A Clockwork Orange

by Anthony Burgess

  'Long time is right,' said Dim. 'I don't remember them days too horrorshow. Don't call me Dim no more, either. Officer call me.'

  'Enough is remembered, though,' Billyboy kept nodding. He was not so fatty as he had been. 'Naughty little malchicks handy with cut-throat britvas--these must be kept under.' And they took me in a real strong grip and like walked me out of the Biblio. There was a millicent patrolcar waiting outside, and this veck they called Rex was the driver. They like tolchocked me into the back of this auto, and I couldn't help feeling it was all really like a joke, and that Dim anyway would pull his shlem off his gulliver and go haw haw haw. But he didn't. I said, trying to fight the strack inside me:

  'And old Pete, what happened to old Pete? It was sad about Georgie,' I said. 'I slooshied all about that.'

  'Pete, oh yes, Pete,' said Dim. 'I seem to remember like the name.' I could viddy we were driving out of town. I said:

  'Where are we supposed to be going?'

  Billyboy turned round from the front to say: 'It's light still. A little drive into the country, all winter-bare but lonely and lovely. It is not right, not always, for lewdies in the town to viddy too much of our summary punishment. Streets must be kept clean in more than one way.' And he turned to the front again.

  'Come,' I said. 'I just don't get this at all. The old days are dead and gone days. For what I did in the past I have been punished. I have been cured.'

  'That was read out to us,' said Dim. 'The Super read all that out to us. He said it was a very good way.'

  'Read to you,' I said, a malenky bit nasty. 'You still too dim to read for yourself, O brother?'

  'Ah, no,' said Dim, very like gentle and like regretful. 'Not to speak like that. Not no more, droogie.' And he launched a bolshy tolchock right on my cluve, so that all red red nose-krovvy started to drip drip drip.

  'There was never any trust,' I said, bitter, wiping off the krovvy with my rooker. 'I was always on my oddy knocky.'

  'This will do,' said Billyboy. We were now in the country and it was all bare trees and a few odd distant like twitters, and in the distance there was some like farm machine making a whirring shoom. It was getting all dusk now, this being the heighth of winter. There were no lewdies about, nor no animals. There was just the four. 'Get out, Alex boy,' said Dim. 'Just a malenky bit of summary.'

  All through what they did this driver veck just sat at the wheel of the auto, smoking a cancer, reading a malenky bit of a book. He had the light on in the auto to viddy by. He took no notice of what Billyboy and Dim did to your Humble Narrator. I will not go into what they did, but it was all like panting and thudding against this like background of whirring farm engines and the twittwit-twittering in the bare or nagoy branches. You could viddy a bit of smoky breath in the auto light, this driver turning the pages over quite calm. And they were on to me all the time, O my brothers. Then Billyboy or Dim, I couldn't say which one, said: 'About enough, droogie, I should think, shouldn't you?' Then they gave me one final tolchock on the litso each and I fell over and just laid there on the grass. It was cold but I was not feeling the cold. Then they dusted their rookers and put back on their shlems and tunics which they had taken off, and then they got back into the auto. 'Be viddying you some more sometime, Alex,' said Billyboy, and Dim just gave one of his old clowny guffs. The driver finished the page he was reading and put his book away, then he started the auto and they were off townwards, my ex-droog and ex-enemy waving. But I just laid there, fagged and shagged.

  After a bit I was hurting bad, and then the rain started, all icy. I could viddy no lewdies in sight, nor no lights of houses. Where was I to go, who had no home and not much cutter in my carmans? I cried for myself boo hoo hoo. Then I got up and began walking.

  4

  Home, home, home, it was home I was wanting, and it was HOME I came to, brothers. I walked through the dark and followed not the town way but the way where the shoom of a like farm machine had been coming from. This brought me to a sort of village I felt I had viddied before, but was perhaps because all villages look the same, in the dark especially. Here were houses and there was a like drinking mesto, and right at the end of the village there was a malenky cottage on its oddy knocky, and I could viddy its name shining white on the gate. HOME, it said. I was all dripping wet with this icy rain, so that my platties were no longer in the heighth of fashion but real miserable and like pathetic, and my luscious glory was a wet tangled cally mess all spread over my gulliver, and I was sure there were cuts and bruises all over my litso, and a couple of my zoobies sort of joggled loose when I touched them with my tongue or yahzick. And I was sore all over my plott and very thirsty, so that I kept opening my rot to the cold rain, and my stomach growled grrrrr all the time with not having had any pishcha since morning and then not very much, O my brothers.

