A Clockwork Orange - Burgess, Anthony [72]
‘What gives, bratty? What’s coming over old Alex?’
‘Ah, to hell,’ I said. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know. What it is is I don’t like just throwing away my hard-earned pretty polly, that’s what it is.’
‘Earned?’ said Rick. ‘Earned? It doesn’t have to be earned, as well thou knowest, old droogie. Took, that’s all, just took, like.’ And he smecked real gromky and I viddied one or two of his zoobies weren’t all that horrorshow.
‘Ah,’ I said, ‘I’ve got some thinking to do.’ But viddying these baboochkas looking all eager like for some free alc, I like shrugged my pletchoes and pulled out my own cutter from my trouser carman, notes and coin all mixed together, and plonked it tinkle crackle on the table.
‘Scotchmen all round, right,’ said the waiter. But for some reason I said:
‘No, boy, for me make it one small beer, right.’ Len said:
‘This I do not much go for,’ and he began to put his rooker on my gulliver, like kidding I must have fever, but I like snarled doggy-wise for him to give over skorry.
‘All right, all right, droog,’ he said. ‘As thou like sayest.’ But Bully was having a smot with his rot open at something that had come out of my carman with the pretty polly I’d put on the table. He said:
‘Well well well. And we never knew.’
‘Give me that,’ I snarled and grabbed it skorry. I couldn’t explain how it had got there, brothers, but it was a photograph I had scissored out of the old gazetta and it was of a baby. It was of a baby gurgling goo goo goo with all like moloko dribbling from its rot and looking up and like smecking at everybody, and its was all nagoy and its flesh was like in all folds with being a very fat baby. There was then like a bit of haw haw haw struggling to get hold of this bit of paper from me, so I had to snarl again at them and I grabbed the photo and tore it up into tiny teeny pieces and let it fall like a bit of snow on to the floor. The whisky came in then and the starry baboochkas said: ‘Good health, lads, God bless you, boys, the best lads living, that’s what you are,’ and all that cal. And one of them who was all lines and wrinkles and no zoobies in her shrunken old rot said: ‘Don’t tear up money, son. If you don’t need it give it them as does,’ which was very bold and forward of her. But Rick said:
‘Money that was not, O baboochka. It was a picture of a dear little itsy witsy bitsy bit of a baby.’ I said:
‘I’m getting just that bit tired, that I am. It’s you who’s the babies, you lot. Scoffing and grinning and all you can do is smeck and give people bolshy cowardly tolchocks when they can’t give them back.’ Bully said:
‘Well now, we always thought it was you who was the king of that and also the teacher. Not well, that’s the trouble with thou, old droogie.’
I viddied this sloppy glass of beer I had on the table in front of me and felt like all vomity within, so I went ‘Aaaaah’ and poured all the frothy vonny cal all over the floor. One of the starry ptitsas said: ‘Waste not want not.’ I said:
‘Look, droogies. Listen. Tonight I am somehow just not in the mood. I know not why or how it is, but there it is. You three go your own ways this nightwise, leaving me out. Tomorrow we shall meet same place same time, me hoping to be like a lot better.’
‘Oh,’ said Bully, ‘right sorry I am.’ But you could viddy a like gleam in his glazzies, because now he would be taking over for this nochy. Power power, everybody like wants power. ‘We can postpone till tomorrow,’ said Bully. ‘what we in mind had. Namely, that bit of shopcrasting in Gagarin Street. Flip horrorshow takings there, droog, for the having.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘You postpone nothing. You just carry on in your own like style. Now,’ I said, ‘I itty off.’ And I got up from my chair. ‘Where to, then?’ asked Rick.
‘That know I not,’ I said. ‘Just to be on like my own and sort things out.’ You could viddy the old baboochkas were real puzzled at me going out like that and like all morose and not the bright and smecking malchickiwick you will remember. But I said: ‘Ah, to hell, to hell,’ and scatted out all on