A/N: Finally, the next installment—I'm sorry for the long wait. I was editing the rough draft of this chapter a few days ago when I got the idea to start another story based on it ("The Miracle of the Snowflake," if you want to check it out). But I'll be continuing this as well, though I don't know if it will go to 21 chapters the way "A Clockwork Zhena" will (Great story by Dan Sickles! Check it out too!)
Warnings: a) disturbing subject, b) our narrator not being sympathetic, to put it lightly, and c) this mostly follows the book continuity, not the movie continuity, or else things wouldn't make as much sense.
9. The Ninth
I stared at Dave, my rot wide open. "What do you mean, you know who I am?" But as I viddied his nasty smirking grin, I knew. Like those malchicks in Jaydeep's malenky shaika, he knew that Alex Burgess (the teenage criminal the gazettas wrote of) and Alex DeLarge (now the reformed college-going malchick) were the exact same lewdie. Me.
Dave just made a snorty shoom and goolied off down the hallway. Cowardly bratchny.
When Harmeet tapped me on the pletcho, I jumped. I was still standing outside the door of the choir classroom. "Well?" Harmless Harmeet like demanded. "What was that all about?"
Cool as a cucumber and all that cal, I replied, "The veck knows who I am. Thou heardest him say so."
Harmless Harm raised a glaz-brow. "Dave? Of course he does. We all work at the same place, remember?"
"Right right right," I said as we parted ways. "Au revoir and see you later."
...
The veck knows who I am. Who I am. The slovos pounded in my head that nochy as I tried to sleep. Dobby Harmony did not snore, or if he did I couldn't slooshy him from the other room, but the roar of the autos outside kept me tossing and turning as I like slooshied their motors grumbling Who I am, who I am. It was nearly an hour before I got any spatchka.
Wednesday morning, Harmeet and I took the bus together to skolliwoll. I was far too busy for govoreeting, though. Like a goodiwood malchick, I was writing a list of my classes in like alphabetical order:
Cwoir: Tuesday, 9 – 11:30
Compozition: Monday Wensday Friday, 10 – 11:30
Ear Traning 1: Monday Wensday, 3:30 – 5
Harmony 1: Tuesday Thursday, 2:30 – 4
Melody and Cownterpoint: Monday Wensday, 1 – 2:30
Music History 1: Tuesday Thursday, 1 – 2:30
Thank Bog I didn't have that much skolliwoll on Friday. Friday! Friday would be Scrabble night with Pete, Georgina, Pete's friend Greg... and Melody, who I like invited all on my oddy knocky. But wait: that would be five of us. Melody would have to be on my team. I wanted her on my team, not on anybody else's team. If I had to, I'd pretend I was illiterate or some veshch...
I was frowning over this like dilemma when Harm made me jump by breathing on my nagoy neck. He pointed to my schedule. "It's W-E-D-N-E-S-D-A-Y."
"Yes. Yes, it is." Dim kind of veck, wasn't he?
...
Composition teacher Geoffrey Plautus did not have us start composing today, oh no. We were still listening to samples of other like Great Composers. Today he started with the old oldies, like this very starry medieval chant by the English nun Hildegard of Bingen.
Her eemya was as new to me as it was to Melody; I saw Mel poke poor blind Sonya next to her and whisper, "See? There were girl composers back then."
And snotty Sonya said, "You can't call her a girl now. She's like a thousand years old."
All that class, we like fast-forwarded in time with the music – one minoota we were in the Middle Ages, then in the Renaissance, then the old Baroque era, then the Early Classical, and finally Plautus smiled and govoreeted, "Now I'm sure you've all heard this before," before pressing the on button for the fifth or sixth time.
When I slooshied the strong low notes booming out of the speaker, I ponied right away it was the last movement of the Ninth of Ludwig Van. I smiled a horrorshow little in-grin at all the lewdies who wouldn't recognize it until the "Ode to Joy" tune started up, the tune they'd learned to play in primary school on their gloopy plastic recorders or some such cal.
But then I slooshied and viddied something else. With a groaning shoom, Sonya Keyes pushed her chair away and with quick nogas rushed to the door. Not viddying where she was going, of course, she knocked her poor gulliver on the door-post and fell down. Old Plautus turned around, saying, "Are you all right?" while Melody rushed forward to help her up.
Melody looked very pretty when she was being helpful, with her voloss falling over her face, and I remembered the dream I'd had that first day, with poor poor me injured and dying on the auto-road and a beautiful black-haired devotchka holding me in her rookers and singing a Puccini aria. Or was it Handel? Or was nobody like singing at all? Never you mind, brothers, because the next thing that vareeted put it right out of my mozg. Young Sonya, instead of platching about her sore gulliver, threw her hands over her ears and creeched, "Please, turn it off. I don't feel well. Please." She was trembling like in terror.
Plautus dealt his machine the off, and Beethoven's glorious Ninth no longer blasted through the speakers. Sonya leaned against the wall, trembling like a malenky leaf, while Melody put a rooker on her shoulder. Brothers, I could not pony it. Mel's little droogie was afraid of the Ninth for a reason, and what other reason could there be than the Ludovico Technique? What I could not guess, brothers, was the reason she'd gone to prison. Having your eyesight snuffed out was not like a crime.
"How's your head? Do you need to see the nurse?" Plautus was asking.
The ptitsa squeaked out No, and Melody added, helping her back to her chair, "She's just panicked. Sometimes she gets panic attacks."
Panic attack my sharries. I caught Mel's glazzies, wanting to know the real veshch that was vareeting, but she just shook her head.
