The Fireman Read online

  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 doo
r 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."

  "It's not too late. There are still books."

  "And there is still life in me, and I'm afraid of dying. Civilizations fall because men like myself fear death."

  "I've a plan," said Montag. "I'm in a position to do things. I'm a fireman; I can find and hide books. Last night I lay awake, thinking. We might publish many books privately when we have copies to print from."

  "How many have been killed for that?"

  "We'll get a press."

  "We? Not we. You, Mr. Montag."

  "You must help me. You're the only one I know. You must."

  "Must? What do you mean, must?'

  "We could find someone to build a press for us."

  "Impossible. The books are dead."

  "We can bring them back. I have a little money."

  "No, no." Faber waved his hands, his old hands, blotched with liver freckles.

  "But let me tell you my plan."

  "I don't want to hear. If you insist on telling me, I must ask you to leave."

  "We'll have extra copies of each book printed and hide them in firemen's houses!"

  "What?" The Professor raised his brows and gazed at Montag as if a bright light had been switched on.

  "Yes, and put in an alarm."

  "Call the fire engines?"

  "Yes, and see the engines roar up. See the doors battered down on firemen's houses for a change. And see the planted books found and each fireman, at last, accused and thrown in jail!"

  The Professor put his hand to his face. "Why, that's absolutely sinister."

  "Do you like it?"

  "The dragon eats his tail."

  "You'll join me?"

  "I didn't say that. No, no."

  ""BUT you see the confusion and suspicion we could spread?"

  "Yes, plenty of trouble there."

  "I've a list of firemen's homes all across the states. With an underground, we could reap fire and chaos for every blind bastard in the industry."

  "You can't trust anyone, though."

  "What about Professors like yourself, former actors, directors, writers, historians, linguists?"

  "Dead, or ancient, all of them."

  "Good. They'll have fallen from public notice. You know hundreds of them. I know you must."

  "Nevertheless, I can't help you, Montag. I'll admit your idea appeals to my sense of humor, to my delight in striking back. A temporary delight, however. I'm a frightened man; I frighten easily."

  "Think of the actors alone, then, who haven't acted Shakespeare or Pirandello. We could use their anger, and the rage of historians who haven't written for forty years. We could start small classes in reading..."

  "Impractical."

  "We could try."

  "The whole civilization must fall. We can't change just the front. The framework needs melting and remolding. Don't you realize, young man, that the Great Burning forty years back was almost unnecessary? By that time the public had stopped reading. Libraries were Saharas of emptiness. Except the Science Department."

  "But—"

  "Can you shout louder than radio, dance faster than t-v? People don't want to think. They're having fun."

  "Committing suicide."

  "Let them commit it."

  "Murdering."

  "Let them murder. The fewer fools there will be."

  "A war is starting, perhaps tonight, and no one will even talk about it."

  The house shook. A bomber flight was moving south. It had slowed to five hundred miles an hour and was trembling the two men standing there across from each other.

  "Let the war turn off the t-vs and radio, and bomb the true confessions."

  "I can't wait," said Montag.

  "Patience. The civilization is flinging itself to pieces. Stand back from the centrifuge."

  "There has to be another structure ready when this one falls," insisted Montag. "That's us."

  "A bunch of men quoting Shakespeare and saying I remember Sophocles? It would be funny if it were not tragic."

  "We've got to be there. We've got to remind those who are left that there are things more urgent than machines. We must remember that the right kind of work is happiness, instead of the wrong kind of leisure. We must give people things to do. We must make them feel wanted again."

  "They will only war again. No, Montag, go on home and go to bed. It was nice seeing you. But it's a lost cause."

  MONTAG paced about the room for a few moments, chafing his hands, then he returned and picked up the book and held it toward the other man.

  "Do you see this book? Would you like to own it?"

  "My God, yes! I'd give my right arm for it."

  "Watch." Montag began ripping the pages out, one by one, dropping them to the floor, tearing them in half, spitting on them and rolling them into wads.

  "Stop it!" cried Faber. "You idiot, stop it!" He sprang forward. Montag warded him off and went on tearing at the pages.

  "Do you see?" he said, a fistful of pages in his tightening fist, flourishing them under the chin of the old man. "Do you see what it means to have your heart torn out? Do you see what they do?"

  "Don't tear any more, please," said the old man.

  "Who can stop me? You? I'm a fireman. I can do anything I want to do. Why, I could burn your house now, do you know that? I could burn everything. I have the power."

  "You wouldn't!"

  "No. I wouldn't."

  "Please. The book; don't rip it any more. I can't stand that." Faber sank into a chair, his face white, his mouth trembling. "I see; I understand. My God, I'm old enough so it shouldn't matter what happens to me. I'll help you. I can't take any more of this. If I'm killed, it won't make any difference. I'm a terrible fool of an old man and it's too late, but I'll help you."

  "To print the books?"

  "Yes."

  "To start classes?"

  "Yes, yes, anything, but don't ruin that book, don't. I never thought a book could mean so much to me." Faber sighed. "Let us say that you have my limited cooperation. Let us say that part of your plan, at least, intrigues me, the idea of striking back with books planted in firemen's homes. I'll help. How much money could you get me today?"

  "Five thousand dollars."

  "Bring it here when you can. I know a man who once printed our college paper. That was the year I came to class one morning and found only two students to sign up for Ancient Greek Drama. You see, that's how it went. Like an ice-block melting in the sun.

  And when the people had censored themselves into a living idiocy with their purchasing power, the Government, which of course represents the people's will, being composed of representative people, froze the situation. Newspapers died. No one cared if the Government said they couldn't come back. No one wanted them back. Do they now? I doubt it, but I'll contact a printer, Montag. We'll get the books started, and wait for the war. That's one fine thing; war destroys machines so beautifully."

  MONTAG went to the door. "I'm afraid I'll have to take the Bible along."

  "No!"

  "Leahy guessed I have a book in the house. He didn't come right out and
accuse me, or name the book..."

  "Can't you substitute another book for this?"