  HOME, it said, and perhaps here would be some veck to help. I opened the gate and sort of slithered down the path, the rain like turning to ice, and then I knocked gentle and pathetic on the door. No veck came, so I knocked a malenky bit longer and louder, and then I heard the shoom of nogas coming to the door. Then the door opened and a male goloss said: 'Yes, what is it?'

  'Oh,' I said, 'please help. I've been beaten up by the police and just left to die on the road. Oh, please give me a drink of something and a sit by the fire, please, sir.'

  The door opened full then, and I could viddy like warm light and a fire going crackle crackle within. 'Come in,' said this veck, 'whoever you are. God help you, you poor victim, come in and let's have a look at you.' So I like staggered in, and it was no big act I was putting on, brothers, I really felt done and finished. This kind veck put his rookers round my pletchoes and pulled me into this room where the fire was, and of course I knew right away now where it was and why HOME on the gate looked so familiar. I looked at this veck and he looked at me in a kind sort of way, and I remembered him well now. Of course he would not remember me, for in those carefree days I and my so-called droogs did all our bolshy dratsing and fillying and crasting in maskies which were real horrorshow disguises. He was a shortish veck in middle age, thirty, forty, fifty, and he had ochkies on. 'Sit down by the fire,' he said, 'and I'll get you some whisky and warm water. Dear dear dear, somebody has been beating you up.' And he gave a like tender look at my gulliver and litso.

  'The police,' I said. 'The horrible ghastly police.'

  'Another victim,' he said, like sighing. 'A victim of the modern age. I'll go and get you that whisky and then I must clean up your wounds a little.' And off he went. I had a look round this malenky comfortable room. It was nearly all books now and a fire and a couple of chairs, and you could viddy somehow that there wasn't a woman living there. On the table was a typewriter and a lot of like tumbled papers, and I remembered that this veck was a writer veck. A Clockwork Orange, that had been it. It was funny that that stuck in my mind. I must not let on, though, for I needed help and kindness now. Those horrible grahzny bratchnies in that terrible white mesto had done that to me, making me need help and kindness now and forcing me to want to give help and kindness myself, if anybody would take it.

  'Here we are, then,' said this veck returning. He gave me this hot stimulating glassful to peet, and it made me feel better, and then he cleaned up these cuts on my litso. Then he said: 'You have a nice hot bath, I'll draw it for you, and then you can tell me all about it over a nice hot supper which I'll get ready while you're having the bath.' O my brothers, I could have wept at his kindness, and I think he must have viddied the old tears in my glazzies, for he said: 'There there there,' patting me on the pletcho.

  Anyway, I went up and had this hot bath, and he brought in pyjamas and an over-gown for me to put on, all warmed by the fire, also a very worn pair of toofles. And now, brothers, though I was aching and full of pains all over, I felt I would soon feel a lot better. I ittied downstairs and viddied that in the kitchen he had set the table with knives and forks and a fine big loaf of kleb, also a bottle of PRIMA SAUCE, and soon he served out
a nice fry of eggiwegs and lomticks of ham and bursting sausages and big bolshy mugs of hot sweet milky chai. It was nice sitting there in the warm, eating, and I found I was very hungry, so that after the fry I had to eat lomtick after lomtick of kleb and butter spread with strawberry jam out of a bolshy great pot. 'A lot better,' I said. 'How can I ever repay?'

  'I think I know who you are,' he said. 'If you are who I think you are, then you've come, my friend, to the right place. Wasn't that your picture in the papers this morning? Are you the poor victim of this horrible new technique? If so, then you have been sent here by Providence. Tortured in prison, then thrown out to be tortured by the police. My heart goes out to you, poor poor boy.' Brothers, I could not get a slovo in, though I had my rot wide open to answer his questions. 'You are not the first to come here in distress,' he said. 'The police are fond of bringing their victims to the outskirts of this village. But it is providential that you, who are also another kind of victim, should come here. Perhaps, then, you have heard of me?'

  I had to be very careful, brothers. I said: 'I have heard of A Clockwork Orange. I have not read it, but I have heard of it.'

