And then in the afterlunch I might perhaps, if I still felt like it,
itty off to the old skolliwoll and see what was vareeting in
the great seat of gloopy useless learning, O my brothers. I
heard my papapa grumbling and trampling and then ittying off
to the dyeworks where he rabbited, and then my mum called
in in a very respectful goloss as she did now I was growing up
big and strong:
"It's gone eight, son. You don't want to be late again."
So I called back: "A bit of pain in my gulliver. Leave us be
and I'll try to sleep it off and then I'll be right as dodgers for
this after." I slooshied her give a sort of a sigh and she said:
"I'll put your breakfast in the oven then, son. I've got to be
off myself now." Which was true, there being this law for
everybody not a child nor with child nor ill to go out rab-
biting. My mum worked at one of the Statemarts, as they
called them, filling up the shelves with tinned soup and beans
and all that cal. So I slooshied her clank a plate in the gas-
oven like and then she was putting her shoes on and then
getting her coat from behind the door and then sighing again,
then she said: "I'm off now, son." But I let on to be back in
sleepland and then I did doze off real horrorshow, and I had a
queer and very real like sneety, dreaming for some reason of
my droog Georgie. In this sneety he'd got like very much
older and very sharp and hard and was govoreeting about
discipline and obedience and how all the malchicks under his
control had to jump hard at it and throw up the old salute
like being in the army, and there was me in line like the rest
saying yes sir and no sir, and the I viddied clear that Georgie
had these stars on his pletchoes and he was like a general. And
then he brought in old Dim with a whip, and Dim was a lot
more starry and grey and had a few zoobies missing as you
could see when he let out a smeck, viddying me, and then my
droog Georgie said, pointing like at me: "That man has filth
and cal all over his platties," and it was true. Then I creeched:
"Don't hit, please don't, brothers," and started to run. And I
was running in like circles and Dim was after me, smecking his
gulliver off, cracking with the old whip, and each time I got a
real horrorshow tolchock with this whip there was like a very
loud electric bell ringringring, and this bell was like a sort
of a pain too.
Then I woke up real skorry, my heart going bap bap bap,
and of course there was really a bell going brrrrr, and it was
our front-door bell. I let on that nobody was at home, but
this brrrrr still ittied on, and then I heard a goloss shouting
through the door: "Come on then, get out of it, I know
you're in bed." I recognized the goloss right away. It was the
goloss of P. R. Deltoid (a real gloopy nazz, that one) what
they called my Post-Corrective Adviser, an overworked veck
with hundreds on his books. I shouted right right right, in a
goloss of like pain, and I got out of bed and attired myself, O
my brothers, in a very lovely over-gown of like silk, with
designs of like great cities all over this over-gown. Then I put
my nogas into very comfy wooly toofles, combed my
luscious glory, and was ready for P. R. Deltoid. When I
opened up he came shambling in looking shagged, a battered
old shlapa on his gulliver, his raincoat filthy. "Ah, Alex boy,"
he said to me. "I met your mother, yes. She said something
about a pain somewhere. Hence not at schol, yes."
"A rather intolerable pain in the head, brother, sir," I said in
my gentleman's goloss. "I think it should clear by this after-
noon."
"Or certainly by this evening, yes," said P. R. Deltoid. "The
evening is the great time, isn't it, Alex boy? Sit," he said, "sit,
sit," as though this was his domy and me his guest. And he sat
in this starry rocking-chair of my dad's and began rocking, as
if that was all he had come for. I said:
"A cup of the old chai, sir? Tea, I mean."
"No time," he said. And he rocked, giving me the old glint
under frowning brows, as if with all the time in the world. "No
time, yes," he said, gloopy. So I put the kettle on. Then I
said:
"To what do I owe the extreme pleasure? Is anything
wrong, sir?"
"Wrong?" he said, very skorry and sly, sort of hunched
looking at me but still rocking away. Then he caught sight of
an advert in the gazetta, which was on the table - a lovely
smecking young ptitsa with her groodies hanging out to ad-
vertise, my brothers, the Glories of the Jugoslav Beaches.
