A Pleasure to Burn (24 page)

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.

 

“T
HANK YOU
, M
ONTAG
.”
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 him think of the old man and the old woman and the fire that he and these others had set with their brass machines.

“You're not smoking any more, Montag?”

“No. I've a cigarette cough. Got to stop.”

And when he played cards he hid his hands under the table so that Leahy wouldn't see him fumble. “Let's have our hands on the table,” said Leahy. “Not that we don't trust you. You got extra cards under there.” And they all laughed. While Montag drew forth the guilty hands, the stealers and the seekers, shaking, to place his cards during the long game.

The phone rang.

Mr. Leahy, carrying his cards in his quiet hand, walked over and stood by it, let it ring once more, and then picked up the receiver.

“Yes?”

Mr. Montag listened.

“Yes,” said Leahy.

The clock ticked in the room.

“I see,” said Leahy. He looked at Mr. Montag and smiled and winked Montag looked away. “Better give me that address again.”

Mr. Montag got up and walked around the room, hands in pockets. The other two men were standing, now, ready. Leahy gave them a nod of his head, toward their hats and coats, as if to say, on the double. They shoved their arms in their coats and pushed on their helmets, joking.

Mr. Montag waited.

“I understand perfectly,” said Leahy. “Yes. Yes. Perfectly. No, that's all right. Don't you worry. We'll be right out.”

Mr. Montag put down the phone. “Well, well,” he said.

“A call?”

“Yes.”

“Books to be burned?”

“So it seems.”

Mr. Montag sat down. “I don't feel well.”

“What a shame, for this is a special case,” said Leahy, coming forward slowly, putting on his slicker.

“I think I'm tendering my resignation.”

“Please wait. One more fire, eh, Montag. And then I'll be agreeable, you can hand in your papers and we'll all be happy.”

“Do you mean that?”

“Have I ever lied to you.”

Mr. Leahy fetched Montag his helmet. “Put it on. It'll all be over in an hour. I understand you, Montag, really I do. And soon everything will be hunky-dory.”

“All right.” Montag arose. They slid down the brass pole. “Where's the fire this time?”

“I'll direct you, Mr. Brown,” shouted Leahy up at the man on the engine.

The engine blasted itself to life and in gaseous thunder they all climbed aboard.

They rounded the corner in thunder and siren, with concussion of tires, with scream of rubber, with a shifting of kerosene bulk in the glittery brass tank, like the food in the stomach of a giant, with Mr. Montag's fingers jolting off the silver rail, swinging into cold space, with the wind tearing his hair back from his bleak face, with the wind whistling in his teeth, and him all the while thinking of the women, the chaff women, with the kernels blown out from under them by a neon wind, and his reading the book to them, what a silly thing it was now, for what was a book, a bit of paper, a bit of type, why should he care about one book, ten books, five thousand books, he was the only one in the world who cared about books, really. Why not forget it all, let it drop, let the books lie?

“Turn here!” said Leahy.

“Elm Street?”

“Right!”

He saw Leahy up ahead, with his massive black slicker flapping out about him. He seemed to be a black bat flying over the engine, over the brass numbers, taking the wind. His phosphorescent face glimmered in the high darkness, pressing forward, and he was smiling.

“Here we go to keep the world happy!” he shouted.

And Mr. Montag thought, no, I won't let the books die. I won't let them burn. As long as there are men like Leahy, I can't quit. But what can I do. I can't kill everyone. It's me against the world, and the odds are too big for one man. What can I do? Against fire, what water is best?

He didn't know.

“Now over on Park Terrace!” That was Leahy.

The Fire Engine blundered to a stop, throwing the men forward on themselves. Mr. Montag stood there, looking at the cold rail under his loose fingers, trembling.

“I can't do it,” he murmured. “I can't go in there. I can't burn another book.”

Leahy jumped down from his perch, smelling of the fresh wind that had hammered at him. “All right, Montag, fetch the kerosene!”

The hoses were being reeled out. The men were running on soft bootheels, as clumsy as cripples, as quiet as spiders.

Mr. Montag at last looked up.

Mr. Leahy said, “What's wrong, Montag?”

“Why,” said Montag. “That house. It's my house.”

“So it is,” said Leahy.

“That's my house!”

All the lights were on. Down the street, lights were burning yellow in every house. People were coming out on porches, as on to stages. The door of Montag's house stood wide. In it, with two suitcases at her feet, was Mildred. When she saw her husband she stooped, picked up the suitcases, and came down the steps with dream-like rigidity, looking at the third button on his jacket.

“Mildred!”

She didn't speak.

“Okay, Montag, up with the hoses and the axes.”

“Just a moment, Mr. Leahy. Mildred, you didn't telephone this call in, did you?”

She walked past him with her arms rigid and at the ends of them, in the sharp fingers, the valise handles. Her mouth was bloodless.

“Mildred!”

She put the valises into a waiting cab and climbed in and sat there, staring straight ahead.

Montag started toward her, but Leahy held his arm. Leahy jerked his head toward the house. “Come on, Montag.”

The cab drove away slowly among the lighted houses.

There was a crystal tinkling as the windows of the house were broken to provide fine drafts for fire.

Mr. Montag walked but did not feel his feet touch the sidewalk, nor the hose in his cold fingers, nor did he hear Leahy talking continually as they reached the door.

“Pour it on, Montag.”

“What?”

“The kerosene.”

Montag stood looking in at the strange house, made strange by the hour of the night, by the murmur of neighbor voices, by the broken glass and the lights burning in each room, and there on the floor, their covers torn off, the pages spilled about like pigeon feathers, were his incredible books, and they looked so pitiful and silly and not worth bothering with there, for they were nothing but type and paper and raveled binding.

But he knew what he must do to quench the fire that was burning everything even before set ablaze. He stepped forward in a huge silence, and he picked up one of the pages of the books and he read what it had to say.

“I'll memorize it,” he told himself. “And some day I'll write it down and make another book from what I remember.”

He had read three lines when Leahy snatched the paper away from him, wadded it into a ball, and tossed it over his shoulder.

“Oh, no, no,” said Leahy, smiling. “Because then we'd have to burn your mind, too. Mustn't have that.”

“Ready!” said Leahy, stepping back.

“Ready,” said Montag, snapping the valve lock on the fire-thrower.

“Aim,” said Leahy.

“Aim.”

“Fire!”