Ray Bradbury 3-Book Collection: Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man

‘I want to know if there are any copies 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, chain-smoking, 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 felt her blinking slowly at the back of his neck.

‘Why’d you ask a silly question like that?’

He felt he wanted to cry, but nothing would happen to his eyes or mouth.

‘If you see that dog outside,’ said Mildred, ‘give him a kick for me.’

He hesitated, listening at the door. He opened it and stepped out.

The rain had stopped and the sun was setting in the clear sky. The street and the lawn and the porch were empty. He let his breath go in a great sigh.

He slammed the door.

He was on the subway.

I’m numb, he thought. When did the numbness really begin in my face? In my body? The night I kicked the pill-bottle in the dark, like kicking a buried mine.

The numbness will go away, he thought. It’ll take time, but I’ll do it, or Faber will do it for me. Someone somewhere will give me back the old face and the old hands the way they were. Even the smile, he thought, the old burnt-in smile, that’s gone. I’m lost without it.

The subway fled past him, cream-tile, jet-black, cream-tile, jet-black, numerals and darkness, more darkness and the total adding itself.

Once as a child he had sat upon a yellow dune by the sea in the middle of the blue and hot summer day, trying to fill a sieve with sand, because some cruel cousin had said, ‘Fill this sieve and you’ll get a dime!’ And the faster he poured, the faster it sifted through with a hot whispering. His hands were tired, the sand was boiling, the sieve was empty. Seated there in the midst of July, without a sound, he felt the tears move down his cheeks.

Now as the vacuum-underground rushed him through the dead cellars of town, jolting him, he remembered the terrible logic of that sieve, and he looked down and saw that he was carrying the Bible open. There were people in the suction train but he held the book in his hands and the silly thought came to him, if you read fast and read all, maybe some of the sand will stay in the sieve. But he read and the words fell through, and he thought, in a few hours, there will be Beatty, and here will be me handing this over, so no phrase must escape me, each line must be memorized. I will myself to do it.

He clenched the book in his fists.

Trumpets blared.

‘Denham’s Dentifrice.’

Shut up, thought Montag. Consider the lilies of the field.

‘Denham’s Dentifrice.’

They toil not –

‘Denham’s –’

Consider the lilies of the field, shut up, shut up.

‘Dentrifice!’

He tore the book open and flicked the pages and felt them as if he were blind, he picked at the shape of the individual letters, not blinking.

‘Denham’s. Spelled: D-E-N –’

They toil not, neither do they …

A fierce whisper of hot sand through empty sieve.

‘Denham’s does it!’

Consider the lilies, the lilies, the lilies …

‘Denham’s dental detergent.’