“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.”
“But how will you start?”
“A few books here and there. And build the organization.”
“Who can you trust?”
“Former professors like yourself, former actors, directors, writers, historians, linguists. There must be thousands boiling under the skin.”
“Ancient, most of them. There’ve been no new crops lately.”
“All the better. They’ll have fallen from public notice.”
“I know a few.”
“We could start with those, spread slowly in a network. Think of the actors who never have a chance to play Shakespeare, or Pirandello or Shaw anymore. We would use their anger, my God, to good purpose! Think of the historians who haven’t written a line of history for forty years, and the writers who’ve written pap half a century now, who go home nights and vomit to forget. There must be a million such people!”
“At least.”
“And perhaps we could get small classes in reading started, build an interest in the people.”
“Impossible.”
“But we must try.”
“The whole structure must come down. This isn’t a façade job, we can’t change the front. We’ve got to kick down the skeleton. The whole works is so shot through with mediocrity. I don’t think you realize, Montag, that the burning was almost unnecessary, forty years back.”
“Oh?”
“By that time the great mass had been so pulverized by comic books, quick digests of digests, that public libraries were like the great Sahara, empty and silent. Except, of course, for the science dept.”
“But we can bring libraries back.”
“Can you shout louder than the radio, dance faster than the freak dancers, are your books enough to interest this population breast-fed from infancy through senility? Look at your magazine stands. Half naked women on every cover. Your billboards, your films, sex. Can you get the American man from under his crankcase, the woman out of her beauty salon, both of them away from their friend, the TV?”
“We can try.”
“You’re a fool. They don’t want to think. They’re having fun.”
“They only think they are. My wife has everything. She, like a million others, tried to commit suicide last week.”
“All right, they’re lying to themselves, but if you try to show them to themselves, they’ll crush you like a bug.”
A flight of warplanes shook the house, going west.
“There’s our hope,” said Faber, pointing up. “Let’s hope for a good long bad war, Montag. Let the war take away the TVs and radio and comics and true confessions. This civilization is flinging itself to pieces. Wait for the centrifuge to break the wheel.”
“I can’t wait. There has to be another structure, anyway, ready and waiting when this one falls. That’s us.”
“A few men quoting Shakespeare or saying I remember Sophocles? It would be funny if it weren’t so tragic.”
“We must be there to remind them that there is a little more to man besides machines, that the right kind of work is happiness, rather than the wrong kind of leisure. Man must have something to do. He feels useless. We must tell him about things like honesty and beauty and poetry and art, which they lost along the wayside.”
“All right, Montag.” The professor sighed. “You’re wrong, but you’re right. We’ll do a little, anyway. How much money could you get me today?”
“Five thousand dollars.”
“Bring it here then. I know a man who once printed our college paper years ago. I remember that year very well. I came to my class one morning and there was only one student there to sign up for my Ancient Greek Drama. You see, that’s how it went. Like a block of ice melted on an August afternoon. Nobody passed a law. It
