The Fireman (5 page)

"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 time-bomb, 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 t-v — 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 fire house, 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 any more. 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 a 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 one listening."

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

"Tell me, are there any copies?"

"None!" And Faber hung up.

None.

MONTAG fell back in his chair. None! None in all the world, none left, none anywhere, all, all of them destroyed, torn apart, burned. The Bible 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 book and lifted it.

"The old and new testaments, Millie! One last copy and we have it here!"

"Fine," she said vaguely.

"Do you realize what it means, the importance of this copy here in our house? If anything should happen to this book, it would be lost forever."

"And you have to hand it back to Mr. Leahy tonight to be burned, don't you?" said Mildred. She was not being cruel. She was merely relieved that the one book, at least, 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 a head of lettuce, see?" Ripping one page after another from the binding. Lighting the first page with a match.

And when it had curled down into black wings, lighting the second page from the first and the third from the second, and so on, chain-smoking the entire volume chapter by printed chapter, all of the words and the wisdom. When it was finished, with Montag seated there sweating, the floor would resemble a swarm of black moths that had fluttered and died in one 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 if we could photograph it."

"No one would do it for you."

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

"You'll be here for the t-v party, won't you?" Mildred called after him. "It wouldn't be fun without you."

"You'd never miss me." But she was looking at the late afternoon t-v show and didn't hear. He went out and slammed the door, the book in his hand.

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

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

And now, as the jet-underground car roared him through the lower cellars of town, rocking him, jolting him, he remembered that frustrating sieve and he held this precious copy of the old and new testaments fiercely in his hands, 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 each word, no phrase must escape me, each line can be memorized. I must remember, I must.

"But I do not remember." He shut the book and pressed it with his fists and tried to force his mind.

"Try Denham's Dentifrice tonight!" screamed the radio in the bright, shuddering wall of the
jet-train. Trumpets blared.

"Shut up," thought Mr. Montag in panic. "
Behold, the lilies of the field
—"

"Denham's Dentifrice!"

"
They toil not
— "

"Denham's Dentifrice!"

"
Behold, the lilies of the field
, shut up, let me remember!"

"Denham's Dentifrice!"

He tore the book open furiously and flicked the pages about as if blind, tearing at the lines with raw eyes, staring until his eyelashes were wet and quivering.

"Denham's, Denham's, Denham's! D-E-N— "

"
They toil not, neither do they
..."

A whisper, a faint sly whisper of yellow sand through empty, empty sieve.

"Denham's does it!"

"
Behold, the lilies
— "

"No dandier dental detergent!"

"Shut up!" It was a shriek so loud, so vicious that the loudspeaker seemed stunned. Mr. Montag found himself on his feet, the shocked inhabitants of the loud car looking at him, recoiling from a man with an insane, gorged face, a gibbering wet mouth, a flapping book in his fist.

These rabbit people who hadn't asked for music and commercials on their public trains 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 loudspeaker, at the enemy of peace, at the killer of philosophy and privacy!

"Madman!"

"Call the conductor!"

"Denham's, Denham's Double Dentifrice!"

"Fourteenth Street!"

Only that saved him. The car stopped. Montag, thrown into the aisle by the grinding halt, rolled over, book in hand, leaped up past the pale, frightened faces, screamed in his mind soundlessly, and was out the opening door of the train and running on the white tiles up and up through tunnels, alone, that voice still crying like a seagull on a lonely shore after him, "Denham's, Denham's..."

Professor Faber opened the door, saw the book, seized it. "My God, I haven't held a copy in years!"

"We burned a house last night. I stole it."

"What a chance to take!"

Montag stood catching his breath. "I was curious."

"Of course. It's beautiful. Here, come in, shut the door, sit down." Faber walked with the book in his fingers, feeling it, flipping the pages slowly, hungrily, a thin man, bald, with slender hands, as light as chaff. "There were a lot of lovely books once. Before we let them go." 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 feeble protestations and subsided. I've damned myself ever since."