Then, after sort of eating her up in two swallows, he said:
"Why should you think in terms of there being anything
wrong? Have you been doing something you shouldn't,
yes?"
"Just a manner of speech," I said, "sir."
"Well," said P. R. Deltoid, "it's just a manner of speech from
me to you that you watch out, little Alex, because next time,
as you very well know, it's not going to be the corrective
school any more. Next time it's going to be the barry place
and all my work ruined. If you have no consideration for your
horrible self you at least might have some for me, who have
sweated over you. A big black mark, I tell you in confidence,
for every one we don't reclaim, a confession of failure for
every one of you that ends up in the stripy hole."
"I've been doing nothing I shouldn't, sir," I said. "The mil-
licents have nothing on me, brother, sir I mean."
"Cut out this clever talk about millicents," said P. R. Deltoid
very weary, but still rocking. "Just because the police have not
picked you up lately doesn't, as you very well know, mean
you've not been up to some nastiness. There was a bit of a
fight last night, wasn't there? There was a bit of shuffling with
nozhes and bike-chains and the like. One of a certain fat boy's
friends was ambulanced off late from near the Power Plant
and hospitalized, cut about very unpleasantly, yes. Your name
was mentioned. The word has got through to me by the usual
channels. Certain friends of yours were named also. There
seems to have been a fair amount of assorted nastiness last
night. Oh, nobody can prove anything about anybody, as
usual. But I'm warning you, little Alex, being a good friend to
you as always, the one man in this sick and sore community
who wants to save you from yourself."
"I appreciate all that, sir," I said, "very sincerely."
"Yes, you do, don't you?" he sort of sneered. "Just watch it,
that's all, yes. We know more than you think, little Alex."
Then he said, in a goloss of great suffering, but still rocking
away: "What gets into you all? We study the problem and
we've been studying it for damn well near a century, yes, but
we get no further with our studies. You've got a good home
here, good loving parents, you've got not too bad of a brain.
Is it some devil that crawls inside you?"
"Nobody's got anything on me, sir," I said. "I've been out of
the rookers of the millicents for a long time now."
"That's just what worries me," sighed P. R. Deltoid. "A bit
too long of a time to be healthy. You're about due now by my
reckoning. That's why I'm warning you, little Alex, to keep
your handsome young proboscis out of the dirt, yes. Do I
make myself clear?"
"As an unmuddied lake, sir," I said. "Clear as an azure sky of
deepest summer. You can rely on me, sir." And I gave him a
nice zooby smile.
But when he'd ookadeeted and I was making this very
strong pot of chai, I grinned to myself over this veshch that
P. R. Deltoid and his droogs worried about. All right, I do
bad, what with crasting and tolchocks and carves with the
britva and the old in-out-in-out, and if I get loveted, well, too
bad for me, O my little brothers, and you can't run a country
with every chelloveck comporting himself in my manner of
the night. So if I get loveted and it's three months in this
mesto and another six in that, and the, as P. R. Deltoid so
kindly warns, next time, in spite of the great tenderness of my
summers, brothers, it's the great unearthly zoo itself, well, I
say: "Fair, but a pity, my lords, because I just cannot bear to
be shut in. My endeavour shall be, in such future as stretches
out its snowy and lilywhite arms to me before the nozh
overtakes or the blood spatters its final chorus in twisted
metal and smashed glass on the highroad, to not get loveted
again." Which is fair speeching. But, brothers, this biting of
their toe-nails over what is the cause of badness is what turns
me into a fine laughing malchick. They don't go into the cause
of goodness, so why the other shop? If lewdies are good
that's because they like it, and I wouldn't ever interfere with
their pleasures, and so of the other shop. And I was patron-
izing the other shop. More, badness is of the self, the one, the
you or me on our oddy knockies, and that self is made by old
Bog or God and is his great pride and radosty. But the not-self
cannot have the bad, meaning they of the government and the
judges and the schools cannot allow the bad because they
cannot allow the self. And is not our modern history, my
brothers, the story of brave malenky selves fighting these big
machines? I am serious with you, brothers, over this. But
what I do I do because I like to do.
