by Ray Bradbury
Mildred. Clarisse. Life. And his own work, growing aware for the first time of what he was doing. And now, tonight. Burning that woman. And last night, the man’s book, and him into an asylum. It was all such a nightmare that only a nightmare could be used as an escape from it.
He lay there all night, thinking, smelling the smoke on his hands, in the dark.
He awoke with chills and fever in the morning.
“You can’t be sick,” said Mildred.
He looked at his wife. He closed his eyes upon the hotness and the trembling. “Yes.”
“But you were all right, last night.”
“I’m sick now.” He heard the radio shouting in the parlor.
She stood over the bed, curiously. He felt her there, looking at him but he didn’t open his eyes. He felt his body shake as if there was another person in it somewhere pounding away at his ribs, someone pulling at the bars of a prison screaming, with no one to hear. Did Mildred hear?
“Will you bring me some water and aspirin.”
“You’ve got to get up,” she said. “It’s noon. You’ve slept five hours later than usual.”
There she lay with her hair burnt to straw, her eyes with a kind of cataract far behind the pupils unseen but suspect, and the reddened, pouting lips, and the body as thin as a praying mantis from diet, and the flesh like thin milk, and the voice with that metallic ferocity that came from imitating radio voices. He could remember her no other way.
“Will you turn the radio off?”
“That’s my program.”
“Will you turn it off for a sick man?”
“I’ll turn it down,” she said.
She went out of the room and did nothing to the radio. She came back. “Is that better?”
He opened his eyes and wondered at her. “Thanks.”
“That’s my favorite program,” she said.
“What about the aspirin?” he said.
“You’ve never been sick before.” She went away again.
“Well, I’m sick now. I’m not going to work this evening. Call Healy for me.”
“You acted funny last night,” she said, coming back, humming.
“Where’s the aspirin,” he said, looking at the glass of water she handed him.
“Oh,” she said, and went off again. “Did something happen?”
“A fire, is all.”
“I had a nice evening,” she said, in the bathroom.
“What doing?”
“Television.”
“What was on.”
“Programs.”
“What programs?”
“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 odor of kerosene was so strong that he vomited.
She came back, humming. She was surprised. “Why’d you do that?”
He looked with dismay at what he had done. “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.”
“What for?”
“Television.”
“Couldn’t you get it on your own set.”
“Sure, but it’s nice visiting.”
“How’s Helen?”
“All right.”
“Did she get over that infection in her hand?”
“I didn’t notice.”
She went out into the living room. He heard her by the radio humming.
“Mildred,” he called.
She came back, 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 and a woman.”
“Forbidden books.”
The radio was exploding in the parlor.
“Yes,” he said. “Copies of Edgar Allan Poe and William Shakespeare and Plato.”
“Wasn’t he a European?”
“Something like that.”
“Wasn’t he a radical?”
“I don’t know, I never read him.”
“He was a radical.” Mildred fiddled with the telephone. “You don’t expect me to call Mr. Leahy, do you?”
“You must!”
“Don’t shout.”
“I wasn’t shouting!” he cried. He was up in bed, enraged and flushed, trembling. The radio roared in the tight air. “I can’t call him. I can’t tell him I’m sick. You’ve got to do it.”
“Why?”
“Because …”
Because you’re afraid, he thought. A child pretending illness. Afraid to call Leahy, because after only a moment’s discussion the conversation would run like this: “Yes, Mr. Leahy, I feel better already. I’ll be in at six o’clock. I’m fine.”
“You’re not sick,” she said.
Mr. Montag propped himself up in bed and felt, secretly, for the book under his warm pillow. It was still there. “Millie?”
“What?”
“How would it be if, well, maybe, I went away for a little rest. Quit my job awhile.”
Her mouth was open and now she had pivoted to stare at him.
“You are sick, aren’t you?”
“Don’t take it that way!”
“You want to give up everything. You need your head examined. Why your father was a fireman, and his father before him.”
“Mildred.”
“After all these years of working hard, to give it all up because one night, one morning you’re sick, lying to me, all because of some woman.”
“You should have seen her, Millie.”
“She’s nothing to me, she shouldn’t have had books. It was her responsibility, she should’ve thought of that. I hate her. She’s got you going and next you know we’ll be out, no job, no house, nothing.”
“Shut up.”
“I won’t.”
“I’ll shut you up in a moment,” he cried, almost out of bed. “You weren’t there. You didn’t see. There must be something in books, whole worlds we don’t dream about, to make a woman stay in a burning house, there must be something fine there, you don’t stay for nothing.”
“She was simple-minded.”
“She was as rational as you or I, and we burned her!”
“That’s water under the bridge.”
“No, not water, Millie, but fire. You ever see a burnt house? It smolders for days. Well, this fire’ll last me half a century. My God, I was trying to put it out all night, and I was crazy in trying!”
“You should’ve thought of that before becoming a fireman.”
