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yellow?flame?coloured beetle with the black, char?coloured tyres.
Across the street and down the way the other houses stood with their flat fronts.
What was it Clarisse had said one afternoon? "No front porches. My uncle says there
used to be front porches. And people sat there sometimes at night, talking when they
wanted to talk, rocking, and not talking when they didn't want to talk. Sometimes they
just sat there and thought about things, turned things over. My uncle says the
architects got rid of the front porches because they didn't look well. But my uncle
says that was merely rationalizing it; the real reason, hidden underneath, might be
they didn't want people sitting like that, doing nothing, rocking, talking; that was the
wrong kind of social life. People talked too much. And they had time to think. So they
ran off with the porches. And the gardens, too. Not many gardens any more to sit
around in. And look at the furniture. No rocking?chairs any more. They're too
comfortable. Get people up and running around. My uncle says . . . and . . . my uncle
. . . and . . . my uncle . . ." Her voice faded.
Montag turned and looked at his wife, who sat in the middle of the parlour talking to
an announcer, who in turn was talking to her. "Mrs. Montag," he was saying. This,
that and the other. "Mrs. Montag?" Something else and still another. The converter
attachment, which had cost them one hundred dollars, automatically supplied her
name whenever the announcer addressed his anonymous audience, leaving a blank
where the proper syllables could be filled in. A special spot?wavex?scrambler also
caused his televised image, in the area immediately about his lips, to mouth the
vowels and consonants beautifully. He was a friend, no doubt of it, a good friend.
"Mrs. Montag?now look right here."
Her head turned. Though she quite obviously was not listening.
Montag said, "It's only a step from not going to work today to not working tomorrow,
to not working at the firehouse ever again." ,
"You are going to work tonight, though, aren't you?" said Mildred.
"I haven't decided. Right now I've got an awful feeling I want to smash things and kill
things :'
"Go take the beetle."
"No thanks."
"The keys to the beetle are on the night table. I always like to drive fast when I feel
that way. You get it up around ninetyfive and you feel wonderful. Sometimes I drive
all night and come back and you don't know it. It's fun out in the country. You hit
rabbits, sometimes you hit dogs. Go take the beetle."
"No, I don't want to, this time. I want to hold on to this funny thing. God, it's gotten big
on me. I don't know what it is. I'm so damned unhappy, I'm so mad, and I don't know
why I feel like I'm putting on weight. I feel fat. I feel like I've been saving up a lot of
things, and don't know what. I might even start reading books."
"They'd put you in jail, wouldn't they?" She looked at him as if he were behind the
glass wall.
He began to put on his clothes, moving restlessly about the bedroom. "Yes, and it
might be a good idea. Before I hurt someone. Did you hear Beatty? Did you listen to
him? He knows all the answers. He's right. Happiness is important. Fun is everything.
And yet I kept sitting there saying to myself, I'm not happy, I'm not happy."
"I am." Mildred's mouth beamed. "And proud of it."
"I'm going to do something," said Montag. "I don't even know what yet, but I'm going
to do something big."
"I'm tired of listening to this junk," said Mildred, turning from him to the announcer
again
Montag touched the volume control in the wall and the announcer was speechless.
"Millie?" He paused. "This is your house as well as mine. I feel it's only fair that I tell
you something now. I should have told you before, but I wasn't even admitting it to
myself. I have something I want you to see, something I've put away and hid during
the past year, now and again, once in a while, I didn't know why, but I did it and I
never told you."
He took hold of a straight?backed chair and moved it slowly and steadily into the hall
near the front door and climbed up on it and stood for a moment like a statue on a
pedestal, his wife standing under him, waiting. Then he reached up and pulled back
the grille of the air?conditioning system and reached far back inside to the right and
moved still another sliding sheet of metal and took out a book. Without looking at it
he dropped it to the floor. He put his hand back up and took out two books and
moved his hand down and dropped the two books to the floor. He kept moving his
hand and dropping books, small ones, fairly large ones, yellow, red, green ones.
When he was done he looked down upon some twenty books lying at his wife's feet.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't really think. But now it looks as if we're in this together."
Mildred backed away as if she were suddenly confronted by a pack of mice that had
come up out of the floor. He could hear her breathing rapidly and her face was paled
out and her eyes were fastened wide. She said his name over, twice, three times.
Then moaning, she ran forward, seized a book and ran toward the kitchen
incinerator.
He caught her, shrieking. He held her and she tried to fight away from him,
scratching.
"No, Millie, no! Wait! Stop it, will you? You don't know . . . stop it!" He slapped her
face, he grabbed her again and shook her.
She said his name and began to cry.
"Millie! "' he said. "Listen. Give me a second, will you? We can't do anything. We
can't burn these. I want to look at them, at least look at them once. Then if what the
Captain says is true, we'll burn them together, believe me, we'll burn them together.
You must help me." He looked down into her face and took hold of her chin and held [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]