Fahrenheit 451 PAGE 11 by Isac Asimov

 

Fahrenheit 451 PAGE 11 by Isac Asimov

Fahrenheit 451

 

PAGE 11

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The train radio vomited upon Montag, in retaliation, a great ton-load of
music made of tin, copper, silver, chromium, and brass. The people were pounded into
submission; they did not run, there was no place to run; the great air-train fell down its shaft in
the earth.

"Lilies of the field." "Denham's."

"Lilies, I said!"
The people stared.
"Call the guard."
"The man's off--"
"Knoll View!"
The train hissed to its stop.
"Knoll View! "Aery.
"Denham's." A whisper.
Montag's mouth barely moved. "Lilies..."

The train door whistled open. Montag stood. The door gasped, started shut. Only then .did he
leap past the other passengers, screaming in his mind, plunge through the slicing door only in
time. He ran on the white tiles up through the tunnels, ignoring the escalators, because he wanted
to feel his feet-move, arms swing, lungs clench, unclench, feel his throat go raw with air. A voice
drifted after him, "Denham's Denham's Denham's," the train hissed like a snake. The train
vanished in its hole.

"Who is it?"



"Montag out here."

"What do you want?"

"Let me in."

"I haven't done anything 1"

"I'm alone, dammit ! "

"You swear it?"

"I swear!"

The front door opened slowly. Faber peered out, looking very old in the light and very fragile

and very much afraid. The old man looked as if he had not been out of the house in years. He and

the white plaster walls inside were much the same. There was white in the flesh of his mouth and

his cheeks and his hair was white and his eyes had faded, with white in the vague blueness there.

Then his eyes touched on the book under Montag's arm and he did not look so old any more and

not quite as fragile. Slowly his fear went.

"I'm sorry. One has to be careful."

He looked at the book under Montag's arm and could not stop. "So it's true."

Montag stepped inside. The door shut.

"Sit down." Faber backed up, as if he feared the book might vanish if he took his eyes from it.

Behind him, the door to a bedroom stood open, and in that room a litter of machinery and steel

tools was strewn upon a desk-top. Montag had only a glimpse, before Faber, seeing Montag's

attention diverted, turned quickly and shut the bedroom door and stood holding the knob with a

trembling hand. His gaze returned unsteadily to Montag, who was now seated with the book in

his lap. "The book-where did you-?"

"I stole it."

Faber, for the first time, raised his eyes and looked directly into Montag's face. "You're brave."

"No," said Montag. "My wife's dying. A friend of mine's already dead. Someone who may have

been a friend was burnt less than twenty-four hours ago. You're the only one I knew might help

me. To see. To see. ."

Faber's hands itched on his knees. "May I?"

"Sorry." Montag gave him the book.

"It's been a long time. I'm not a religious man. But it's been a long time." Faber turned the pages,

stopping here and there to read. "It's as good as I remember. Lord, how they've changed it- in our

"parlours' these days. Christ is one of the "family' now. I often wonder it God recognizes His own

son the way we've dressed him up, or is it dressed him down? He's a regular peppermint stick

now, all sugar-crystal and saccharine when he isn't making veiled references to certain

commercial products that every worshipper absolutely needs." Faber sniffed the book. "Do you

know that books smell like nutmeg or some spice from a foreign land? I loved to smell them

when I was a boy. Lord, there were a lot of lovely books once, before we let them go." Faber

turned the pages. "Mr. Montag, you are looking at a coward. I saw the way things were going, a

long time back. I said nothing. I'm one of the innocents who could have spoken up and out when

no one would listen to the "guilty, 1 but I did not speak and thus became guilty myself. And when

finally they set the structure to burn the books, using the, firemen, I grunted a few times and

subsided, for there were no others grunting or yelling with me, by then. Now, it's too late." Faber

closed the Bible. "Well�suppose you tell me why you came here?"

"Nobody listens any more. I can't talk to the walls because they're yelling at me. I can't talk to

my wife; she listens to the walls. I just want someone to hear what I have to say. And maybe if I

talk long enough, it'll make sense. And I want you to teach me to understand what I read."



Faber examined Montag's thin, blue-jowled face. "How did you get shaken up? What knocked

the torch out of your hands?"

"I don't know. We have everything we need to be happy, but we aren't happy. Something's

missing. I looked around. The only thing I positively knew was gone was the books I'd burned in

ten or twelve years. So I thought books might help."

"You're a hopeless romantic," said Faber. "It would be funny if it were not serious. It's not books

you need, it's some of the things that once were in books. The same things could be in the

"parlour families' today. The same infinite detail and awareness could be projected through the

radios and televisors, but are not. No, no, it's not books at all you're looking for! Take it where

you can find it, in old phonograph records, old motion pictures, and in old friends; look for it in

nature and look for it in yourself. Books were only one type of receptacle where we stored a lot

of things we were afraid we might forget. There is nothing magical in them at all. The magic is

only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment

for us. Of course you couldn't know this, of course you still can't understand what I mean when I

say all this. You are intuitively right, that's what counts. Three things are missing.

