“Out out out out out.”

“Where to?” said Rick, who had a litso like a frog’s.

“Oh, just to viddy what’s doing in the great outside,” I said. But somehow, my brothers, I felt very bored and a bit hopeless, and I had been feeling that a lot these days. So I turned to the chelloveck nearest me on the big plush seat that ran right round the whole mesto, a chelloveck, that is, who was burbling away under the influence, and I fisted him real skorry ack ack ack in the belly. But he felt it not, brothers, only burbling away with his “Cart cart virtue, where in toptails lieth the poppoppicorns?” So we scatted out into the big winter nochy.

We walked down Marghanita Boulevard and there were no millicents patrolling that way, so when we met a starry veck coming away from a news-kiosk where he had been kupetting a gazetta I said to Bully: “All right, Bully boy, thou canst if thou like wishest.” More and more these days I had been just giving the orders and standing back to viddy them being carried out. So Bully cracked into him er er er, and the other two tripped him and kicked at him, smecking away, while he was down and then let him crawl off to where he lived, like whimpering to himself. Bully said:

“How about a nice yummy glass of something to keep out the cold, O Alex?” For we were not too far from the Duke of New York. The other two nodded yes yes yes but all looked at me to viddy whether that was all right. I nodded too and so off we ittied. Inside the snug there were these starry ptitsas or sharps or baboochkas you will remember from the beginning and they all started on their: “Evening, lads, God bless you, boys, best lads living, that’s what you are,” waiting for us to say “What’s it going to be, girls?” Bully rang the collocoll and a waiter came in rubbing his rookers on his grazzy apron. “Cutter on the table, droogies,” said Bully, pulling out his own rattling and chinking mound of deng. “Scotchmen for us and the same for the old baboochkas, eh?” And then I said:

“Ah, to hell. Let them buy their own.” I didn’t know what it was, but these last days I had become like mean. There had come into my gulliver a like desire to keep all my pretty polly to myself, to like hoard it all up for some reason. Bully said:

“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 viddy-ing these baboochkas looking all eager like for some free ale, 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 shop-crasting 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 my oddy knocky into the street.

It was dark and there was a wind sharp as a nozh getting up, and there were very very few lewdies about. There were these patrol cars with brutal rozzes inside them like cruising about, and now and then on the cor ner you would viddy a couple of very young millicents stamping against the bitchy cold and letting out steam breath on the winter air, O my brothers. I suppose really a lot of the old ultra-violence and crasting was dying” out now, the rozzes being so brutal with who they caught, though it had become like a fight between naughty nadsats and the rozzes who could be more skorry with the nozh and the britva and the stick and even the gun. But what was the matter with me these days was that I didn’t like care much. It was like something soft getting into me and I could not pony why. What I wanted these days I did not know. Even the music I liked to slooshy in my own malenky den what what I would have smecked at before, brothers. I was slooshying more like malenky romantic songs, what they call Lieder, just a goloss and a piano, very quiet and like yearny, different from when it had been all bolshy orchestras and me lying on the bed between the violins and the trombones and kettledrums. There was something happening inside me, and I wondered if it was like some disease or if it was what they had done to me that time upsetting my gulliver and perhaps going to make me real bezoomny.

So thinking like this with my gulliver bent and my rookers stuck in my trouser carmans I walked the town, brothers, and at last I began to feel very tired and also in great need of a nice bolshy chasha of milky chai. Thinking about this chai, I got a sudden like picture of me sitting before a bolshy fire in an armchair peeting away at this chai, and what was funny and very very strange was that I seemed to have turned into a very starry chel-loveck, about seventy years old, because I could viddy my own voloss, which was very grey, and I also had whiskers, and these were very grey too. I could viddy myself as an old man, sitting by a fire, and then the like picture vanished. But it was very like strange.