“Thought!” he cried. “Was I given a choice? I was raised to think the best thing in the world is not to read. The best thing is listening to radios, watching television sets, filling your mind with pap and swill. My God, it’s only now I realize what I’ve done. I went into this job because it was just a job.”
The radio was playing a dance tune.
“I’ve been killing the brain of the world for ten years, pouring kerosene on it. My God, Millie, a book is a brain, it isn’t only that woman we killed, or others like her, in these years, but it’s the thoughts I burned with fire reckless abandon.”
He got out of bed.
“It took a man a lifetime to put some of his thoughts on paper, looking after all the beauty and goodness in life, and then we come along in five minutes and toss it in the incinerator!”
“I’m proud to say,” said Mildred, eyes wide. “I never read a book in my life.”
“And look at you!” he said. “Turn you on and I get predigested news, gossip, tidbits from daytime serials. Why even the music you hum is some deodorant commercial!”
“Let me alone,” she said.
“Let you alone is what you don’t need. That’s what’s wrong. You need to be bothered. No one’s bothered any more. Nobody thinks. Let a baby alone, why don’
t you? What would you have in twenty years, if you let a baby alone, a gangling idiot!”
A motor sounded outside the house. Mildred went to the window, “Now you’ve done it,” she wailed. “Look who’s here.”
“I don’t give a damn.” He stood up and he was feeling better, but he didn’t know why. He stalked to the window.
“Who is it?”
“Mr. Leahy!”
The elation drained away. Mr. Montag slumped.
“Go open the door,” he said, at last. “I’ll get back to bed. Tell him I’m sick.”
“Tell him yourself.”
He hurried back, cold and suddenly shaking again, as if lightning had struck just beyond the window. In the white glare, he found the pillow, made sure the terrible book was hidden, climbed in, and had made himself uneasily comfortable, when the door opened and Mr. Leahy strolled in.
“SHUT THE RADIO OFF,” said Leahy, abstractedly.
This time, Mildred obeyed.
Mr. Leahy sat down in a comfortable chair and folded one knee over another, not looking at Mr. Montag.
“Just thought I’d come by and see how the sick man is.”
“How’d you guess!”
“Oh.” Leahy smiled his pink smile and shrugged. “I’m an old hand at this. I’ve seen it all. You were going to call me and tell me you needed a day off.”
“Yes.”
“Take a day off,” said Leahy. “Take two. But never take three. Not, that is, unless, you’re really ill. Remember that.” He took a cigar from his pocket and cut off a little piece to chew. “When will you be well?”
“Tomorrow, the next day, first of the week.”
“We’ve been talking about you,” said Leahy. “Every man goes through this. They only need a little understanding. They need to be told how the wheels run.”
“And how do they?”
“Mr. Montag, you don’t seem to have assimilated the history of your honorable trade. They don’t give it to rookies any more. Only fire chiefs remember it now. I’ll let you in on it.” He chewed a moment.
“Yes,” said Montag. Mildred fidgeted.
“You ask yourself why, how, and when. About the books.”
“Maybe.”
“It started in the early 1900s, I’d say. After the Civil War maybe. Photography invented. Fast print presses. Films. Television. Things began to have mass, Montag, mass.”
“I see.”
“And because they had mass, they had to become simpler. Books now. Once they appealed to various bits of people here and there. They could afford to be different. The world was roomy. Plenty of room for elbows and differentness, right?”
“Right.”
“But then the world got full of mass and elbows. And things for lots of millions of people had to be simple. Films and radio and TV and big big magazines had to be a sort of paste-pudding norm, you might say. Follow me?”
“I think.”
“Picture it. The nineteenth century man with his horses and books and leisure. You might call him the Slow Motion man. Everyone taking a year to sit down, get up, jump a fence. Then, in the Twentieth Century you speed up the camera.”
“A good simile.”
“Splendid. Books get shorter. Condensations appear. Tabloids. Radio programs simplify. The exquisite pantomime of great actors become the pratfall. Everything sublimates itself to the joke, the gag, the snap ending. Everything is sacrificed for pace.”
“Pace.” Mildred smiled.
“Great classics are cut to fit a fifteen minute show, then a two minute Book column, then a two line Dictionary resume. Magazines become picture books! Out of the nursery to the college back to the nursery, in a few short centuries!”
Mildred got up. She was losing the thread of the talk, Montag knew, and when this happened, she began to fiddle with things. She went about the room, cleaning up. Leahy ignored her.
“Faster and faster the film, Mr. Montag, quick! Men over hurdles, dogs over stiles, horses over fences! CLICK? PIC, LOOK, EYE, NOW? FLICK, HERE, THERE? QUICK, WHY, HOW, WHO, EH?, Mr. Montag! The world’s political affairs become one paper column, a sentence, a headline. Then, in mid-air, vanishes. Look at your man now, quick over hurdles, over stile, horse over fence so swift you can’t see the blur. And the mind of man, whirling so fast under the pumping hands of publishers, exploiters, broad-casters that the centrifuge throws off all ideas! He is unable to concentrate.”
