Stanley Kubrick's A clockwork orange: based on the novel by Anthony Burgess (18 page)

promising start," grinning all over his litso, then he like

waddled out, Dr. Branom after him, but Dr. Branom gave me a

like very droogy and sympathetic type smile as though he had

nothing to do with all this veshch but was like forced into it

as I was.

Anyhow, they freed my plott from the chair and they let go

the skin above my glazzies so that I could open and shut them

again, and I shut them, O my brothers, with the pain and throb

in my gulliver, and then I was like carried to the old wheel-

chair and taken back to my malenky bedroom, the under-veck

who wheeled me singing away at some hound-and-horny

popsong so that I like snarled: "Shut it, thou," but he only

smecked and said: "Never mind, friend," and then sang louder.

So I was put into the bed and still felt bolnoy but could not

sleep, but soon I started to feel that soon I might start to feel

that I might soon start feeling just a malenky bit better, and

then I was brought some nice hot chai with plenty of moloko

and sakar and, peeting that, I knew that that like horrible

nightmare was in the past and all over.  And then Dr. Branom

came in, all nice and smiling.  He said:

"Well, by my calculations you should be starting to feel all

right again.  Yes?"

"Sir," I said, like wary.  I did not quite kopat what he was

getting at govoreeting about calculations, seeing that getting

better from feeling bolnoy is like your own affair and nothing

to do with calculations.  He sat down, all nice and droogy, on

the bed's edge and said:

"Dr. Brodsky is pleased with you.  You had a very positive

response.  Tomorrow, of course, there'll be two sessions,

morning and afternoon, and I should imagine that you'll be

feeling a bit limp at the end of the day.  But we have to be hard

on you, you have to be cured."  I said:

"You mean I have to sit through - ?  You mean I have to

look at - ?  Oh, no," I said.  "It was horrible."

"Of course it was horrible," smiled Dr. Branom.  "Violence is a

very horrible thing.  That's what you're learning now.  Your

body is learning it."

"But," I said, "I don't understand.  I don't understand about

feeling sick like I did.  I never used to feel sick before.  I used to

feel like very the opposite.  I mean, doing it or watching it I

used to feel real horrorshow.  I just don't understand why or

how or what - "

"Life is a very wonderful thing," said Dr. Branom in a like

very holy goloss.  "The processes of life, the make-up of the

human organism, who can fully understand these miracles?  Dr.

Brodsky is, of course, a remarkable man.  What is happening

to you now is what should happen to any normal healthy

human organism contemplating the actions of the forces of

evil, the workings of the principle of destruction.  You are

being made sane, you are being made healthy."

"That I will not have," I said, "nor can understand at all.

What you've been doing is to make me feel very ill."

"Do you feel ill now?" he said, still with the old droogy

smile on his litso.  "Drinking tea, resting, having a quiet chat

with a friend - surely you're not feeling anything but well?"

I like listened and felt for pain and sickness in my gulliver

and plott, in a like cautious way, but it was true, brothers,

that I felt real horrorshow and even wanting my dinner.  "I

don't get it," I said.  "You must be doing something to me to

make me feel ill."  And I sort of frowned about that, thinking.

"You felt ill this afternoon," he said, "because you're getting

better.  When we're healthy we respond to the presence of the

hateful with fear and nausea.  You're becoming healthy, that's

all.  You'll be healthier still this time tomorrow."  Then he

patted me on the noga and went out, and I tried to puzzle the

whole veshch out as best I could.  What it seemed to me was

that the wire and other veshches that were fixed to my plott

perhaps were making me feel ill, and that it was all a trick

really.  I was still puzzling out all this and wondering whether I

should refuse to be strapped down to this chair tomorrow

and start a real bit of dratsing with them all, because I had my

rights, when another chelloveck came in to see me.  He was a

like smiling starry veck who said he was what he called the

Discharge Officer, and he carried a lot of bits of paper with

him.  He said:

"Where will you go when you leave here?"  I hadn't really

thought about that sort of veshch at all, and it only now

really began to dawn on me that I'd be a fine free malchick

very soon, and then I viddied that would only be if I played it

everybody's way and did not start any dratsing and creeching

and refusing and so on.  I said:

"Oh, I shall go home.  Back to my pee and em."

"Your - ?"  He didn't get nadsat-talk at all, so I said:

"To my parents in the dear old flatblock."

"I see," he said.  "And when did you last have a visit from

your parents?"

"A month," I said, "very near.  They like suspended visiting-

day for a bit because of one prestoopnick getting some blast-

ing-powder smuggled in across the wires from his ptitsa.  A

real cally trick to play on the innocent, like punishing them as

well.  So it's near a month since I had a visit."

