“Yes.” Her body sagged.
The doorbell rang.
They jerked about to stare at the door and the books toppled everywhere, everywhere in heaps.
“Leahy!”
“It can’t be him!”
“He’s come back!” sobbed Mildred.
The bell rang again.
“Let him stand out there. We won’t answer.” Montag reached blindly for a book on the floor, any book, any beginning, any start, any beauty at all would do. He put the book into Mildred’s shaking hands.
The bell rang a third time, insistently.
“Read.” He quivered a hand to a page. “Out loud.”
Mildred’s eyes were on the door and the bell rang angrily, loudly, again and again. “He’ll come in,” she said, “Oh, God, and set fire to everything, and us.”
But at last she found the line, with Montag standing over her, swaying, any line in the book, and after trying it four times, she began to fumble out the words of a poem printed there on the white, unburned paper:
“And evening vanish and no more
The low pale light across that land—”
The bell rang.
“Nor now the long light on the sea:
And here face downward in the sun …”
Another ring.
Montag whispered. “He’ll go away in a minute.
Mildred’s lips trembled:
“To feel how swift, how secretly
The shadow of the night comes on …”
Near the ceiling, smoke from Leahy’s cigar still lingered.
The Sieve and the Sand
THEY READ THE LONG AFTERNOON THROUGH, WHILE THE fire flickered and blew on the hearth and the October rain fell from the sky upon the strangely quiet house. Now and again, Mr. Montag would silently pace the room, or bring in a bottle of cold beer and drink it easily or say, “Will you read that part over again? Isn’t that an idea now?”
Mildred’s voice, as colorless as a beer bottle which contains a rare and beautiful wine but does not know it, went on enclosing the words in plain glass, pouring forth the beauties with a loose mouth, while her drab eyes moved over the words and over the words and the rain rained and the hour grew late.
They read a man named Shakespeare and a man named Poe and part of a book by a man named Matthew and one named Mark. On occasion, Mildred glanced fearfully at the window.
“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 understand 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 took the book from her. “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.”
“But you remember some of it.”
“Nothing.”
“You’ll learn. It’s difficult at first.”
I don’t like books,” she said. “I don’t understand books. 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 the house. They’ll burn our books and kill us. Now, I’m sick.”
“I’m sorry,” 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 aloud again.”
“Thanks.”
“But you must listen. I’ll explain.”
“I’ll never learn. I just know I won’t.”
“You must if you want to be free.”
“I’m free already. I couldn’t be freer.”
“You can’t be free if you’re not aware.”
“Why do you want to ruin us with all this?” she asked.
“Listen,” he said.
SHE LISTENED.
Jet-bombers were crossing the sky over their house.
Those quick gasps in the heavens, as if a running giant had drawn his breath. Those sharp, almost quiet whistles, here and gone in so much less than an instant that one almost believed one had heard nothing. And seeing nothing in the sky, if you did look, was worse than seeing something. There was a feeling as if a great invisible fan was whirring blade after hostile blade across the stars, with giant murmurs and no motion, perhaps only a faint trembling of starlight. All night, every night of their lives, they had heard those jet sounds and seen nothing, until, like the tick of a clock or a timebomb, it had come to be unnoticed, for it was the sound of today and the sound of today dying, the Cheyne-Stokes respiration of civilization.
“I want to know why and how we are where we are,” said Montag. “How did those bombers get in the sky every instant? Why have there been three semi-atomic wars since 1960? Where did we take the wrong turn? What can we do about it? Only the books know this. Maybe the books can’t solve my problem, but they can bring me out in the light. And they might stop us from going on with the same insane mistakes—”
“You can’t stop wars. There’ve always been wars.”
“No, I can’t. War’s so much a part of us now that in the last three days, though we’re on the very rim of war, people hardly mention it. Ignoring it, at least, isn’t the answer. But now, about us. We must have a schedule of reading. An hour in the morning. An hour or so in the afternoon. Two hours in the evening—”
“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 if you want me to for a while every day,” she cried. “But I’ve got to have my radio programs, too, and every night on the TV—you can’t take that away from me!”
“But don’t you see? That’s the very thing I’d like to counteract—”
The telephone rang. They both started. Mildred snatched it up and was almost immediately laughing. “Hello, Ann. Yes, oh, yes! Tonight, you come here. Yes, the White Clown’s on tonight and the Terror will be fun.”
Mr. Montag shuddered, sick. He left the room. He walked through the house, thinking.
Leahy, the firehouse, these dangerous 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. “I’d have to shoot most of the people in the world. How does one start a revolution? I’m alone. My wife, as the saying goes, does not understand me. What can a single lonely man do?”
MILDRED WAS CHATTERING. The radio was thundering, turned on again.
And then Mr. Montag remembered; about a month ago, walking through the park alone, he had come upon a man in a black suit, unaware. The man had been reading something. Montag hadn’t seen a book; he had only seen the man move hastily, face flushed. The man had jumped up as if to run, and Montag had said, simply, “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 fine arts had been closed. His name was William Faber, and shyly, fearfully, he admitted he had been reading a little book of American poems, forbidden poems which he now produced from his coat pocket.
“Just to know I’m alive,” said Mr. Faber. “Just to know where I am and what things are. To sense things. Most of my friends sense nothing. 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 Montag, none of which Montag understood, but the sounds were good, and slowly the meaning crept in. When it was all over, Montag said, “I’m a fireman.”
Faber had looked as if he might die on the spot.
“Don’t be afraid. I won’t turn you in,” said Montag, hastily. “I stopped being mean about it years ago. You know, the way you talk reminds me of a girl I knew once, name of Clarisse. She was killed a few months ago by a car. But she had me thinking, too. We met each other because we took long walks. No one walks anymore. I haven’t seen a pedestrian in ten years on our street. Are you ever stopped by police simply because you’re a pedestrian?”
He and Faber had smiled, exchanged addresses orally, and parted. He had never seen Faber again. It wouldn’t be safe to know a former English literature professor. But now … ?
He dialed the call.
“Hello, Professor Faber?”
“Who is this?”
“This is Montag. You remember? The park? A month ago?”
“Yes, Mr. Montag. Can I help you?”
“Mr. Faber.” He hesitated. “How many copies of the Bible are 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 discuss such things, Montag.”
“This line is closed. There’s no
