Stanley Kubrick's A clockwork orange: based on the novel by Anthony Burgess (4 page)

disgrace, all creased and untidy and covered in cal and mud

and filth and stuff.  So we got hold of him and cracked him

with a few good horrorshow tolchocks, but he still went on

singing.  The song went:

    And I will go back to my darling, my darling,

    When you, my darling, are gone.

But when Dim fisted him a few times on his filthy drunkard's

rot he shut up singing and started to creech: "Go on, do me in,

you bastard cowards,  I don't want to live anyway, not in a

stinking world like this one."  I told Dim to lay off a bit then,

because it used to interest me sometimes to slooshy what

some of these starry decreps had to say about life and the

world.  I said: "Oh.  And what's stinking about it?"

He cried out: "It's a stinking world because it lets the young

get on to the old like you done, and there's no law nor order

no more."  He was creeching out loud and waving his rookers

and making real horrorshow with the slovos, only the odd

blurp blurp coming from his keeshkas, like something was

orbiting within, or like some very rude interrupting sort of a

moodge making a shoom, so that this old veck kept sort of

threatening it with his fists, shouting: "It's no world for any

old man any longer, and that means that I'm not one bit

scared of you, my boyos, because I'm too drunk to feel the

pain if you hit me, and if you kill me I'll be glad to be dead."

We smecked and then grinned but said nothing, and then he

said: "What sort of a world is it at all?  Men on the moon and

men spinning round the earth like it might be midges round a

lamp, and there's not more attention paid to earthly law nor

order no more.  So your worst you may do, you filthy cow-

ardly hooligans."  Then he gave us some lip-music -

"Prrrrzzzzrrrr" - like we'd done to those young millicents, and

then he started singing again:

    Oh dear dear land, I fought for thee

    And brought thee peace and victory -

So we cracked into him lovely, grinning all over our litsos,

but he still went on singing.  Then we tripped him so he laid

down flat and heavy and a bucketload of beer-vomit came

whooshing out.  That was disgusting so we gave him the boot,

one go each, and then it was blood, not song nor vomit, that

came out of his filthy old rot.  Then we went on our way.

It was round by the Municipal Power Plant that we came

across Billyboy and his five droogs.  Now in those days, my

brothers, the teaming up was mostly by fours or fives, these

being like auto-teams, four being a comfy number for an

auto, and six being the outside limit for gang-size.  Sometimes

gangs would gang up so as to make like malenky armies for

big night-war, but mostly it was best to roam in these like

small numbers.  Billyboy was something that made me want to

sick just to viddy his fat grinning litso, and he always had this

von of very stale oil that's been used for frying over and over,

even when he was dressed in his best platties, like now.  They

viddied us just as we viddied them, and there was like a very

quit kind of watching each other now.  This would be real,

this would be proper, this would be the nozh, the oozy, the

britva, not just fisties and boots.  Billyboy and his droogs

stopped what they were doing, which was just getting ready

to perform something on a weepy young devotchka they had

there, not more than ten, she creeching away but with her

platties still on.  Billyboy holding her by one rooker and his

number-one, Leo, holding the other.  They'd probably just

been doing the dirty slovo part of the act before getting down

to a malenky bit of ultra-violence.  When they viddied us a-

coming they let go of this boo-hooing little ptitsa, there

being plenty more where she came from, and she ran with her

thin white legs flashing through the dark, still going "Oh oh

oh".  I said, smiling very wide and droogie: "Well, if it isn't fat

stinking billygoat Billyboy in poison.  How art thou, thou

globby bottle of cheap stinking chip-oil?  Come and get one in

the yarbles, if you have any yarbles, you eunuch jelly, thou."

And then we started.

There were four of us to six of them, like I have already

indicated, but poor old Dim, for all his dimness, was worth

three of the others in sheer madness and dirty fighting.  Dim

had a real horrorshow length of oozy or chain round his

waist, twice wound round, and he unwound this and began to

swing it beautiful in the eyes or glazzies.  Pete and Georgie had

good sharp nozhes, but I for my own part had a fine starry

horrorshow cut-throat britva which, at that time, I could flash

and shine artistic.  So there we were dratsing away in the dark,

the old Luna with men on it just coming up, the stars stabbing

away as it might be knives anxious to join in the dratsing.

With my britva I managed to slit right down the front of one

of Billyboy's droog's platties, very very neat and not even

touching the plott under the cloth.  Then in the dratsing this

droog of Billyboy's suddenly found himself all opened up like

a peapod, with his belly bare and his poor old yarbles show-

ing, and then he got very razdraz, waving and screaming

and losing his guard and letting in old Dim with his chain

snaking whisssssshhhhhhhhh, so that old Dim chained him

right in the glazzies, and this droog of Billyboy's went totter-

ing off and howling his heart out.  We were doing very hor-

rorshow, and soon we had Billyboy's number-one down

underfoot, blinded with old Dim's chain and crawling and

howling about like an animal, but with one fair boot on the

gulliver he was out and out and out.

