"How many copies of Shakespeare and Plato?"
"None! You know as well as I do. None!"
Faber hung up.
Montag put down the phone. None. A thing he knew of course from the firehouse listings. But somehow he had wanted to hear it from Faber himself.
In the hall Mildred's face was suffused with excitement. "Well, the ladies are coming over!"
Montag showed her a book. "This is the Old and New Testament, and . . ."
"Don't start that again!"
"It might be the last copy in this part of the world."
"You've got to hand it back tonight, don't you? Captain Beatty knows you got it, doesn't he?"
"I don't think he knows which book I stole. But how do I choose a substitute? Do I turn in Mr. Jefferson? Mr. Thoreau? Which is least valuable? If I pick a substitute and Beatty does know which book I stole, he'll guess we've an entire library here!"
Mildred's mouth twitched. "See what you're doing? You'll ruin us! Who's more important, me or that Bible?" She was beginning to shriek now, sitting there like a wax doll melting in its own heat.
He could hear Beatty's voice. "Sit down, Montag.
Watch. Delicately, like the petals of a flower. Light the first page, light the second page. Each becomes a black butterfly. Beautiful, eh? Light the third page, from the second and so on, chain-smoking, chapter by chapter, all the silly things the words mean, all the false promises, all the secondhand notions and time-worn philosophies." There sat Beatty, perspiring gently, the floor littered with swarms of black moths that had died in a single storm.
Mildred stopped screaming as quickly as she started. Montag was not listening. "There's only one thing to do," he said. "Some time before tonight when I give the book to Beatty, I've got to have a duplicate made."
"You'll be here for the White Clown tonight, and the ladies coming over?" cried Mildred.
Montag stopped at the door, with his back turned. "Millie?"
A silence. "What?"
"Millie? Does the White Clown love you?"
No answer.
"Millie, does"--he licked his lips--"does your 'family' love you, love you very much, love you with all their heart and soul, Millie?"
He felt her blinking slowly at the back of his neck. "Why'd you ask a silly question like that?"
He felt he wanted to cry, but nothing would happen to his eyes or his mouth.
"If you see that dog outside," said Mildred, "give him a kick for me."
He hesitated, listening at the door. He opened it and stepped out.
The rain had stopped and the sun was setting in the clear sky. The street and the lawn and the porch were empty. He let his breath go in a great sigh.
He slammed the door.
He was on the subway.
I'm numb, he thought. When did the numbness really begin in my face? In my body? The night I kicked the pill bottle in the dark, like kicking a buried mine.
The numbness will go away, he thought. It'll take time, but I'll do it, or Faber will do it for me. Someone somewhere will give me back the old face and the old hands the way they were. Even the smile, he thought, the old burnt-in smile, that's gone. I'm lost without it.
The subway fled past him, cream-tile, jet-black, cream-tile, jet-black, numerals and darkness, more darkness and the total adding itself.