  'Ah,' he said, and his litso shone like the sun in its flaming morning glory. 'Now tell me about yourself.'

  'Little enough to tell, sir,' I said, all humble. 'There was a foolish and boyish prank, my so-called friends persuading or rather forcing me to break into the house of an old ptitsa--lady, I mean. There was no real harm meant. Unfortunately the lady strained her good old heart in trying to throw me out, though I was quite ready to go of my own accord, and then she died. I was accused of being the cause of her death. So I was sent to prison, sir.'

  'Yes yes yes, go on.'

  'Then I was picked out by the Minister of the Inferior or Interior to have this Ludovico's veshch tried out on me.'

  'Tell me all about it,' he said, leaning forward eager, his pullover elbows with all strawberry jam on them from the plate I'd pushed to one side. So I told him all about it. I told him the lot, all, my brothers. He was very eager to hear all, his glazzies like shining and his goobers apart, while the grease on the plates grew harder harder harder. When I had finished he got up from the table, nodding a lot and going hm hm hm, picking up the plates and other veshches from the table and taking them to the sink for washing up. I said:

  'I will do that, sir, and gladly.'

  'Rest, rest, poor lad,' he said, turning the tap on so that all steam came burping out. 'You've sinned, I suppose, but your punishment has been out of all proportion. They have turned you into something other than a human being. You have no power of choice any longer. You are committed to socially acceptable acts, a little machine capable only of good. And I see that clearly--that business about the marginal conditionings. Music and the sexual act, literature and art, all must be a source now not of pleasure but of pain.'

  'That's right, sir,' I said, smoking one of this kind man's cork-tipped cancers.

  'They always bite off too much,' he said, drying a plate like absent-mindedly. 'But the essential intention is the real sin. A man who cannot choose ceases to be a man.'

  'That's what the charles said, sir,' I said. 'The prison chaplain, I mean.'

  'Did he, did he? Of course he did. He'd have to, wouldn't he, being a Christian? Well, now then,' he said, still wiping the same plate he'd been wiping ten minutes ago, 'we shall have a few people in to see you tomorrow. I think you can be used, poor boy. I think that you can help dislodge this overbearing Government. To turn a decent young man into a piece of clockwork should not, surely, be seen as any triumph for any government, save one that boasts of its repressiveness.' He was still wiping this same plate. I said:

  'Sir, you're still wiping that same plate. I agree with you, sir, about boasting. This Government seems to be very boastful.'

  'Oh,' he said, like viddying this plate for the first time and then putting it down. 'I'm still not too handy,' he said, 'with domestic chores. My wife used to do them all and leave me to my writing.'

  'Your wife, sir?' I said. 'Has she gone and left you?' I really wanted to know about his wife, remembering very well.

  'Yes, left me,' he said, in a like loud and bitter goloss. 'She died, you see. She was brutally raped and beaten. The shock was very great. It was in this house,' his rookers were trembling, holding a wiping-up cloth, 'in that room next door. I have had to steel myself to continue to live here, but she would have wished me to stay where her fragrant memory still lingers. Yes yes yes. Poor little girl.' I viddied all clearly, my brothers, what had happened that far-off nochy, and viddying myself on that job, I began to feel I wanted to sick and the pain started up in my gulliver. This veck viddied this, because my litso felt it was all drained of red red krovvy, very pale, and he would be able to viddy this. 'You go to bed now,' he said kindly. 'I've got the spare room ready. Poor poor boy, you must have had a terrible time. A victim of the modern age, just as she was. Poor poor poor girl.'

