Antony Burgess: A Clockwork Orange

“Well well well. And we never knew.”

“Give me that,” I snarled and grabbed it skorry. I couldn’t explain how it had got there, brothers, but it was a photograph I had scissored out of the old gazetta and it was of a baby. It was of a baby gurgling goo goo goo with all like moloko dribbling from its rot and looking up and like smecking at everybody, and its was all nagoy and its flesh was like in all folds with being a very fat baby. There was then like a bit of haw haw haw struggling to get hold of this bit of paper from me, so I had to snarl again at them and I grabbed the photo and tore it up into tiny teeny pieces and let it fall like a bit of snow on to the floor. The whisky came in then and the starry baboochkas said: “Good health, lads, God bless you, boys, the best lads living, that’s what you are,” and all that cal. And one of them who was all lines and wrinkles and no zoobies in her shrunken old rot said: “Don’t tear up money, son. If you don’t need it give it them as does,” which was very bold and forward of her. But Rick said:

“Money that was not, O baboochka. It was a picture of a dear little itsy witsy bitsy bit of a baby.” I said:

“I’m getting just that bit tired, that I am. It’s you who’s the babies, you lot. Scoffing and grinning and all you can do is smeck and give people bolshy cowardly tolchocks when they can’t give them back.” Bully said:

“Well now, we always thought it was you who was the king of that and also the teacher. Not well, that’s the trouble with thou, old droogie.”

I viddied this sloppy glass of beer I had on the table in front of me and felt like all vomity within, so I went “Aaaaah” and poured all the frothy vonny cal all over the floor. One of the starry ptitsas said:

“Waste not want not.” I said:

“Look, droogies. Listen. Tonight I am somehow just not in the mood. I know not why or how it is, but there it is. You three go your own ways this nightwise, leaving me out. Tomorrow we shall meet same place same time, me hoping to be like a lot better.”

“Oh,” said Bully, “right sorry I am.” But you could viddy a like gleam in his glazzies, because now he would be taking over for this nochy. Power power, everybody like wants power. “We can postpone till tomorrow,” said Bully, “what we in mind had. Namely, that bit of shop-crasting in Gagarin Street. Flip horrorshow takings there, droog, for the having.”

“No,” I said. “You postpone nothing. You just carry on in your own like style. Now,” I said, “I itty off.” And I got up from my chair.

“Where to, then?” asked Rick.

“That know I not,” I said. “Just to be on like my own and sort things out.” You could viddy the old baboochkas were real puzzled at me going out like that and like all morose and not the bright and smecking malchickiwick you will remember. But I said: “Ah, to hell, to hell,” and scatted out all on my oddy knocky into the street.

It was dark and there was a wind sharp as a nozh getting up, and there were very very few lewdies about. There were these patrol cars with brutal rozzes inside them like cruising about, and now and then on the cor ner you would viddy a couple of very young millicents stamping against the bitchy cold and letting out steam breath on the winter air, O my brothers. I suppose really a lot of the old ultra-violence and crasting was dying” out now, the rozzes being so brutal with who they caught, though it had become like a fight between naughty nadsats and the rozzes who could be more skorry with the nozh and the britva and the stick and even the gun. But what was the matter with me these days was that I didn’t like care much. It was like something soft getting into me and I could not pony why. What I wanted these days I did not know. Even the music I liked to slooshy in my own malenky den what what I would have smecked at before, brothers. I was slooshying more like malenky romantic songs, what they call Lieder, just a goloss and a piano, very quiet and like yearny, different from when it had been all bolshy orchestras and me lying on the bed between the violins and the trombones and kettledrums. There was something happening inside me, and I wondered if it was like some disease or if it was what they had done to me that time upsetting my gulliver and perhaps going to make me real bezoomny.

So thinking like this with my gulliver bent and my rookers stuck in my trouser carmans I walked the town, brothers, and at last I began to feel very tired and also in great need of a nice bolshy chasha of milky chai. Thinking about this chai, I got a sudden like picture of me sitting before a bolshy fire in an armchair peeting away at this chai, and what was funny and very very strange was that I seemed to have turned into a very starry chel-loveck, about seventy years old, because I could viddy my own voloss, which was very grey, and I also had whiskers, and these were very grey too. I could viddy myself as an old man, sitting by a fire, and then the like picture vanished. But it was very like strange.

I came to one of these tea-and-coffee mestos, brothers, and I could viddy through the long long window that it was full of very dull lewdies, like ordinary, who had these very patient and expressionless litsos and would do no harm to no one, all sitting there and govoreeting like quietly and peeting away at their nice harmless chai and coffee. I ittied inside and went up to the counter and bought me a nice hot chai with plenty of moloko, then I ittied to one of these tables and sat down to peet it. There was a like young couple at this table, peeting and smoking filter-tip cancers, and govoreeting and smecking very quietly between themselves, but I took no notice of them and just went on peeting away and like dreaming and wondering what it was in me that was like changing and what was going to happen to me. But I viddied that the devotchka at this table who was with this chelloveck was real horrorshow, not the sort you would want to like throw down and give the old in-out in-out to, but with a horrorshow plott and litso and a smiling rot and very very fair voloss and all that cal. And then the veck with her, who had a hat on his gulliver and had his litso like turned away from me, swivelled round to viddy the bolshy big clock they had on the wall in this mesto, and then I viddied who he was and then he viddied who I was. It was Pete, one of my three droogs from those days when it was Georgie and Dim and him and me. It was Pete like looking a lot older though he could not now be more than nineteen and a bit, and he had a bit of a moustache and an ordinary day-suit and this baton. I said:

“Well well well, droogie, what gives? Very very long time no viddy.” He said:

“It’s little Alex, isn’t it?”

“None other,” I said. “A long long long time since those dead and gone good days. And now poor Georgie, they told me, is underground and old Dim is a brutal millicent, and here is thou and here is I, and what news hast thou, old droogie?”

“He talks funny, doesn’t he?” said this devotchka, like giggling.

“This,” said Pete to the devotchka, “is an old friend. His name is Alex. May I,” he said to me, “introduce my wife?”

My rot fell wide open then. “Wife?” I like gaped. “Wife wife wife? Ah no, that cannot be. Too young art thou to be married, old droog. Impossible impossible.”

This devotchka who was like Pete’s wife (impossible impossible) giggled again and said to Pete: “Did you used to talk like that too?”

“Well,” said Pete, and he liked smiled. “I’m nearly twenty. Old enough to be hitched, and it’s been two months already. You were very young and very forward, remember.”

“Well,” I liked gaped still. “Over this get can I not, old droogie. Pete married. Well well well.”