Mildred was smoothing the bed now. Montag felt panic as she approached his pillow to straighten it. The book was behind the pillow! And she would pull it out, not knowing, of course, in front of Leahy!
“School is shortened. Short cuts are made, philosophies and languages dropped. English dropped. Spelling dropped. Life is immediate. The job is what counts. Why learn anything except how to work your hands, press a button, pull a switch, fit a bolt?”
“Yes,” quavered Montag.
“Let me fix your pillow,” said Mildred, smiling.
“No,” whispered Montag.
“The button is replaced by the zipper. Does a man have time to think while he dresses, a philosophical time, in the morning.”
“He does not,” said Montag, automatically.
Mildred pulled at the pillow.
“Get away,” said Montag.
“Life becomes one Big Prat Fall, Mr. Montag. No more of the subtleties, everything is bang and boff and wow!”
“Wow,” said Mildred, yanking at the pillow.
“For God’s sake, leave me alone,” said Montag. Leahy stared at him.
Mildred’s hand was thrusting behind him.
“The theatres are empty, Mr. Montag. Something that was getting meaningless is replaced by something evermore massive and meaningless, the television set, and after that The Clam.”
“What’s this?” said Mildred. Montag crushed back against her hand. “What’ve you got hidden here?”
“Go sit down,” he screamed at her. She drew back, her hand empty. “We’re talking.”
“As I was saying,” said Leahy. “Cartoons everywhere. Books become cartoons. The mind drinks in less and less. Impatience. Nervous impatience. Time to kill. No work. Highways full of crowds going somewhere, anywhere, nowhere. Impatience to be somewhere they are not, not where they are. The gasoline refugee, towns becoming almost exclusively motels. And people in vast nomadic moves from city to city, impatient, following the moon tides, living tonight in the room where you slept last night and I slept the night before.”
Mildred went in the other room and shut the door. She turned on the radio.
“Go on,” said Montag.
“Along with the technological rush, there was the minority problem. The bigger a population, the more minorities. It’s hard to find a majority in a big mass. And since the Mass Market was with us there were ten thousand minorities, union minorities, church minorities, racial minorities, dog lovers, cat lovers.”
“Professional Irishmen, Texans, Brooklynites,” suggested Mr. Montag, sweating. He leaned back hard on the hidden book.
“Right. Swedes, Britons, French, people from Oregon, Illinois, Mexico. You couldn’t have doctors as villains, or lawyers, or merchants or chiefs. The UN prevented your doing films on past wars. The Dog Protectors had to be pleased and bull fights were banished. All the minorities with their own little navels that had to be kept clean. Intelligent men gave up in disgust.
“Pictures became puddings. Magazines were tapioca. The book buyer, the ticket buyer bored by dishwater, his brain spinning, quit buying, the trades died a slow death. There you have it. Don’t blame the government. Technology coupled with mass exploitation, coupled with censorship from minorities. All you’ve got today to read is comic books, confessions, and trade journals.”
“I know,” said Montag.
“The psychologists killed off Edgar Allan Poe, said his stories were bad for the mind. They killed off fairy tales, too. Fantasy. Not facing facts, they said.”
“But why the firemen,” said Mon
tag at last. “Why all the fear and the prejudice and the burning and killing now?”
“Ah,” said Leahy, leaning forward to finish. “Books went out of fashion. Minority groups in order to insure their security made sure the censorship was fastened tight. Psychiatrists helped. They needn’t have bothered. By that time people were uneducated. They stayed away from books, and, in ignorance, hated and feared them. You always fear something you don’t know. Men have been burned at the stake for centuries, for knowing too much.”
“Yes,” said Montag. “The worst thing you can call a man today is a ‘professor’ or ‘intellectual.’ It’s a swear word.”
“Intelligence is suspect, for good reason. The little man fears someone’ll put something over on him as does the big man. So the best thing is to keep everybody as dumb as everybody else. The little man wants you and me to be like him. Rewrite the slogan. Not everyone born free and equal, but everyone made equal. Crush the IQs down to the sub-norm. A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shout out of the weapon. Unbreach men’s minds. Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man. And so, the Fire Men came into being. You, Mr. Montag, and me.”
Leahy stood up. “I’ve got to go.”
“Thanks for talking to me.”
“You needed to be put straight. Now that you understand it, you’ll see our civilization, because it’s so big, has to be placid. We can’t have minorities stirred and upset. People must be content, Mr. Montag. Books upset them. Colored people who don’t like Little Black Sambo are unhappy. So we burn Little Black Sambo. White people who read Uncle Tom’s Cabin are unhappy. We burn that, too. Keep everyone calm and happy. That’s the trick.”