A Clockwork Orange - Burgess, Anthony [31]
At this point, brothers, a plenny somewhere or other near the back row let out a shoom of lip-music - ‘Prrrrrp’ - and then the brutal chassos were on the job right away, rushing real skorry to what they thought was the scene of the schoom, then hitting out nasty and delivering tolchocks, left and right. Then they picked out one poor trembling plenny, very thin and malenky and starry too, and dragged him off, but all the time he kept creeching: “It wasn’t me, it was him, see,” but that made no difference. He was tolchocked real nasty and then dragged out of the Wing Chapel creeching his gulliver off.
“Now,” said the prison charlie, “listen to the Word of the Lord.” Then he picked up the big book and flipped over the pages, keeping on wetting his fingers to do this by licking them splurge splurge. He was a bolshy great burly bastard with a very red litso, but he was very fond of myself, me being young and also now very interested in the big book. It had been arranged as part of my like further education to read in the book and even have music on the chapel stereo while I was reading, O my brothers. And that was real horrorshow. They would like lock me in and let me slooshy holy music by J. S. Bach and G. F. Handel, and I would read of these starry yahoodies tolchocking each other and then peeting their Hebrew vino and getting on to the bed with their wives’ like hand-maidens, real horrorshow. That kept me going, brothers. I didn’t so much kopat the later part of the book, which is more like all preachy govoreeting than fighting and the old in-out. But one day the charles said to me, squeezing me like tight with his bolshy beefy rooker: “Ah, 6655321, think on the divine suffering. Meditate on that, my boy.” And all the time he had this rich manny von of Scotch on him, and then he went off to his little cantora to peet some more. So I read all about the scourging and the crowning with thorns and then the cross veshch and all that cal, and I viddied better that there was something in it. While the stereo played bits of lovely Bach I closed my glazzies and viddied myself helping in and even taking charge of the tolchocking and the nailing in, being dressed in a like toga that was the heighth of Roman fashion. So being in Staja 84F was not all that wasted, and the Governor himself was very pleased to hear that I had taken to like Religion, and that was where I had my hopes. This Sunday morning the charlie read out from the book about chellovecks who slooshied the slovo and didn’t take a blind bit being like a domy built upon sand, and then the rain came splash and the old boomaboom cracked the sky and that was the end of that domy. But I thought that only a very dim veck would have built his domy upon sand, and a right lot of real sneering droogs and nasty neighbours a veck like that would have, them not telling him how dim he was doing that sort of building. Then the charles creeched: “Right, you lot. We’ll end with Hymn Number 435 in the Prisoners’ Hymnal.”
Then there was a crash and plop and a whish whish while the plennies picked up and dropped and lickturned the pages of their grazzy malenky hymnbooks, and the bully fierce warders creeched: “Stop talking there, bastards. I’m watching you, 920537.” Of course I had the disc ready on the stereo, and then I let the simple music for organ only come belting out with a growwwwowwwwowwww. Then the plennies started to sing real horrible:
Weak tea are we, new brewed But stirring make all strong. We eat no angel’s food, Our times of trial are long.
They sort of howled and wept these stupid slovos with the charlie like whipping them on with “Louder, damn you, sing up,” and the warders creeching: