"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 punishments. 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
height 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 twittwittwittering 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 started 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 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 tangle 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 otchkies 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 Clock-
work 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 ter-
rible 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," pat-
ting 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 straw-
berry 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 condition-
ings. 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 chap-
lain, 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 boast-
ful."
"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 trem-
bling, 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 vid-
dying myself on that job, I began to feel I wanted to sick and
the pain started up in my gulliver. This veck viddied this, be-
cause 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
