A Pleasure to Burn

by Ray Bradbury

Montag shut his eyes. “I’ll be in later, maybe.”

  “See that you do.”

  “I’ll never come in again!” yelled Montag, but only in his mind.

  “Get well.”

  Leahy, trailing smoke, went out.

  MONTAG WATCHED THROUGH THE FRONT window as Leahy drove away in his gleaming beetle which was the color of the last fire they had set.

  Mildred had turned on the afternoon television show and was staring into the shadow screen.

  Montag cleared his throat, but she didn’t look up.

  “It’s only a step,” he said, “from not working today, to not working tomorrow, to not working ever again.”

  “You’re going to work tonight, though?”

  “I’m doing more than that,” he said. “I’m going to start to kill people and rave, and buy books!”

  “A one man revolution,” said Mildred, lightly, turning to look at him. “They’d put you in jail, wouldn’t they?”

  “That’s not a bad idea. The best people are there.” He put his clothes on, furiously, walking about the bedroom. “But I’d kill a few people before I did get locked up. There’s a real bastard, that Leahy. Did you hear him! Knows all the answers, but does nothing about it!”

  “I won’t have anything to do with all this junk,” she said.

  “No?” he said. “This is your house as well as mine, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I have something I want you to see, something I put away and never looked at again during the past year, not even knowing why I put them away and hid them and kept them and never told you.”

  He dragged a chair into the hall, climbed up on it, and opened an air-vent. Reaching up, he began throwing books, big ones, little ones, red, yellow, green books, twenty, thirty, fifty books, one by one, swiftly, into the parlor at her feet. “There!”

  “Leonard Montag! You didn’t!”

  “So you’re not in this with me? You’re in it up to your neck!”

  She backed away as if she were surrounded by a pack of terrible rats. Her face was paled out and her eyes were fastened wide and she was breathing as if someone had struck her in the stomach. “They’ll burn our house. They’ll kill us.”

  “Let them try.”

  She hesitated, then, moaning, she seized a book and ran toward the fireplace.

  He caught her. “No, Millie! No! Never touch my books. Never. Or, by God, if you do, touch just one of them meaning to burn it, believe me, Millie, I’ll kill you.”

  “Leonard Montag! You wouldn’t!”

  HE SHOOK HER. “Listen,” he pleaded down into her face. He held her shoulders firmly, while her face bobbed helplessly, and tears sprang from her eyes.

  “You must help me,” he said, slowly, trying to find his way into her thinking. “You’re in this now, whether you like it or not. I’ve never asked for anything in my life of you, but I ask it now, I plead it. We just start somewhere. We’re going to read books. It’s a thing we haven’t done and must do. We’ve got to know what these books are so we can tell others, and so that, eventually, they can tell everyone. Sit down now, Millie, there, right there. I’ll help you, we’ll help each other. Between us, we’ll do something to destroy men like Leahy and Stoneman and Black and myself, and this world we live in, and put it all back together a different way. Do you hear me?”

  “Yes.” Her body sagged.

  The doorbell rang.

  They jerked about to stare at the door and the books toppled everywhere, everywhere in heaps.

  “Leahy!”

  “It can’t be him!”

  “He’s come back!” sobbed Mildred.

  The bell rang again.

  “Let him stand out there. We won’t answer.” Montag reached blindly for a book on the floor, any book, any beginning, any start, any beauty at all would do. He put the book into Mildred’s shaking hands.

  The bell rang a third time, insistently.

  “Read.” He quivered a hand to a page. “Out loud.”

  Mildred’s eyes were on the door and the bell rang angrily, loudly, again and again. “He’ll come in,” she said, “Oh, God, and set fire to everything, and us.”

  But at last she found the line, with Montag standing over her, swaying, any line in the book, and after trying it four times, she began to fumble out the words of a poem printed there on the white, unburned paper:

  “And evening vanish and no more

  The low pale light across that land—”

  The bell rang.

  “Nor now the long light on the sea:

  And here face downward in the sun …”

  Another ring.

