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#1 
___ @ 24.12.07 19:33 |
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"What's it going to be then, eh?"
There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie,
and Dim. Dim being really dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar making up
our rassoodocks what to do with the evening, a flip dark chill winter
bastard though dry. The Korova Milkbar was a milk-plus mesto, and you may, O
my brothers, have forgotten what these mestos were like, things changing so
skorry these days and everybody very quick to forget, newspapers not being
read much neither. Well, what they sold there was milk plus something else.
They had no licence for selling liquor, but there was no law yet against
prodding some of the new veshches which they used to put into the old
moloko, so you could peet it with vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom or one
or two other veshches which would give you a nice quiet horrorshow fifteen
minutes admiring Bog And All His Holy Angels and Saints in your left shoe
with lights bursting all over your mozg. Or you could peet milk with knives
in it, as we used to say, and this would sharpen you up and make you ready
for a bit of dirty twenty-to-one, and that was what we were peeting this
evening I'm starting off the story with.
Our pockets were full of deng, so there was no real need from the point
of view of crasting any more pretty polly to tolchock some old veck in an
alley and viddy him swim in his blood while we counted the takings and
divided by four, nor to do the ultra-violent on some shivering starry
grey-haired ptitsa in a shop and go smecking off with the till's guts. But,
as they say, money isn't everything.
The four of us were dressed in the height of fashion, which in those
days was a pair of black very tight tights with the old jelly mould, as we
called it, fitting on the crotch underneath the tights, this being to
protect and also a sort of a design you could viddy clear enough in a
certain light, so that I had one in the shape of a spider, Pete had a rooker
(a hand, that is), Georgie had a very fancy one of a flower, and poor old
Dim had a very hound-and-horny one of a clown's litso (face, that is). Dim
not ever having much of an idea of things and being, beyond all shadow of a
doubting thomas, the dimmest of we four. Then we wore waisty jackets without
lapels but with these very big built-up shoulders (`pletchoes' we called
them) which were a kind of a mockery of having real shoulders like that.
Then, my brothers, we had these off-white cravats which looked like
whipped-up kartoffel or spud with a sort of a design made on it with a fork.
We wore our hair not too long and we had flip horrorshow boots for kicking.
"What's it going to be then, eh?"
There were three devotchkas sitting at the counter all together, but
there were four of us malchicks and it was usually like one for all and all
for one. These sharps were dressed in the heighth of fashion too, with
purple and green and orange wigs on their gullivers, each one not costing
less than three or four weeks of those sharps' wages, I should reckon, and
make-up to match (rainbows round the glazzies, that is, and the rot painted
very wide). Then they had long black very straight dresses, and on the
groody part of them they had little badges of like silver with different
malchicks' names on them--Joe and Mike and suchlike. These were supposed to
be the names of the different malchicks they'd spatted with before they were
fourteen. They kept looking our way and I nearly felt like saying the three
of us (out of the corner of my rot, that is) should go off for a bit of pol
and leave poor old Dim behind, because it would be just a matter of
kupetting Dim a demi-litre of white but this time with a dollop of
synthemesc in it, but that wouldn't really have been playing like the game.
Dim was very very ugly and like his name, but he was a horrorshow filthy
fighter and very handy with the boot.
"What's it going to be then, eh?"
The chelloveck sitting next to me, there being this long big plushy
seat that ran round three walls, was well away with his glazzies glazed and
sort of burbling slovos like "Aristotle wishy washy works outing cyclamen
get forficulate smartish." He was in the land all right, well away, in
orbit, and I knew what it was like, having tried it like everybody else had
done, but at this time I'd got to thinking it was a cowardly sort of a
veshch, O my brothers. You'd lay there after you'd drunk the old moloko and
then you got the messel that everything all round you was sort of in the
past. You could viddy it all right, all of it, very clear--tables, the
stereo, the lights, the sharps and the malchicks--but it was like some
veshch that used to be there but was not there not no more. And you were
sort of hypnotized by your boot or shoe or a finger-nail as it might be, and
at the same time you were sort of picked up by the old scruff and shook like
you might be a cat. You got shook and shook till there was nothing left. You
lost your name and your body and your self and you just didn't care, and you
waited until your boot or finger-nail got yellow, then yellower and yellower
all the time. Then the lights started cracking like atomics and the boot or
finger-nail or, as it might be, a bit of dirt on your trouser-bottom turned
into a big big big mesto, bigger than the whole world, and you were just
going to get introduced to old Bog or God when it was all over. You came
back to here and now whimpering sort of, with your rot all squaring up for a
boohoohoo. Now that's very nice but very cowardly. You were not put on this
earth just to get in touch with God. That sort of thing could sap all the
strength and the goodness out of a chelloveck.
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