"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," patting 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 strawberry 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 conditionings. 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 chaplain, 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 boastful."
"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 trembling, 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, because 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 dreams at all, and the morning was very clear and like frosty, and there was the very pleasant like von of breakfast frying away down below. It took me some little time to remember where I was, as it always does, but it soon came back to me and then I felt like warmed and protected. But, as I laid there in the bed, waiting to be called down to breakfast, it struck me that I ought to get to know the name of this kind protecting and like motherly veck, so I had a pad round in my nagoy nogas looking for 'A Clockwork Orange', which would be bound to have his eemya in, he being the author. There was nothing in my bedroom except a bed and a chair and a light, so I ittied next door to this veck's own room, and there I viddied his wife on the wall, a bolshy blown-up photo, so I felt a malenky bit sick remembering. But there were two or three shelves of books there too, and there was, as I thought there must be, a copy of 'A Clockwork Orange', and on the back of the book, like on the spine, was the author's eemya -F. Alexander. Good Bog, I thought, he is another Alex. Then I leafed through, standing in his pyjamas and bare nogas but not feeling one malenky bit cold, the cottage being warm all through, and I could not viddy what the book was about. It seemed written in a very bezoomny like style, full of Ah and Oh and all that cal, but what seemed to come out of it was that all lewdies nowadays were being turned into machines and that they were really – you and me and him and kiss-my-sharries – more like a natural growth like a fruit. F. Alexander seemed to think that we all like grow on what he called the world-tree in the world-orchard that like Bog or God planted, and we were there because Bog or God had need of us to quench his thirsty love, or some such cal. I didn't like the shoom of this at all, O my brothers, and wondered how bezoomny this F. Alexander really was, perhaps driven be-zoomny by his wife's snuffing it. But then he called me down in a like sane veck's goloss, full of joy and love and all that cal, so down Your Humble Narrator went. 'You've slept long," he said, ladling out boiled eggs and pulling black toast from under the grill. "It's nearly ten already. I've been up hours, working."