  Montag whispered. “He’ll go away in a minute.

  Mildred’s lips trembled:

  “To feel how swift, how secretly

  The shadow of the night comes on …”

  Near the ceiling, smoke from Leahy’s cigar still lingered.

  The Sieve and the Sand

  THEY READ THE LONG AFTERNOON THROUGH, WHILE THE fire flickered and blew on the hearth and the October rain fell from the sky upon the strangely quiet house. Now and again, Mr. Montag would silently pace the room, or bring in a bottle of cold beer and drink it easily or say, “Will you read that part over again? Isn’t that an idea now?”

  Mildred’s voice, as colorless as a beer bottle which contains a rare and beautiful wine but does not know it, went on enclosing the words in plain glass, pouring forth the beauties with a loose mouth, while her drab eyes moved over the words and over the words and the rain rained and the hour grew late.

  They read a man named Shakespeare and a man named Poe and part of a book by a man named Matthew and one named Mark. On occasion, Mildred glanced fearfully at the window.

  “Go on,” said Mr. Montag.

  “Someone might be watching. That might’ve been Mr. Leahy at our door a while back.”

  “Whoever it was went away. Read that last section again. I want to understand that.”

  She read from the works of Jefferson and Lincoln.

  When it was five o’clock her hands dropped open. “I’m tired. Can I stop now?” Her voice was hoarse.

  “How thoughtless of me.” He took the book from her. “But isn’t it beautiful, Millie? The words, and the thoughts, aren’t they exciting!”

  “I don’t understand any of it.”

  “But surely …”

  “Just words.”

  “But you remember some of it.”

  “Nothing.”

  “You’ll learn. It’s difficult at first.”

  I don’t like books,” she said. “I don’t understand books. They’re over my head. They’re for professors and radicals and I don’t want to read any more. Please, promise you won’t make me.”

  “Mildred!”

  “I’m afraid,” she said, putting her face into her shaking hands. “I’m so terribly frightened by these ideas, by Mr. Leahy, and having these books in the house. They’ll burn our books and kill us. Now, I’m sick.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, at last, sighing. “I’ve put you on trial, haven’t I? I’m way out front, trying to drag you, when I should be walking beside you, barely touching. I expect too much. It’ll take months to put you in the frame of mind where you can receive the ideas in these books. It’s not fair of me. All right, you won’t have to read aloud again.”

  “Thanks.”

  “But you must listen. I’ll explain.”

  “I’ll never learn. I just know I won’t.”

  “You must if you want to be free.”

  “I’m free already. I couldn’t be freer.”

  “You can’t be free if you’re not aware.”

  “Why do you want to ruin us with all this?” she asked.

  “Listen,” he said.

  SHE LISTENED.

  Jet-bombers were crossing the sky over their house.

  Those quick gasps in the heavens, as if a running giant had drawn his breath. Those sharp, almost quiet whistles, here and g
one in so much less than an instant that one almost believed one had heard nothing. And seeing nothing in the sky, if you did look, was worse than seeing something. There was a feeling as if a great invisible fan was whirring blade after hostile blade across the stars, with giant murmurs and no motion, perhaps only a faint trembling of starlight. All night, every night of their lives, they had heard those jet sounds and seen nothing, until, like the tick of a clock or a timebomb, it had come to be unnoticed, for it was the sound of today and the sound of today dying, the Cheyne-Stokes respiration of civilization.

  “I want to know why and how we are where we are,” said Montag. “How did those bombers get in the sky every instant? Why have there been three semi-atomic wars since 1960? Where did we take the wrong turn? What can we do about it? Only the books know this. Maybe the books can’t solve my problem, but they can bring me out in the light. And they might stop us from going on with the same insane mistakes—”

  “You can’t stop wars. There’ve always been wars.”

  “No, I can’t. War’s so much a part of us now that in the last three days, though we’re on the very rim of war, people hardly mention it. Ignoring it, at least, isn’t the answer. But now, about us. We must have a schedule of reading. An hour in the morning. An hour or so in the afternoon. Two hours in the evening—”

  “You’re not going to forbid me my radio, are you?” Her voice rose.

