The front door opened slowly.
Faber peered out, looking very old in the
light and very fragile
and very much afraid.
The old man looked as if he had not been out
of the house in years.
He and
the white plaster walls inside were much the
same.
There was white in the flesh of his mouth
and
his cheeks and his hair was white and his
eyes had faded, with white in the vague blueness
there.
Then his eyes touched on the book under Montag's
arm and he did not look so old any more and
not quite as fragile.
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 his eyes from it.
Behind him, the door to a bedroom stood open,
and in that room a litter of machinery and
steel
tools was strewn upon a desk-top.
Montag had only a glimpse, before Faber, seeing
Montag's
attention diverted, turned quickly and shut
the bedroom door and stood holding the knob
with a
trembling hand.
His gaze returned unsteadily to Montag, who
was now seated with the book in
his lap.
"The book-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 who may have
been a friend was burnt less than twenty-four
hours ago.
You're the only one 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 turned the pages,
stopping here and there to read.
"It's as good as I remember.
Lord, how they've changed it- in our
`parlours' these days.
Christ is one of the `family' now.
I often wonder it God recognizes His own
son the way we've dressed him up, or is it
dressed him down?
He's a regular peppermint stick
now, all sugar-crystal and saccharine when
he isn't making veiled references to certain
commercial products that every worshipper
absolutely needs."
Faber sniffed the book.
"Do you
know that books smell like nutmeg or some
spice from a foreign land?
I loved to smell them
when 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 the way things were going, a
long time back.
I said nothing.
I'm one of the innocents who could have spoken
up and out when
no one would listen to the `guilty,' but I
did not speak and thus became guilty myself.
And when
finally they set the structure to burn the
books, using the, firemen, I grunted a few
times and
subsided, for there were no others 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?"
