Ray Bradbury 3-Book Collection: Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man. Рэй БрэдбериЧитать онлайн книгу.
fire from his look. Their faces grew haunted with silence. They leaned forward at the sound of Montag’s swallowing his final bite of food. They listened to his feverish breathing. The three empty walls of the room were like the pale brows of sleeping giants now, empty of dreams. Montag felt that if you touched these three staring brows you would feel a fine salt sweat on your finger-tips. The perspiration gathered with the silence and the sub-audible trembling around and about and in the women who were burning with tension. Any moment they might hiss a long sputtering hiss and explode.
Montag moved his lips.
‘Let’s talk.’
The women jerked and stared.
‘How’re your children, Mrs Phelps?’ he asked.
‘You know I haven’t any! No one in his right mind, the Good Lord knows, would have children!’ said Mrs Phelps, not quite sure why she was angry with this man.
‘I wouldn’t say that,’ said Mrs Bowles. ‘I’ve had two children by Caesarian section. No use going through all that agony for a baby. The world must reproduce, you know, the race must go on. Besides, they sometimes look just like you and that’s nice. Two Caesarians turned the trick, yes, sir. Oh, my doctor said, Caesarians aren’t necessary; you’ve got the hips for it, everything’s normal, but I insisted.’
‘Caesarians or not, children are ruinous; you’re out of your mind,’ said Mrs Phelps.
‘I plunk the children in school nine days out of ten. I put up with them when they come home three days a month; it’s not bad at all. You heave them into the “parlour” and turn the switch. It’s like washing clothes; stuff laundry in and slam the lid.’ Mrs Bowles tittered. ‘They’d just as soon kick as kiss me. Thank God, I can kick back!’
The women showed their tongues, laughing.
Mildred sat a moment and then, seeing that Montag was still in the doorway, clapped her hands. ‘Let’s talk politics, to please Guy!’
‘Sounds fine,’ said Mrs Bowles. ‘I voted last election, same as everyone, and I laid it on the line for President Noble. I think he’s one of the nicest-looking men who ever became president.’
‘Oh, but the man they ran against him!’
‘He wasn’t much, was he? Kind of small and homely and he didn’t shave too close or comb his hair very well.’
‘What possessed the “Outs” to run him? You just don’t go running a little short man like that against a tall man. Besides – he mumbled. Half the time I couldn’t hear a word he said. And the words I did hear I didn’t understand!’
‘Fat, too, and didn’t dress to hide it. No wonder the landslide was for Winston Noble. Even their names helped. Compare Winston Noble to Hubert Hoag for ten seconds and you can almost figure the results.’
‘Damn it!’ cried Montag. ‘What do you know about Hoag and Noble?’
‘Why, they were right in that parlour wall, not six months ago. One was always picking his nose; it drove me wild.’
‘Well, Mr Montag,’ said Mrs Phelps, ‘do you want us to vote for a man like that?’
Mildred beamed. ‘You just run away from the door, Guy, and don’t make us nervous.’
But Montag was gone and back in a moment with a book in his hand.
‘Guy!’
‘Damn it all, damn it all, damn it!’
‘What’ve you got there; isn’t that a book? I thought that all special training these days was done by film.’ Mrs Phelps blinked. ‘You reading up on fireman theory?’
‘Theory, hell,’ said Montag. ‘It’s poetry.’
‘Montag.’ A whisper.
‘Leave me alone!’ Montag felt himself turning in a great circling roar and buzz and hum.
‘Montag, hold on, don’t …’
‘Did you hear them, did you hear these monsters talking about monsters? Oh God, the way they jabber about people and their own children and themselves and the way they talk about their husbands and the way they talk about war, dammit, I stand here and I can’t believe it!’
‘I didn’t say a single word about any war, I’ll have you know,’ said Mrs Phelps.
‘As for poetry, I hate it,’ said Mrs Bowles.
‘Have you ever read any?’
‘Montag,’ Faber’s voice scraped away at him. ‘You’ll ruin everything. Shut up, you fool!’
All three women were on their feet.
‘Sit down!’
They sat.
‘I’m going home,’ quavered Mrs Bowles.
‘Montag, Montag, please, in the name of God, what are you up to?’ pleaded Faber.
‘Why don’t you just read us one of those poems from your little book,’ Mrs Phelps nodded. ‘I think that’d be very interesting.’
‘That’s not right,’ wailed Mrs Bowles. ‘We can’t do that!’
‘Well, look at Mr Montag, he wants to, I know he does. And if we listen nice, Mr Montag will be happy and then maybe we can go on and do something else.’ She glanced nervously at the long emptiness of the walls enclosing them.
‘Montag, go through with this and I’ll cut off, I’ll leave.’ The beetle jabbed his ear. ‘What good is this, what’ll you prove?’
‘Scare hell out of them, that’s what, scare the living daylights out!’
Mildred looked at the empty air. ‘Now, Guy, just who are you talking to?’
A silver needle pierced his brain. ‘Montag, listen, only one way out, play it as a joke, cover up, pretend you aren’t mad at all. Then – walk to your wall-incinerator, and throw the book in!’
Mildred had already anticipated this in a quavery voice. ‘Ladies, once a year, every fireman’s allowed to bring one book home, from the old days, to show his family how silly it all was, how nervous that sort of thing can make you, how crazy. Guy’s surprise tonight is to read you one sample to show you how mixed-up things were, so none of us will ever have to bother our little old heads about that junk again, isn’t that right, darling?’
He crushed the book in his fists.
‘Say “yes”.’
His mouth moved like Faber’s:
‘Yes.’
Mildred snatched the book with a laugh. ‘Here! Read this one. No, I take it back. Here’s that real funny one you read out loud today. Ladies, you won’t understand a word. It goes umpty-tumpty-ump. Go ahead, Guy, that page, dear.’
He looked at the opened page.
A fly stirred its wings softly in his ear. ‘Read.’
‘What’s the title, dear?’
‘Dover Beach.’ His mouth was numb.
‘Now read in a nice clear voice and go slow.’
The room was blazing hot, he was all fire, he was all coldness; they sat in the middle of an empty desert with three chairs and him standing, swaying, and him waiting for Mrs Phelps to stop straightening her dress hem and Mrs Bowles to take her fingers away from her hair. Then he began to read in a low, stumbling voice that grew firmer as he progressed from line to line, and his voice went out across the desert, into the whiteness, and around the three sitting women there in the great hot emptiness.
‘“The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full,