A Pleasure to Burn (22 page)

“Go on,” said Mr. Montag.

“Someone might be watching. That might've been Mr. Leahy at our door a while back.”

“Whoever it was went away. Read that last section again, I want to think on that.”

She read from the works of Jefferson and Lincoln.

When it was five o'clock, her hands dropped open. “I'm tired. Can I stop now?” Her voice was hoarse.

“How thoughtless of me,” he said, taking the book. “But isn't it beautiful, Millie, the words, and the thoughts, aren't they exciting!”

“I don't understand any of it.”

“But surely …”

“Just words,” she said.

“But you remember some of it.”

“Nothing.”

“Try.”

She tried to remember and tell it. “Nothing.”

“You'll learn, in time. Doesn't some of the beauty get through to you?”

“I don't like books, I don't understand them, they're over my head, they're for professors and radicals and I don't want to read any more. Please, promise you won't make me!”

“Mildred!”

“I'm afraid,” she said, putting her face into her shaking hands. “I'm so terribly frightened by these ideas, by Mr. Leahy, and having these books in our house. They'll burn our books and kill us. Now, I'm sick.”

“Poor Millie,” he said, at last, sighing. “I've put you on trial, haven't I? I'm way out front, trying to drag you, when I should be walking beside you, barely touching. I expect too much. It'll take months to put you in the frame of mind where you can receive the ideas in these books. It's not fair of me. All right, you won't have to read again.”

“Thanks.”

“But you must
listen.
I'll explain. And one day you'll understand why these books are so fine.”

“I'll never learn.”

“You must, if you want to be free.”

“I'm free already, I couldn't be freer.”

“But aware, no. You're like the moth that got caught in the interior of a bell at midnight. Numb with concussion, drunk on sound. Thirty years of that confounded blatting radio, no ideas, no beauty, just noise. A moth in a bell. And we've got to—”

“You're not going to forbid me my radio, are you?” Her voice rose.

“Well, to start—”

She was up in a fury, raging at him. “I'll sit and listen to this for a while every day,” she cried. “But I've got to have my radio, too. You can't take that away from me!”

“Millie.”

The telephone rang. They both started. She snatched it up, and was almost immediately laughing. “Hello, Ann, yes, yes! Of course. Tonight. Yes. You come here. Yes, the Clown's on tonight, yes and the Terror, it'll be nice.”

Mr. Montag shuddered. He left the room. He walked through the house, thinking. Leahy. The Fire House. These books.

“I'll shoot him, tonight,” he said, aloud. “I'll kill Leahy. That'll be one censor out of the way. No.” He laughed coldly. “For I'll have to shoot most of the people in the world. How does one start a revolution? What can a single lonely man do?”

Mildred was chattering. The radio was back on again, thundering.

And then he remembered, about a year ago, walking through a park alone he had come upon a man in a black suit unawares. The man had been reading something. Montag hadn't seen a book, he had seen the man move hastily, and his face was flushed, and he had jumped up as if to run, and Montag had said, “Sit down.”

“I didn't do anything.”

“No one said you did.”

They had sat in the park all afternoon. Montag had drawn the man out. He was a retired professor of English literature, who had lost his job forty years before when the last college of arts had been closed. His name was William Faber, and yes, shyly, fearfully, he produced a little book of American Poems he had been reading, “Just to know I'm alive,” said Mr. Faber. “Just to know where I am and what things are. To be aware. Most of my friends aren't aware. Most of them can't talk. They stutter and halt and hunt words. And what they talk is sales and profits and what they saw on television the hour before.”

What a nice afternoon that had been. Professor Faber had read some of the poems to him, none of which he understood, but the sounds were good, and slowly the meaning crept in. When it was over, Montag said, “I'm a fireman.”

Faber had almost died on the spot from a heart attack.

“Don't be afraid. I won't turn you in,” said Montag. “I've stopped being mean about it years ago. I take long walks. No one walks anymore. Do you have the same trouble? Are you stopped by the police as a robbery or burglary suspect simply because you're on foot?”

He and Faber had laughed, exchanged addresses verbally, and parted. He had never seen Faber again. It wouldn't be safe to know a former English lit. professor. But now … ?

He dialed the call through.

“Hello?”

“Hello, Professor Faber?”

“Yes. Who is this?”

“This is Mr. Montag. Remember, in the park, a year ago.”

“Oh yes, Mr. Montag. Can I help you?”

“Mr. Faber …”

“Yes?”

“How many copies of Shakespeare are there left in the world?”

“I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about.” The voice grew cold.

“I want to know if there are any copies at all.”

“I can't talk to you now, Montag.”

“This telephone line is closed, there's no one listening.”

“Is this some sort of trap? I can't talk to just anyone on the phone.”

“Tell me. Are there any copies left?”

“None!” And Faber hung up.

None. Montag fell back in his chair, gasping. None! None in all the world, none left, none anywhere, all of them destroyed, torn apart, burnt. Shakespeare at last dead for all time to the world! He got up shakily and walked across the room and bent down among the books. He took hold of one and lifted it.

“The plays of Shakespeare, Millie! One last copy and I own it!”

“Fine,” she said.

“If anything should happen to this copy he'd be lost forever. Do you realize what that means, the importance of this copy here in our house.”

“And you have to hand it back to Mr. Leahy tonight to be burned, don't you?” she said. She was not being cruel. She merely sounded relieved that the book was going out of her life.

