A Clockwork Orange - Burgess, Anthony [38]
of the ability to make an ethical choice, you have in a sense really chosen the good. So I shall like to think. So, God help us all, 6655321, I shall like to think.” And then he began to cry. But I didn’t really take much notice of that, brothers only having a bit of a quiet smeck inside, because you could viddy that he had been peeting away at the old whisky, and now he took a bottle from a cupboard in his desk and started to pour himself a real horrorshow bolshy slog into a very greasy and grahzny glass. He downed it and the said: “All may be well, who knows? God works in a mysterious way.” Then he began to sing away at a hymn in a real loud rich goloss. Then the door opened and the chassos came in to tolchock me back to my vonny cell, but the old charles still went on singing this hymn. Well, the next morning I had to say good-bye to the old Staja, and I felt a malenky bit sad as you always will when you have to leave a place you’ve like got used to. But I didn’t go very far, O my brothers. I was punched and kicked along to the new white building just beyond the yard where we used to do our bit of exercise. This was a very new building and it had a new cold like sizy smell which gave you a bit of the shivers. I stood there in the horrible bolshy bare hall and I got new vons, sniffing away there with my like very sensitive morder or sniffer. These were like hospital vons, and the chelloveck the chassos handed me over to had a white coat on, as he might be a hospital man. He signed for me, and one of the brutal chassos who had brought nme said: “You watch this one, sir. A right brutal bastard he has been and will be again, in spite of all his sucking up to the Prison Chaplain and reading the Bible.” But this new chelloveck had real horrorshow blue glaz-zies which like smiled when he govoreeted. He said: “Oh, we don’t anticipate any trouble. We’re going to be friends, aren’t we?” And he smiled with his glazzies and his fine big rot which was full of shining white zoobies and I sort of took to this veck right away. Anyway, he passed me on to a like lesser veck in a white coat, and this one was very nice too, and I was led off to a very nice white clean bedroom with curtains and a bedside lamp, and just the one bed in it, all for Your Humble Narrator. So I had a real horrorshow inner smeck at that, thinking I was really a very lucky young mal-chickiwick. I was told to take off my horrible prison platties and I was given a really beautiful set of pyjamas, O my brothers, in plain green, the heighth of bedwear fashion. And I was given a nice warm dressing-gown too and lovely toofles to put my bare nogas in, and I thought: “Well, Alex boy, little 6655321 as was, you have copped it lucky and no mistake. You are really going to enjoy it here.” After I had been given a nice chasha of real horrorshow coffee and some old gazettas and mags to look at while peet-ing it, this first veck in white came in, the one who had like signed for me, and he said: “Aha, there you are,” a silly sort of a veshch to say but it didn’t sound silly, this veck being so like nice. “My name,” he said, “is Dr. Branom. I’m Dr. Brodsky’s assistant. With your permission, I’ll just give you the usual brief overall examination.” And he took the old stetho out of his right carman. “We must make sure you’re quite fit, mustn’t we? Yes indeed, we must.” So while I lay there with my pyjama top off and he did this, that and the other, I said: “What exactly is it, sir, that you’re going to do?”
“Oh,” said Dr. Branom, his cold stetho going all down my back, “it’s quite simple, really. We just show you some films.”
“Films?” I said. I could hardly believe my ookos, brothers, as you may well understand. “You mean,” I said, “it will be just like going to the pictures?”
“They’ll be special films,” said Dr. Branom. “Very special films. You’ll be having the first session this afternoon. Yes,” he said, getting up from bending over me, “you seem to be quite a fit young boy. A bit under-nourished perhaps. That will be the fault of the prison food. Put your pyjama top back on.