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By Root 2765 0

blobby and liny and crackly film you could viddy had been made by the Germans. It opened with German eagles and the Nazi flag with that like crooked cross that all mal-chicks at school love to draw, and then there were very haughty and nadmenny like German officers walking through streets that were all dust and bomb-holes and broken buildings. Then you were allowed to viddy lewdies being shot against walls, officers giving the orders, and also horrible nagoy plotts left lying in gutters, all like cages of bare ribs and white thin nogas. Then there were lewdies being dragged off creeching though not on the sound-track, my brothers, the only sound being music, and being tolchocked while they were dragged off. Then I noticed, in all my pain and sickness, what music it was that like crackled and boomed on the sound-track, and it was Ludwig van, the last movement of the Fifth Symphony, and I creeched like bezoomny at that. “Stop!” I creeched. “Stop, you grahzny disgusting sods. It’s a sin, that’s what it is, a filthy unforgivable sin, you bratchnies!” They didn’t stop right away, because there was only a minute or two more to go - lewdies being beaten up and all krovvy, then more firing squads, then the old Nazi flag and THE END. But when the lights came on this Dr. Brodsky and also Dr. Branom were standing in front of me, and Dr. Brodsky said: “What’s all this about sin, eh?”

“That,” I said, very sick. “Using Ludwig van like that. He did no harm to anyone. Beethoven just wrote music.” And then I was really sick and they had to bring a bowl that was in the shape of like a kidney.

“Music,” said Dr. Brodsky, like musing. “So you’re keen on music. I know nothing about it myself. It’s a useful emotional heightener, that’s all I know. Well, well. What do you think about that, eh, Branom?”

“It can’t be helped,” said Dr. Branom. “Each man kills the thing he loves, as the poet-prisoner said. Here’s the punishment element, perhaps. The Governor ought to be pleased.”

“Give me a drink,” I said, “for Bog’s sake.”

“Loosen him,” ordered Dr. Brodsky. “Fetch him a carafe of ice-cold water.” So then these under-vecks got to work and soon I was peeting gallons and gallons of water and it was like heaven, O my brothers. Dr. Brodsky said: “You seem a sufficiently intelligent young man. You seem, too, to be not without taste. You’ve just got this violence thing, haven’t you? Violence and theft, theft being an aspect of violence.” I didn’t govoreet a single slovo, brothers, I was still feeling sick, though getting a malenky bit better now. But it had been a terrible day. “Now then,” said Dr. Brodsky, “how do you think this is done? Tell me, what do you think we’re doing to you?”

“You’re making me feel ill. I’m ill when I look at those filthy pervert films of yours. But it’s not really the films that’s doing it. But I feel that if you’ll stop these films I’ll stop feeling ill.”

“Right,” said Dr. Brodsky. “It’s association, the oldest educational method in the world. And what really causes you to feel ill?”

“These grahzny sodding veshches that come out of my gulliver and my plott,” I said, “that’s what it is.”

“Quaint,” said Dr. Brodsky, like smiling, “the dialect of the tribe. Do you know anything of its provenance, Branom?”

“Odd bits of old rhyming slang,” said Dr. Branom, who did not look quite so much like a friend any more. “A bit of gipsy talk, too. But most of the roots are Slav. Propaganda. Subliminal penetration.”

“All right, all right, all right,” said Dr. Brodsky, like impatient and not interested any more. “Well,” he said to me, “it isn’t the wires. It’s nothing to do with what’s fastened to you. Those are just for measuring your reactions. What is it, then?” I viddied then, of course, what a bezoomny shoot I was not to notice that it was the hypodermic shots in the rooker. “Oh,” I creeched, “oh, I viddy all now. A filthy cally vonny trick. An act of treachery, sod you, and you won’t do it again.”

“I’m glad you’ve raised your objections now,” said Dr. Brodsky. “Now we can be perfectly clear about it. We can get this stuff of