     When the last movement had gone round for the second time  with all the
banging and creeching  about Joy Joy Joy  Joy,  then these two young ptitsas
were not acting the big lady sophisto  no more. They were like waking up  to
what was being done to their malenky persons  and saying that they wanted to
go home and like I was a wild beast. They