A Pleasure to Burn (20 page)

And he thought, when did I stop loving Mildred, and the answer was never! For he had never known her. She was the pale sad goldfish that swam in the subterranean illumination of the TV set, her natural habitat the yeasty chairs especially placed for viewing.

“It's the dandelion you used,” he protested. “Use another.”

“No,” said Clarisse. “You're not in love. A dandelion won't help.” She got up. “Well, I've got to go see my psychiatrist. The school sends me to him. So I can go back to school, he's trying to make me normal.”

“I'll kill him if he does!”

He didn't see Clarisse for a month. He watched for her each day. And after some forty days had passed, one afternoon, he mentioned it to his wife.

“Oh, her,” said Mildred, with the radio music jarring the table plates. “Why, she was killed by an auto a month ago.”

“A month!” He leaped up. “But why didn't you tell me!”

“Didn't I? A car hit her.”

“Did they find whose car it was?”

“No. You know how those things are. What do you want for supper, dear, frozen steak or an omelet?”

And so with the death of the girl, 1 percent of the world died. And the other 99 percent was on the instant revealed to him for what it was. He saw what she had been and what Mildred had been, was, and always would be, what he himself was but didn't want to be any more, what Millie's friends were and would forever be. And he saw that it was no idle, separate thing, Mildred's suicide attempts, the lovely dark girl with the flowers and the leaves being ground under a motor-car, it was a thing of the world they lived in, it was all a parcel of the world, it was part of the screaming average, of the pressing down of people into electric moulds, it was the vacuum of civilization in its meaningless cam-shaft rotations down a rotary track to smash against its own senseless tail. Suddenly Millie's attempts at death were a symbol. She was trying to escape from Nothingness. Whereas the girl had been fighting nothingness with something, with being aware instead of forgetting, with walking instead of sitting, with going to get life instead of having it brought to her. And the civilization had killed her for her trouble, not purposely no, but with a fine ironic sense, for no purpose at all, simply the blind rushing destruction of a car driven by a vanilla-faced idiot going nowhere for nothing, and very irritated that he had been detained for 120 seconds while the police investigated and released him on his way to some distant base that he must tag before running for home.

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.

 

“S
HUT 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.”