“Yes.”

He could see Leahy turning the book over with slow appreciation. “Sit down, Montag, I want you to watch this. Delicately, like an eggplant, see?” Ripping one page after another from the book. Lighting the first page with a match. And when it had curled down into a black butterfly, lighting the second page, and so on, chain-smoking the entire volume page by printed page. When it was all finished, with Montag seated there sweating, the floor would look like a swarm of black moths had died in a small storm. And Leahy smiling, washing his hands.

“My God, Millie, we've got to do something, we've got to copy this, there must be a duplicate made, this can't be lost!”

“You haven't time.”

“No, not by hand, but photographed.”

“No one would do it for you.”

He stopped. She was right. There was no one to trust. Except, perhaps, Faber. Montag started for the door.

“You'll be here for the television party, won't you?” she called after him. “It wouldn't be fun without you!”

“You'd never miss me.” But she was looking at the daylight TV program and didn't hear. He went out and slammed the door.

Once as a child he had sat upon the yellow sands in the middle of the blue and hot summer day trying to fill a sieve with sand. The faster he poured it in, the faster it sifted through, with a hot whispering. He tried all day because some cruel cousin had said, “Fill this sieve with sand and you'll get a dime!”

Seated there in the midst of July, he had cried. His hand was tired, the sand was boiling. The sieve was empty.

And now, as the underground jet-tube roared him through the lower cellars of town, rocking him, he remembered the sieve. And he held the copy of Shakespeare, trying to pour the words into his mind. But the words fell through! And he thought, in a few hours I must hand this book to Leahy, but I must remember every word, none must escape me, each line can be memorized. I must remember, I must.

“But I don't.” He shut the book and tried to repeat the lines.

“Try Denham's Dentifrice tonight,” said the jet-radio in the bright wall of the swaying car. Trumpets blared.

“Shut up,” thought Mr. Montag. “To be or not to be—”

“Denham's Dentifrice is only surpassed by Denham's Dentifrice.”

“—that is the question. Shut up, shut up, let me remember.” He tore the book open feverishly and jerked the pages about, tearing at the lines with his eyes, staring until his eyelashes were wet and quivering. His heart pounded.

“Denham's Dentifrice, spelled D-E-N-H …”

“Whether it is nobler—”

A whispering of hot yellow sand through empty sieve.

“Denham's, Denham's, Denham's does it! No dandier, dental detergent!”

“Shut up!” It was a cry so loud that the radio seemed stunned. Mr. Montag found himself on his feet, the shocked inhabitants of the loud car staring at him, recoiling from a man with an insane face, a gibbering mouth, a terrible book in his hand. These rabbit people who hadn't asked for music and commercials on their public vehicles, but who had got it by the sewerful, the air drenched and sprayed and pummeled and kicked by voices and music every instant. And here was an idiot man, himself, suddenly scrabbling at the wall, beating at the loud-speaker, at the enemy of peace, at the killer of Shakespeare!

“Mad man!”

“Call the conductor!”

“Denham's, Denham's Double Dentifrice for dingy dentures!”

“Fourteenth Street.”

Only that saved him. The car stopped. Mr. Montag, suddenly shocked by the lack of motion, swayed back, dropped from the seat, ran past the pale faces, screaming in his mind soundlessly, the voice crying like a sea-gull on a lonely shore after him, “Denham's, Denham's …” fading.

Professor Faber opened the door and when he saw the book, seized it. “My God, man, I haven't seen Shakespeare in years!”

“We burned a house last night. I stole this.”

“What a chance to take.”

“I was curious.”

“Of course. It's beautiful. There were a lot of lovely books once. Before we let them go.” He turned the pages hungrily, a thin man, bald, with slender hands, as light as chaff. He sat down and put his hand over his eyes. “You are looking at a coward, Mr. Montag. When they burned the last of the evil books, as they called them, forty years back, I made only a few grunts and subsided. I've damned myself ever since.”

“It's not too late. There are still books.”

“And there is still life in me, but I'm afraid of dying. Civilizations fall because men like myself fear death.”

“I have a plan. I'm in a position to do things. I'm a fireman, I can find books and hide them.”

“True.”

“I lay awake last night, thinking. We might publish many books privately when we have copies to print from.”

“It's been tried. A good many thousand men have sat in the electric chair for that. Besides, where will you get a press?”

“Can't we build one? I have a little money.”

“If we can find a skilled craftsman who cares.”

“But here's the really fine part of my plan.” Montag almost laughed. He leaned forward. “We'll print extra copies of each book and plant them in firemen's houses!”

“What!”

“Yes! Ten copies, twenty copies in each house, plenty, more than plenty of evidence, criminal intent. Books on philosophy, politics, religion, fantasy!”

“My God!” Faber jumped up and paced the room, looking back at Montag, beginning to smile. “That's incredible.”

“Do you like my plan?”

“Insidious!”

“Would it work?”

“It'd be
fun
, wouldn't it?”

“That's the word. Christ, to hide the books in houses and phone the alarm and see the engines roar up, the hoses uncoil, the door battered down, the windows crashed in, and the fireman himself accused, his house burnt and himself in jail!”

“Positively insidious.” The professor almost danced. “The dragon eats his tail!”

“I've a list of all firemen's homes here and across the continent. With an underground organization we could sow books and reap fire for every bastard in the industry.”