Fahrenheit 451 / 451 градус по Фаренгейту. Рэй БрэдбериЧитать онлайн книгу.
He was not happy. He was not happy. He said the words to himself. He recognized this as the true state of afaf irs[6]. He wore his happiness like a mask.
Without turning on the light, he imagined how this room could look. His wife, Mildred, is stretched on the bed, uncovered and cold, with her eyes fixed to the ceiling, immovable. And in her ears are the little Seashells, the radios, and there is an electronic ocean of sound, of music and talk coming in on the shore of her unsleeping mind.
He did not wish to open the curtains, for he did not want the moon to come into the room. So, he felt his way toward his open, separate, and therefore cold bed.
Suddenly his foot hit an object on the floor. He stood very straight and listened to the person on the dark bed. The breath coming out of the nostrils was faint.
He still did not want outside light. He pulled out his igniter, felt the salamander engraved on its silver disc, gave it a flick…
“Mildred!”
Her face was like a snow-covered island. There was only the singing of the radios in her ears, and her eyes were all glass, and breath was going in and out, softly, faintly, in and out of her nostrils.
The object he had hit with his foot was the small crystal bottle of sleeping-tablets which earlier today had been filled with thirty capsules and which now lay uncapped and empty in the light of the little flare.
As he stood there the sky over the house screamed. There was a tremendous sound. The jet-bombs[7] were going over, going over, going over, one two, one two, one two, six of them, nine of them, twelve of them… The house shook. The flare went out in his hand. He took the telephone.
The jets[8] were gone. He felt his lips move. “Emergency hospital.”
They had this machine. They had two machines, really. One of them slid down into your stomach like a black cobra down a well. It drank up the green matter. Did it suck out all the poisons accumulated with the years? The operator stood smoking a cigarette. The other machine was working too.
The other machine was operated by an equally indifferent fellow in reddish-brown overalls. This machine pumped all of the blood from the body and replaced it with fresh blood.
“We have to clean them out both ways,” said the operator, standing over the silent woman. “It’s no use cleaning the stomach if you don’t clean the blood. Leave that stuff in the blood and the blood hits the brain, bang, and the brain just gives up.”
“Stop it!” said Montag.
“I was just explaining,” said the operator.
“Are you done?” said Montag.
They shut the machines up tight. “We’re done.” His anger did not even touch them. They stood smoking. “That’s fifty dollars.”
“First, why don’t you tell me if she’ll be all right?”
“Sure, she’ll be O. K.”
“Neither of you is an M. D.[9] Why didn’t they send an M. D. from Emergency?”
“Hell!” the operator’s cigarette moved on his lips. “We get these cases nine or ten a night. It started a few years ago, so we had the special machines built. You don’t need an M. D. in cases like this; all you need is two handymen, who clean up the problem in half an hour. Look” – he started for the door – “we’ve got to go. Just had another call. Ten blocks from here. Someone else just took all the pills in his bottle. Call if you need us again. Keep her quiet. She’ll wake up hungry. Good-bye.”
And the men left.
Montag sank down into a chair and looked at this woman.
“Mildred,” he said, at last.
Half an hour passed.
The bloodstream in this woman was new and it seemed it had done a new thing to her. Her cheeks were very pink, and her lips were very fresh and full of color, and they looked soft and relaxed.
He got up, put back the curtains and opened the windows wide to let the night air in. It was two o’clock in the morning. Was it only an hour ago, Clarisse McClellan in the street, and his return home, and the dark room and his foot kicking the little crystal bottle? Only an hour, but the world had melted down and sprung up in a new and colorless form.
Laughter blew across the moon-colored lawn from the house of Clarisse and her father and mother and the uncle who smiled so quietly and so earnestly. Above all, their laughter was relaxed and sincere, coming from the house that was so brightly lit this late at night while all the other houses were dark. Montag heard the voices talking.
He moved out through the french windows[10] and crossed the lawn. He stood outside the talking house in the shadows, thinking he might even tap on their door and whisper, “Let me come in. I won’t say anything. I just want to listen. What is it you’re saying?”
But instead he stood there, very cold, listening to a man’s voice (the uncle?) moving along at an easy pace:
“Well, after all, this is the age of the disposable tissue[11]. Blow your nose on a person, wad them, flush them away[12], reach for another, blow, wad, flush. Everyone is using everyone else’s coat-tails.”
Montag moved back to his own house, left the window wide, checked Mildred, covered her carefully, and then lay down in his bed.
One drop of rain. Clarisse. Another drop. Mildred. A third. The uncle. A fourth. The fire tonight. One, two, three, four, five, Clarisse, Mildred, uncle, fire, tablets, tissues, blow, wad, flush. Rain. The storm. Thunder falling downstairs. The whole world pouring down.
“I don’t know anything anymore,” he said, and let a sleeping-tablet dissolve on his tongue.
At nine in the morning, Mildred’s bed was empty.
Montag got up quickly, ran down the hall and stopped at the kitchen door.
Toast popped out of the silver toaster, was held by a metal hand that drenched it with melted butter.
Mildred watched the toast delivered to her plate. She had both ears plugged with electronic bees. She looked up suddenly, saw him, and nodded.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
She was an expert at lip-reading from ten years of using Seashell ear-tabs. She nodded again.
Montag sat down.
His wife said, “I don’t know why I am so hungry.”
“Last night,” he began.
“I didn’t sleep well. I feel terrible,” she said. “God, I’m hungry. I can’t understand it.”
“Last night —” he said again.
She watched his lips casually. “What about last night?”
“Don’t you remember?”
“What? Did we have a wild party or something? I feel like I’ve a hangover. God, I’m hungry. Who was here?”
“A few people,” he said.
“That’s what I thought.” She chewed her toast. “I hope I didn’t do anything foolish at the party.”
“No,” he said, quietly.
The toaster gave out a piece of buttered bread
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