"Number one: Do you know why books such as this are so important? Because they have quality.

And what does the word quality mean? To me it means texture. This book has pores. It has

features. This book can go under the microscope. You'd find life under the glass, streaming past

in infinite profusion. The more pores, the more truthfully recorded details of life per square inch

you can get on a sheet of paper, the more Titerary' you are. That's my definition, anyway. Telling

detail. Fresh detail. The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over

her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies.

"So now do you see why books are hated and feared? They show the pores in the face of life.

The comfortable people want only wax moon faces, poreless, hairless, expressionless. We are

living in a time when flowers are trying to live on flowers, instead of growing on good rain and

black loam. Even fireworks, for all their prettiness, come from the chemistry of the earth. Yet

somehow we think we can grow, feeding on flowers and fireworks, without completing the cycle

back to reality. Do you know the legend of Hercules and Antaeus, the giant wrestler, whose

strength was incredible so long as he stood firmly on the earth. But when he was held, rootless,

in mid-air, by Hercules, he perished easily. If there isn't something in that legend for us today, in

this city, in our time, then I am completely insane. Well, there we have the first thing I said we

needed. Quality, texture of information. "

"And the second?"

"Leisure."

"Oh, but we've plenty of off-hours."

"Off-hours, yes. But time to think? If you're not driving a hundred miles an hour, at a clip where

you can't think of anything else but the danger, then you're playing some game or sitting in some

room where you can't argue with the fourwall televisor. Why? The televisor is 'real.' It is

immediate, it has dimension. It tells you what to think and blasts it in. It must be, right. It seems

so right. It rushes you on so quickly to its own conclusions your mind hasn't time to protest,

'What nonsense!'"

"Only the 'family' is 'people.'"

"I beg your pardon?"

"My wife says books aren't 'real.'"

"Thank God for that. You can shut them, say, 'Hold on a moment.' You play God to it. But who

has ever torn himself from the claw that encloses you when you drop a seed in a TV parlour? It



grows you any shape it wishes ! It is an environment as real as the world. It becomes and is the

truth. Books can be beaten down with reason. But with all my knowledge and scepticism, I have

never been able to argue with a one-hundred-piece symphony orchestra, full colour, three

dimensions, and I being in and part of those incredible parlours. As you see, my parlour is

nothing but four plaster walls. And here " He held out two small rubber plugs. "For my ears

when I ride the subway-jets."

"Denham's Dentifrice; they toil not, neither do they spin," said Montag, eyes shut. "Where do we

go from here? Would books help us?"

"Only if the third necessary thing could be given us. Number one, as I said, quality of

information. Number two: leisure to digest it. And number three: the right to carry out actions

based on what we learn from the inter-action of the first two. And I hardly think a very old man

and a fireman turned sour could do much this late in the game..."

"I can get books."

"You're running a risk."

"That's the good part of dying; when you've nothing to lose, you run any risk you want."

"There, you've said an interesting thing," laughed Faber, "without having read it!"

"Are things like that in books. But it came off the top of my mind!"

"All the better. You didn't fancy it up for me or anyone, even yourself."

Montag leaned forward. "This afternoon I thought that if it turned out that books were worth

while, we might get a press and print some extra copies--"

" We?"

"You and I"

"Oh, no ! " Faber sat up.

"But let me tell you my plan�"

"If you insist on telling me, I must ask you to leave."

"But aren't you interested?"

"Not if you start talking the sort of talk that might get me burnt for my trouble. The only way I

could possibly listen to you would be if somehow the fireman structure itself could be burnt.

Now if you suggest that we print extra books and arrange to have them hidden in firemen's

houses all over the country, so that seeds of suspicion would be sown among these arsonists,

bravo, I'd say!"

"Plant the books, turn in an alarm, and see the firemen's houses bum, is that what you mean?"

Faber raised his brows and looked at Montag as if he were seeing a new man. "I was joking."

"If you thought it would be a plan worth trying, I'd have to take your word it would help."

"You can't guarantee things like that! After all, when we had all the books we needed, we still

insisted on finding the highest cliff to jump off. But we do need a breather. We do need

knowledge. And perhaps in a thousand years we might pick smaller cliffs to jump off. The books

are to remind us what asses and fools we are. They're Caesar's praetorian guard, whispering as

the parade roars down the avenue, "Remember, Caesar, thou art mortal.' Most of us can't rush

around, talking to everyone, know all the cities of the world, we haven't time, money or that

many friends. The things you're looking for, Montag, are in the world, but the only way the

average chap will ever see ninety-nine per cent of them is in a book. Don't ask for guarantees.

And don't look to be saved in any one thing, person, machine, or library. Do your own bit of

saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were headed for shore."

Faber got up and began to pace the room.

"Well?" asked Montag.



"You're absolutely serious?"

"Absolutely."

"It's an insidious plan, if I do say so myself."