A Clockwork Orange / Заводной апельсин. Энтони Бёрджесс

[55].

      Being three, we all had one each to viddy at except for Dim. The one I had was called 'Elementary Crystallography', so I opened it up and said: “Excellent, really first-class,” keeping turning the pages. Then I said in a very shocked type goloss: “But what is this here? What is this filthy slovo? I blush to look at this word. You disappoint me, brother, you do really.”

      “But,” he tried, “but, but.”

      “Now,” said Georgie, “here is what I should call real dirt. There's one slovo beginning with an 'f and another with a 'c'.” He had a book called 'The Miracle of the Snowflake.' “Oh,” said poor old Dim, smotting[56] over Pete's shoulder and going too far, like he always did[57], “it says here what he done to her, and there's a picture and all. Why,” he said, “you're nothing but a filthy-minded old skitebird[58].”

      “An old man of your age, brother,” I said, and I started to rip up the book I'd got, and the others did the same with the ones they had. Dim and Pete doing a tug-of-war with 'The Rhombohedral System'. The starry prof type began to creech[59]: “But those are not mine, those are the property of the municipality, this is vandal work,” or some such slovos. And he tried to wrest the books back off of us, which was like pathetic. “You deserve to be taught a lesson[60], brother,” I said, “that you do.” This crystal book I had was very tough-bound and hard to razrez[61]to bits, being real starry and made in days when things were made to last like, but I managed to rip the pages up and toss them in handfuls of like snowflakes all over this creeching old veck, and then the others did the same with theirs, old Dim just dancing about like the clown he was. “There you are,” said Pete, “you dirty reader of filth.”

       “You naughty old veck, you,” I said, and then we began to filly about[62] with him. Pete held his rookers[63]and Georgie sort of opened his rot and Dim yanked out his false zoobies[64], upper and lower. He threw these down on the pavement and then I crushed them, though they were hard bastards like, being made of some new horrorshow plastic stuff. The old veck began to make sort of chumbling[65] shooms[66] – “wuf waf wof” – so Georgie let go of his goobers[67] and just let him have one[68] in the toothless rot with his ringy fist, and that made the old veck start moaning a lot then, then out comes the blood, my brothers, real beautiful. So all we did then was to pull his outer platties[69] off, stripping him down to his vest and long underpants, and then Pete kicks him lovely in his pot, and we let him go. He went sort of staggering off, it not having been too hard of a tolchock really, going “Oh oh oh”, not knowing where or what was what really, and we had a snigger at him[70] and then riffled through his pockets[71], Dim dancing round with his crappy umbrella meanwhile, but there wasn't much in them. There were a few starry letters, some of them dating right back to 1960 with “My dearest dearest” in them and all that chepooka[72], and a keyring and a starry pen. Old Dim gave up his umbrella dance and of course had to start reading one of the letters out loud, like to show the empty street he could read. “My darling one,” he recited, in this very high type goloss, “I shall be thinking of you while you are away and hope you will remember to dress warm when you go out at night.” Then he let out a very shoomny[73]smeck[74] – “Ho ho ho” – pretending to start wiping his yahma[75] with it. “All right,” I said. “Let it go[76].” In the trousers of this starry veck there was only a malenky bit of cutter[77] (money, that is[78]). Then we broke the umbrella and razrezzed his platties and gave them to the blowing winds, my brothers, and then we'd finished with the starry teacher type veck. We hadn't done much, I know, but that was only like the start of the evening and I make no appy polly loggies[79] to you for that. The knives in the milk plus were working nice and horrorshow now. The next thing was to do the sammy[80] act, which was one way to unload some of our cutter so we'd have more reason like for some shop-crasting, as well as to buy an alibi in advance, so we went into the Duke of New York on Amis Avenue and sure enough there were three or four old baboochkas[81] peeting their suds. Now we were the very good malchicks, smiling to one and all, though these wrinkled old cheenas[82] started to get all shook, their veiny old rookers all trembling round their glasses, and making the suds spill on the table. “Leave us be, lads[83],” said one of them, “we're only poor old women.” But we just smiled, sat down, rang the bell, and waited for the boy to come. When he came, all nervous and rubbing his rookers on his grazzy[84] apron, we ordered us four veterans – a veteran being rum and cherry brandy mixed, which was popular just then. Then I said to the boy:

      “Give these poor old baboochkas over there a nourishing something. Large Scotchmen all round and something to take away.” And I poured my pocket of deng all over the table, and the other three did likewise. So double firegolds[85] were brought in for the scared starry cheenas, and they knew not what to do or say. One of them got out “Thanks, lads,” but you could see they thought there was something dirty like coming. Anyway, they were each given a bottle of Yank General, cognac that is, to take away. Then with the cutter that was left over we did purchase all the meat pies, pretzels, cheese-snacks, crisps and chocbars in that mesto, and those too were for the old sharps[86]. Then we said: “Back in a minoota[87],” and the old ptitsas were still saying: “Thanks, lads,” and “God bless you, boys,” and we were going out without one cent of cutter in our carmans[88]. “Makes you feel real dobby[89], that does,” said Pete. Well, we went off now round the corner to Attlee Avenue, and there was this sweets and cancers[90] shop still open. We'd left them alone near three months now and the whole district had been very quiet on the whole, so the armed millicents[91] or rozz[92] patrols weren't round there much, being more north of the river these days. We put our maskies[93] on – new jobs these were, real horrorshow, wonderfully done really; they were like faces of historical personalitities and I had Disraeli[94], Pete had Elvis Presley, Georgie had Henry VIII and poor old Dim had a poet veck called Peebee Shelley[95]; they were a real like disguise, hair and all, and they were some very special plastic veshch so you could roll it up when you'd done with it and hide it in your boot – then three of us went in. Pete keeping chasso without[96], though there was nothing to worry about out there. As soon as we entered the shop we went for Slouse who ran it, who viddied at once what was coming and made straight for the inside where the telephone was and perhaps his well-oiled pooshka

56

смотря, глядя

57

заходя, как обычно, слишком далеко

58

засранец

59

кричать

60

Тебя надо проучить

61

разрезать, разорвать

62

дурачиться

63

руки

64

зубы

65

невнятный, бормочущий

66

шум, звуки

67

отпустил его губы

68

и врезал ему

69

платье, одежда

70

похихикали над ним

71

пошарили по карманам

72

чепуха

73

громкий

74

смех

75

задница

76

Ну всё, хватит

77

деньги, бабки

78

то есть

79

извинения

80

щедрый

81

бабушки, старухи

82

женщины

83

Не трогайте нас, ребята

84

грязный

85

крепкие напитки

86

женщины, тётки

87

минута

88

карманы

89

добрый, хороший

90

сигареты

91

полицейские

92

полицейский

93

маски

94

Бенджамин Дизраэли (1804–1881), британский государственный деятель.

95

Перси Биши Шелли (1792–1822), английский писатель и поэт (зд. вместо P.B. Shelley).

96

Пит стоял на стрёме снаружи