Of the four of us Dim, as usual, came out the worst in point

of looks, that is to say his litso was all bloodied and his

platties a dirty mess, but the others of us were still cool and

whole.  It was stinking fatty Billyboy I wanted now, and there I

was dancing about with my britva like I might be a barber on

board a ship on a very rough sea, trying to get in at him with a

few fair slashes on his unclean oily litso.  Billyboy had a nozh,

a long flick-type, but he was a malenky bit too slow and heavy

in his movements to vred anyone really bad.  And, my

brothers, it was real satisfaction to me to waltz - left two

three, right two three - and carve left cheeky and right cheeky,

so that like two curtains of blood seemed to pour out at the

same time, one on either side of his fat filthy oily snout in the

winter starlight.  Down this blood poured in like red curtains,

but you could viddy Billyboy felt not a thing, and he went

lumbering on like a filthy fatty bear, poking at me with his

nozh.

Then we slooshied the sirens and knew the millicents were

coming with pooshkas pushing out of the police-auto-

windows at the ready.  That weepy little devotchka had told

them, no doubt, there being a box for calling the rozzes not

too far behind the Muni Power Plant.  "Get you soon, fear

not," I called, "stinking billygoat.  I'll have your yarbles off

lovely."  Then off they ran, slow and panting, except for

Number One Leo out snoring on the ground, away north

towards the river, and we went the other way.  Just round the

next turning was an alley, dark and empty and open at both

ends, and we rested there, panting fast then slower, then

breathing like normal.  It was like resting between the feet of

two terrific and very enormous mountains, these being the

flatblocks, and in the windows of all the flats you could

viddy like blue dancing light.  This would be the telly.  Tonight

was what thy called a worldcast, meaning that the same pro-

gramme was being viddied by everybody in the world that

wanted to, that being mostly the middle-aged middle-class

lewdies.  There would be some big famous stupid comic

chelloveck or black singer, and it was all being bounced off

the special telly satellites in outer space, my brothers.  We

waited panting, and we could slooshy the sirening millicents

going east, so we knew we were all right now.  But poor old

Dim kept looking up at the stars and planets and the Luna

with his rot wide open like a kid who'd never viddied any such

things before, and he said:

"What's on them, I wonder.  What would be up there on

things like that?"

I nudged him hard, saying: "Come, gloopy bastard as thou

art.  Think thou not on them.  There'll be life like down here

most likely, with some getting knifed and others doing the

knifing.  And now, with the nochy still molodoy, let us be on

our way, O my brothers."  The others smecked at this, but

poor old Dim looked at me serious, then up again at the stars

and the Luna.  So we went on our way down the alley, with the

worldcast blueing on on either side.  What we needed now was

an auto, so we turned left coming out of the alley, knowing

right away we were in Priestly Place as soon as we viddied the

big bronze statue of some starry poet with an apey upper lip

and a pipe stuck in a droopy old rot.  Going north we came to

the filthy old Filmdrome, peeling and dropping to bits

through nobody going there much except malchicks like me

and my droogs, and then only for a yell or a razrez or a bit of

in-out-in-out in the dark.  We could viddy from the poster on

the Filmdrome's face, a couple of fly-dirtied spots trained on

it, that there was the usual cowboy riot, with the archangels

on the side of the US marshal six-shooting at the rustlers out

of hell's fighting legions, the kind of hound-and-horny veshch

put out by Statefilm in those days.  The autos parked by the

sinny weren't all that horrorshow, crappy starry veshches

most of them, but there was a newish Durango 95 that I

thought might do.  Georgie had one of these polyclefs, as they

called them, on his keyring, so we were soon aboard - Dim

and Pete at the back, puffing away lordly at their cancers - and

I turned on the ignition and started her up and she grumbled

away real horrorshow, a nice warm vibraty feeling grumbling

all through your guttiwuts.  Then I made with the noga,

and we backed out lovely, and nobody viddied us take off.

We fillied round what was called the backtown for a bit,

scaring old vecks and cheenas that were crossing the roads

and zigzagging after cats and that.  Then we took the road

west.  There wasn't much traffic about, so I kept pushing the

old noga through the floorboards near, and the Durango 95

ate up the road like spaghetti.  Soon it was winter trees and

dark, my brothers, with a country dark, and at one place I ran

over something big with a snarling toothy rot in the head-

lamps, then it screamed and squelched under and old Dim at

the back near laughed his gulliver off - "Ho ho ho" - at that.

Then we saw one young malchick with his sharp, lubbilubbing