So now, this smiling winter morning, I drink this very
strong chai with moloko and spoon after spoon after spoon
of sugar, me having a sladky tooth, and I dragged out of the
oven the breakfast my poor old mum had cooked for me. It
was an egg fried, that and no more, but I made toast and ate
egg and toast and jam, smacking away at it while I read the
gazetta. The gazetta was the usual about ultra-violence and
bank robberies and strikes and footballers making everybody
paralytic with fright by threatening to not play next Saturday
if they did not get higher wages, naughty malchickiwicks as
they were. Also there were more space-trips and bigger stereo
TV screens and offers of free packets of soapflakes in ex-
change for the labels on soup-tins, amazing offer for one
week only, which made me smeck. And there was a bolshy big
article on Modern Youth (meaning me, so I gave the old bow,
grinning like bezoomny) by some very clever bald chelloveck.
I read this with care, my brothers, slurping away at the old
chai, cup after tass after chasha, crunching my lomticks of
black toast dipped in jammiwam and eggiweg. This learned
veck said the usual veshches, about no parental discipline, as
he called it, and the shortage of real horrorshow teachers
who would lambast bloody beggary out of their innocent
poops and make them go boohoohoo for mercy. All this was
gloopy and made me smeck, but it was like nice to go on
knowing one was making the news all the time, O my
brothers. Every day there was something about Modern
Youth, but the best veshch they ever had in the old gazetta
was by some starry pop in a doggy collar who said that in his
considered opinion and he was govoreeting as a man of Bog
IT WAS THE DEVIL THAT WAS ABROAD and was
like ferreting his way into like young innocent flesh, and it was
the adult world that could take the responsibility for this with
their wars and bombs and nonsense. So that was all right. So
he knew what he talked of, being a Godman. So we young
innocent malchicks could take no blame. Right right right.
When I'd gone erk erk a couple of razzes on my full inno-
cent stomach, I started to get out day platties from my ward-
robe, turning the radio on. There was music playing, a very
nice malenky string quartet, my brothers, by Claudius Bird-
man, one that I knew well. I had to have a smeck, though,
thinking of what I'd viddied once in one of these like articles
on Modern Youth, about how Modern Youth would be better
off if A Lively Appreciation Of The Arts could be like en-
couraged. Great Music, it said, and Great Poetry would like
quieten Modern Youth down and make Modern Youth more
Civilized. Civilized my syphilised yarbles. Music always sort of
sharpened me up, O my brothers, and made me feel like
old Bog himself, ready to make with the old donner and blit-
zen and have vecks and ptitsas creeching away in my ha ha
power. And when I'd cheested up my litso and rookers a bit
and done dressing (my day platties were like student-wear: the
old blue pantalonies with sweater with A for Alex) I thought
here at last was time to itty off to the disc-bootick (and
cutter too, my pockets being full of pretty polly) to see about
this long-promised and long-ordered stereo Beethoven
Number Nine (the Choral Symphony, that is), recorded on
Masterstroke by the Esh Sham Sinfonia under L. Muhaiwir. So
out I went, brothers.
The day was very different from the night. The night be-
longed to me and my droogs and all the rest of the nadsats,
and the starry bourgeois lurked indoors drinking in the
gloopy worldcasts, but the day was for the starry ones, and
there always seemed to be more rozzes or millicents about
during the day, too. I got the autobus from the corner and
rode to Center, and then I walked back to Taylor Place, and
there was the disc-bootick I favoured with my inestimable
custom, O my brothers. It had the gloopy name of MEL-
ODIA, but it was a real horrorshow mesto and skorry, most
times, at getting the new recordings. I walked in and the only
other customers were two young ptitsas sucking away at ice-
sticks (and this, mark, was dead cold winter and sort of
shuffling through the new pop-discs - Johnny Burnaway,