  “Well, to start …”

  She was up in a fury, raging at him. “I’ll sit and listen if you want me to for a while every day,” she cried. “But I’ve got to have my radio programs, too, and every night on the TV—you can’t take that away from me!”

  “But don’t you see? That’s the very thing I’d like to counteract—”

  The telephone rang. They both started. Mildred snatched it up and was almost immediately laughing. “Hello, Ann. Yes, oh, yes! Tonight, you come here. Yes, the White Clown’s on tonight and the Terror will be fun.”

  Mr. Montag shuddered, sick. He left the room. He walked through the house, thinking.

  Leahy, the firehouse, these dangerous books.

  “I’ll shoot him tonight,” he said, aloud. “I’ll kill Leahy. That’ll be one censor out of the way. No.” He laughed coldly. “I’d have to shoot most of the people in the world. How does one start a revolution? I’m alone. My wife, as the saying goes, does not understand me. What can a single lonely man do?”

  MILDRED WAS CHATTERING. The radio was thundering, turned on again.

  And then Mr. Montag remembered; about a month ago, walking through the park alone, he had come upon a man in a black suit, unaware. The man had been reading something. Montag hadn’t seen a book; he had only seen the man move hastily, face flushed. The man had jumped up as if to run, and Montag had said, simply, “Sit down.”

  “I didn’t do anything.”

  “No one said you did.”

  They had sat in the park all afternoon. Montag had drawn the man out. He was a retired professor of English literature, who had lost his job forty years before when the last college of fine arts had been closed. His name was William Faber, and shyly, fearfully, he admitted he had been reading a little book of American poems, forbidden poems which he now produced from his coat pocket.

  “Just to know I’m alive,” said Mr. Faber. “Just to know where I am and what things are. To sense things. Most of my friends sense nothing. Most of them can’t talk. They stutter and halt and hunt words. And what they talk is sales and profits and what they saw on television the hour before.”

  What a nice afternoon that had been. Professor Faber had read some of the poems to Montag, none of which Montag understood, but the sounds were good, and slowly the meaning crept in. When it was all over, Montag said, “I’m a fireman.”

  Faber had looked as if he might die on the spot.

  “Don’t be afraid. I won’t turn you in,” said Montag, hastily. “I stopped being mean about it years ago. You know, the way you talk reminds me of a girl I knew once, name of Clarisse. She was killed a few months ago by a car. But she had me thinking, too. We met each other because we took long walks. No one walks anymore. I haven’t seen a pedestrian in ten years on our street. Are you ever stopped by police simply because you’re a pedestrian?”

  He and Faber had smiled, exchanged addresses orally, and parted. He had never seen Faber again. It wouldn’t be safe to know a former English literature professor. But now … ?

  He dialed the call.

  “Hello, Professor Faber?”

  “Who is this?”

  “This is Montag. You remember? The park? A month ago?”

  “Yes, Mr. Montag. Can I help you?”

  “Mr. Faber.” He hesitated. “How many copies of the Bible are left in the world?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The voice grew cold.

  “I want to know if there are any copies at all.”

  “I can’t discuss such things, Montag.”

  “This line is closed. There’s no one listening.”

  “Is this some sort of trap? I can’t talk to just anyone on the phone.”

  “Tell me, are there any copies?”

  “None!” And Faber hung up

  None.

  Montag fell back in his chair. None! None in all the world, none left, none anywhere, all, all of them destroyed, torn apart, burned. The Bible at last dead for all time to the world.

  He got up shakily and walked across the room and bent down among the books. He took hold of one and lifted it.

  “The old and new testaments, Millie! One last copy and we have it here!”

  “Fine,” she said vaguely.

  “Do you realize what it means, the importance of this copy here in our house? If anything should happen to this book, it would be lost forever.”

