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.""What do you want?""Let me in.""I haven't done anything l""I'm alone, dammit ! ""You swear it?""I swear!"The front door opened slowly.Faber peered out, looking very old in the light and veryfragile and very much afraid.The old man looked as if he had not been out of thehouse in years.He and the white plaster walls inside were much the same.Therewas white in the flesh of his mouth and his cheeks and his hair was white and hiseyes had faded, with white in the vague blueness there.Then his eyes touched onthe book under Montag's arm and he did not look so old any more and not quite asfragile.Slowly his fear went."I'm sorry.One has to be careful."He looked at the book under Montag's arm and could not stop."So it's true."Montag stepped inside.The door shut."Sit down." Faber backed up, as if he feared the book might vanish if he took hiseyes from it.Behind him, the door to a bedroom stood open, and in that room a litterof machinery and steel tools was strewn upon a desk-top.Montag had only aglimpse, before Faber, seeing Montag's attention diverted, turned quickly and shutthe bedroom door and stood holding the knob with a trembling hand.His gazereturned unsteadily to Montag, who was now seated with the book in his lap."Thebook-where did you-?""I stole it."Faber, for the first time, raised his eyes and looked directly into Montag's face."You're brave.""No," said Montag."My wife's dying.A friend of mine's already dead.Someone whomay have been a friend was burnt less than twenty-four hours ago.You're the onlyone I knew might help me.To see.To see."Faber's hands itched on his knees."May I?""Sorry." Montag gave him the book."It's been a long time.I'm not a religious man.But it's been a long time." Faber turnedthe pages, stopping here and there to read."It's as good as I remember.Lord, howthey've changed it- in our `parlours' these days.Christ is one of the `family' now.Ioften wonder it God recognizes His own son the way we've dressed him up, or is itdressed him down? He's a regular peppermint stick now, all sugar-crystal andsaccharine when he isn't making veiled references to certain commercial productsthat every worshipper absolutely needs." Faber sniffed the book."Do you know thatbooks smell like nutmeg or some spice from a foreign land? I loved to smell themwhen I was a boy.Lord, there were a lot of lovely books once, before we let them go." Faber turned the pages."Mr.Montag, you are looking at a coward.I saw theway things were going, a long time back.I said nothing.I'm one of the innocents whocould have spoken up and out when no one would listen to the `guilty,' but I did notspeak and thus became guilty myself.And when finally they set the structure to burnthe books, using the, firemen, I grunted a few times and subsided, for there were noothers grunting or yelling with me, by then.Now, it's too late." Faber closed the Bible."Well--suppose you tell me why you came here?""Nobody listens any more.I can't talk to the walls because they're yelling at me.Ican't talk to my wife; she listens to the walls.I just want someone to hear what I haveto say.And maybe if I talk long enough, it'll make sense.And I want you to teach meto understand what I read."Faber examined Montag's thin, blue-jowled face."How did you get shaken up? Whatknocked the torch out of your hands?""I don't know.We have everything we need to be happy, but we aren't happy.Something's missing.I looked around.The only thing I positively knew was gone wasthe books I'd burned in ten or twelve years.So I thought books might help.""You're a hopeless romantic," said Faber."It would be funny if it were not serious.It'snot books you need, it's some of the things that once were in books.The same thingscould be in the `parlour families' today.The same infinite detail and awareness couldbe projected through the radios and televisors, but are not.No, no, it's not books atall you're looking for! Take it where you can find it, in old phonograph records, oldmotion pictures, and in old friends; look for it in nature and look for it in yourself.Books were only one type of receptacle where we stored a lot of things we wereafraid we might forget.There is nothing magical in them at all.The magic is only inwhat books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into onegarment for us.Of course you couldn't know this, of course you still can't understandwhat I mean when I say all this.You are intuitively right, that's what counts.Threethings are missing."Number one: Do you know why books such as this are so important? Because theyhave quality.And what does the word quality mean? To me it means texture.Thisbook has pores.It has features.This book can go under the microscope.You'd findlife under the glass, streaming past in infinite profusion.The more pores, the moretruthfully recorded details of life per square inch you can get on a sheet of paper, themore `literary' you are.That's my definition, anyway.Telling detail.Fresh detail.Thegood writers touch life often.The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her.The badones rape her and leave her for the flies."So now do you see why books are hated and feared? They show the pores in theface of life.The comfortable people want only wax moon faces, poreless, hairless,expressionless.We are living in a time when flowers are trying to live on flowers,instead of growing on good rain and black loam.Even fireworks, for all theirprettiness, come from the chemistry of the earth.Yet somehow we think we cangrow, feeding on flowers and fireworks, without completing the cycle back to reality.Do you know the legend of Hercules and Antaeus, the giant wrestler, whose strengthwas incredible so long as he stood firmly on the earth.But when he was held,rootless, in mid-air, by Hercules, he perished easily.If there isn't something in thatlegend for us today, in this city, in our time, then I am completely insane.Well, therewe have the first thing I said we needed.Quality, texture of information.""And the second?""Leisure.""Oh, but we've plenty of off-hours." "Off-hours, yes
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