[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.They stood by the river in the starlight.Montag saw the luminous dial of his waterproof.Five.Five o'clock in the morning.Another year ticked by in a single hour, and dawn waiting beyond the far bank of theriver."Why do you trust me?" said Montag.A man moved in the darkness."The look of you's enough.You haven't seen yourself in a mirror lately.Beyond that,the city has never cared so much about us to bother with an elaborate chase like thisto find us.A few crackpots with verses in their heads can't touch them, and theyknow it and we know it; everyone knows it.So long as the vast population doesn'twander about quoting the Magna Charta and the Constitution, it's all right.Thefiremen were enough to check that, now and then.No, the cities don't bother us.Andyou look like hell."They moved along the bank of the river, going south.Montag tried to see the men'sfaces, the old faces he remembered from the firelight, lined and tired.He was lookingfor a brightness, a resolve, a triumph over tomorrow that hardly seemed to be there.Perhaps he had expected their faces to burn and glitter with the knowledge theycarried, to glow as lanterns glow, with the light in them.But all the light had comefrom the camp fire, and these men had seemed no different from any others who hadrun a long race, searched a long search, seen good things destroyed, and now, verylate, were gathering to wait for the end of the party and the blowing out of the lamps.They weren't at all certain that the things they carried in their heads might makeevery future dawn glow with a purer light, they were sure of nothing save that thebooks were on file behind their quiet eyes, the books were waiting, with their pagesuncut, for the customers who might come by in later years, some with clean andsome with dirty fingers.Montag squinted from one face to another as they walked."Don't judge a book by its cover," someone said.And they all laughed quietly, moving downstream.There was a shriek and the jets from the city were gone overhead long before themen looked up.Montag stared back at the city, far down the river, only a faint glownow."My wife's back there.""I'm sorry to hear that.The cities won't do well in the next few days," said Granger. "It's strange, I don't miss her, it's strange I don't feel much of anything," said Montag."Even if she dies, I realized a moment ago, I don't think I'll feel sad.It isn't right.Something must be wrong with me.""Listen," said Granger, taking his arm, and walking with him, holding aside thebushes to let him pass."When I was a boy my grandfather died, and he was asculptor.He was also a very kind man who had a lot of love to give the world, and hehelped clean up the slum in our town; and he made toys for us and he did a millionthings in his lifetime; he was always busy with his hands.And when he died, Isuddenly realized I wasn't crying for him at all, but for the things he did.I criedbecause he would never do them again, he would never carve another piece of woodor help us raise doves and pigeons in the back yard or play the violin the way he did,or tell us jokes the way he did.He was part of us and when he died, all the actionsstopped dead and there was no one to do them just the way he did.He wasindividual.He was an important man.I've never gotten over his death.Often I think,what wonderful carvings never came to birth because he died.How many jokes aremissing from the world, and how many homing pigeons untouched by his hands.Heshaped the world.He did things to the world.The world was bankrupted of ten millionfine actions the night he passed on."Montag walked in silence."Millie, Millie," he whispered."Millie.""What?""My wife, my wife.Poor Millie, poor Millie.I can't remember anything.I think of herhands but I don't see them doing anything at all.They just hang there at her sides orthey lie there on her lap or there's a cigarette in them, but that's all."Montag turned and glanced back.What did you give to the city, Montag?Ashes.What did the others give to each other?Nothingness.Granger stood looking back with Montag."Everyone must leave something behindwhen he dies, my grandfather said.A child or a book or a painting or a house or awall built or a pair of shoes made.Or a garden planted.Something your handtouched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and whenpeople look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there.It doesn't matter whatyou do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before youtouched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away.Thedifference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in thetouching, he said.The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; thegardener will be there a lifetime."Granger moved his hand."My grandfather showed me some V-2 rocket films once,fifty years ago.Have you ever seen the atom-bomb mushroom from two hundredmiles up? It's a pinprick, it's nothing.With the wilderness all around it."My grandfather ran off the V-2 rocket film a dozen times and then hoped that someday our cities would open up and let the green and the land and the wilderness inmore, to remind people that we're allotted a little space on earth and that we survivein that wilderness that can take back what it has given, as easily as blowing its breathon us or sending the sea to tell us we are not so big.When we forget how close thewilderness is in the night, my grandpa said, some day it will come in and get us, forwe will have forgotten how terrible and real it can be.You see?" Granger turned toMontag."Grandfather's been dead for all these years, but if you lifted my skull, byGod, in the convolutions of my brain you'd find the big ridges of his thumbprint.Hetouched me.As I said earlier, he was a sculptor.'I hate a Roman named Status Quo!' he said to me.'Stuff your eyes with wonder,' he said, 'live as if you'd drop dead in tenseconds.See the world.It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for infactories.Ask no guarantees, ask for no security, there never was such an animal.And if there were, it would be related to the great sloth which hangs upside down in atree all day every day, sleeping its life away
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]