Fahrenheit 451 / 451 градус по Фаренгейту. Рэй Брэдбери
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“Now,” said Mildred, “my ‘family’ is people. They tell me things; I laugh, they laugh! And the colours!”
“Yes, I know.”
“And besides, if Captain Beatty knew about those books – ” She thought about it. Her face grew amazed and then horrified. “He might come and bum the house and the ‘family.’ That’s awful! Think of our investment. Why should I read? What for?”
“What for! Why!” said Montag. “I saw the damnedest snake in the world the other night. It was dead but it was alive. It could see but it couldn’t see. You want to see that snake. It’s at Emergency Hospital where they filed a report on all the junk the snake got out of you! Would you like to go and check their file? Maybe you’d look under Guy Montag or maybe under Fear or War. Would you like to go to that house that burnt last night? And rake ashes for the bones of the woman who set fire to her own house! What about Clarisse McClellan, where do we look for her? The morgue! Listen!”
The bombers crossed the sky and crossed the sky over the house, gasping, murmuring, whistling like an immense, invisible fan, circling in emptiness.
“Jesus God,” said Montag. “Every hour so many damn things in the sky! How in hell did those bombers get up there every single second of our lives! Why doesn’t someone want to talk about it? We’ve started and won two atomic wars since 1960. Is it because we’re having so much fun at home we’ve forgotten the world? Is it because we’re so rich and the rest of the world’s so poor and we just don’t care if they are? I’ve heard rumours; the world is starving, but we’re well-fed. Is it true, the world works hard and we play? Is that why we’re hated so much? I’ve heard the rumours about hate, too, once in a long while, over the years. Do you know why? I don’t, that’s sure! Maybe the books can get us half out of the cave. They just might stop us from making the same damn insane mistakes! I don’t hear those idiot bastards in your parlour talking about it. God, Millie, don’t you see? An hour a day, two hours, with these books, and maybe…”
The telephone rang. Mildred snatched the phone.
“Ann!” She laughed. “Yes, the White Clown’s on tonight!”
Montag walked to the kitchen and threw the book down. “Montag,” he said, “you’re really stupid. Where do we go from here? Do we turn the books in, forget it?”
He opened the book to read over Mildred’s laughter. Poor Millie, he thought. Poor Montag, it’s mud to you, too. But where do you get help, where do you find a teacher this late?
Hold on. He shut his eyes. Yes, of course. Again he found himself thinking of the green park a year ago. The thought had been with him many times recently, but now he remembered how it was that day in the city park when he had seen that old man in the black suit hide something, quickly in his coat.
…The old man leapt up as if to run. And Montag said, “Wait!”
“I haven’t done anything!” cried the old man trembling.
“No one said you did.”
They had sat in the green soft light without saying a word for a moment, and then Montag talked about the weather, and then the old man responded with a pale voice. It was a strange quiet meeting. The old man admitted to being a retired English professor who had been thrown out upon the world forty years ago when the last liberal arts college shut for lack of students and patronage. His name was Faber, and when he finally lost his fear of Montag, he talked in a cadenced voice, looking at the sky and the trees and the green park, and when an hour had passed he said something to Montag and Montag sensed it was a rhymeless poem. Then the old man grew even more courageous and said something else and that was a poem, too. Faber held his hand over his left coat-pocket and spoke these words gently, and Montag knew if he reached out, he might pull a book of poetry from the man’s coat. But he did not reach out. His. hands stayed on his knees, numbed and useless.
“I don’t talk things, sir,” said Faber. “I talk the meaning of things. I sit here and know I’m alive.”
That was all there was to it, really. An hour of monologue, a poem, a comment, and then without even acknowledging the fact that Montag was a fireman, Faber with a certain trembling, wrote his address on a slip of paper. “For your file,” he said, “in case you decide to be angry with me.”
“I’m not angry,” Montag said, surprised.
Mildred shrieked with laughter in the hall.
Montag went to his bedroom closet and flipped through his file-wallet to the heading: FUTURE INVESTIGATIONS (?). Faber’s name was there. He hadn’t turned it in and he hadn’t erased it.
He dialled the call on a secondary phone. The phone on the far end of the line called Faber’s name a dozen times before the professor answered in a faint voice. Montag identified himself and was met with a lengthy silence.
“Yes, Mr. Montag?”
“Professor Faber, I have a rather odd question to ask. How many copies of the Bible are left in this country?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“I want to know if there are any copies left at all.”
“This is some sort of a trap! I can’t talk to just anyone on the phone!”
“How many copies of Shakespeare and Plato?”
“None! You know as well as I do. None!”
Faber hung up.
Montag put down the phone. None. A thing he knew of course from the firehouse listings. But somehow he had wanted to hear it from Faber himself.
In the hall Mildred’s face was suffused with excitement.
“Well, the ladies are coming over!”
Montag showed her a book. “This is the Old and New Testament, and…”
“Don’t start that again!”
“It might be the last copy in this part of the world.”
“You’ve got to hand it back tonight, don’t you know? Captain Beatty knows you’ve got it, doesn’t he?”
“I don’t think he knows which book I stole. But how do I choose a substitute? Do I turn in Mr. Jefferson? Mr. Thoreau? Which is least valuable? If I pick a substitute and Beatty does know which book I stole, he’ll guess we’ve an entire library here!”
Mildred’s mouth twitched.
“See what you’re doing? You’ll ruin us! Who’s more important, me or that Bible?”
She was beginning to shriek now, sitting there like a wax doll melting in its own heat.
He could hear Beatty’s voice.
“Sit down, Montag. Watch. Delicately, like the petals of a flower. Light the first page, light the second page. Each becomes a black butterfly. Beautiful, eh? Light the third page from the second and so on, chainsmoking, chapter by chapter, all the silly things the words mean, all the false promises, all the second-hand notions and time-worn philosophies.” There sat Beatty, perspiring gently, the floor littered with swarms of black moths that had died in a single storm.
Mildred stopped screaming as quickly as she started. Montag was not listening.
“There’s only one thing to do,” he said. “Some time before tonight when I give the book to Beatty, I’ve got to have a duplicate made.”
“You’ll be here for the White Clown tonight, and the ladies coming over?” cried Mildred.
Montag stopped at the door, with his back turned. “Millie?”
A silence.
“What?”
“Millie? Does the White Clown love you?”
No answer.
“Millie, does – ” He licked his lips. “Does your ‘family’ love you, love you very much, love you with all their heart and soul, Millie?”
He