  5

  I had a real horrorshow night's sleep, brothers, with no dreams at all, and the morning was very clear and like frosty, and there was the very pleasant like von of breakfast frying away down below. It took me some little time to remember where I was, as it always does, but it soon came back to me and then I felt like warmed and protected. But, as I laid there in the bed, waiting to be called down to breakfast, it struck me that I ought to get to know the name of this kind protecting and like motherly veck, so I had a pad round in my nagoy nogas looking for A Clockwork Orange, which would be bound to have his eemya in, he being the author. There was nothing in my bedroom except a bed and a chair and a light, so I ittied next door to this veck's own room, and there I viddied his wife on the wall, a bolshy blown-up photo, so I felt a malenky bit sick remembering. But there were two or three shelves of books there too, and there was, as I thought there must be, a copy of A Clockwork Orange, and on the back of the book, like on the spine, was the author's eemya--F. Alexander. Good Bog, I thought, he is another Alex. Then I leafed through, standing in my pyjamas and bare nogas but not feeling one malenky bit cold, the cottage being warm all through, and I could not viddy what the book was about. It seemed written in a very bezoomny like style, full of Ah and Oh and that cal, but what seemed to come out of it was that all lewdies nowadays were being turned into machines and that they were really--you and me and him and kiss-my-sharries--more like a natural growth like a fruit. F. Alexander seemed to think that we all like grow on what he called the world-tree in the world-orchard that like Bog or God planted, and we were there because Bog or God had need of us to quench his thirsty love, or some such cal. I didn't like the shoom of this at all, O my brothers, and wondered how bezoomny this F. Alexander really was, perhaps driven bezoomny by his wife's snuffing it. But then he called me down in a like sane veck's goloss, full of joy and love and all that cal, so down Your Humble Narrator went.

  'You've slept long,' he said, ladling out boiled eggs and pulling black toast from under the grill. 'It's nearly ten already. I've been up hours, working.'

  'Writing another book, sir?' I said.

  'No no, not that now,' he said, and we sat down nice and droogy to the old crack crack crack of eggs and crackle crunch crunch of this black toast, very milky chai standing by in bolshy great morning mugs. 'No, I've been on the phone to various people.'

  'I thought you didn't have a phone,' I said, spooning egg in and not watching out what I was saying.

  'Why?' he said, very alert like some skorry animal with an egg-spoon in its rooker. 'Why shouldn't you think I have a phone?'

  'Nothing,' I said, 'nothing, nothing.' And I wondered, brothers, how much he remembered of the earlier part of that distant nochy, me coming to the door with the old tale and saying to phone the doctor and she saying no phone. He took a very close smot at me but then went back to being like kind and cheerful and spooning up the old eggiweg. Munching away, he said:

  'Yes, I've rung up various people who will be interested in your case. You can be a very potent we
apon, you see, in ensuring that this present evil and wicked Government is not returned in the forthcoming election. The Government's big boast, you see, is the way it has dealt with crime these last months.' He looked at me very close again over his steaming egg, and I wondered again if he was viddying what part I had so far played in his jeezny. But he said: 'Recruiting brutal young roughs for the police. Proposing debilitating and will-sapping techniques of conditioning.' All these long slovos, brothers, and a like mad or bezoomny look in his glazzies. 'We've seen it all before,' he said, 'in other countries. The thin end of the wedge. Before we know where we are we shall have the full apparatus of totalitarianism.' 'Dear dear dear,' I thought, egging away and toast-crunching. I said:

  'Where do I come into all this, sir?'

  'You,' he said, still with this bezoomny look, 'are a living witness to these diabolical proposals. The people, the common people must know, must see.' He got up from his breakfast and started to walk up and down the kitchen, from the sink to the like larder, saying very gromky: 'Would they like their sons to become what you, poor victim, have become? Will not the Government itself now decide what is and what is not crime and pump out the life and guts and will of whoever sees fit to displease the Government?' He became quieter but did not go back to his egg. 'I've written an article,' he said, 'this morning, while you were sleeping. That will be out in a day or so, together with your unhappy picture. You shall sign it, poor boy, a record of what they have done to you.' I said:

  'And what do you get out of all this, sir? I mean, besides the pretty polly you'll get for the article, as you call it? I mean, why are you so hot and strong against this Government, if I may make like so bold as to ask?'

  He gripped the edge of the table and said, gritting his zoobies, which were very cally and all stained with cancer-smoke: 'Some of us have to fight. There are great traditions of liberty to defend. I am no partisan man. Where I see the infamy I seek to erase it. Party names mean nothing. The tradition of liberty means all. The common people will let it go, oh yes. They will sell liberty for a quieter life. That is why they must be prodded, prodded--' And here, brothers, he picked up a fork and stuck it two or three razzes into the wall, so that it all got bent. Then he threw it on the floor. Very kindly he said: 'Eat well, poor boy, poor victim of the modern world,' and I could viddy quite clear he was going off his gulliver. 'Eat, eat. Eat my egg as well.' But I said: