"Who
is it?"
"Montag
out here."
"What
do you want?"
"Let
me in."
"I
haven't done anything l"
"I'm
alone, dammit ! "
"You
swear it?"
"I
swear!"
The
front door opened slowly. Faber peered out, looking very old in the light and
very fragile and very much afraid. The old man looked as if he had not been out
of the house in years. He and the white plaster walls inside were much the same.
There was white in the flesh of his mouth and his cheeks and his hair was white
and his eyes had faded, with white in the vague blueness there. Then his eyes
touched on the book under Montag's arm and he did not look so old any more and
not quite as fragile. Slowly his fear went.
"I'm
sorry. One has to be careful."
He
looked at the book under Montag's arm and could not stop. "So it's true."
Montag stepped inside. The door shut.
"Sit
down." Faber backed up, as if he feared the book might vanish if he took his
eyes from it. Behind him, the door to a bedroom stood open, and in that room a
litter of machinery and steel tools was strewn upon a desk-top. Montag had only
a glimpse, before Faber, seeing Montag's attention diverted, turned quickly and
shut the bedroom door and stood holding the knob with a trembling hand. His gaze
returned unsteadily to Montag, who was now seated with the book in his lap. "The
book-where did you-?"
"I
stole it."
Faber, for the first time, raised his eyes and looked directly into Montag's
face.
"You're brave."
"No,"
said Montag. "My wife's dying. A friend of mine's already dead. Someone who may
have been a friend was burnt less than twenty-four hours ago. You're the only
one I knew might help me. To see. To see. ."
Faber's hands itched on his knees. "May I?"
"Sorry." Montag gave him the book.
"It's
been a long time. I'm not a religious man. But it's been a long time." Faber
turned the pages, stopping here and there to read. "It's as good as I remember.
Lord, how they've changed it- in our `parlours' these days. Christ is one of the
`family' now. I often wonder it God recognizes His own son the way we've dressed
him up, or is it dressed him down? He's a regular peppermint stick now, all
sugar-crystal and saccharine when he isn't making veiled references to certain
commercial products that every worshipper absolutely needs."
Faber
sniffed the book. "Do you know that books smell like nutmeg or some spice from a
foreign land? I loved to smell them when I was a boy. Lord, there were a lot of
lovely books once, before we let them go."
Faber
turned the pages. "Mr. Montag, you are looking at a coward. I saw the way things
were going, a long time back. I said nothing. I'm one of the innocents who could
have spoken up and out when no one would listen to the `guilty,' but I did not
speak and thus became guilty myself. And when finally they set the structure to
burn the books, using the, firemen, I grunted a few times and subsided, for
there were no others grunting or yelling with me, by then. Now, it's too late."
Faber closed the Bible.
"Well--suppose you tell me why you came here?"
"Nobody listens any more. I can't talk to the walls because they're yelling at
me. I can't talk to my wife; she listens to the walls. I just want someone to
hear what I have to say. And maybe if I talk long enough, it'll make sense. And
I want you to teach me to understand what I read."
Faber
examined Montag's thin, blue-jowled face. "How did you get shaken up? What
knocked the torch out of your hands?"
"I
don't know. We have everything we need to be happy, but we aren't happy.
Something's missing. I looked around. The only thing I positively knew was gone
was the books I'd burned in ten or twelve years. So I thought books might help."
"You're a hopeless romantic," said Faber. "It would be funny if it were not
serious. It's not books you need, it's some of the things that once were in
books. The same things could be in the `parlour families' today. The same
infinite detail and awareness could be projected through the radios and
televisors, but are not. No, no, it's not books at all you're looking for! Take
it where you can find it, in old phonograph records, old motion pictures, and in
old friends; look for it in nature and look for it in yourself. Books were only
one type of receptacle where we stored a lot of things we were afraid we might
forget. There is nothing magical in them at all. The magic is only in what books
say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for
us. Of course you couldn't know this, of course you still can't understand what
I mean when I say all this. You are intuitively right, that's what counts. Three
things are missing.
"Number one: Do you know why books such as this are so important? Because they
have quality. And what does the word quality mean? To me it means texture. This
book has pores. It has features. This book can go under the microscope. You'd
find life under the glass, streaming past in infinite profusion. The more pores,
the more truthfully recorded details of life per square inch you can get on a
sheet of paper, the more `literary' you are. That's my definition, anyway.
Telling detail. Fresh detail. The good writers touch life often. The mediocre
ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the
flies.
"So
now do you see why books are hated and feared? They show the pores in the face
of life. The comfortable people want only wax moon faces, poreless, hairless,
expressionless. We are living in a time when flowers are trying to live on
flowers, instead of growing on good rain and black loam. Even fireworks, for all
their prettiness, come from the chemistry of the earth. Yet somehow we think we
can grow, feeding on flowers and fireworks, without completing the cycle back to
reality. Do you know the legend of Hercules and Antaeus, the giant wrestler,
whose strength was incredible so long as he stood firmly on the earth. But when
he was held, rootless, in mid-air, by Hercules, he perished easily. If there
isn't something in that legend for us today, in this city, in our time, then I
am completely insane. Well, there we have the first thing I said we needed.
Quality, texture of information."
"And
the second?"
"Leisure."
"Oh,
but we've plenty of off-hours."
"Off-hours, yes. But time to think? If you're not driving a hundred miles an
hour, at a clip where you can't think of anything else but the danger, then
you're playing some game or sitting in some room where you can't argue with the
fourwall televisor. Why? The televisor is 'real.' It is immediate, it has
dimension. It tells you what to think and blasts it in. It must be, right. It
seems so right. It rushes you on so quickly to its own conclusions your mind
hasn't time to protest, 'What nonsense!'"
"Only
the 'family' is 'people.'"
"I
beg your pardon?"
"My
wife says books aren't 'real.'"
"Thank God for that. You can shut them, say, 'Hold on a moment.' You play God to
it. But who has ever torn himself from the claw that encloses you when you drop
a seed in a TV parlour? It grows you any shape it wishes! It is an environment
as real as the world. It becomes and is the truth. Books can be beaten down with
reason. But with all my knowledge and scepticism, I have never been able to
argue with a one hundred- piece symphony orchestra, full colour, three
dimensions, and I being in and part of those incredible parlours. As you see, my
parlour is nothing but four plaster walls. And here " He held out two small
rubber plugs. "For my ears when I ride the subway-jets."
"Denham's Dentifrice; they toil not, neither do they spin," said Montag, eyes
shut.
"Where do we go from here? Would books help us?"
"Only
if the third necessary thing could be given us. Number one, as I said, quality
of information. Number two: leisure to digest it. And number three: the right to
carry out actions based on what we learn from the inter-action of the first two.
And I hardly think a very old man and a fireman turned sour could do much this
late in the game..."
"I
can get books."
"You're running a risk."
"That's the good part of dying; when you've nothing to lose, you run any risk
you want."
"There, you've said an interesting thing," laughed Faber, "without having read
it!"
"Are
things like that in books. But it came off the top of my mind!"
"All
the better. You didn't fancy it up for me or anyone, even yourself."
Montag leaned forward. "This afternoon I thought that if it turned out that
books were worth while, we might get a press and print some extra copies--"
"
We?"
"You
and I"
"Oh,
no ! " Faber sat up.
"But
let me tell you my plan---"
"If
you insist on telling me, I must ask you to leave."
"But
aren't you interested?"
"Not
if you start talking the sort of talk that might get me burnt for my trouble.
The only way I could possibly listen to you would be if somehow the fireman
structure itself could be burnt. Now if you suggest that we print extra books
and arrange to have them hidden in firemen's houses all over the country, so
that seeds of suspicion would be sown among these arsonists, bravo, I'd say!"
"Plant the books, turn in an alarm, and see the firemen's houses bum, is that
what you mean?"
Faber
raised his brows and looked at Montag as if he were seeing a new man. "I was
joking."
"If
you thought it would be a plan worth trying, I'd have to take your word it would
help."
"You
can't guarantee things like that! After all, when we had all the books we
needed, we still insisted on finding the highest cliff to jump off. But we do
need a breather. We do need knowledge. And perhaps in a thousand years we might
pick smaller cliffs to jump off. The books are to remind us what asses and fools
we are. They're Caesar's praetorian guard, whispering as the parade roars down
the avenue, `Remember, Caesar, thou art mortal.' Most of us can't rush around,
talking to everyone, know all the cities of the world, we haven't time, money or
that many friends. The things you're looking for, Montag, are in the world, but
the only way the average chap will ever see ninety-nine per cent of them is in a
book. Don't ask for guarantees. And don't look to be saved in any one thing,
person, machine, or library. Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at
least die knowing you were headed for shore."
Faber
got up and began to pace the room.
"Well?" asked Montag.
"You're absolutely serious?"
"Absolutely."
"It's
an insidious plan, if I do say so myself." Faber glanced nervously at his
bedroom door. "To see the firehouses burn across the land, destroyed as hotbeds
of treason. The salamander devours his tail! Ho, God! "
"I've
a list of firemen's residences everywhere. With some sort of underground "
"Can't trust people, that's the dirty part. You and I and who else will set the
fires?"
"Aren't there professors like yourself, former writers, historians, linguists .
. .?"
"Dead
or ancient."
"The
older the better; they'll go unnoticed. You know dozens, admit it ! "
"Oh,
there are many actors alone who haven't acted Pirandello or Shaw or Shakespeare
for years because their plays are too aware of the world. We could use their
anger. And we could use the honest rage of those historians who haven't written
a line for forty years. True, we might form classes in thinking and reading."
"Yes!
"
"But
that would just nibble the edges. The whole culture's shot through. The skeleton
needs melting and re-shaping. Good God, it isn't as simple as just picking up a
book you laid down half a century ago. Remember, the firemen are rarely
necessary. The public itself stopped reading of its own accord. You firemen
provide a circus now and then at which buildings are set off and crowds gather
for the pretty blaze, but it's a small sideshow indeed, and hardly necessary to
keep things in line. So few want to be rebels any more. And out of those few,
most, like myself, scare easily. Can you dance faster than the White Clown,
shout louder than `Mr. Gimmick' and the parlour `families'? If you can, you'll
win your way, Montag. In any event, you're a fool. People are having fun"
"Committing suicide! Murdering!"
A
bomber flight had been moving east all the time they talked, and only now did
the two men stop and listen, feeling the great jet sound tremble inside
themselves.
"Patience, Montag. Let the war turn off the `families.' Our civilization is
flinging itself to pieces. Stand back from the centrifuge."
"There has to be someone ready when it blows up."
"What? Men quoting Milton? Saying, I remember Sophocles? Reminding the survivors
that man has his good side, too? They will only gather up their stones to hurl
at each other. Montag, go home. Go to bed. Why waste your final hours racing
about your cage denying you're a squirrel?"
"Then
you don't care any more?"
"I
care so much I'm sick."
"And
you won't help me?"
"Good
night, good night."
Montag's hands picked up the Bible. He saw what his hands had done and he looked
surprised.
"Would you like to own this?"
Faber
said, "I'd give my right arm."
Montag stood there and waited for the next thing to happen. His hands, by
themselves, like two men working together, began to rip the pages from the book.
The hands tore the flyleaf and then the first and then the second page. "Idiot,
what're you doing!" Faber sprang up, as if he had been struck. He fell, against
Montag. Montag warded him off and let his hands continue. Six more pages fell to
the floor. He picked them up and wadded the paper under Faber's gaze.
"Don't, oh, don't ! " said the old man.
"Who
can stop me? I'm a fireman. I can bum you!"
The
old man stood looking at him. "You wouldn't."
"I
could ! "
"The
book. Don't tear it any more." Faber sank into a chair, his face very white, his
mouth trembling. "Don't make me feel any more tired. What do you want?"
"I
need you to teach me."
"All
right, all right."
Montag put the book down. He began to unwad the crumpled paper and flatten it
out as the old man watched tiredly.
Faber
shook his head as if he were waking up.
"Montag, have you some money?"
"Some. Four, five hundred dollars. Why?"
