Bradbury Ray Farenheit 451

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"You can't be sick," said Mildred.
He closed his eyes over the hotness. "Yes."
"But you were all right last night."
"No, I wasn't all right " He heard the "relatives" shouting in the parlour.
Mildred stood over his bed, curiously. He felt her there, he saw her without opening
his eyes, her hair burnt by chemicals to a brittle straw, her eyes with a kind of
cataract unseen but suspect far behind the pupils, the reddened pouting lips, the
body as thin as a praying mantis from dieting, and her flesh like white bacon. He
could remember her no other way.
"Will you bring me aspirin and water?"
"You've got to get up," she said. "It's noon. You've slept five hours later than usual."
"Will you turn the parlour off?" he asked.
"That's my family."
"Will you turn it off for a sick man?"
"I'll turn it down."
She went out of the room and did nothing to the parlour and came back. "Is that
better?"
"Thanks."
"That's my favourite programme," she said.
"What about the aspirin?"
"You've never been sick before." She went away again.
"Well, I'm sick now. I'm not going to work tonight. Call Beatty for me."
"You acted funny last night." She returned, humming.
"Where's the aspirin?" He glanced at the water-glass she handed him.
"Oh." She walked to the bathroom again. "Did something happen?"
"A fire, is all."
"I had a nice evening," she said, in the bathroom.
"What doing?"
"The parlour."
"What was on?"
"Programmes."
"What programmes?"
"Some of the best ever."
"Who?".
"Oh, you know, the bunch."
"Yes, the bunch, the bunch, the bunch." He pressed at the pain in his eyes and
suddenly the odour of kerosene made him vomit.
Mildred came in, humming. She was surprised. "Why'd you do that?"
He looked with dismay at the floor. "We burned an old woman with her books."
"It's a good thing the rug's washable." She fetched a mop and worked on it. "I went to
Helen's last night."
"Couldn't you get the shows in your own parlour?"
"Sure, but it's nice visiting."
She went out into the parlour. He heard her singing.
"Mildred?" he called.
She returned, singing, snapping her fingers softly.
"Aren't you going to ask me about last night?" he said.
"What about it?"
"We burned a thousand books. We burned a woman."
"Well?"
The parlour was exploding with sound.
"We burned copies of Dante and Swift and Marcus Aurelius."
"Wasn't he a European?"
"Something like that."
"Wasn't he a radical?"
"I never read him."
"He was a radical." Mildred fiddled with the telephone. "You don't expect me to call
Captain Beatty, do you?"
"You must! "
"Don't shout!"
"I wasn't shouting." He was up in bed, suddenly, enraged and flushed, shaking. The
parlour roared in the hot air. "I can't call him. I can't tell him I'm sick."
"Why?"
Because you're afraid, he thought. A child feigning illness, afraid to call because after
a moment's discussion, the conversation would run so: "Yes, Captain, I feel better
already. I'll be in at ten o'clock tonight."
"You're not sick," said Mildred.
Montag fell back in bed. He reached under his pillow. The hidden book was still
there.
"Mildred, how would it be if, well, maybe, I quit my job awhile?"
"You want to give up everything? After all these years of working, because, one
night, some woman and her books--"
"You should have seen her, Millie! "
"She's nothing to me; she shouldn't have had books. It was her responsibility, she
should have thought of that. I hate her. She's got you going and next thing you know
we'll be out, no house, no job, nothing."
"You weren't there, you didn't see," he said. "There must be something in books,
things we can't imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be
something there. You don't stay for nothing."
"She was simple-minded."
"She was as rational as you and I, more so perhaps, and we burned her."
"That's water under the bridge."
"No, not water; fire. You ever seen a burned house? It smoulders for days. Well, this
fire'll last me the rest of my life. God! I've been trying to put it out, in my mind, all
night. I'm crazy with trying."
"You should have thought of that before becoming a fireman."
"Thought! " he said. "Was I given a choice? My grandfather and father were firemen.
In my sleep, I ran after them."
The parlour was playing a dance tune.
"This is the day you go on the early shift," said Mildred. "You should have gone two
hours ago. I just noticed."
"It's not just the woman that died," said Montag. "Last night I thought about all the
kerosene I've used in the past ten years. And I thought about books. And for the first
time I realized that a man was behind each one of the books. A man had to think
them up. A man had to take a long time to put them down on paper. And I'd never
even thought that thought before." He got out of bed.
"It took some man a lifetime maybe to put some of his thoughts down, looking around
at the world and life, and then I came along in two minutes and boom! it's all over."
"Let me alone," said Mildred. "I didn't do anything."
"Let you alone! That's all very well, but how can I leave myself alone? We need not to
be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you
were really bothered? About something important, about something real?"
And then he shut up, for he remembered last week and the two white stones staring
up at the ceiling and the pump-snake with the probing eye and the two soap-faced
men with the cigarettes moving in their mouths when they talked. But that was
another Mildred, that was a Mildred so deep inside this one, and so bothered, really
bothered, that the two women had never met. He turned away.
Mildred said, "Well, now you've done it. Out front of the house. Look who's here.".
"I don't care."
"There's a Phoenix car just driven up and a man in a black shirt with an orange snake [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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