[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

"Montag, old men who stay at home, afraid, tending their
peanut-brittle bones, have no right to criticize. Yet you
almost killed things at the start. Watch it! I'm with you,
remember that. I understand how it happened. I must admit
that your blind raging invigorated me. God, how young I
felt! But now-I want you to feel old, I want a little of my
cowardice to be distilled in you tonight. The next few
hours, when you see Captain Beatty, tiptoe round him, let me
hear him for you, let me feel the situation out. Survival is
our ticket. Forget the poor, silly women ...."
"I made them unhappier than they have been in years, I
think," said Montag. "It shocked me to see Mrs. Phelps cry.
Maybe they're right, maybe it's best not to face things, to
run, have fun. I don't know. I feel guilty--"
"No, you mustn't! If there were no war, if there was peace
in the world, I'd say fine, have fun! But, Montag, you
mustn't go back to being just a fireman. All isn't well with
the world."
Montag perspired.
"Montag, you listening?"
"My feet," said Montag. "I can't move them. I feel so damn
silly. My feet won't move!"
"Listen. Easy now," said the old man gently. "I know, I
know. You're afraid of making mistakes. Don't be. Mistakes
can be profited by. Man, when I was young I shoved my
ignorance in people's faces. They beat me with sticks. By
the time I was forty my blunt instrument had been honed to a
fine cutting point for me. If you hide your ignorance, no
one will hit you and you'll never learn. Now, pick up your
feet, into the firehouse with you! We're twins, we're not
alone any more, we're not separated out in different
parlours, with no contact between. If you need help when
Beatty pries at you, I'll be sitting right here in your
eardrum making notes!"
Montag felt his right foot, then his left foot, move.
"Old man," he said, "stay with me."
The Mechanical Hound was gone. Its kennel was empty and the
firehouse stood all about in plaster silence and the orange
Salamander slept with its kerosene in its belly and the
firethrowers crossed upon its flanks and Montag came in
through the silence and touched the brass pole and slid up
in the dark air, looking back at the deserted kennel, his
heart beating, pausing, beating. Faber was a grey moth
asleep in his ear, for the moment.
Beatty stood near the drop-hole waiting, but with his back
turned as if he were not waiting.
"Well," he said to the men playing cards, "here comes a very
strange beast which in all tongues is called a fool."
He put his hand to one side, palm up, for a gift. Montag put
the book in it. Without even glancing at the title, Beatty
tossed the book into the trash-basket and lit a cigarette.
"`Who are a little wise, the best fools be.' Welcome back,
Montag. I hope you'll be staying, with us, now that your
fever is done and your sickness over. Sit in for a hand of
poker?"
They sat and the cards were dealt. In Beatty's sight, Montag
felt the guilt of his hands. His fingers were like ferrets
that had done some evil and now never rested, always stirred
and picked and hid in pockets, moving from under Beatty's
alcohol-flame stare. If Beatty so much as breathed on them,
Montag felt that his hands might wither, turn over on their
sides, and never be shocked to life again; they would be
buried the rest of his life in his coat-sleeves, forgotten.
For these were the hands that had acted on their own, no
part of him, here was where the conscience first manifested
itself to snatch books, dart off with job and Ruth and
Willie Shakespeare, and now, in the firehouse, these hands
seemed gloved with blood.
Twice in half an hour, Montag had to rise from the game and
go to the latrine to wash his hands. When he came back he
hid his hands under the table.
Beatty laughed. "Let's have your hands in sight, Montag. Not
that we don't trust you, understand, but--"
They all laughed.
"Well," said Beatty, "the crisis is past and all is well,
the sheep returns to the fold. We're all sheep who have
strayed at times. Truth is truth, to the end of reckoning,
we've cried. They are never alone that are accompanied with
noble thoughts, we've shouted to ourselves. `Sweet food of
sweetly uttered knowledge,' Sir Philip Sidney said. But on
the other hand: `Words are like leaves and where they most
abound, Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found.'
Alexander Pope. What do you think of that?"
"I don't know."
"Careful," whispered Faber, living in another world, far
away.
"Or this? 'A little learning is a dangerous thing. Drink
deep, or taste not the Pierian spring; There shallow
draughts intoxicate the brain, and drinking largely sobers
us again.' Pope. Same Essay. Where does that put you?"
Montag bit his lip.
"I'll tell you," said Beatty, smiling at his cards. "That
made you for a little while a drunkard. Read a few lines and
off you go over the cliff. Bang, you're ready to blow up the
world, chop off heads, knock down women and children,
destroy authority. I know, I've been through it all."
"I'm all right," said Montag, nervously.
"Stop blushing. I'm not needling, really I'm not. Do you
know, I had a dream an hour ago. I lay down for a cat-nap
and in this dream you and I, Montag, got into a furious
debate on books. You towered with rage, yelled quotes at me.
I calmly parried every thrust. Power, I said, And you,
quoting Dr. Johnson, said `Knowledge is more than equivalent
to force!' And I said, `Well, Dr. Johnson also said, dear
boy, that "He is no wise man that will quit a certainty for
an uncertainty.' Stick with the fireman, Montag. All else is
dreary chaos!"
"Don't listen," whispered Faber. "He's trying to confuse.
He's slippery. Watch out!"
Beatty chuckled. "And you said, quoting, `Truth will come to
light, murder will not be hid long!' And I cried in good
humour, 'Oh God, he speaks only of his horse!' And `The
Devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.' And you yelled,
'This age thinks better of a gilded fool, than of a
threadbare saint in wisdom's school!' And I whispered
gently, 'The dignity of truth is lost with much protesting.'
And you screamed, 'Carcasses bleed at the sight of the
murderer!' And I said, patting your hand, 'What, do I give
you trench mouth?' And you shrieked, 'Knowledge is power!'
and 'A dwarf on a giant's shoulders of the furthest of the
two!' and I summed my side up with rare serenity in, 'The
folly of mistaking a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of
verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself as an
oracle, is inborn in us, Mr. Valery once said.'"
Montag's head whirled sickeningly. He felt beaten
unmercifully on brow, eyes, nose, lips, chin, on shoulders,
on upflailing arms. He wanted to yell, "No! shut up, you're
confusing things, stop it!" Beatty's graceful fingers thrust
out to seize his wrist.
"God, what a pulse! I've got you going, have I, Montag.
Jesus God, your pulse sounds like the day after the war.
Everything but sirens and bells! Shall I talk some more? I [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]