"Bring it. I know a man who printed our college paper half a century ago. That
was the year I came to class at the start of the new semester and found only one
student to sign up for Drama from Aeschylus to O'Neill. You see? How like a
beautiful statue of ice it was, melting in the sun. I remember the newspapers
dying like huge moths. No one wanted them back. No one missed them. And the
Government, seeing how advantageous it was to have people reading only about
passionate lips and the fist in the stomach, circled the situation with your
fire-eaters. So, Montag, there's this unemployed printer. We might start a few
books, and wait on the war to break the pattern and give us the push we need. A
few bombs and the `families' in the walls of all the houses, like harlequin
rats, will shut up! In silence, our stage-whisper might carry."
They
both stood looking at the book on the table.
"I've
tried to remember," said Montag. "But, hell, it's gone when I turn my head. God,
how I want something to say to the Captain. He's read enough so he has all the
answers, or seems to have. His voice is like butter. I'm afraid he'll talk me
back the way I was. Only a week ago, pumping a kerosene hose, I thought: God,
what fun!"
The
old man nodded. "Those who don't build must burn. It's as old as history and
juvenile delinquents."
"So
that's what I am."
"There's some of it in all of us."
Montag moved towards the front door. "Can you help me in any way tonight, with
the Fire Captain? I need an umbrella to keep off the rain. I'm so damned afraid
I'll drown if he gets me again."
The
old man said nothing, but glanced once more nervously, at his bedroom. Montag
caught the glance. "Well?"
The
old man took a deep breath, held it, and let it out. He took another, eyes
closed, his mouth tight, and at last exhaled. "Montag..."
The
old man turned at last and said, "Come along. I would actually have let you walk
right out of my house. I am a cowardly old fool."
Faber
opened the bedroom door and led Montag into a small chamber where stood a table
upon which a number of metal tools lay among a welter of microscopic wirehairs,
tiny coils, bobbins, and crystals.
"What's this?" asked Montag.
"Proof of my terrible cowardice. I've lived alone so many years, throwing images
on walls with my imagination. Fiddling with electronics, radio-transmission, has
been my hobby. My cowardice is of such a passion, complementing the
revolutionary spirit that lives in its shadow, I was forced to design this."
He
picked up a small green-metal object no larger than a .22 bullet.
"I
paid for all this-how? Playing the stock-market, of course, the last refuge in
the world for the dangerous intellectual out of a job. Well, I played the market
and built all this and I've waited. I've waited, trembling, half a lifetime for
someone to speak to me. I dared speak to no one. That day in the park when we
sat together, I knew that some day you might drop by, with fire or friendship,
it was hard to guess. I've had this little item ready for months. But I almost
let you go, I'm that afraid!"
"It
looks like a Seashell radio."
"And
something more! It listens! If you put it in your ear, Montag, I can sit
comfortably home, warming my frightened bones, and hear and analyse the
firemen's world, find its weaknesses, without danger. I'm the Queen Bee, safe in
the hive. You will be the drone, the travelling ear. Eventually, I could put out
ears into all parts of the city, with various men, listening and evaluating. If
the drones die, I'm still safe at home, tending my fright with a maximum of
comfort and a minimum of chance. See how safe I play it, how contemptible I am?"
Montag placed the green bullet in his ear. The old man inserted a similar object
in his own ear and moved his lips.
"Montag!
"
The
voice was in Montag's head.
"I
hear you! "
The
old man laughed. "You're coming over fine, too!" Faber whispered, but the voice
in Montag's head was clear. "Go to the firehouse when it's time. I'll be with
you. Let's listen to this Captain Beatty together. He could be one of us. God
knows. I'll give you things to say. We'll give him a good show. Do you hate me
for this electronic cowardice of mine? Here I am sending you out into the night,
while I stay behind the lines with my damned ears listening for you to get your
head chopped off."
"We
all do what we do," said Montag. He put the Bible in the old man's hands. "Here.
I'll chance turning in a substitute. Tomorrow--"
"I'll
see the unemployed printer, yes; that much I can do."
"Good
night, Professor."
"Not
good night. I'll be with you the rest of the night, a vinegar gnat tickling your
ear when you need me. But good night and good luck, anyway."
The
door opened and shut. Montag was in the dark street again, looking at the world.