A Clockwork Orange - Burgess, Anthony [64]
“Writing another book, sir?” I said.
“No no, not that now,” he said, and we sat down nice and droogy to the old crack crack crack of eggs and crackle crunch crunch of this black toast, very milky chai standing by in bolshy great morning mugs. “No, I’ve been on the phone to various people.”
“I thought you didn’t have a phone,” I said, spooning egg in and not watching out what I was saying. “Why?” he said, very alert like some skorry animal with an egg-spoon in its rooker. “Why shouldn’t you think I have a phone?”
“Nothing,” I said, “nothing, nothing.” And I wondered, brothers, how much he remembered of the earlier part of that distant nochy, me coming to the door with the old tale and saying to phone the doctor and she saying no phone. He took a very close smot at me but then went back to being like kind and cheerful and spooning up the old eggiweg. Munching away, he said:
“Yes, I’ve rung up various people who will be interested in your case. You can be a very potent weapon, you see, in ensuring that this present evil and wicked Government is not returned in the forthcoming election. The Government’s big boast, you see, is the way it has dealt with crime these last months.” He looked at me very close again over his steaming egg, and I wondered again if he was viddying what part I had so far played in his jeezny. But he said: “Recruiting brutal young roughs for the police. Proposing debilitating and will-sapping techniques of conditioning.” All these long slovos, brothers, and a like mad or bezoomny look in his glazzies. “We’ve seen it all before,” he said, “in other countries. The thin end of the wedge. Before we know where we are we shall have the full apparatus of totalitarianism.”
“Dear dear dear,” I thought, egging away and toast-crunching. I said: “Where do I come into all this, sir?”
“You,” he said, still with this bezoomny look, “are a living witness to these diabolical proposals. The people, the common people must know, must see.” He got up from his breakfast and started to walk up and down the kitchen, from the sink to the like larder, saying very gromky: “Would they like their sons to become what you, poor victim, have become? Will not the Government itself now decide what is and what is not crime and pump out the life and guts and will of whoever sees fit to displeasure the Government? He became quieter but did not go back to his egg. “I’ve written an article,” he said, “this morning, while you were sleeping. That will be out in a day or so, together with your unhappy picture. You shall sign it, poor boy, a record of what they have done to you.” I said:
“And what do you get out of all this, sir? I mean, besides the pretty polly you’ll get for the article, as you call it? I mean, why are you so hot and strong against this Government, if I may make like so bold as to ask?” He gripped the edge of the table and said, gritting his zoobies, which were very cally and all stained with cancer-smoke: “Some of us have to fight. There are great traditions of liberty to defend. I am no partisan man. Where I see the infamy I seek to erase it. Party names mean nothing. The tradition of liberty means all. The common people will let it go, oh yes. They will sell liberty for a quieter life. That is why they must be prodded, prodded - ” And here, brothers, he picked up a fork and stuck it two or three razzes into the wall, so that it got all bent. Then he threw it on the floor. Very kindly he said: “Eat well, poor boy, poor victim of the modern world,” and I could viddy quite clear he was going