«A Clockwork Orange»

Загрузить книгу на мобильный телефон.

Tortured in
prison, then thrown out to be tortured by the police. My heart goes out to
you, poor poor boy." Brothers, I could not get a slovo in, though I had my
rot wide open to answer his questions.
"You are not the first to come here in distress," he said. "The police
are fond of bringing their victims to the outskirts of this village. But it
is providential that you, who are also another kind of victim, should come
here. Perhaps, then, you have heard of me?"
I had to be very careful, brothers. I said: "I have heard of `A
Clockwork Orange.' I have not read it, but I have heard of it."
"Ah," he said, and his litso shone like the sun in its flaming morning
glory. "Now tell me about yourself."
"Little enough to tell, sir," I said, all humble. "There was a foolish
and boyish prank, my so-called friends persuading or rather forcing me to
break into the house of an old ptitsa--lady, I mean. There was no real harm
meant. Unfortunately the lady strained her good old heart in trying to throw
me out, though I was quite ready to go of my own accord, and then she died.
I was accused of being the cause of her death. So I was sent to prison,sir."
"Yes yes yes, go on."
"Then I was picked out by the Minister of the Inferior or Interior to
have this Ludovico's veshch tried out on me."
"Tell me all about it," he said, leaning forward eager, his pullover
elbows with all strawberry jam on them from the plate I'd pushed to one
side. So I told him all about it. I told him the lot, all, my brothers. He
was very eager to hear all, his glazzies like shining and his goobers apart,
while the grease on the plates grew harder harder harder. When I had
finished he got up from the table, nodding a lot and going hm hm hm, picking
up the plates and other veshches from the table and taking them to the sink
for washing up. I said:
"I will do that, sir, and gladly."
"Rest, rest, poor lad," he said, turning the tap on so that all steam
came burping out. "You've sinned, I suppose, but your punishment has been
out of all proportion. They have turned you into something other than a
human being. You have no power of choice any longer. You are committed to
socially acceptable acts, a little machine capable only of good. And I see
that clearly--that business about the marginal conditionings. Music and the
sexual act, literature and art, all must be a source now not of pleasure but
of pain."
"That's right, sir," I said, smoking one of this kind man's cork-tipped
cancers.
"They always bite off too much," he said, drying a plate like
absent-mindedly. "But the essential intention is the real sin. A man who
cannot choose ceases to be a man."
"That's what the charles said, sir," I said. "The prison chaplain, I
mean.