  “And you have to hand it back to Mr. Leahy tonight to be burned, don’t you?” said Mildred. She was not being cruel. She was merely relieved that the one book, at least, was going out of her life.

  “Yes.”

  He could see Leahy turning the book over with slow appreciation. “Sit down, Montag. I want you to watch this. Delicately, like a head of lettuce, see?” Ripping one page after another from the binding. Lighting the first page with a match. And when it had curled down into black wings, lighting the second page from the first and the third from the second, and so on, chain-smoking the entire volume chapter by printed chapter. When it was finished, with Montag seated there sweating, the floor would resemble a swarm of black moths that had fluttered and died in one small storm. And Leahy smiling, washing his hands.

  “My God, Millie, we’ve got to do something! We’ve got to copy this. There must be a duplicate made. This can’t be lost!”

  “You haven’t time.”

  “No, not by hand. But if we could photograph it.”

  “No one would do it for you.”

  He stopped. She was right. There was no one to trust, except, perhaps, Professor Faber. Montag started for the door.

  “You’ll be here for the TV party, won’t you?” Mildred called after him. “It wouldn’t be fun without you.”

  “You’d never miss me.” But she was looking at the late afternoon TV show and didn’t hear. He went out and slammed the door, the book in his hand.

  Once as a child, he had sat upon the yellow dunes by the sea in the middle of the blue and hot summer day, trying to fill a sieve with sand. The faster he poured, the faster it sifted through with a hot whispering. He tried all day because some cruel cousin had said, “Fill this sieve with sand and you’ll get a dime!”

  Seated there in the middle of July, he had cried. His hands were tired, the sand was boiling, the sieve was empty.

  And now, as the jet-underground car roared him through the lower cellars of town, rocking him, jolting him, he remembered that frustrating sieve and he held this precious copy of the old and new testaments fiercely in his hands, trying to pour the words into his mind. But the words fell through,
and he thought, in a few hours I must hand this book to Leahy, but I must remember each word, no phrase must escape me, each line can be memorized. I must remember, I must.

  “But I do not remember.” He shut the book and pressed it with his fists and tried to force his mind.

  “Try Denham’s Dentifrice tonight!” screamed the radio in the bright, shuddering wall of the jet-train. Trumpets blared.

  “Shut up,” thought Mr. Montag in panic. “Behold the lilies of the field—”

  “Denham’s Dentifrice!”

  “They toil not—”

  “Denham’s Dentifrice!”

  “Behold the lilies of the field, shut up, let me remember!”

  “Denham’s Dentifrice!”

  He tore the book open furiously and flicked the pages about as if blind, tearing at the lines with raw eyes, staring until his eyelashes were wet and quivering.

  “Denham’s, Denham’s, Denham’s! D-E-N—”

  “They toil not, neither do they …”

  A whisper, a faint sly whisper of yellow sand through empty, empty sieve.

  “Denham’s does it!”

  “Behold the lilies—”

  “No dandier dental detergent!”

  “Shut up!” It was a shriek so loud, so vicious that the loudspeaker seemed stunned. Mr. Montag found himself on his feet, the shocked inhabitants of the loud car looking at him, recoiling from a man with an insane, gorged face, a gibbering wet mouth, a flapping book in his fist. These rabbit people who hadn’t asked for music and commercials on their public trains but who had got it by the sewerful, the air drenched and sprayed and pummeled and kicked by voices and music every instant. And here was an idiot man, himself, suddenly scrabbling at the wall, beating at the loudspeaker, at the enemy of peace, at the killer of philosophy and privacy!

  “Mad man!”

  “Call the conductor!”

  “Denham’s, Denham’s Double Dentifrice!”

  “Fourteenth Street!”

  Only that saved him. The car stopped. Montag, thrown into the aisle by the grinding halt, rolled over, book in hand, leaped past the pale, frightened faces, screamed in his mind soundlessly, and was out the opening door of the train and running on the white tiles up and up through tunnels, alone, that voice still crying like a seagull on a lonely shore after him, “Denham’s, Denham’s …”