“What's it going to be then, eh?[1]”
There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs[2], that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim. Dim was really dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar making up our rassoodocks[3]what to do with the evening. The Korova Milkbar was a mesto[4], where they sold milk plus something else. They had no license for selling liquor, but there was no law yet against putting some of the new veshches[5] into the old moloko[6], so you could peet[7] it and it would give you a nice horrorshow[8] fifteen minutes admiring Bog[9] And All His Holy Angels in your left shoe with lights bursting all over your mozg[10]. Or you could peet milk with knives[11] in it, as we used to say, and this would make you ready for a bit of dirty twenty-to-one[12], and that was what we were peeting this evening as I'm starting the story with.
Our pockets were full of deng[13], so there was no real need to crast[14] any more pretty polly[15] to tolchock[16] some old veck[17] in an alley and viddy[18] him swim in his blood while we counted the takings[19] and divided by four, nor to do the ultra-violent on some starry[20] grey-haired ptitsa[21] in a shop and go smecking[22] off with the till's guts[23]. 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. Then we wore waisty jackets without lapels but with these very big built-up shoulders ('pletchoes[24]' we called them). Then, we had these white cravats which looked like whipped-up kartoffel[25] or spud with a sort of a design made on it with a fork.
We wore our hair not too long and we had horrorshow boots for kicking. “What's it going to be then, eh?” There were three devotchkas[26] sitting at the counter all together, but there were four of us malchicks[27] and it was usually like one for all and all for one. These sharps[28] were dressed in the height of fashion too, with purple and green and orange wigs on their gullivers[29], each one not costing less than three or four weeks of those sharps' wages, I should think, and make-up to match (rainbows round the glazzies[30], that is, and the rot[31] painted very wide). Then they had long black very straight dresses, and on the groody[32] 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[33] with before they were fourteen. They kept looking our way and I nearly felt like saying the three of us should go off for a bit of pol[34] and leave poor old Dim behind, because it would be just a matter of kupetting[35]Dim a demi-litre of white[36] but this time with a dollop of drug in it, but that wouldn't really have been playing like the game fair[37]. Dim was very ugly and like his name, but he was a horrorshow fighter.
“What's it going to be then, eh?”
The chelloveck[38] sitting next to me was well away with his glazzies glazed and sort of burbling some senseless slovos[39]. 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. You'd lay there after you'd drunk the old moloko and then you got the messel[40] 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 scruff[41]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[42] and the boot or finger-nailor, as it might be, a bit of dirt on your trouser-bottom turned into a 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 started sort of whimpering. Now that's very nice but very cowardly. You were not put on this earth just to get in touch[43] with God. That sort of thing could sap all the strength and the goodness out of a chelloveck. “What's it going to be then, eh?”
The stereo was on and you got the idea that the singer's goloss[44] was moving from one part of the bar to another, flying up to the ceiling and then falling down again and again. One of the three ptitsas at the counter, the one with the green wig, kept pushing her belly out and pulling it in in time to what they called the music. I could feel the knives in the old moloko starting to work, and now I was ready for a bit of twenty-to-one. So I said: “Out out out out!”, and then I gave this veck who was sitting next to me a horrorshow crack on the ooko
