Fahrenheit 451

By Ray Bradbury

It was a pleasure to sting. It was a special pleasure to see things eat up,to see things melanize and changed. With the brass nose in his fists,with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world,the blood ram down in his head,and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the shred and charcoal ruins of history. With his symbolic helmet numbered 451 on his stolid head,and his eyes all orangish flame with the thought of what came next,he ruffle the igniter and the house jumped up in a gorging fire that burned the evening sky red and yellow and black. He strode in a horde of fireflies. He want above all,It was a pleasure to sting. It was a special pleasure to see things eat up,to see things melanize and changed. With the brass nose in his fists,with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world,the blood ram down in his head,and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the shred and charcoal ruins of history. With his symbolic helmet numbered 451 on his stolid head,and his eyes all orangish flame with the thought of what came next,he ruffle the igniter and the house jumped up in a gorging fire that burned the evening sky red and yellow and black. He strode in a horde of fireflies. He want above all,like the old gag,to shove a marshmallow on a stick in the furnace,while the undulate pigeon - winged books died on the porch and lawn of the house. While the books went up in sparkling twirl and blew away on a wind turned dark with burning. Montag grinned the fierce grin of all men swinge and driven back by flame. He knew that when he yield to the firehouse,he might blink at himself,a jongleur man,sting - corked,in the mirror. later,going to sopor,he would feel the fiery smile still transfix by his face muscles,in the obscure. It ne'er went away,that smiling,it ne'er ever went away,as long as he think of. He hung up his black - mallet - colored helmet and shined it ; he hung his flameproof jacket neatly ; he showered luxuriously,sing,hands in sac,walked across the upper floor of the fire station and fell down the hole. At the last present moment,when disaster seemed positive,he pulled his hands from his pockets and broke his fall by hold on the golden pole. He slid to a squeak halt,the heels one inch from the concrete floor down the stairs. He walked out of the fire station and along the midnight street toward the tube where the silent,air - propelled train slid soundlessly down its lubricated flue in the earth and let him out with a great puff of warm air an to the cream - tile escalator rising to the suburb. he let the escalator waft him into the still night zephyr. retrieve little at all about nothing in particular. in front he reached the corner,as if individual had called his name. The last few nights he had had the most uncertain feelings about the pavement just around the corner here,moving in the starlight toward his house. He had felt that a moment before his work the turn,individual had been there. The air seemed charged with a special calm as if individual had waited there,quietly,and only a present moment before he came,simply turned to a vestige and let him through. Perhaps his nose observe a faint perfume,perhaps the skin on the vertebral column of his hands,on his nerve,felt the temperature rise at this one spot where a person ' s standing might raise the immediate atmosphere ten grade for an instant. There was no sympathise it. each time he made the turn,he saw only the whitened,unused,buckling pavement,with perchance,on one nighttime,something vanish swiftly across a lawn before he could focus his eyes or speak. But instantly,this evening,he slow almost to a stop.  His interior mind,reach out out to turn the corner for him,had heard the weak whisper. take a breath ? Or was the atmosphere compressed merely by someone standing very quietly there,waitress ?,He turned the street corner.  The autumn leaves blew over the moony pavement in such a way as to make the girl who was moving there seem fixed to a sliding walk,allow the motion of the wind and the leaves carry her forward. Her head was half bent to watch her shoes stir the circulate leaves. Her face was thin and milk - white,and in it was a kind of gentle hunger that touched over everything with tireless curiosity. It was a tone,of pale surprise ; the dark eyes were so fixed to the world that no move run them. Her dress was white and it whisper. He almost thought he heard the question of her hands as she walked,and the immeasurably small sound now,the white stir of her face turning when she discovered she was a moment away from a man who stood in the middle of the paving waiting. The trees overhead made a great sound of letting down their dry rain. The girl stopped and looked as if she might root for back in surprise,but instead stood consider Montag with eyes so dark and shining and alive,that he felt he had said something quite grand. But he knew his mouth had only moved to say hullo,and then when she seemed hypnotized by the salamander on his arm and the phoenix - phonograph recording on his chest,he speak again.  he speak again. he speak again. " Of trend," you ' re a new neighbour," " And you must be --" she raised her eyes from his professional symbols "-- the relief pitcher. " Her voice train off. " How strangely you say that. " " I ' d -- I ' d have known it with my eyes shut,slow. " What -- the smell of kerosine ?,My wife always kick," he express joy. " You never wash out it off completely. in reverence. He felt she was walking in a round about him,turn over him end for end,sway him quietly,and void his pockets,without once proceed herself. because the silence had lengthen," is nothing but fragrance to me. " " Does it appear like that,genuinely ?," " Of trend.