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
streets that were all dust and bomb-holes and broken build-
ings. Then you were allowed to viddy lewdies being shot
against walls, officers giving the orders, and also horrible
nagoy plotts left lying in gutters, all like cages of bare ribs and
white thin nogas. Then there were lewdies being dragged off
creeching though not on the sound-track, my brothers, the
only sound being music, and being tolchocked while they
were dragged off. Then I noticed, in all my pain and sickness,
what music it was that like crackled and boomed on the
sound-track, and it was Ludwig van, the last movement of the
Fifth Symphony, and I creeched like bezoomny at that. "Stop!"
I creeched. "Stop, you grahzny disgusting sods. It's a sin, that's
what it is, a filthy unforgivable sin, you bratchnies!" They
didn't stop right away, because there was only a minute or
two more to go - lewdies being beaten up and all krovvy, then
more firing squads, then the old Nazi flag and THE END. But
when the lights came on this Dr. Brodsky and also Dr. Branom
were standing in front of me, and Dr. Brodsky said:
"What's all this about sin, eh?"
"That," I said, very sick. "Using Ludwig van like that. He did
no harm to anyone. Beethoven just wrote music." And then I
was really sick and they had to bring a bowl that was in the
shape of like a kidney.
"Music," said Dr. Brodsky, like musing. "So you're keen on
music. I know nothing about it myself. It's a useful emotional
heightener, that's all I know. Well, well. What do you think
about that, eh, Branom?"
"It can't be helped," said Dr. Branom. "Each man kills the
thing he loves, as the poet-prisoner said. Here's the pun-
ishment element, perhaps. The Governor ought to be
pleased."
"Give me a drink," I said, "for Bog's sake."
"Loosen him," ordered Dr. Brodsky. "Fetch him a carafe of
ice-cold water." So then these under-vecks got to work and
soon I was peeting gallons and gallons of water and it was
like heaven, O my brothers. Dr. Brodsky said:
"You seem a sufficiently intelligent young man. You seem,
too, to be not without taste. You've just got this violence
thing, haven't you? Violence and theft, theft being an aspect
of violence." I didn't govoreet a single slovo, brothers, I was
still feeling sick, though getting a malenky bit better now. But
it had been a terrible day. "Now then," said Dr. Brodsky, "how
do you think this is done? Tell me, what do you think we're
doing to you?"
"You're making me feel ill. I'm ill when I look at those filthy
pervert films of yours. But it's not really the films that's doing
it. But I feel that if you'll stop these films I'll stop feeling ill."
"Right," said Dr. Brodsky. "It's association, the oldest edu-
cational method in the world. And what really causes you to
feel ill?"
"These grahzny sodding veshches that come out of my gulli-
ver and my plott," I said, "that's what it is."
"Quaint," said Dr. Brodsky, like smiling, "the dialect of the
tribe. Do you know anything of its provenance, Branom?"
"Odd bits of old rhyming slang," said Dr. Branom, who did
not look quite so much like a friend any more. "A bit of gipsy
talk, too. But most of the roots are Slav. Propaganda. Sub-
liminal penetration."
"All right, all right, all right," said Dr. Brodsky, like impatient
and not interested any more. "Well," he said to me, "it isn't the
wires. It's nothing to do with what's fastened to you. Those
are just for measuring your reactions. What is it, then?"
I viddied then, of course, what a bezoomny shoot I was not
to notice that it was the hypodermic shots in the rooker.
"Oh," I creeched, "oh, I viddy all now. A filthy cally vonny
trick. An act of treachery, sod you, and you won't do it
again."
"I'm glad you've raised your objections now," said Dr.
Brodsky. "Now we can be perfectly clear about it. We can get
this stuff of Ludovico's into your system in many different
ways. Orally, for instance. But the subcutaneous method is the
best. Don't fight against it, please. There's no point in your
fighting. You can't get the better of us."
"Grahzny bratchnies," I said, like snivelling. Then I said: "I
don't mind about the ultra-violence and all that cal. I put up
with that. But it's not fair on the music. It's not fair I should
feel ill when I'm slooshying lovely Ludwig van and G. F. Handel
and others. All that shows you're an evil lot of bastards and I
shall never forgive you, sods."
They both looked a bit like thoughtful. Then Dr. Brodsky
said: "Delimitation is always difficult. The world is one, life is
one. The sweetest and most heavenly of activities partake in
some measure of violence - the act of love, for instance;
