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Now what I want you to know is that this cell was intended for only three when it was built, but there were six of us there, all jammed together sweaty and tight. And that was the state of all the cells in all the prisons in those days, brothers, and a dirty cally disgrace it was, there not being decent room for a chelloveck to stretch his limbs. And you will hardly believe what I say now, which is that on this Sunday they brosatted in another ple
He was a chi
2
Well, it was the letting-in of this new chelloveck that was really the start of my getting out of the old Staja, for he was such a nasty quarrelsome type of ple
What sloochatted then, of course, was that me cell-mates woke up and started to join in, tolchocking a bit wild in the near-dark, and the shoom seemed to wake up the whole tier, so that you could slooshy a lot of creeching and banging about with tin mugs on the wall, as though all the ple
Then I put in my complaint and every chasso said it was probably your Humble Narrator, brothers, that started it all anyway, me having no mark of a scratch on me but this horrible ple
“Not having that we’re not, brotherth. Don’t give in to the thquirt.” So this new one said:
“Crash your dermott, yid,” meaning to shut up, but it was very insulting. So then Big Jew got ready to launch a tolchock. The Doctor said:
“Come on, gentlemen, we donэt want any trouble, do we?” in his very high-class goloss, but this new prestoopnick was really asking for it. You could viddy that he thought he was a very big bolshy veck and it was beneath his dignity to be sharing a cell with six and having to sleep on the floor till I made this gesture at him. In his sneery way he tried to take off The Doctor, saying:
“Owwww, yew wahnt noo moor trouble, is that it, Archiballs?” So Jojohn, mean and keen and wiry, said:
“If we can’t have sleep let’s have some education. Our new friend here had better be taught a lesson.” Although he like specialized in Sexual Assault he had a nice way of govoreeting, quiet and like precise. So the new ple
“Kish and kosh and koosh, you little terror.” So then it all really started, but in a queer like gentle way, with nobody raising his goloss much. The new ple
“Leave him to me, go on, let me have him now, brothers.” So Big Jew said:
“Yeth, yeth, boyth, that’th fair. Thlosh him then, Alekth.” So they all stood around while I cracked at this prestoopnick in the near dark. I fisted him all over, dancing about with my boots on though unlaced, and then I tripped him and he went crash crash on to the floor. I gave him one real horrorshow kick on the gulliver and he went ohhhh, then he sort of snorted off to like sleep, and The Doctor said:
“Very well, I think that wil be enough of a lesson,” squinting to viddy this downed and beaten-up veck on the floor. “Let him dream perhaps about being a better boy in the future.” So we all climbed back into our bunks, being very tired now.
What I dreamt of, O my brothers, was of being in some very big orchestra, hundreds and hundreds strong, and the conductor was a like mixture of Ludwig van and G. F. Handel, looking very deaf and blind and weary of the world. I was with the wind instruments, but what I was playing was like a white pinky bassoon made of flesh and growing out of my plott, right in the middle of my belly, and when I blew into it I had to smeck ha ha ha very loud because it like tickled, and then Ludwig van G. F. got very razdraz and bezoomny. Then he came right up to my litso and creeched loud in my ooko, and then I woke up like sweating. Of course, what the loud shoom really was was the prison buzzer going brrrrr brrrrr brrrrr. It was winter morning and my glazzies were all cally with sleepglue, and when I opened up they were very sore in the electric light that had been switched on all over the zoo. Then I looked down and viddied this new prestoopnick lying on the floor, very bloody and bruisy and still out out out. Then I remembered about last night and that made me smeck a bit.