Old Geoffrey continued with the music, but I couldn't really slooshy even lovely Beethoven. My mind was too full of questions, especially viddying Sonya at the desk front of me, her hands clamped over her ookos, and Melody not saying a slovo to me.
...
Sonya's head snapped up and she gripped the table with both rookers. "Who's there?"
"It's just me, Alex," I said, sitting down across from her at the back table of the cafeteria. One end of the bench was broken, but that was fine and dobby since it meant we had the table all to ourselves. The other tables were so full of lewdies that you couldn't hear your own goloss above their noise. I'd been searching for Melody, but when I'd viddied little Sonya goolying slowly through the crowd with her walk-stick and tray full of pishcha. I hadn't gotten any pishcha myself yet, brothers, but there were more important veshches to do. "Isn't it unusual," I govoreeted carefully, "that you had a like, what do you call it, panic attack while listening to Beethoven's Ninth?"
Her rookers started trembling, but she clasped them together. "Unusual, but not unjustified," she said in her snobby goloss.
"I don't quite pony that," I said, reaching carefully into her tray and crasting half an eggiwegg sandwich. She'd slooshy me chewing, but she couldn't viddy me taking her food.
"It doesn't matter," she said like bitterly, lowering her head to her hands. "If you're just going to bother me, you can go away."
I crasted a rookerful of her baby carrots, munching on them and messeling about what to say. I decided to be like direct. "I know what happened to you because the same thing happened to me."
She lifted her gulliver. "Really?" For one minoota she looked almost sorry for Your Humble Narrator. But then she frowned, "No. You're lying. You're just trying to make fun of me."
I was very shocked, brothers. "Why dost thou suspect me of that?" I asked between bites.
"I can hear it in your voice, and... Would you stop eating my food!" she yelled. Slooshying she was too loud, she said in a soft voice, cold as ice, "I suppose Mel or Harm told you about it, and you think it's funny. Just like this," she gestured at her glazzies, "was so so funny."
"Oh no no no," I skazatted. I didn't think the Ludovico Technique was funny at all. It'd made me want to snuff myself. And then I had a thought. "But if you're still like affected by what happened, shouldn't all classical music make you feel sick, not just the Ninth?"
She wrinkled her litso in a frown. "Why?"
I finished the carrots. Why, indeed? "Right right. I guess it's different for everyone."
"Of course," she like sighed. "And me, I was only twelve years old."
"Twelve?" I couldn't help smecking a little. "What could a malenky twelve-year-old ptitsa do that was so baddiwad?"
"What did I do that was so bad?" she repeated, her goloss low and miserable. "I don't know! But it wasn't my fault, you'd be crazy to think that. He's the criminal—a murderer too, you know. Or maybe you don't." She looked at the floor. "I knew I shouldn't have skipped school... or gone to his apartment... but I thought I'd be safe with my friend Marty there too." Her voice lowered to a whisper. "He gave us some drinks—I'd never tasted alcohol before so I didn't know what it was—and he played our little pop discs... Yes," she looked up with a weary smile, "I used to like Goggly Gogol, Walky Talky and the Trotskys, all that pop crap... And when we were drunk he raped us both."
She stopped abruptly, putting her head in her rookers again. I was quite disappointed, brothers. I'd thought another lewdie besides myself had gone through the Ludovico Technique, but no, I was all on my oddy knocky. Of course it was baddiwad that some veck had given her the old in-out without her wanting to, but it wasn't a very new or interesting veshch to hear about. I was the only veck in the wide wide world who'd suffered from that monstrous Technique, O brothers. I felt like platching, but that's what Sonya was doing. Quietly, though, not in a loud boo-hooing way.
She took off her dark otchkies and rubbed her eyes. "And the reason I can't stand that particular piece, the last part of Beethoven's Ninth, is because he put that music on before he... he... hurt me."
When she took her hands off her glazzies so I could viddy them, I let out like a gasp. It wasn't that her eyes were so horrible to viddy—just clouded over like it was cataracts, with the skin rough and reddish around them—but when I saw her whole litso something clicked in my gulliver. So that's who she was: Sonietta, of Marty and Sonietta, one of the Melodia-record-store ptitsas I'd fillied with hours before my filthy droogs betrayed me. At that raz I'd guessed they were both ten, not twelve, but since I'd taken them to lunch and all before giving them the old in-out, it wasn't very fair to throw the slovo rape around, which wasn't a very nice slovo, brothers. But if Melody ever found out... Melody... For a second I thought my tick-tocker had stopped, but then I felt it thumping like 180 to the minute. "Oh Bog," I breathed. "That's horrible."
"Yes," said Sonietta—that Sonietta!—drying her eyes. "Rather."
"What awful malchick would do such a veshch?" I asked, just to make sure it was really me and not some other veck. Bad things had a habit of happening to her, after all.
"I recognized his picture in the papers. It was the same boy that went to jail for murder, then got out after two years just because of that Ludovico thing." Her voice was like disgusted. "Tried to off himself afterwards, but what do I care?"
"Does he have a name?" I asked, like I was dim, but I had to know.
"Alex, like you... Alex Burgess... Aaaah!" The ptitsa jumped up. "My God! Don't sneak up on me like that!"
Dave Purcell stood behind us, a smirk on his litso. "I was just looking for Alex Burgess myself."
"What?!" Sonietta stayed standing.
"Don't you know," said Dave, taking her cane from her and tapping me with it, "that Alex Burgess and Alex DeLarge here are the exact same person?"