"I see," said this veck.  "And have your parents been informed

of your transfer and impending release?"  That had a real

lovely zvook that did, that slovo 'release'.  I said:

"No."  Then I said: "It will be a nice surprise for them, that,

won't it?  Me just walking in through the door and saying:

'Here I am, back, a free veck again.'  Yes, real horrorshow."

"Right," said the Discharge Officer veck, "we'll leave it at that.

So long as you have somewhere to live.  Now, there's the

question of your having a job, isn't there?"  And he showed me

this long list of jobs I could have, but I thought, well, there

would be time enough for that.  A nice malenky holiday first.  I

could do a crasting job soon as I got out and fill the old

carmans with pretty polly, but I would have to be very careful

and I would have to do the job all on my oddy knocky.  I did

not trust so-called droogs any more.  So I told this veck to

leave it a bit and we would govoreet about it again.  He said

right right right, then got ready to leave.  He showed himself

to be a very queer sort of a veck, because what he did now

was to like giggle and then say: "Would you like to punch me

in the face before I go?"  I did not think I could possibly have

slooshied that right, so I said:

"Eh?"

"Would you," he giggled, "like to punch me in the face

before I go?"  I frowned like at that, very puzzled, and said:

"Why?"

"Oh," he said, "just to see how you're getting on."  And he

brought his litso real near, a fat grin all over his rot.  So I

fisted up and went smack at this litso, but he pulled himself

away real skorry, grinning still, and my rooker just punched

air.  Very puzzling, this was, and I frowned as he left, smecking

his gulliver off.  And then, my brothers, I felt real sick again,

just like in the afternoon, just for a couple of minootas.  It

then passed off skorry, and when they brought my dinner in

I found I had a fair appetite and was ready to crunk away at

the roast chicken.  But it was funny that starry chelloveck

asking for a tolchock in the litso.  And it was funny feeling sick

like that.

What was even funnier was when I went to sleep that night,

O my brothers, I had a nightmare, and, as you might expect, it

was one of those bits of film I'd viddied in the afternoon.  A

dream or nightmare is really only like a film inside your gulli-

ver, except that it is as though you could walk into it and be

part of it.  And this is what happened to me.  It was a nightmare

of one of the bits of film they showed me near the end of the

afternoon like session, all of smecking malchicks doing the

ultra-violent on a young ptitsa who was creeching away in her

red red krovvy, her platties all razrezzed real horrorshow.  I

was in this fillying about, smecking away and being like the

ring-leader, dressed in the heighth of nadsat fashion.  And then

at the heighth of all this dratsing and tolchocking I felt like

paralysed and wanting to be very sick, and all the other mal-

chicks had a real gromky smeck at me.  Then I was dratsing my

way back to being awake all through my own krovvy, pints

and quarts and gallons of it, and then I found myself in my bed

in this room.  I wanted to be sick, so I got out of the bed all

trembly so as to go off down the corridor to the old vaysay.

But, behold, brothers, the door was locked.  And turning

round I viddied for like the first raz that there were bars on

the window.  And so, as I reached for the like pot in the mal-

enky cupboard beside the bed, I viddied that there would be

no escaping from any of all this.  Worse, I did not dare to go

back into my own sleeping gulliver.  I soon found I did not

want to be sick after all, but then I was poogly of getting back

into bed to sleep.  But soon I fell smack into sleep and did not

dream any more.

6

"Stop it, stop it, stop it," I kept on creeching out.  "Turn it off

you grahzny bastards, for I can stand no more."  It was the

next day, brothers, and I had truly done my best morning and

afternoon to play it their way and sit like a horrorshow smil-

ing cooperative malchick in their chair of torture while they

flashed nasty bits of ultra-violence on the screen, my glazzies

clipped open to viddy all, my plott and rookers and nogas

fixed to the chair so I could not get away.  What I was being

made to viddy now was not really a veshch I would have

thought to be too bad before, it being only three or four

malchicks crasting in a shop and filling their carmans with

cutter, at the same time fillying about with the creeching

starry ptitsa running the shop, tolchocking her and letting the

red red krovvy flow.  But the throb and like crash crash crash

in my gulliver and the wanting to be sick and the terrible dry

rasping thirstiness in my rot, all were worse than yesterday.

"Oh.  I've had enough" I cried.  "It's not fair, you vonny sods,"

and I tried to struggle out of the chair but it was not possible

me being as good as stuck to it.

"First-class," creeched out this Dr. Brodsky.  "You're doing

really well.  Just one more and then we're finished."

What it was now was the starry 1939-45 War again, and it

was a very blobby and liny and crackly film you could viddy

had been made by the Germans.  It opened with German eagles

and the Nazi flag with that like crooked cross that all mal-

chicks at school love to draw, and then there were very

haughty and nadmenny like German officers walking through