A Pleasure to Burn by Ray Bradbury

Author:Ray Bradbury [Bradbury, Ray]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: General Fiction
ISBN: 9780062071026
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2010-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

The Sieve and the Sand

THEY READ THE LONG AFTERNOON THROUGH, WHILE THE fire flickered and blew the hearth and the rain fell from the sky over the house. Now and again, Mr. Montag would quietly light a cigarette and puff it, or go 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?” And Mildred’s voice, as colorless as a beer bottle which contains a 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 cigarette smoke idled, 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 think on 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 said, taking the book. “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,” she said.

“But you remember some of it.”

“Nothing.”

“Try.”

She tried to remember and tell it. “Nothing.”

“You’ll learn, in time. Doesn’t some of the beauty get through to you?”

“I don’t like books, I don’t understand them, 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 our house. They’ll burn our books and kill us. Now, I’m sick.”

“Poor Millie,” 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 again.”

“Thanks.”

“But you must listen. I’ll explain. And one day you’ll understand why these books are so fine.”

“I’ll never learn.”

“You must, if you want to be free.”

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

“But aware, no. You’re like the moth that got caught in the interior of a bell at midnight. Numb with concussion, drunk on sound. Thirty years of that confounded blatting radio, no ideas, no beauty, just noise. A moth in a bell. And we’ve got to—”

“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.

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