“Leonard,” said Mildred, nervously.
“I thought we might enjoy a little silence.”
They thought about it and blinked.
“I thought we might try a little conversation for a change.”
Conversation!
A flight of bombers going East shook the house and trembled up through their bodies to shake the drinks in their hands. Mr. Montag followed the sound with his eyes.
“There they go,” he said.
Everyone glanced at him.
“When do you suppose the war will be?”
Silence.
At last: “What war?”
“There isn’t going to be any war.”
“What about your husbands? I notice they’re not here tonight.”
Mrs. Masterson looked sidewise at the empty TV screen. “Oh. My husband’ll be back in a week or so. The Army called him. But they have these things every month or so.” She laughed.
“Don’t you worry? About the war?”
“Well, even if there was one, heavens, it’s got to be fought and got over with, we can’t just sit, can we?”
“No, but we can think about it.”
She sipped her drink charmingly. “Who wants to think about war. I’ll let Bob think of all that.”
“And die.”
“It’s always someone else’s husband dies, isn’t that the joke?” The women all tittered. “Bob can take care of himself.”
Yes, thought Montag, and if he doesn’t, what’ll it matter, we’ve learned the magic of the replaceable part from factories. A man after all is just a man. You can’t tell one from another these days.
As for these women. His wife, the others, with their barbarously bright faces, the neon lipstick, the doll-lash eyes. Why worry about Bob or Mary or Tom, if there is a Joe or Helen or Roger to replace them, just as vacuous. In the land of television pallor, where the tanned face? In the land of the spread gluteus maximus, where the muscular thigh? In the land of blanc mange and vanilla pudding where the crisp bacon, the sharp roquefort? Where in this world of dull paring knives the mind like a machete to cut to the heart of the matter! Why these women couldn’t peel the rind from a bit of smalltalk without lopping their arms off at the elbow!
The silence in the room was like a cotton batting.
“Did you see the Clarence Dove film last night, wasn’t he funny.”
“He’s funny!”
“He sure is funny.”
“But what if Bob should be killed, or your husband, Mrs. Phelps …”
“He’s already dead,” said Mrs. Phelps. “He died a week ago, didn’t you know? Jumped off a building.”
“I didn’t know.” He fell silent, embarrassed.
“But back to Clarence Dove, he’s really funny,” said Mildred.
“Why did you marry Mr. Phelps?” said Montag.
“Why?”
“Yes, what did you have in common.”
The poor woman waved her hands helplessly. “Why, because he had such a nice sense of humor, and we liked the same TV programs, and things like that. He danced nice.”
He had seen other widows at funerals, dry-eyed, even as this woman was dry-eyed because the dead man was a robot turned out on assembly belt, gay, casual, but replaceable by another gay casual chap who would pop up like the clap pipe so mistakable for the one you just blew to bits at the shooting gallery.
“And you? Mrs. Masterson, have you any children?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Come to think of it, no one here has any children,” said Montag. “Except you, Mrs. Bowles.”
“Four, by Caesarian section. It’s so easy.”
“The Caesarians weren’t physically necessary?”
“No. But I always said I’ll be damned if I’ll go through all that agony just for a baby. Four Caesarians.” She held up her fingers.
Yes, everything easy. To mistake the easy way for the right way, how delicious the temptation, but it wasn’t living. A woman who wouldn’t have a baby, or a man who wouldn’t work didn’t belong. They were passing through, they were expendables. They belonged to nothing and did nothing.
“Have you ever thought, ladies,” he said, growing more contemptuous of them by the minute, “that perhaps this isn’t the best of all possible worlds? That perhaps the Negroes and Jews and civil rights and every damned other thing is still where it was a hundred years ago, maybe worse?”
“Why that can’t be true,” said Mrs. Phelps. “We’d have heard about it.”
“On that pap-dispenser?” said Montag, jerking his thumb at the TV. “On that censoring machine?”
“You’re lying,” said Mrs. Phelps.
He drew a paper from his pocket, shaking with irritation.
“What’s that?” Mrs. Masterson squinted.
“A poem from a book, I want you to hear it.”
“I don’t like poetry.”
“Have you ever heard any?”
“I detest it.”
Mildred jumped up, but Montag said, “Sit down.” The women all lit cigarettes nervously, twisting their mouths, their nicotined hands gesturing in the smoky air. “Well, go on,” said Mrs. Masterson, impatiently “Let’s get this junk over with.”
Mrs. Phelps was squealing. “This is illegal, isn’t it? I’m afraid. I’m going home.”
“Sit down, we’ll talk about that later.” He cleared his throat. The room was quiet. He glanced up and the women were all looking with expectation at the television set, as if looking would turn it back on.
“Listen,” he said. “This is a poem by Matthew Arnold, titled ‘Dover Beach.’” He waited. He wanted very much to speak it right, and he was afraid that he might stumble. He read:
“The sea is calm tonight.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits—on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet in the night air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land
Listen! You hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
“Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
“The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
“Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash night.”
He stopped reading.
Mildred got up. “Can I turn on the TV now?”
“No, god damn it, no!”
Mildred sat down.
Mrs. Masterson said, “I don’t get it.”
“What was it about?” said Mrs. Phelps, her eyes frightened.
“Don’t you see the beauty?” asked Montag, much too loudly.
“Hardly worth getting excited about,” said Mrs. Masterson.
“That’s just it. Because it is such a little thing, it’s big. We don’t have time for poetry or anything anymore. We don’t like rain. We seed clouds to make it rain away from our cities. On Christmas we dump the snow in the sea. Trees are trouble, rip them out! Grass needs cutting, pour cement over it! We can’t be troubled to live anymore.”
“Mr. Montag,” said Mrs. Masterson. “It’s only because you’re a fireman that we haven’t turned you in for reading this to us tonight. This is illegal. But it’s silly. The poem was silly.”
“Of course, because you can’t plug it in anywhere, it isn’t practical.”
“Ladies, let’s get out of here.”
“We don’t want to get caught here with him and his poem,” said Mrs. Phelps, running.
“Don’t,” said Mildred.
Not speaking, the ladies ran. The door slammed.
“Go home and plug in your blankets and fry!” yelled Montag. “Go home and think of your first husband, Mrs. Masterson, in the insane asylum, and you Mrs. Phelps of Mr. Phelps jumping off a building!”
The house was quiet.
He went to the bedroom where Mildred had locked herself in the bath. He heard the water running. He heard her shaking the sleeping tablets out into her hand.
He walked out of the house, slamming the door.
“THANK YOU, MONTAG.” Mr. Leahy took the copy of Shakespeare and without even looking at it, tore it slowly apart and threw it into a wall slot. “Now, let’s have a game of blackjack and forget all about it, Montag. Glad to see you’re back.” They walked upstairs in the fire house.
They sat and played cards.
In Leahy’s sight, he felt the guilt of his hands. His hands were like ferrets that had done some evil deed in Leahy’s sight, and now were never at rest, were always stirring and picking and hiding in pockets, or moving out from under his alcohol-flame gaze. If Leahy so much as breathed on them, Montag felt his hands might turn upon their backs and die and he might never shake them to life again, they would be frozen cold, to be buried forever in his coat-sleeves, forgotten.
For these were the hands that acted on their own, that were no part of him, that snatched books, tore pages, hid paragraphs and sentences in little wads to be opened later, at home, by match-light, read, and burned. These were the hands that ran off with Shakespeare and Job and Ruth and packed them away next to his crashing heart, over the beating ribs and the hot, pouring blood of a man excited by his theft, appalled by his temerity, betrayed by ten fingers which at times he held up and looked upon as if they were covered with fresh blood.
He washed the hands continually. He found it impossible to smoke, not only because of having to use his hands in front of Leahy, but because the drifting cigarette clouds made
